MONDAY’S BIG STORIES
Toon Down
As everybody knows, preseason games are not about results. They are about fitness, about getting back into the swing of things, about trying out new tactical shapes and systems. They are practice.
Unfortunately, they are also about results, because that’s how we read football matches. Look up a preseason game and it’s the first thing you see. Tell yourself it doesn’t matter and your brain will reply: right, but still, we lost. Newcastle United, we can hope, had 90 minutes of excellent practice against York City yesterday. And they lost.
Of course, fans need a preseason just as surely as the players, and this is a good chance for the #BruceOut partisans to get in shape. The Warm-Up won’t be joining them, at least not yet, partly because preseason is practice but mostly because it’s far too hot to be holding strong opinions about anything. Ice cream is good, that’s about all we’re willing to commit .
The bookies have the three newly-promoted clubs as favourites to go straight back down. No surprise there. But looking beyond Norwich, Watford and Brentford, it’s quite an exciting time for a few of the Premier League’s relatively established midtable teams. And by “exciting” we mean: this could all be about to go horribly wrong.
Crystal Palace have replaced the safest of safe bets, Roy Hodgson, with a relatively inexperienced manager and, not content with that, are trying to reinvigorate their squad. Wolves have had to replace their own comfort blanket, Nuno Espírito Santo, and have sold their brilliant goalkeeper. Southampton have a strange air about them, after last season’s slow deflation, and their squad is looking thin.
And then there’s Newcastle. Cursed Newcastle, unhappy Newcastle, still-un-taken-over Newcastle. Just lost to York City, five divisions below; practice making very imperfect. It’s always futile making predictions about Newcastle, the club’s too weird for that. But between the off-field distractions, Steve Bruce’s always precarious position, and a squad lacking plenty of things, including goals, this campaign is loaded with the potential for disaster.
Preseason is about practice. It’s not an echoing foreshadow of doom. But sometimes, it can really feel like it.
Steve Bruce is feeling the heat more than most already
Image credit: Getty Images
This Week’s Saga
It is one of the great universal truths of modern football: Manchester United could do with a midfielder. This has been the case ever since Alex Ferguson decided that 4-4-2 was for losers and brought Juan Sebastián Verón to the Premier League. The heart of United’s first team has been unbalanced ever since.
Liverpool needing a central midfielder is a more recent development, but since Gini Wijnaldum has taken his handsome self to Paris, there’s a job going there too. Maybe the solution is some combination of Curtis Jones plus Marko Grujić plus Thiago plus Naby Keita. Maybe all of them at once, in a very large pair of shorts. The perfect player, and a prebuilt defensive wall.
But if we were the agent for one of the best midfielders in the world, we’d be looking very hard at the north-west of England. Perhaps rubbing our hands together. Even cackling. And so it’s no surprise to hear reports from Spain that Saúl Ñíguez’s representatives have been sending out positive vibes.
Saúl is brilliant, we all know that. Whether he’s the right kind of brilliant for Klopp’s budget or Solskjaer’s plans remains to be seen, but it’s hard to imagine he’d flop. No, the real loser here would be Barcelona, but also all of us. Saúl for Griezmann would have been a perfect swap deal, and swap deals are always extremely pleasing. A sudden eruption of sticker logic into what is supposed to be a very serious business. Need meets got, got meets need. It would be just like the Premier League to go and ruin it.
Saul Niguez
Image credit: Getty Images
On Reflection
We’re not saying news in thin on the ground today, but the big headline out of Manchester is that Marcus Rashford may not be having his shoulder surgery after all. Sorry, we should have checked you were sitting down first. Here, have a glass of water.
According to Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, Rashford has gone away “just to reflect on it a little bit”, and “we have to take the best course of action for him and the club.” Now, the Warm-Up is not a doctor, but having seen Rashford wincing and flinching through games for most of last season, we’re pretty confident that he needs a little care and attention. And perhaps a new bionic arm. And laser eyes.
It’s hard not to be cynical. Football is such a grubby business. If your first response to this story wasn’t “Ah hah, United are trying to force him through the season so he can have the work next summer,” then you’re a kind and good person and we admire that. Hopefully you’re right. Hopefully this is just everybody involved being sensible, taking their time, and making sure that the big decision is also the correct decision. That sounds like football, right? Right?
IN OTHER NEWS
You don’t need to speak French to pick up the vibe here. Kevin Gameiro is going home, and Racing Strasbourg are very pleased about it.
RETRO CORNER (I)
Some Olympic football nostalgia today, since that all gets going this week. Here’s Nigeria’s victorious men’s team from Atlanta 1996. They did it the hard way, too: Brazil in the semis, Argentina in the final. And they beat Brazil with an accidental back-assist, which is a pretty cool way to beat Brazil.
RETRO CORNER (II)
Here’s the best bits from the USA’s women’s campaigns over the Olympiads, which included gold medals in 1996, 2004, 2008 and 2012. Although all that football glory and yellow metal pales in comparison to the shell suits right at the beginning. What a time the ’90s was. What a fire hazard the ’90s was.
COMING UP
Not very much at all, and none of that on television. Your time’s your own.
