The Warm-Up: It's 2017 and Gary Megson is a Premier League manager

The inevitable happened on Tuesday, as West Brom bowed to public pressure but more importantly common sense and facts by dismissing Tony Pulis. There might well have been riots from a set of fans now so ground down into the dirt by the abysmalness of Pulisball had he not been handed his cards, and presumably even in the short term the club were keen to get someone in to reverse this heinous style of play and get the team playing some attracti….hang on, what’s this?

It seems that the man West Brom have placed in temporary charge is one Gary Megson, perhaps the only man working in football today capable of grimmer and more stultifying football than Pulis. Megson was appointed as Pulis’s assistant earlier in the season, presumably to curb the manager’s more flamboyant excesses, and now after the change he is now in the hotseat.

Let’s just mull over this one for a short while. Megson last managed in 2012, when he was sacked by Sheffield Wednesday in League One. Before that he’d spent over two years in charge of Bolton, winning just a quarter of their games and producing football so unrelentingly grim that people turned to stone while watching it. And this man is a Premier League manager, albeit temporarily.

Sure, presumably this will only be a short-term measure, but in this age of enlightenment, when the football world has all the information in the world at its fingertips and we’re supposed to be the smartest we’ve ever been about the game, Gary Megson is a Premier League manager.

Well, who saw this coming? Brighton vs Stoke on a fairly grim Monday night down on the south coast looked like a classic quota-filler for the TV boys, a way to sneak in two of the Premier League’s lesser draws before they can get on with the business of showing bigger, shinier teams.

But, as it turned out, this was a low-key ripper, ending in a 2-2 draw with some flamboyantly poor refereeing thrown in as a bonus. Brighton came from behind twice to claim a draw, after first Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting (he deserves the full name here) then Kurt Zouma gave Stoke the lead, only to be pegged back by Pascal Gross and Jose Izquierdo.

Brighton felt rather aggrieved that they weren’t given a penalty in the first half, when Ryan Shawcross legged up Glenn Murray in the area, only for referee Lee Mason to turn down the howls of protest. While Mark Hughes claimed there was “minimal contact”, Shawcross admitted it “was probably a penalty” and even Stoke’s Twitter account, the sort of place usually reserved for the most one-eyed partisanship, fessed up.

This has been on the cards for a while now, but the bidding has finally started for Newcastle United. Mike Ashley is keen to sell, a consortium led by American financier Amanda Staveley is keen to buy, and they’ve submitted an offer worth around £300 million for the club.

The question now is whether Ashley wants rid of the club enough to accept this discounted offer on his already discounted price. Ashley apparently cut his asking price to £380mi to try forcing through a deal before Christmas, but the mathematically savvy among you will have noted that this offer is below even that.

Basically, the opportunity is still there if anyone has a few quid and a big Sports Direct mug they want to throw into the deal…

He may be out of a job, but it seems he at least somewhere to go for red wine and cuddles.

One wonders if Coleman is feeling like a little bit of a chump after quitting Wales to take over at noted basket case club Sunderland, when if he’d held out for only a few days more he could probably have waltzed into slightly less of a basket case club West Brom.

Presumably there is some sort of back story to this – an erroneous report or whispers that got out of control – but we’re simply not interested and choose to believe that Tony just likes to keep us informed.

And since we’re discussing the great man, here are his 32 goals for Leeds United.

Wondering what the deal with new Arsenal head of recruitment Sven Mislintat is? Allow ESPN’s Stephan Uersfeld to explain.

CHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMMPIONS! Europe’s brassiest competition is back on our screens tonight, and…well actually a lot of the games involving English sides are already a bit meaningless. Tottenham have already qualified so their encounter with Borussia Dortmund is more about whether the German side can cling on, even though a Real Madrid win over Apoel Nicosia would put them out anyway. Liverpool can secure their qualification in Sevilla, while Manchester City are looking to continue their 100% record, playing Feyenoord. There’s also a full slate of Championship fixtures, if that’s your bag.