The Warm-Up: Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp's spending hypocrisy; why Wayne Rooney chose DC

A week ago today, the Warm-Up sprang out of bed full of excitement and possibility.

England were making their deepest World Cup run for nearly three decades, and stood two matches from history.

Then Luka Modric caught site of an optimistic Daily Mirror back page. An ex-Spurs team-mate – looking at you, Crouchy - sent him the Shrek ‘It’s Coming Home’ meme. Modric decided that he would, after all, try hard in a World Cup semi-final. And that was the end of our fun.

In those innocent, pre-Luka’s-vengeance times, there was also a tonne of massive news that went virtually unnoticed.

Cristiano Ronaldo signing for Juventus – i.e. the world’s best and most popular (and unpopular) player moving club – was dismissed as an unnecessary distraction.

Then Manchester City announced Riyad Mahrez a few nanoseconds after France beat Belgium, answering the question: If club spends £60m and no-one is around to care, does the ‘Welcome Mahrez’ video still make a sound?

Apparently, yes. But a rubbish one.

Anyway, here we are seven days later, and the Warm-Up is trying to find something meaningful to say about Rangers’ goalless Europa League draw in Macedonia against FK Shkupi. Sad times.

As Liverpool close in on the £62m signing of Brazil goalkeeper Alisson, it’s easy to mock Jurgen Klopp’s dismissal of football clubs who spend money.

Easy, and right.

It’s quite true that the Alisson fee and the £75m for Virgil van Dijk are largely offset by the sale of Philippe Coutinho.

Not so much £54m Naby Keita, £45m Fabinho and £13m Xherdan Shaqiri – but that’s fine too.

There’s nothing wrong with clubs spending big money on players. Given the huge financial contribution their fans make through season tickets, TV packages and merch, it would literally be rude not to.

If Liverpool want to spend their way to success, go ahead. It’s what everyone else does.

But as they do it, it would be nice if their manager canned the pious claptrap about “doing it differently”.

Wayne Rooney gave a lengthy interview yesterday about his move from Everton to DC United.

Among the platitudes was this nugget on why he moved to Washington: "I also felt the city was more suited to me and my family than Los Angeles or New York.”

Some might assume he wanted to stay away from LA and NYC’s hectic showbiz lifestyle – the Warm-Up would rather believe the Rooney family have already snaffled season tickets to the Smithsonian, and that Kai is eyeing up a tilt at Congress in 2030.

He's right, you know.

Actually, Luka Modric was right – this song’s really annoying when it’s not about your team.

The real Magic of the Cup comes in the form of sick burns from the competition’s official Twitter account.

Yesterday the @EmiratesFACup handle marked World Emoji Day (like we said earlier, we’re all doomed) by offering an ‘Award for Creativity’ to Willian – a reference to the Brazilian’s covering up Antonio Conte with trophies after Chelsea’s Cup win in May.

Written down it almost sounds like a bit of playfully harmless japery, but Because The Internet the joke caused much furore and a belated tweet deletion after three hours.

This from the account that brought you the ‘What’s In Your Pocket, Chris Smalling?’ dig at Harry Kane that caused a constitutional crisis earlier this year.

These are the crazy cats in charge of the London Stadium. A BBC report now claims they have spent £450,000 of taxpayers’ money looking unsuccessfully for a stadium sponsor. That’s nearly 20% of their annual rent from West Ham.

Fortunately for LLDC, the world is so aggressively doomed that it’s hard to feel genuine outrage about this – and we can comfort ourselves with the knowledge that West Ham fans hate the stadium as much as everyone else. Look on the bright side – if everyone’s unhappy, nobody’s unhappy!

Daley Blind’s re-arrival at Ajax brought briefly to mind the glorious summer of 2017, when teams battled to outdo each other in pursuit of the weirdest transfer announcement.

Roma were the undisputed stars of the show... and Aston Villa ruined everything. Golden times.

Champions League qualifying – and that means Celtic’s annual battle royal with central Asia’s finest.

Tonight Brendan Rodgers’ men welcome FC Alashkert of (*Googles*) Armenia. Very good.