The Warm-Up: Violent Aguero the hero, and human kindness prevails

It’s shaping up to be a grim old few months for Hull, and their spiral towards the foot of the Premier League, which they’re only above thanks to the incompetence of Swansea, was given another spin by Middlesbrough on Monday night. A single goal for Gaston Ramirez, once a Tigers stalwart (22 games there on loan in the 2014-15 season) was enough to claim the 1-0 victory for Aitor Karanka’s side, Hull’s ninth defeat in the last 12 games, leaving them with just 11 points to show for their efforts so far.

As ever with these things, it’s not that despair that will do for Hull fans. It’s the hope. The summer could not possibly have gone worse for them, Steve Bruce leaving a few weeks before the start of the season after yet another argument with their board and with only a small handful of fit, senior players at their disposal. Yet on the opening day they beat defending champions Leicester, then took three points from Swansea too: maybe it was all going to be OK. Maybe they would defy the odds and stay up. Maybe they could perform a minor miracle.

No. Not a bit of it. Hope crushed, after being dangled in front of them. Hull are going down, and in a cruel, dispiriting fashion.

As more horrifying details about the plane crash that wiped out most of Brazilian club Chapecoense emerge, one comforting thing is just how generous and community spirited the rest of the South American football world have been. While stories that Ronaldinho has offered to play for them might be bunkum, their scheduled opponents in the Copa Sudamericana final, Atletico Nacional, did the decent thing and insisted that the trophy be awarded to them. Quite what sort of monster would tell them they did still have to play we’re not sure, but it’s heartening nonetheless.

It’s also been confirmed that Brazil and Colombia will play each other in a friendly towards the end of January, the proceeds going to the victims’ families. It’s an unimaginably awful world in which things like this are allowed to happen, but whenever there is tragedy, generally human kindness also shines through.

Jaap Stam is still a fairly terrifying character, and given the state of Jose Mourinho at the moment, if football matches were decided by a straight fight between the two managers, Stam would win hands down. Alas, football matches are still generally decided by the rather archaic method of seeing who scores more goals, so he’ll have to resort to that when he takes his Reading side to Old Trafford, as mandated by the FA Cup third round draw.

Elsewhere, the big ‘minnows travel wide-eyed to a big club where they’ll take pictures of the huge stadium while in their new club suits’ tie comes at Anfield, where either Plymouth or Newport County will travel, depending on how their second round replay pans out. The non-league teams have been stitched up rather by the draw, with Barrow drawing Rochdale, Halifax or Eastleigh will face Brentford and Stourbridge United, the lowest-ranked team in the competition, will travel to Wycombe Wanderers, should they beat Northampton.

You remember Lee Trundle, right? Swansea cult hero of extensive showboating fame, fond of the odd rabona and flamboyant skill, but never actually played above the Championship? Well, he’s playing for Llanelli Town these days, and he’s still at it.

Is John Terry’s bursting pride that he is still Chelsea captain quite sweet or a little bit pathetic? You decide.

In yesterday’s Warm-Up, Adam Hurrey disgracefully categorised Sergio Aguero as a ‘Zero’, for the mere crime of trying to wipe out David Luiz with a thigh-high tackle. Aguero has been given a four-match ban for the assault, and rightly so, but it’s long been an accepted truth that if football can’t be good, then it must either be violent or funny, ideally both. With that in mind, Aguero deserves our thanks for sparking one of those disgraceful incidents we all love so much.

It’s a similar story at Preston, where as you may have seen two of their players – Jermaine Beckford and Eoin Doyle – were sent off for fighting each other at the weekend. Preston have responded to this by saying all fans will receive a refund on their tickets after this disgraceful display of scrapping, but this surely misses the point of why we all bother with this: the Warm-Up might be alone here, but if we knew two colleagues were going to start wailing on each other during a game, we’d pay extra, not expect our money back.

Respect your elders, we’re told. And you definitely should respect Tony Collins, known as football’s ‘master spy’ who worked for Manchester United, among others, and spotted Paul McGrath, Lee Sharpe and Alan Shearer. Matt Stanger talks to him over at The Set Pieces.

It’s Bayern Munich v Atletico Madrid in the Champions League tonight, so let’s go waaaaaaaaaaaay back to when those sides met in the 1974 European Cup final. This was actually the replay, after Atletico drew the first game in fairly heartbreaking style, Luis Aragones giving them the lead in the 112th minute only for Hans-Georg Schwarzenbeck to equalise in the very last seconds of extra-time. It wasn’t so close in the second game though, as the German side gave the Spaniards a thorough hosing, dancing away with a 4-0 victory. Tor!

It’s our last fix of Champions League action for a little while and, well, erm, there’s not actually a huge amount at stake. Group A is sorted bar who finishes top from Arsenal and PSG, and they face Basel and Ludogorets respectively, the positions in Group C are set in stone with Barcelona and Manchester City through, and it’s the same with Group D, Atletico sitting top, above Bayern. Group B is where it’s at, where two points separate Benfica, Napoli and Besiktas – the former two face each other in Portgual, while Besiktas travel to eliminated Dynamo Kiev. Tune in.