The Warm-Up: The misery of Alvaro Morata, and Saints sinking without trace

There is a condition known to affect darts players called, imaginatively, dartitis, which renders them almost unable to throw a dart. Shakes and spasms leave them powerless to follow through with the basic process of chucking their arras at the board.

In golf and cricket, a similar loss of fine motor skills is more commonly known as ‘the yips’, when players lose the ability to perform basic tasks. It is a phenomenon also observed in basketball and baseball, but rarely talked about in football. Still, on Thursday night, there was surely a confirmed case.

Chelsea paid anything between £56-65m to sign Alvaro Morata last summer – around £20m more than Liverpool stumped up for Mohamed Salah. He started quickly enough with seven goals in his first eight games, but his form in 2018 has gone down the toilet. Last night, in a 2-1 win against Burnley, things got even worse.

Antonio Conte tried to coax something different out of a player with one league goal in 2018 by pairing him with Olivier Giroud in a two-man attack for the first time. But the Spaniard exhibited a bad case of the Moratas when he was released one for what should have been a certain goal, only to fire miserably wide.

Morata fluffing a great one-on-one has been one of the enduring motifs of Chelsea’s season - along with Antonio Conte’s weekly grumbles about transfer policy - and his latest failure in front of goal seems likely to cost him his place for the FA Cup semi-final against Southampton at the weekend. A stroppy reaction to being substituted didn’t help, as Morata kicked a water bottle and unleashed his fury - mostly at himself.

"I want to apologize for my reaction when I was sent to the bench,” he tweeted. “When I fail I get really angry with myself."

Which means that for most of 2018, Morata has probably been stomping around Cobham like the Incredible Hulk, smashing up lockers and looking for an air rifle so he can teach a youth player a lesson.

"Alvaro must be angry, because when you have the chance to score you have to score and it can change your confidence," said Conte, picking up the thread. “He was angry with himself for his missed chance.”

The Warm-Up isn’t prepared at this stage to diagnose full-blown Torres-itis, but the Moratas is serious enough.

Southampton face Chelsea in that aforementioned FA Cup semi-final on Sunday, but of more pressing concern to the club and Mark Hughes is the awful position they find themselves in in the Premier League.

Last night, Southampton could only draw 0-0 in a desperately frustrating game with Leicester City, who being stuck firmly in mid table didn’t need the points at all. By contrast, Southampton are now four points off 17th-placed Swansea, and with only four games remaining have played once more than their relegation rivals.

With one point in four games since his appointment, Hughes is currently on course to lead two clubs to relegation given Stoke are sitting a place below Southampton. Saints’ fate will be decided in the next three games when they face Bournemouth at home and then Everton and Swansea away. The season concludes with a home game against Manchester City but there is a good chance they will be relegated by that point.

Hughes knows it’s time to start taking some risks: “We are going to get to a point where we are just going to have to throw everything at it. Maybe tonight wasn't the game for that but certainly that is going to be in my mindset that we are going to have to get maximum points. We are going to have to take more risks in the games coming up and that's where we find ourselves, unfortunately.”

It’s probably no exaggeration to say that if they can’t beat Bournemouth on April 28, it’s game over.

Michael Carrick’s curiously truncated England career has always been a bit of a mystery to The Warm-Up: 34 caps hardly seems sufficient for a player of his quality, who has been a pivotal influence at Manchester United for over a decade.

But now the midfielder has revealed that he struggled with depression when he was called up for international duty, to the extent that he asked the Football Association not to pick him.

“I’d been in the squad a long time and I’ll be honest, I was finding it hard going away with England. I didn’t mind going away with United pre-season for three weeks or whatever and coming back, but going with England, it was almost depressing in a way.

Lol-a-minute striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic is continuing his charm offensive after joining LA Galaxy. Lucky his arrogance isn’t getting tired at all!

Pepe doing Pepe things.

Also of note in that match: the game had to be temporarily stopped when Besiktas manager Senol Gunes was struck by an object. Great work all round.

As it’s FA Cup semi-final weekend, and as Channel 5 are showing a documentary next week about the Arsene Wenger-Sir Alex Ferguson rivalry which sounds amazing, why not revisit one of the best matches of modern times? Villa Park was the setting for some pure, unadulterated drama as Manchester United beat Arsenal in 1999. That stunning David Beckham goal, Dennis Bergkamp’s reply, Nicolas Anelka’s disallowed goal, Roy Keane’s red card and then the stunning conclusion: Bergkamp’s penalty failure in injury time which stopped him ever taking a spot-kick again, and a certain goal from Ryan Giggs…

ESPN FC had time with Burnley manager Sean Dyche and naturally spent a few minutes discussing his musical influences. “Going into that sort of mod turnover scene and then going into the New Romantics scene… that sort of Madchester vibe.” Topped off with the claim that, “the rave scene was a big era for me” along with the revelation that he’s bang into Kanye West and Jay-Z. Amazing scenes, and a refreshing way to conduct an interview.

Fulham’s promotion push continues as they travel to Millwall looking to leapfrog Cardiff into second place in The Championship. That’s live on Sky at 7:45pm. Top of the bill for BT is the Bundesliga match between Borussia Monchengladbach and Wolfsburg, at 7:30pm.