The Warm-Up: The Ballon d'Or and Raheem Sterling pays for a flight

If anyone hasn’t seen the film ‘Ronaldo’, a curious documentary about one man’s quest to win as many Ballon d’Ors (Ballons d’Or?) as one can possibly fit on mantle piece, or one of those weird trophy rooms footballers seem to have where everything underlit and rotating, the Warm-Up recommends it. If only because of the truly strange sensation of having spent an hour-and-a-half in the company of one of the two defining players of this generation, without any real idea of whether you like him more or less after it.

What is clear about the film is that the Ballon d’Or is a big deal. Players – or at least this one, certainly – care about it enormously, so presumably plenty were gathered around their radios and telegram devices to hear who was on the shortlist this year. And indeed it does contain the men you’d expect, with Cristiano Ronald and Leo Messi joined by 28 other hopefuls, fingers crossed that this is the year people depart from orthodoxy and give it to someone else, for the first time since 2007.

Perhaps this time they do have a slightly better chance, as the responsibility for dishing out the award has been passed back from Fifa to France Football, who thought of the thing in the first place. Perhaps Jamie Vardy will win it, capping an extraordinary year that has seen him win the Premier League, feature on the cover of Hello! magazine and then complain about becoming too famous.

Does anyone really care? Well, it seems at least the players do.

One should never delve too deeply into the processes by which things are decided. Rules are flexible beasts, liable to be interpreted in the way that makes those in charge look least silly, something that seemed particularly evident on Monday when Moussa Sissoko was summoned before the beak for his powerfully unsubtle elbow to Harry Arter’s mush.
This, of course, is not to say that the FA were wrong in seeking to punish Sissoko for a moronic act that could have caused Arter some serious injury, but it was odd that it has reached this stage, given their own rules. During the game, referee Craig Pawson seemed to be looking directly at the incident, had a long conference with his linesman and then decided to do not much about it. According to FA rules, if a referee has seen and dealt with such an occurence then the player could have taken an opponent’s knees off with a musket, and they wouldn’t be able to touch him. But they indeed have, and Sissoko will be able to put his feet up for a bit – three games, in fact, as Spurs have recognised a fair cop when they see one, and won’t contest the charge.

Still, this is complaining about procedure, for which you’d be entirely justified in calling the Warm-Up a great big dweeb and breaking our glasses. It would be more of a problem if players were not punished for naughtiness like this, but it does feel rather like the FA are making things up as they go along. Hey, perhaps that’s to be applauded – we could all do with a little more unpredictability in our lives.

You’ll recall in the summer, after being one of several shonky performers for England at the European Championships, Raheem Sterling got some attention in the press for spending too much money. He apparently ‘enraged’ fans ‘showing off’ a ‘blinging’ sink and ‘flaunting his millionaire wealth’. Of course, it turned out that the video this was based on was taken by someone else, uploaded by someone else, and the house was someone else’s, specifically Sterling’s mum’s. No matter: he was a footballer, he had spent a lot of money on some things, so onto the front pages he went.

Now, Sterling has made the papers for spending not a lot of money on a thing, specifically a plane ticket to Malaga. Sterling was SNAPPED on a BUDGET AIRLINE flight (which is weird enough in itself: stop taking pictures of strangers without their permission, people), when surely a man of his means should be travelling via diamond-encrusted dragon or something. Of course, as it turned out he was flying from Manchester to Malaga, and the budget airline was the only scheduled flight he could take, so one assumes he was expected to look at the relatively reasonable price for this air travel and add a zero. Or would that be flaunting his millionaire wealth?

Obviously we’re a couple of days late with this one, but we would kindly ask you to pick that one out. Woof!

As a counterpoint to Adam Hurrey’s EVISCERATION/perfectly reasonable assessment of Paul Pogba in Monday’s Warm-Up, let’s sit back and enjoy Pogba as we’re supposed to in these modern times: via a YouTube compilation of his INSANE SKILLS, soundtracked by some vaguely baffling Europop. Get with the times, grandpa.

Poor old David Moyes. When he was Manchester United manager he resembled a little boy who’d lost his mum in the supermarket, and perhaps he’s never recovered from that. Now at Sunderland, with just two points from nine games, he looks like a broken man. Andi Thomas investigates the sadness of Moyes.

As goalkeepers who aren’t in that maverick breed of free-kick and penalty takers go, Paul Robinson was quite prolific in front of goal. He found the net twice during his career, once from what we’ll most certainly call ‘range’ while playing for Tottenham, and once from much closer in for Leeds. It’s the latter we’ll celebrate today, what with it being the League Cup tonight, and share with you his header for Leeds against Swindon in the 2003/04 tournament. Leeds were heading for an embarrassing defeat in what would be a season of embarrassing defeats, those lived dreams coming back to bite them on the bottoms as the bills came in. Robinson soared for a header and equalised for his side, taking the game into extra-time, after which came penalties and he was the hero then, too. He saved one spot-kick as Leeds progressed, a rare highlight in a depressing relegation season.

Why yes, it’s the EFL Cup tonight, with a selection of games for you to enjoy. The theoretical stand-out is Liverpool v Tottenham, perhaps the two most interesting sides in the Premier League facing off like a pair of good ‘uns, but the gloss is slightly taken off this one as Mauricio Pochettino is set to put the kids out, spoiling everyone’s fun, the entirely reasonable spoilsport. Elsewhere Arsenal face Reading in what will almost certainly be a repeat of their 7-5 encounter from a few years ago, while Norwich visit Leeds, Bristol City face Hull and Newcastle host Preston.