The Warm-Up: A Christmas gif for you from Lee Johnson
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Updated 21/12/2017 at 08:14 GMT
Jack Lang rounds up the night's League Cup action, recalls a classic Nike advert and brings news of a diving manager...
Bristol City manager Lee Johnson
Image credit: Reuters
THURSDAY’S BIG STORIES
Robins prove they’ve got the bottle
It’s easy to say with hindsight, but it was clearly all about the Barca Velha Red 2004.
“I spent £450 on a bottle of wine,” Bristol City manager Lee Johnson said before his side’s League Cup clash with Manchester United. “I have had to raid my little girl’s piggy bank. It is being flown in especially from Portugal.”
At which point, you imagine, Jose Mourinho’s ears pricked up. But there was more: “We have done the due diligence and realised Jose likes this particular bottle that has to be poured by an expert.”
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Jose Mourinho has been asked to explain his pre-derby comments to the FA
Image credit: PA Sport
Mmmmm, wine. Mmmmm, expert pourer. Mmmmm, due diligence. The Warm-Up may no longer be legally permitted to offer psychological diagnoses – not since The Incident – but there’s surely a decent chance that The Special/Happy/Whatever One was put into some catatonic state of anticipation by Johnson’s pre-match spiel, such that he was unable to function as normal.
Mind games, you might call it, and how else to explain his frankly bizarre selection of Matteo Darmian in a roaming playmaker role last night?
Darmian, of course, didn’t actually play there, and Bristol City’s night to remember wasn’t really about Mourinho at all. Yes, United rotated, but this was still a star-studded XI and they were put to the sword by the Robins, who played out of their skins throughout and landed the knockout blow deep into injury time, when Korey Smith slammed a shot beyond Sergio Romero.
Cue wild celebrations at Ashton Gate and, further afield, a timely re evaluation of City’s credentials. They have delighted plenty with their goofy goal gifs – last night was no exception – but there has been serious progress this season: Johnson has taken them to third in the Championship and they have now won nine of their last 11 games in all competitions.
“They played brilliantly,” admitted Mourinho. “They fought like it was the game of their lives, which probably it was. It’s a beautiful day for football.” Oddly magnanimous from him, but then by that point he was probably a couple of glasses deep.
£450 well spent, then, and with Manchester City next up, Johnson should probably start asking around about Pep Guardiola’s tipple of choice.
London calling
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Álvaro Morata celebra su gol en el Chelsea-Bournemouth
Image credit: Getty Images
Chelsea overcame Bournemouth in the evening’s other quarter-final, scoring early and then immediately replying to Dan Gosling’s late equaliser with an added-time winner, like a teenager holding his younger brother at arm’s length. The Blues will now play Arsenal in the last four.
The only black cloud for Chelsea was a yellow card for Alvaro Morata, who celebrated his goal rather too exuberantly and is now suspended for the Everton game at the weekend. Antonio Conte can probably cope without him, but tens of thousands of fantasy football managers were left crying into their late-night snacks.
Another defeat for the PC brigade
Well, well, well. It turns out that adopting a game plan involving pretty much zero attacking intent isn’t a ticket to longevity as a Premier League manager. After months of mind-numbing boredom, Swansea called time on the Paul Clement era yesterday, admitting they “couldn’t leave it any longer”.
Clement had credit in the bank after keeping the Swans up last term, but struggled after the summer sales of Gylfi Sigurdsson and Fernando Llorente, the dream-ticket frontline of Jordan Ayew, Tammy Abraham and Wilfried Bony’s reanimated corpse somehow – somehow! – failing to fill the void. To wit: 10 goals in 18 games.
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Swansea boss manager Paul Clement is ready for a tough run of Premier League fixtures
Image credit: PA Sport
To be fair, this isn’t particularly Clement’s fault. His gamble on Renato Sanches has backfired spectacularly, but otherwise the failings are more institutional than personal: Swansea have lost their identity in the last few seasons, the pass-mastery of the Martínez-Rodgers years seeping away in a blitz of managerial reshuffles.
Chairman Huw Jenkins said that axing Clement in December was “the last thing we wanted to do”, but in truth it’s exactly the kind of thing the fans have now come to expect:
RETRO CORNER
Tomas Rosicky called time on his career yesterday, which was sad for a couple of reasons: firstly because he was a really, really fun footballer to watch – more on that later – and secondly because it ended an era. No, not that of the flaky Arsenal playmaker (always in our hearts, Alexander Hleb) but this one:
God, what an advert. It had everything: stars, tricks, Eric Cantona, comedy… and it spread the goods out in gotta-catch-em-all style over a few different clips. Luckily for us, they’ve all now been spliced into one master version, which is surely the kind of thing for which the internet was invented:
HEROES AND ZEROES
Hero: This Bristol City ball boy
Absolutely. Loving. It.
Zero: Heiko Herrlich
The 46-year-old has done a good job since taking charge of Bayer Leverkusen in the summer, but he’ll want to draw a line under Wednesday night’s events. That’s not because Die Werkself struggled against Borussia Monchengladbach – they won 1-0 – but because he went all Christmas panto after the lightest of touches from Denis Zakaria on the touchline.
He apologised after the match, and quite right too. That’s not in the spirit of the season, friend.
HAT TIP
It is the way he twists and turns, full of creative possibility; the way potential energy becomes kinetic as he passes, prods and pushes the ball in his distinctive manner, through all kinds of gaps and via all kinds of angles and trajectories; and, like a native tribesman utilising every part of an animal carcass, the way no part of his boot goes to waste: instep, heel, toe, laces and, most gloriously, the outside as he audaciously sends a cross-field pass soaring across the turf.
Is it bad form to plug the work of another Warm-Upper? And on this very website to boot? HAHA, JOKING! The Warm-Up laughs in the face of your unwritten rules. Here’s Tom Adams, writing a couple of years ago, on what made Tommy Rozzer great.
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Arsenal's Czech midfielder Tomas Rosicky controls the ball during the English Premier League football match between Arsenal and Sunderland at the Emirates Stadium in London on May 20, 2015
Image credit: AFP
COMING UP
To Spain, where they’re preparing for Saturday’s Clásico with, erm, a bunch of deeply underwhelming fixtures throughout the week. We’ve had Levante vs Leganés, Getafe vs Las Palmas and tonight there are two more absolute bangers: Eibar vs Girona (on Eibar’s Sunday-league pitch) and then the relegation battle between Alavés and Málaga. We know, we know: it’s almost too good to be true.
Nick Miller prepared a fantastic ‘wrote this morning’s Warm-Up’ gif months ago and will dust it off tomorrow if you’re good.
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