The Warm-Up: Postcard from Bleaksville
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Updated 06/11/2018 at 10:22 GMT
Inner demons, dastardly bus doors and touchline scraps feature in Jack Lang's latest dispatch...
Fulham's Serbian manager Slavisa Jokanovic looks on during the English Premier League football match between Huddersfield Town and Fulham at the John Smith's stadium in Huddersfield, northern England on November 5, 2018
Image credit: Getty Images
TUESDAY’S BIG STORIES
Glass half Fulham
The Warm-Up was not at the John Smith’s Stadium last night, but it’s safe to assume it was a pretty good evening for the phrase ‘Can we play you every week?’
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s do this properly. And by ‘properly’, I naturally mean, ‘in the voice of a boxing announcer’.
In the red corner: iiiiiiiit’s Huddersfield, with the politest defence in history of all sport, about three players you would feasibly recognise if you passed them outside Tesco Metro, and two strikers who couldn’t spell the word ‘goal’ between them if you gave them a dictionary and a decade to read it.
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Huddersfield Town's German-US head coach David Wagner (2nd L) embraces Huddersfield Town's Swiss defender Florent Hadergjonaj as they celebrate their win after the English Premier League football match between Huddersfield Town and Fulham at the John Smit
Image credit: Getty Images
In the blue corner: iiiiiiiit’s Fulham, with his Black Friday-endorsed transfer policy, three senior goalkeepers, dice-roll selection process, LITERALLY ANDRE SCHURRLE, and a defence every bit as solid as a blancmange skyscraper.
Something had to give. And what gave was Tim Fosu-Mensah, dishing out a ridiculously early Christmas present to hand the Terriers their first win of the season. “Sometimes everything comes together,” said David Wagner, eyeing the league table with renewed affection.
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Huddersfield players celebrate their win after the English Premier League football match between Huddersfield Town and Fulham at the John Smith's stadium in Huddersfield, northern England on November 5, 2018
Image credit: Getty Images
Slavisa Jokanovic, meanwhile, offered a devastating five-sentence assessment of his side’s performance: “They seem to be a little bit scared. Maybe we didn’t understand how important this game is. We were a little bit confused. We didn’t play the first 45 minutes with enough intensity. We started to kick the ball without any sense.”
That last line: ouch. Yet the most succinct take on Fulham’s struggles at the moment was probably the one provided by the club’s Twitter account. It’s good to know there’s internet access in Bleaksville, but that won’t be much solace for the west Londoners at the moment.
Alvar-Oh No! Morata
We often hear footballers – and particularly strikers – described as “confidence players”. But we might just need to move the threshold for that epithet a touch after some fascinating comments from Alvaro Morata yesterday.
The Spaniard is feeling pretty positive about his form after netting twice against Crystal Palace at the weekend, but revealed that his morale hit rock-bottom at points last season.
“No-one, only my wife, knows how big the last year was,” he said. “In the last month of last season I was down, down, down, down. I cannot be more down. I had a period where everything … if it was raining, I was angry because it’s raining; if I miss, it’s because the pitch is too wet. It was only excuses. It is not good.”
The Warm-Up knows the feeling. This particular article, for instance, is slightly substandard because the ‘n’ key on this laptop keeps sticking. But like Morata, we’ll return to our devastating best. Don’t you worry about that.
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Chelsea's Spanish striker Alvaro Morata (R) celebrates with Chelsea's Spanish midfielder Pedro (L) after scoring the opening goal of the English Premier League football match between Chelsea and Crystal Palace at Stamford Bridge in London on November 4, 2
Image credit: Getty Images
Home Swede home
Speaking of confidence, here comes Zlatan Ibrahimovic, megaphone in hand, and with some red-hot opinions to share. Get ’em quick, world! They’re straight from the oven!
Here’s Ibra telling FourFourTwo about the Premier League: “People said, ‘You don’t need to go to England, because if you fail in England, people will always say you weren’t good enough’. Everybody was against it.
“I liked the Premier League […] although I feel the quality is a little bit overrated – the individual quality, the technical part.
“I came there and they said I came in a wheelchair. All the people that talked, in the whole Premier League, I put them in a wheelchair. That’s what I did.”
Say what you will about MLS, but Zlatan’s patented Quote-a-Tron 4000 implant seems to be working just fine on the other side of the Atlantic.
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Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Manchester United
Image credit: Getty Images
IN OTHER NEWS
This week in footballers being fouled by inanimate objects:
Could have been worse, mind…
RETRO CORNER 1
12 years ago: Arsene Wenger and Alan Pardew engage in a little light shoving after a late West Ham goal vs Arsenal. It goes without saying it’s an utter, utter travesty that this didn’t break out into a full-on brawl.
The Warm-Up, for what it’s worth, would be backing Wenger all day. Pardew would have the swagger and maybe even the strength, but Le Professeur would have all the technique.
RETRO CORNER 2
Double Retro Corner? It’s like Adam Hurrey never left the building, isn’t it? But 6 November is a date deserving of some proper nostalgia – and not just because it’s The Warm-Up’s birthday. (“How would you like to celebrate?” “Oh, definitely by getting up at the crack of dawn and covering for Nick Miller on Eurosport.” Said nobody ever.)
It was on this day in 1986 that a certain Alex Ferguson first pitched up at Manchester United, with chestnut-brown hair and just a hint – well, maybe quite a lot – of the flintiness that would define his next decades in the job. Here’s his very first interview as Red Devils boss:
HAT TIP
Money isn’t so much talking in football, but issuing dictatorial decrees, and as made painfully clear by that other most prominent detail from Football Leaks – the naked and detailed plans for a Super League – it is now threatening the very fabric of the game to a greater degree than ever before.
That’s Miguel Delaney on Football Leaks, money, and the inevitability of a European Super League. And here’s Jonathan Liew on Morata and Sam Borden on Jose Mourinho (the latter worth a click just for the graphic alone).
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Manchester CIty's Khaldoon Al Mubarak and Ferran Soriano
Image credit: Reuters
COMING UP
The Chaaaaaampions! Sorry, The Warm-Up really needs to get out of the habit of the starting every single Champions League matchday by sitting bolt upright in bed and howling that as loud as possible. Mrs Warm-Up really, really isn’t a fan.
But you can bet that she too is pretty excited about tonight’s games. Red Star vs Liverpool (5.55pm kick-off, timing fans!), Spurs vs PSG, Inter vs Barcelona, Napoli vs PSG, Atletico Madrid vs Dortmund… ADD TO CART.
Alex Chick hasn’t been at his best for years, but we’re bringing him back for one last valedictory Warm-Up tomorrow. Or something.
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