The Warm Up: More trouble for Moyes, Neville on his way and the old bill

Before leading his Sunderland team into battle against his former team Everton on Monday, David Moyes said a fairly brassy thing. “We had a great team at Goodison but we were missing a centre-forward,” said Moyes. “I might be exaggerating but I think, with a top centre-forward, we would have been close to winning the league; we were that good.”

Perhaps in a bid to prove his point, a striker signed by Everton after his departure set about his Sunderland team in the most merciless way, Romelu Lukaku helping himself to three goals in 12 minutes as Ronald Koeman’s side sashayed off into the cool night air with a 3-0 victory.

Actually, it wasn’t quite that Lukaku scored a hat-trick, more that one was donated to him by a Sunderland defence who seemed to regard marking as one of those optional extras a car dealer tries to offer you when selling a brand new Passat. “No sir!” Lamine Kone and Papy Djilobodji seemed to say whenever a cross would be delivered into the box requiring their attention. “You’ll not sell me lots of fancy things I don’t need. Good day sir. I SAID GOOD DAY SIR.”

One does fear for Moyes after a result like this. He’s joined a club where it almost seems mandatory to change managers during the season, and if they play like this in many more games (with the obvious caveat that he’s been dealt a pretty rough hand in the collection of players at his disposal) then he’ll be quietly invited to do one and perhaps not seen again in top-flight management for quite a long time.

On Monday Gary Neville announced that he might not return to coaching, preferring to concentrate on his existing commitments with Sky Sports and that hotel he let homeless people live in for a bit. He said he had an ‘obligation’ to Salford City, his Hotel Football project and to “deliver high-end restaurants.” Which is all absolutely fine, his own choice and nobody reasonable could really have any problem with it. But forgive coaching if it doesn’t cry itself to sleep at the thought of a great lost genius.

There was a sort of self-pitying whine to Neville’s statement, a vague sense of bafflement as to why the FA weren’t especially keen to keep him on after the appointment of Sam Allardyce. “The FA and Roy Hodgson invested in me for four years and I’m the most experienced I’ve ever been, yet you get chucked overboard,” Neville said.

“The reality is the investment has to come through defeat and victory. The pathway for young coaches cannot just be based on a run of defeats or a run of victories otherwise you are forever changing. I heard [FA chief executive] Martin Glenn say ex-players go into punditry for the money. It’s not that simple. It’s an excuse, but don’t tell me the problem, tell me the solution.”

Forgive us for suggesting this, but it’s a little odd to complain about the FA throwing away four years of ‘investment’ when a) he spent the previous few minutes explaining what he’d rather be doing other than coaching, and b) those four years didn’t exactly contain anything approaching success, did it? Neville managed Valencia to just three wins from 16 games and left them six points above the relegation zone, while he was part of an England coaching staff that…well, we all know what happened there.

Neville didn’t do a particularly good job of explaining why the FA should continue to invest in someone only involved in failures so far, and by pointing out how experienced he was he only served to highlight that, despite this experience, he was still no good at coaching. How long should he be given? Five years? Ten? 27? Perhaps football coaching should not weep too much for losing Neville.

When the Warm-Up’s toilet breaks (a troublingly frequent occurrence, probably best not to ask why) we get straight on the phone to the landlord to get it sorted. After all, we’re not responsible for the upkeep of the place, so why should it be our job to pay for bits of it to be fixed?

That very much seems to be West Ham’s attitude to the issues at the London Stadium/Olympic Stadium/Hammerdome, which has suffered from, shall we say, some ‘teething problems’. Specifically, people keep fighting and there aren’t enough stewards to intervene and calm things down. Having proudly and lengthily declared that it was their new home, with the claret and blue cladding and the big pictures of Mark Noble outside, you might think this was their problem to resolve, right? Wrong.

West Ham are said to be quite indignant that the company who runs the stadium haven’t provided enough stewards, and that they want more police to come in and help maintain order among the masses. One wonders who West Ham expect to pay for these extra police, mind: the club themselves, who clearly require them for the safe running of their football games, or the public? Consistency would probably point to the latter: after all, they’ve paid for the stadium, so why not the plod too?

The Metro, like many publications, runs a ‘team of the weekend’ section in their Monday paper, and this week they selected Danny Rose, the Tottenham left-back. A perfectly reasonable decision on the face of things: he’s England’s No.3 and one of the finest defenders in the Premier League. "Tottenham are back! Or so it seems after a convincing 4-0 win over Stoke," they wrote. "Rose was one of the many Spurs stars to finally hit their straps after a steady start to the campaign, contributing at both ends of the pitch to ensure the north Londoners came away with all three points."

Of course the only problem was that Rose didn’t actually play at the weekend. Swing and a miss.

Heroic work from Plaza Colonia’s Uruguayan goalkeeper Kevin Dawson (apparently that is his real name) who took exception to an opponent seeming to waste time in the closing stages of their match against Rampla Juniors.

With his team trailing, Dawson took it upon himself to run over and fetch a stretcher for his ailing opponent, only to chuck the thing over the advertising boards when it became clear that the opponent could walk on his own two feet after all. He was, scandalously, booked for his troubles, but he did have the last laugh: Colonia grabbed a late equaliser and the game finished 1-1.

With Arsenal set to face PSG tonight, let’s take a look at the last (and indeed only) time these two played each other in a competitive game. It was in the semi-finals of the sadly departed Cup Winners’ Cup in 1993/94, and features commentary from the even more sadly departed Brian Moore. The first leg saw Arsenal take the lead through Ian Wright, only to be pegged back by a near-post corner, the aerial colossus that was David Ginola getting the better of Bould, Adams et al. But Arsenal prevailed, winning the return 1-0 at Highbury thanks to a Kevin Campbell goal and progressing to face Parma, who they would also beat 1-0, in the final.

The Champions League group stage is basically a procession, an administrative procedure designed to wave through the best teams, but John Nicholson over on Football365 remembers a time when all European games genuinely did matter. Could we return to those days?

The CHHHAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMPPPIIOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONS! Yes, that’s right, the Champions League is back, back, back, and while we all basically know what’s going to happen and who’s going to qualify, it’s something to do on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, innit? As mentioned Arsenal travel to PSG, while Manchester City host Borussia Monchengladbach and Brendan Rodgers reunites with his one true love, Luis Suarez, as Barcelona travel to Celtic. The big one, as trailed in yesterday’s Warm Up, is of course Basel v Ludogorets, but we won’t mention that too much because presumably you’re all sick of the blanket media coverage it’s already receiving. There’s also a (nearly) full programme of Championship games, if you prefer your football a little earthier/are trying to fathom which new ways Derby will find to muck up their season this time.