Weird week in football: Posts, parachutes, and poor penalties

Every Monday, theScore will highlight the most outlandish moments from the wacky, sometimes daft, and perennially entertaining world of European football. Here's what made us smile - or cringe - on the pitch this past week.

With the holidays fast approaching and a glut of fixtures dotting the calendar, football is never more prone to the weird than in the days leading up to the winter break.

And what a week it was, especially for shot-stoppers.

Rayo Vallecano's Paulo Gazzaniga made a case for never returning to Southampton, while Genoa 'keeper Mattia Perrin proved there is something worse than losing to lowly Palermo.

And moving up the pitch at a leisurely pace like Wes Brown, whoever says Christmas miracles don't exist missed Old Man Winter himself score on his Blackburn debut this past weekend.

In the spirit of Yeovil Town's generous players and staff, grab a pint and a pie and enjoy this instalment of the Weird Week in Football:

Geronimo, look out below

Perennial Eredivisie power Ajax welcomed fellow giant PSV to the Amsterdam ArenA on Sunday in a match rarely short on excitement, and befitting the atmosphere of the tilt, the hosts had the match ball delivered by parachute.

Perhaps completely unrelated, but for the first time in 10 fixtures between the two, the match ended in a stalemate when on-loan Magpie Siem de Jong's 80th-minute effort cancelled out an opening-half goal from Oranje brother Davy Klaassen.

As the adage goes, you don't need a parachute to go skydiving - you need a parachute to go skydiving twice. Feyenoord did it better.

That's Maloudacrous

While balls are falling from the heavens in the Netherlands, former Chelsea attacker Florent Malouda is doing his best to return them.

Malouda's Delhi Dynamos missed three spot kicks, not the least of which was the Frenchman's galactic effort, and were bounced from the Indian Super League semi-finals by Steve Coppell's Kerala Blasters.

"Malouda has already… he knows where he's playing this… he knows where he's putting this away… he's focused, he's got his eyes … OH!"

Liverpool legend Ian Rush must be wondering what in the fancy heck he's just seen.

Lights-out lower-league clash

Saturday's National League clash between top-six sides Forest Green Rovers and Dover Athletic started 40 minutes late after the floodlights at the former's New Lawn ground went out courtesy of a local power outage.

Forest Green, which has become the lower-league bastion of all things eco-friendly, is sponsored by green energy company Ecotricity and is planning a move into a new stadium made almost entirely of wood. The two sides waited out the medieval conditions before eventually kicking off.

Related: Forest Green Rovers to build stadium made almost entirely of wood

For those keeping score at home: The two major power outages in England this season took place at the Stadium of Light and an eco-friendly club.

City stud Gabriel Jesus clattered by pitch invader

Manchester City supporters will be delighted to hear that star signing Gabriel Jesus was not seriously injured when a pitch invader channeled his inner Lee Cattermole and took out the Brazilian gold-medal winner from behind in a charity game this past week.

Any reports that Tony Pulis has sent his minions to Brazil to lure the idiot fan to the Hawthorns for a trial are fake until proven otherwise.

Irons praise post

Mark Noble's penalty was enough to hand West Ham a second successive home victory, this time over a reeling Hull City, though Irons supporters were quick to give credit where it was due by naming the post the Man of the Match after the thrilling one-goal conquest at the London Stadium.

The cheeky social media maverick behind West Ham's account deserves some of the praise, as do supporters who found something comical amid a dreadful campaign for the east London lot.

Still, it's hard not to feel for Andy Carroll in this situation. The ponytailed purveyor of long-term absences was as near to a reward as he's been since he lived under Kevin Nolan's roof after an assault charge and received a gold star for doing the chores the week Nolan's eldest was out with a calf niggle.