The Warm-Up: Chelsea can use £900m deal to invest in new plastic fivers

If the international week and the onset of winter have left you numb and weeping into your vat of Bovril, fear not - the Premier League returns this weekend. Welcome back old friend.

Indeed, if the PL were in fact flesh and blood The Warm Up would give him a huge hug and awkwardly cling on for slightly too long after getting lost in the deep embrace. (We've all done it, right! Right?)

But before the action starts, Chelsea will have to crawl out from underneath a rather large dollop of dollars. Yes, that's right, they've signed the biggest sponsorship deal in Premier League history with American sportswear giants Nike. Not content with the £5bn TV deal to tide them over, the Londoners have landed a measly extra £900m. Pah.

The 15-year deal is reportedly worth £60m a season, which is just as well as they could, perhaps, do with spending another £30m or so on defender who they had previously sold, has zero positional sense and is unlikely to get into their best XI anyway. In fact, sod it, just buy a whole new squad.

With any money left over, the smart move would be to invest in some of those new plastic fivers. Although the Warm-up was not initially convinced about their legitimacy as legal tender, considering them not much more than trumped up Monopoly notes, we now believe this could be an excellent move. This is especially when you can buy some with funky serial numbers on them, like AK47, for £65,000. If there is anything that should definitely not be taken at face value, after all, it is cash.

Bigger is always better. It's a fundamental law of life, a total truth. So FIFA would have us believe anyway. And that's why, a week after initially proposing an expanded World Cup, Gianni Infantino, the president, was at it again on Thursday evening. He said that 32, 40 and 48-team tournaments are all still options. "I don't agree with diluting the quality," he added. "I would like to remind everyone that in the last World Cup, Italy and England were eliminated by Costa Rica."

Is that the same England who were conquered by Iceland at Euro 2016 and the same Italy who employ Sunderland reject Emanuele Giaccherini? Just checking. And, as for a potential knockout round consisting of 32 teams, contesting one match each for the right to enter the tournament proper, what another monumental waste of time and money. They're gonna feel pretty special if they train for weeks, fly to the venue, then get knocked out after 90 minutes.

But at least we can count on FIFA to learn the lessons of the over-complex and super-long Euro 2016. Oh no, wait... (*returns to Bovril to top up with tears*).

As with the fag-end of any international week, much of the football news is focused on managers talking on a broad range of subjects, or anything they feel like really. But they do tend to revert back to similar themes and grievances. So, when Steve Bruce was lamenting VIlla fans previously calling him "Potato Head", Ronald Koeman and Mark Hughes were taking aim at Martin O'Neill and Chris Coleman respectively, for playing injury-prone James McCarthy and Joe Allen on international duty. 'You're killing my player' screams the back-page of The Mirror (the actual quote is something like "massively overloading", but try fitting that in size 120 point with shouty caps).

Unfortunately for the Everton and Stoke managers, national call-ups and an insistence on using players are a natural by-product of success in domestic leagues (looking more at Everton, of course, in this particular instance). So perhaps they could both learn from Bruce who insisted that he took the name calling as a compliment (never let is be said he has, ahem, a chip on his shoulder).

If you thought the short-term prognosis for England's men was bad, a little peek at a goal from England Women's Under 17s' 3-0 defeat to Japan on Thursday shows us that the filthy defending of Gareth's Southgate's men - characterised this week by a chronic case of poorly planned backpasses - seems to be infectious. Although these symptoms have presented themselves in a different manner in the women - a total phobia of going anywhere near the ball - they are nevertheless worrying signs for the Lionesses...

Still, at least they made the quarter-finals.

In Thursday's Warm-Up, Jack Lang - back in the fold after abandoning Team Eurosport in the news abyss of international week - implied that there was some sort of option in the hopeless case of Steve McClaren following the 2014-15 season. That he might be a man very much in demand across the country, that he had he had a choice, that he deigned to join Newcastle.

Unfortunately, he seems to be forgetting that McClaren was sacked by Derby for failing to get them promoted and the only reason he wound up in the North East is because he was a) cheap, having been relieved of his duties at Derby and therefore potentially open to a zero hours contract under Mike Ashely b) not John Carver, the self-proclaimed "best coach in the league" (who won 3 out of 20 games as caretaker).

But don't worry Jack, it seems Derby have a misfiring memory as well - they appear to have forgotten that they sacked McClaren 18 months ago. The Warm-Up will hand over to Alan Shearer and 140 characters of impenetrable logic to explain why this situation seems strange...

With Mike Phelan being handed the reins at Hull on a permanent basis on Thursday, we thought he might be in need of pick-me-up. Firstly, The Warm-Up recommends a stiff drink and a period of contemplation over the task you have taken on. If he is still around after that, we then suggest he watches the below video to a) appreciate how far his club has come b) wet his pants at some cracking moustaches c) see how NOT to conduct a team talk (that is, offer up something better than a half-arsed "get out there and play, work hard, enjoy it").

Sure, there's a couple of Championship matches on this evening and Rangers are going to soldier bravely on without their social media philosopher and all-round guiding light Joey Barton as he continues his ban for, sources say, generally being a bit of a tit.

But don't chow down too much on these weekend appetisers, you might spoil your main meal on Saturday. Here are the fixtures, in case you fancy a look...

Cardiff v Bristol City (19.45)

Nottm Forest v Birmingham (19.45)

Inverness CT v Rangers (19.45)