Manchester City finally lost. Hurrah. But don’t worry, there won’t be any “Have Liverpool shown how to beat…” in here. That’s so last week.
What’s so ‘this week’ are the next 488 words…
Another struggling Premier League player being linked to a Turkish club
As was acknowledged in Gameweek Three of this series, it is common courtesy for any has-been – or indeed, struggling – Premier League player to have interest from a Süper Lig club. The black hole, which has a penchant for once-highly-rated strikers especially, has engulfed Islam Slimani, Kelechi Iheanacho and Javier Hernandez so far this window.
The limit on the breadth of questions you can ask managers becoming uncontrollable
An article was published on Vice this week titled “Ranking Every Premier League Manager By How Likely They Are to Eat a Worm”. Right. It came after Soren Andersen, former teammate of Sean Dyche, said the ginger pit-bull used to eat to the earth-burrowing cylindrical creatures. In his Thursday press conference, Dyche just was asked if he ever ate a worm, wasn’t he? Unfortunately, it wasn't true, he just put them in his mouth...
Live commentators messing up at least once on articulating the meeting of Southampton’s and Tottenham’s managers
If last week’s Super Sunday was Birra Moretti out of a chalice, then this week’s is Pilsner canned lager. One game, at the most boring ground in the league; St Mary’s. One narrative is the return of former Saints coach Mauricio Pochettino, who battles wits with Mauricio Pellegrini. If you’re a “betting man” – one who finds seemingly inevitable price boosts at 4/1, and constantly loses – place your pennies on a commentator calling one of them Manuel Pellegrini, through sheer neurological disruption.
The actual Peter Crouch seriously going to Chelsea Football Club
Chelsea seem in a bad place and have decided to solve their self-manufactured striker problem by targeting tall, English men. Andy Carroll’s ankles couldn’t handle his weight, which is apparently a dubiously low 12st 4lbs, meaning West London Blue – to give them their rightful Pre Evolution Soccer name – have opted for Peter Crouch. The man who, when questioned what he’d be if he wasn’t a footballer, replied: “A virgin.”
Mourinho is fully in Conte's head, he's lost the plot
#CFC
Paul Merson allowing the weekend’s results to immediately affect his seemingly ingrained opinions once more
Nothing new here, but hinging this point after Merson declared to Sky Sports that Manchester City should not be among the favourites for the Champions League following their loss to Liverpool, four weeks after stating in his Daily Star column that they were better than Manchester United’s treble winners.
More managers committing the selfish good deed of not talking about a player from another club
As Phoebe told Joey: “There’s no such thing as a selfless good deed.” This timeless rule applies also to managers, who during the transfer window, refuse to even pronounce the name of a player from another club. Having weathered questions on Alexis Sanchez, Mourinho expressed with elation when asked about Henrikh Mkhitaryan: “He is our player, he is a Manchester United player, so I can speak about him,” which sounds like the starting line written by the club’s struggling media officer who was asked to write a 15,000-word profile on the player.
