The Warm-Up: Huddersfield reach the promised land

Last season Huddersfield Town finished 19th in the Championship, four places worse off than Blackburn Rovers, who a few weeks ago were relegated to League One. Now, they’re in the Premier League, after beating Reading on penalties in one of the most powerfully and excruiciatingly tedious playoff finals in recent memory.

Not that the delirious Town fans at Wembley will care about whether the neutral was entertained, of course. After an initial burst of excitement in the early stages, like the sugar rush of a slightly giddy child, everyone had to sit through 120 minutes of grinding boredom, as the players in front of them could barely get it together to put one foot in front of the other, never mind the ball in the net.

Because of the way the universe works, at one point it looked almost certain that we would even be denied the simple pleasure of penalties by a scabby 118th minute goal, but ultimately we did get our shoot-out. Huddersfield missed first, but then they roared back, and a ridiculously calm penalty by German defender Christopher Schindler sealed their promotion to the Premier League.

Huddersfield manager David Wagner said afterwards: “I said to the players before the [play-off] semi-finals: ‘You are heroes, you finished fifth in the league, but from hero to zero in football is sometimes only a week and now you have the opportunity to become legends.’ Now they are legends for sure.”

It seems that another FA Cup win, plus some expect politiking and pointed public statements, combined with the staunch refusal of the Arsenal board to examine the world outside them, has secured another two years in charge for Arsene Wenger.

The word on the street is that Wenger will meet the Gunners board on Tuesday where they will confirm a new two-year contract for the man who’s been there since Vic Akers last wore a pair of long trousers, and will signal another season of mediocre league performance and an exit from Europe at the first stage that they play anyone decent. Which, in the Europa League, admittedly might be a little longer.

Good luck to the old boy, but this does mean another two years of Arsenal Fan TV having the same shouted conversation over, and over, and over again.

For a tantilising few days, between his resignation as Crystal Palace boss and the announcement of Barcelona’s new head man, the possibility of Sam Allardyce taking charge in Cataluyna was real. Well, actually, obviously it wasn’t, but we could still dream a little dream. That was well and truly scuppered on Monday when they announced Ernesto Valverde would be the man to succeed Luis Enrique at the Nou Camp.

“Valverde has the ability, the judgment, the knowledge and the experience,” said Barcelona president, Josep Maria Bartomeu. “He promotes the youth players and he has a Barça way. He is a hard worker and he is a fan of using technology in training and in managing matches.”

“We will grind him into the ground so he is a shadow of the once healthy-looking man he is now, with the constant pressure and demands of a crowd who will accept nothing less than the treble every year,” Bartomeu didn’t go on to say.

We look forward to Valverde’s press conference in 2020, looking gaunt and exhausted, the job having somehow aged him 22 years in three, announcing that he is taking a sabbatical from life and going to live at the bottom of a well, somewhere nice and quiet.

We’ve all got general election fever. Which is to say we’ve taken to our beds and want it all to stop. But Jeremy Corbyn this weekend went for that crucial ‘Nottingham Forest fan from the 1970s and 1980s’ vote over the weekend, by tweeting out this clip of Brian Clough explaining his theories on socialism. Solidarity, comrades.

When he became Huddersfield Town chairman back in 2009, Dean Hoyle made the, perhaps slightly economically rash promise that anyone who continuously held a season ticket at the club between then and whatever time they won promotion to the Premier League would be able to purchase one for £100, should they reach the top flight in his tenure.

Hoyle is sticking to his word, rewarding those loyal fans who went to watch the team in the grim days of League One, giving them Premier League football for £5.26 a game. Not bad at all. Hoyle also cycled down to Wembley for the playoff final on Sunday to raise money for the ‘More In Common’ charity, set up in memory of MP Jo Cox. What a good egg he seems.

The theory of the playoffs is fine: with the possibility that the team who finishes sixth in the table could win promotion, the season is kept alive for the majority of sides in the Championship, who would otherwise have been left abling around in meaningless mid-table.

The trouble is that the final has now become so big, so pressured with that £170million in Premier League prize money dangling over them like some sort of financial sword of Damocles, that it has virtually become a pointless spectacle: either one team becomes so crippled with nerves that it becomes a one-sided encounter, or both do and we get a final as grim and unpleasant as the one on Sunday. What can be done, who knows, but what’s routinely known as the ‘richest game in football’ is rapidly becoming a non-event.

Paolo Bandini on the emotional occasion of Francesco Totti’s last game for Roma.

Let us begin the build-up to Saturday’s Champions League final by taking a look at the last time Juventus and Real Madrid played each other at this stage, back in 1998.

Ah, the harsh, stinging reality of an odd-numbered summer begins to strike. Unless you take a keen interest in the German and Italian playoffs (Perugia v Benevento and 1860 Munich v Jahn Regensburg, since you ask) there appears to be no football of note this evening. Which is not always a bad thing. No, wait, scratch that – it is always a bad thing.