The Warm-Up: Do we want another era of Premier League dominance?
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Updated 12/12/2017 at 10:23 GMT
Plus: Arsenal get the minnows, Diego Maradona's weird statue and Louis van Gaal's big brass swingers...
Champions League Pokal
Image credit: Imago
TUESDAY’S BIG STORIES
Is this the year for English dominance in the Champions League?
In reality, the question that should be asked is not whether English teams are going to dominate the Champions League again, but why they haven’t been doing so for years anyway. The money that Premier League teams regularly bathe in and toss around like gold tokens in the Crystal Maze means that they really should have something much better to show for the last couple of years, when few teams have made a real impact on the tournament.
Now, most look strong and, after the draw for the second round of the tournament yesterday, you could make a very good case for all five Premier League teams progressing.
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Champions League draw
Image credit: Getty Images
Manchester United should get past Sevilla, you shudder to think what City might do to Basel and Porto probably don’t have enough to better Liverpool. Even the tougher tasks, it’s very easy to see the English teams prevailing: Tottenham won’t fear Juventus and Chelsea could easily beat a Barcelona team who aren’t what they were.
Would this be good for European football in general? Probably not, as a financial juggernaut dominating the tournament is rarely a good thing, but England might be the most powerful country in the Champions League again.
You can see Arsenal making a mess of this, can’t you?
If you’ve at all read any football coverage in the last few months, you’ll be aware of the minor miracle at little Ostersunds, the Swedish team who went from obscurity to the Europa League under the management of Englishman Graham Potter.
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Arsenal's French manager Arsene Wenger reacts during the English Premier League football match between Southampton and Arsenal at St Mary's Stadium in Southampton, southern England on December 10, 2017.
Image credit: Getty Images
It is a wonderful story, but after they drew Arsenal in the second round of the tournament, this part of it should really come to a close. Arsenal should be too strong, even in the Thursday night distraction that they seem to resent having to compete in.
And yet, if anyone could make a mess of this sort of thing, unwittingly continue the fairytale and make themselves look ridiculous in the process, it’s Arsenal.
Well, that’s one way of spinning the knowledge your fans hate you
This is the season of positivity, of love, of happiness. A time of goodwill to all men, where everyone thinks and does the best for each other. Like Mark Hughes, for example.
After Stoke were given a 5-1 shoeing by Tottenham at the weekend, a group of their fans showed up at Stoke train station to give them what for. About 200 of them, in fact, all made the effort to welcome the team by telling them in no uncertain terms that they are “not fit to wear the shirt.”
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Stoke boss Mark Hughes saw his side thrashed 5-1 at Tottenham on Saturday
Image credit: PA Sport
But Hughes, a relentless beacon of positivity, decided to embrace the spirit of Christmas by turning that into a plus…somehow. “It’s good we have a game because it is still fresh in their ears probably, and they can use it as a motivating factor,” he said. “Don’t let it make you insular or go into your shell. Don’t allow people to have an opportunity to question you. You do that by playing well, getting the right results.
“Sometimes you need a reality check, and understand how our results and performances affect people. When people criticise you, you have to grow a thick skin in this industry — if you don’t, you’re in the wrong place.”
Fair play. If that happened to us we’d crawl into a cave and never leave.
IN OTHER NEWS
Football statues are a tricky business. Tricky, in that they absolutely never end up looking like the person they’re supposed to look like. Step forward Diego Maradona’s latest, in Kolkata for some reason, and…well, it’s probably not a good thing that the subject of your statue laughs when it’s unveiled.
RETRO CORNER
Here’s Diego in happier times, absolutely leathering a group of Athletic Bilbao players who thought it would be a good idea to foul him for 90 minutes.
HEROES AND ZEROS
Hero: Christian Benteke
If the Warm-Up had made a big show of taking a penalty when someone else was supposed to, hit it with the power of a rat’s fart and cost our team two crucial, precious, rare points, then we’d probably move to a cave on a remote island somewhere and hope our ancestors would ultimately forgive us.
So hats off to Christian Benteke, who not only didn’t get the sea map out and look for a rowing boat, but actually showed up for training on Monday and looked his team-mates in the eye.
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Crystal Palace's Christian Benteke rues his penalty miss during the Premier League match at Selhurst Park, London.
Image credit: PA Sport
“He had the courage to talk in front of the rest of the team, and basically apologise for not following instructions,” said manager Roy Hodgson. “Sometimes you don’t need to kick someone when they are down.
“You just hope the player does what Benteke has done. At the first real opportunity – not in the dressing room afterwards but this morning – he said his piece. That is strong and the correct thing to do: he makes it clear he was wrong and disobeying ranks, and apologises for that, but now he will get on with it."
Zero: Louis van Gaal
Most people could quite reasonably say they don’t find Manchester United particularly entertaining. Most people, that is, apart from the bloke who for two seasons made them play the sort of numbing, stupifying, slow passing football that sent anyone who watched into a catatonic state.
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Louis van Gaal fordert Welpenschutz für Nationaltrainer
Image credit: SID
So in some respects you have to admire the big brass swingers on Louis van Gaal. “If you ask me how did I do at United, I will say it was my best year ever, given the circumstances I was working under,” Van Gaal said. “We played football that was quite alright. But it’s not football that is appreciated in England.
“And yet, right now, looking at United, I have to conclude Mourinho is not being criticised while it’s far more boring football.”
Ah, the misunderstood artist, are we Louis?
HAT TIP
The Rumbelows Sprint Challenge slotted neatly into this pattern: dreamt up by the producers of Saint and Greavsie – the all-conquering ITV weekly round-up show hosted by Ian St John and Jimmy Greaves – and funded by electrical retailers and League Cup sponsors, Rumbelows. The idea appealed to fans, who, just as now, loved to argue about who the quickest player in the game was.
There was some glorious nonsense surrounding football, way back when. Such as the Rumbelows Sprint Challenge: here’s Nick Moore on FourFourTwo to tell you all about it.
COMING UP
Oh, look at this – Premier League! Lots of it! Well, some of it. Huddersfield vs Chelsea is an interesting one, Burnley vs Stoke we could probably do without, but possibly the one to keep your eyes on is Watford v Crystal Palace. That seems to be the one with the greatest possibility of chaos, and that is most certainly what we want from our football.
Tomorrow’s Warm-Up will be brought to you by Alex Chick, through the wind, rain, snow and light drizzle.
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