The Warm-Up: Liverpool lose to...hang on...Swansea?

One of the great things about football is its capacity for making chumps of us all, for exposing the silliest parts of our nature to the world, one minute a man parading up and down the street in his finest new suit with crisp shirt and top hat, the next shuffling around with his trousers around his ankles and a bird having depositing on his headgear.

In this specific instance the man is Liverpool FC, and the bird is a swan. Having gone 19 games without defeat, a week after making the previously unimaginably good champions-elect Manchester City look like a blithering set of buffoons, on Monday night Liverpool lost to the worst team in the Premier League.

1-0 was the score, Alfie Mawson the man with the goal, and after the game, as you might imagine, Jurgen Klopp was far from impressed.

“The performance in the first half was not even close to what we wanted to do,” Klopp said. “We had the situations but didn’t use them. I am frustrated, I am angry. But I am more frustrated about the performance than the result. The result is always a result of the performance; we were just not good enough tonight, especially in the first half. We didn’t stretch their formation; we didn’t keep the right positions to cause them problems. Swansea knew to win this game that they needed our help and we gave them that.”

This might be something of a mystery to non-English viewers, but on Monday Jimmy Armfield died. In the wider scheme of things, Armfield was a very good if not groundbreaking player, a member of the 1966 World Cup squad who didn’t get on the pitch during that tournament but who won 46 caps for his country and was a Blackpool stalwart for 17 years.

But he will primarily be remembered as both a broadcaster and a good egg, one of football’s wise sages who barely had a bad word to say about anyone. In a game that is so polarising, so delighted to inspire strong opinions and opprobrium, Armfield’s soft but firm voice drifting out of the radio was a warm hug, a sign you were in a safe place and everything was going to be OK.

“I’ve kept in touch with Jimmy and the last 14 months have been horrendous for him but even then,” wrote the BBC’s Ian Dennis, a colleague of Armfield’s for 16 years, ‘not one to complain or moan, he was dignified as ever. He said: ‘Football has kept me going.’ The last time we spoke was brief because he was struggling. He said: ‘Thanks son, thanks for ringing.’ Thank you Jimmy, it’s been an honour.’

The Alexis Sanch…sorry Mino Raiola…the Henrikh Mhkitaryan deal is done, but you’ve already heard far too much about that and we don’t wish to bore you further.

What was quite interesting was Sanchez’s farewell statement, which revealed that he apparently spent most of the downtime while waiting for the transfer to go through composing a Big List Of Grievances, and spewed them all onto Instagram.

“There are people (former club players) who have spoken with no knowledge of what happens inside the club and cause damage,” he said. “I must say I always gave 100 percent, until the last day, when I asked to the Mister [manager] to be in the team, because I wanted to be a contribution.”

All of this was accompanied by a slightly weird video montage of Sanchez at Arsenal, prominently featuring, for some reason, him congratulating his erstwhile colleagues after the Community Shield this year. Still, goodbyes can be very emotional.

This is all very well, but that’s definitely a yellow card.

Or, more specifically, Andy Carroll’s comic timing. Those rumours linking Chelsea with a move for the big ol’ tree were rather surreal, although subsequent talk of them sniffing around Peter Crouch or Ashley Barnes actually make it sound rather plausible. But just as Chelsea were preparing their big stacks of cash, Carroll did what Carroll does, and got injured. Bang. Foot fracture. Surgery. Three months out. It’s the way you tell ’em.

We put it to you that these things have gone Too Far.

On this day in 2002, Jose Mourinho took over at Porto. We hope whoever appointed him thinks about what they did every single day. Still, here he is in slightly less belligerent times, winning the Champions League in 2004.

Over on SB Nation, Andi Thomas ponders the absolute weirdness of Theo Walcott playing football for someone other than Arsenal.

The second leg of the Carabao Cup semi-final between Cities Bristol and Manchester tonight. Pep Guardiola’s lads have a 2-1 lead, but Lee Johnson has promised his side will go “gung-ho” for the win. Should be a good one.