Copenhagen 0-0 Manchester City: Pep Guardiola says what we're all thinking about handball - The Warm-Up

The Warm-Up and Pep Guardiola, we've got a lot in common. For instance, both of us think Erling Haaland is a really good footballer. And, er, both of us think that Phil Foden is a really good footballer. And - well, okay, mostly it's just the footballer thing. We don't even have the confidence to wear that turtleneck we've got lurking at the back of a drawer.

But last night, after 10-man Manchester City drew nil-all with Copenhagen, one journalist asked Guardiola if he understood the handball law. He replied, "No." And we've never felt closer to him.

The law in question saw a work of art from Rodri ruled out for the faintest of touches from Riyad Mahrez's hand. Obviously we can't speak for Guardiola, but the Warm-Up's understanding was that accidental handballs by players other than the goalscorer would no longer be penalised. Although, now we think about it, maybe that's just in the Premier League. Good to have different rules for different competitions. Maybe we could reinvigorate the League Cup by abolishing offside? Or introducing tasers?

The problem, as we can see, is twofold. First, it is impossible to come up with an absolutely definitive method of determining what is and isn't handball, since the concept of deliberate and accidental is baked into the thing and who can know the state of another's soul? One solution to this would be for football to recentre the rule around the referee's subjectivity, and ask them to penalise handball only when it seems to them to be a handball that matters. And, well, there's the second problem.

The concept of handball is too nuanced for a simple "any touch of the hand is a foul." And the state of football as it relates to referees is too miserable to allow "any touch of the hand the referee deems to be weird, or important, is a foul." So we get definitions, directives, guidelines, refinements, redefinitions, and arguments about 'natural' and 'unnatural' positions that neatly invert the meaning of the two words. This all purports to reinforce the referee's subjective opinion with a rigorous legality. Instead it confuses and it irritates.

Because deep down, handball is a feeling. Ball to hand, hand to ball: sometimes it seems to be something very significant or very strange, and sometimes it seems of no consequence at all. Ideally, the laws and processes of the game should penalise the former and disregard the latter. But too often, they don't, all the while asserting that these matters of feeling are matters of fact. And that's why nobody really gets it: not us, not Rodri, and not Pep Guardiola. That goal that felt good? It was in fact bad. Because of reasons.

What do Sassuolo, Spezia, Bologna and Maccabi Haifa have in common? That's right, they are the only football teams that Juventus have beaten this season. And last night Maccabi Haifa avenged that defeat with a 2-0 win at home over Max Allegri's gang of zebra-clad frauds.

Practically speaking, this puts Juventus in deep trouble in the Champions League. PSG and Benfica drew 1-1, which leaves Juventus five points behind both sides with both sides to play. Max Allegri's rabble of barcoded apologies need to win twice, and also hope Maccabi Haifa win at least once.

Before the game, Allegri told the world that his team needed to improve, needed to become more solid, needed to avoid making mistakes. None of that happened. Instead, after the game, club president Andrea Agnelli spoke to the cameras and said that he'd love to be rid of the whole miserable shower of chiaroscuro clowns, from the manager down to the lowliest substitute, but the club just can't afford it.

No, of course he didn't. Instead he reiterated that Allegri would remain in charge and denied that the reasoning was financial. It's quite something when the vote of confidence is delivered straight to the cameras after a big, big loss, and we can't quite decide if that makes a sacking more or less likely. We're leaning towards the former, albeit hidden within a last chance: I've gone out there and taken the flak, now get this op art shambles into some kind of order. Benfica away, two weeks' time. Feels big.

Did you enjoy the — checks calendar — five months we had without any Kylian Mbappé transfer speculation? Trick question! The transfer speculation has always been there, smouldering away on the horizon; life on the slopes of a transfer volcano.

But not even the most paranoid footballing seismologist thought it was going to blow this early. Mbappé feels betrayed by PSG, it says here, and he wants out, and he wants out in January.

Sifting through the reports, it seems that Mbappé is unhappy on several levels: strategic, tactical, personal. He doesn't think much of the club's transfer policy, he'd prefer to be playing off the left - next to a proper no.9 - than in the middle, and (per ESPN) his relationship with Neymar has deteriorated. Although, if you're feeling catty, you can basically understand all of those points as relating to Neymar. Your transfer policy is terrible, you didn't sell Neymar. This formation is not appropriate, it has Neymar in it.

But whatever the reason, the great chequebooks of Europe are now open. We've got a quick rundown of the runners and riders over here, and if it's true that PSG won't talk to Real Madrid, then the Warm-Up's guess is that Chelsea provide just the right combination of "incredibly rich" and "in the right place to make a big thing out of being incredibly rich". We're not sure exactly how a surprise Mbappé fits into this long-term strategic vision that Todd Boehly and Graham Potter are wedded to, but we're pretty certain they'll persuade themselves he does. If nothing else, it'll be a real test for the Chelsea striker curse.

In truth, we all should have seen this coming. Back in September, Mbappé told the press that he was having more fun playing for France than for PSG. And when somebody tells you they prefer Didier Deschamps' football to literally anything else, that is a cry for help.

You know that deflated feeling you get when an absolute beauty of a goal turns out, on replay three or four, to have actually been a whacking great deflection? Well, we'd like to thank Omer Atzili for providing us with the exact opposite sensation last night, when he scored Maccabi Haifa's second against Juventus. It definitely gets a nick. It has to get a nick. It's too weird not to-- oh look! It's good!

45 years ago today, the Welsh FA watched one of their cunningest ideas go horribly wrong. Let's hold our game against Scotland at Anfield! What could go wrong? Well, it's quite easy to get from Scotland to Liverpool, and the Welsh ended up outnumbered in an unfamiliar stadium. And then Joe Jordan handled the ball and got given the penalty anyway.

Wales goalkeeper Dai Davies later claimed that he was pleased that Scotland ended up the winners, as the Welsh fans would have been heavily outnumbered if the atmosphere had turned nasty. Which is a pretty cute way to claim the moral high ground: oh, it's for the best, you couldn't have coped with losing. But just think what might have happened had Scotland not made it to Argentina. No "Ally's Tartan Army". No Archie Gemmill goal. No Trainspotting. No Ewan McGregor. No prequel Obi-Wan Kenobi. A butterfly flaps its wings, and the world changes.

Over to the Guardian today, for an excerpt from Spencer Vignes' upcoming book Eric & Dave. It's a look at the life of legendary Brighton & Hove Albion goalkeeper Eric Gill, who played in 247 consecutive games between 1953 and 1958, and Dave Hollins, who spent a good amount of that time waiting for his chance to play for the first team. And waiting. And waiting.

"Signed as a teenager in 1955 to replace a couple of other goalkeepers who’d grown tired of watching the paint dry, Dave got his hands dirty in Brighton’s reserve team for three years until, out of the blue, the seemingly immovable Eric developed flu. Into the breach Dave stepped for three matches, doing well but making way once Eric was fit again. Six months later came another opportunity. Alas, this time things didn’t work out quite so hunky-dory. Middlesbrough 9 Brighton 0 remains Middlesbrough’s record league win and Brighton’s heaviest defeat. And Brian Clough – yes, that Brian Clough – scored five."

The really exciting thing about Gill and Hollins, though, is that they were still friends. "These two octogenarians had, at least until Covid arrived, met up every few weeks to chew the fat over a milky brew, lunch or a game of bowls. Sixty-five years after football had first thrown them together, they were still thick as thieves."

More hot Champions League action this evening: Liverpool are away at Rangers, Spurs host Eintracht Frankfurt, and Inter visit Barcelona. Something for everybody.