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​Chris Coleman's Brother-In-Law Sets Up JustGiving Page to Help Pay Dean Saunders' Parking Fine

In a show of good, Welsh solidarity, people are chipping in to cover Dean Saunders' costs after he left his car at Birmingham Airport for the duration of the Euros.
Image via YouTube

While Wales have had a fantastic Euro 2016 so far, Welsh offerings from the BBC studio have been more of a mixed bag. Dean Saunders is the nation's representative when it comes to punditry and, to be honest, his analysis tends to consist of rambling anecdotes, earnest malapropisms and transfer tales from his time as Wrexham manager. Whenever Gary Lineker asks Saunders for an opinion, he looks like a man who's come to the pub for a bit of peace and quiet, but has managed to get roped into an incredibly technical discussion about boating knots. He's part confused, part surprised, but still very much happy to be there.

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Considering his on-air persona of cheerful bewilderment, it should come as little surprise to learn that Dean can be a bit absent-minded outside of the studio, too. It's not hard to imagine him taking up the role of a Welsh Mr. Bean, getting up to all sorts of absurdist antics, like crashing his canary-yellow Mini Cooper into Swansea Marina, or deliberately going on holiday to Colwyn Bay.

Whether or not he actually drives a Mini we can't say, but Wales Online reports that Dean's had a genuine Mr. Bean-esque mix up with his car during his time at the Euros.

Apparently, he's left his vehicle in Birmingham Airport's short-stay car park, and is now racking up a fine which is growing by up to £100 a day. Having assumed that Wales would go out at the group stage ahead of the tournament, he's now incurring a ludicrously massive financial penalty from Birmingham's aviation authorities. Why would he make such an assumption? Why would he not have at least one contingency plan? Oh Dean, what are you like?

Thankfully, in a wonderfully Welsh turn of affairs, people are now coming together to help Saunders out. Richard Jackson, Chris Coleman's brother-in-law, has set up a JustGiving page to help pay for the ever-increasing parking fine. We can imagine him, bumping into Dean Saunders' great-aunt Gwen down the post office in Pontarddulais, hearing the whole story and thinking: "Oh bloody hell, Dean, not this nonsense again."

See, we have a sneaking suspicion that this isn't the first time that Dean Saunders has accidentally abandoned his car at Birmingham Airport. We reckon he does this practically every summer, and that there are a whole plethora of online fundraising pages dedicated to recouping his massive parking fines. Every year, Dean Saunders demands to organise a lads' trip to Zante, and every year his mates end up giving him a lift home in his flip-flops, and chipping in to get his car released from Wolverhampton Vehicle Pound. He promises it won't happen next time and, inevitably, it does.

Thinking about it, it might be time for Dean to admit that he's not cut out for trips abroad. After all, this is a man who is now claiming to have run out of clothes at Euro 2016, because he only "took a little suitcase". We can infer from this statement that Dean has either never heard of a washing machine, or assumes that French clothing shops only sell berets, cravats and black-and-white stripy shirts. Either way, we do not recommend he goes on holiday without a chaperone. Or anywhere at all, for that matter.