The Warm-Up: Was three points Sean Dyche's goodbye gift to Burnley?
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Updated 31/10/2017 at 08:29 GMT
Plus: the backlash against England's U17s didn't take long, and a bit of good news for Gareth Southgate.
Burnley's English manager Sean Dyche applauds the fans ahead of the English Premier League football match between Burnley and Newcastle United at Turf Moor in Burnley, north west England on October 30, 2017.
Image credit: Getty Images
TUESDAY’S BIG STORIES
Dyche says farewell with a win?
If reports are to be believed, Everton have taken a look at David Unsworth and decided, after two whole games in charge, that he isn’t for them, and they’d rather bring in someone more established. Which is fair enough, although the man they’ve apparently chosen might still be something of a gamble: Sean Dyche has done a fine job with a selection of underdog teams, unlucky to be sacked from Watford and now having established Burnley in the Premier League, but now he has a chance at something a little bigger, with the Ev noting his name down as they one they want.
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Jeff Hendrick, pictured right, was Burnley's match-winner against Newcastle
Image credit: PA Sport
Dyche may well have bowed out with a victory at Burnley, as thanks to a goal from Jeff Hendrick they claimed a 1-0 win over Newcastle on Monday night, taking the Clarets to seventh place and level on points with Liverpool. Quite a thing he’s done there. The game marked Dyche’s five-year anniversary at Turf Moor too, fine success for a man who looks like a Victorian wrestler.
“I just keep getting on with my job, simple as that,” Dyche told Sky Sports when asked about Everton. “We just keep getting on with it. That’s my focus and my team’s focus. We have to do planning of course, but generally we take each game as it comes, we work on that, then we process the information, debrief it and we move forward again and keep that clarity of thought. That’s how we keep going.”
Tammy Abraham set to choose England?
Apart from the success of the youngsters, there’s not a lot for Gareth Southgate to feel massively enthused about these days, what with the England job being a continuing trudge through the misery of public opinion, which will only be sated if they win the World Cup. But, there is one bit of reported good news, in that Tammy Abraham is apparently set to choose England over Nigeria.
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Tammy Abraham says he has signed a new five-year contract with Chelsea
Image credit: PA Sport
Abraham has made a fine start to life as a Premier League player, scoring four goals in nine games for a fairly hopeless looking Swansea side, and despite having been a key part of England’s Under-21 team, he is eligible to play for Nigeria through his father.
But, according to The Times, Abraham has elected to represent England, and could even be part of Southgate’s squad for the upcoming friendlies against Brazil and Germany. Nice to have something a little different and interesting, at least.
Morata fancies a long haul at Chelsea
Apparently there has been some speculation that Alvaro Morata might not be at Chelsea for a particularly long time. We confess we’d missed this vital nugget, but Morata went big in denying the whole thing by saying actually, he wants to stay for ages and ages.
“In the interview… I want to say, probably in the future when I finish in my career, I won’t live in London,” Morata said. “But now, at the moment, I’m very happy in London and enjoy living in London with my wife.
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Striker Alvaro Morata insists he is happy at Chelsea and in London
Image credit: PA Sport
“Probably, in the future, when I need to bring my child to the school and take up a school, when I finish my career, I’d prefer to come back to my country. It’s normal. For me, I prefer the place I was born. But now I’m very happy…
“I want to say again that we had a problem of understanding in this interview. If Chelsea proposed me 10 years I’d probably sign that too. I’m happy with this club, in this city, with everything in London.
I really like London and, probably, if I make good and improve, probably I can stay here more than five years. But I need to score many goals otherwise Chelsea will buy another player. It’s normal.
All a bit of a non-story really. Apologies for clogging up your morning with it.
IN OTHER NEWS
“I’ve got to have stitches…where…?”
It’s never a good sign when you see a player holding his crotch then frantically waving to the bench for treatment. So spare a thought for Albacete’s Mariano Bittolo who required ten stitches in…well…Little Mariano Bittolo after an accidental collision with a team-mate’s studs at the weekend. Remarkably, Bittolo apparently won’t miss any games after this most unfortunate of injuries. We wonder at what point he will start strutting round the dressing room bragging “Ten stitches, eh? Ten! TEN!”
HEROES AND ZEROS
Heroes: QPR players other than Jamie Mackie
QPR's press team probably thought they were in for some absolute social media gold when they decided to do a bit of Halloween content by putting forward Jamie Mackie in a wheelie bin and got him to jump up and try to scare his team-mates. But, as you can see, either he did a rubbish job of being scary or those QPR players have got nerves of the coldest steel.
Zero: Danny Murphy
Everyone is delighted with the success of the England U17s, a collection of fine young players who understandably celebrated with some gusto. But not in the right manner, according to Danny Murphy. “There’s no England badge in the picture of them winning the World Cup – for me, that’s wrong,” he said on Talksport. “They’ve all turned their shirts around because they want their names across their chests, so everybody across the world can see who they are.
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England U17
Image credit: Eurosport
“They’re all saying, ‘I’m a good young player coming through, look at me’, but that in itself is what is wrong with society. In effect, they’re thinking about fame as well as being a footballer and I think it creates a big debate here…The fact they want their names to be on the front of their shirts and think about getting their name out there so people know who they are – they are not wrong, but it’s what is wrong at the moment.”
Well, if you were wondering when the backlash was going to start…
HAT TIP
Being the Rotherham manager, I wouldn’t say it’s a dream because I never dreamt it — it’s an honour. It’s something I’ll look back on in life and think, ‘Well, I gave it my best for the town, and the club, and tried to enjoy it while I had it.’ But ‘enjoyment’ is a tough word in management. You look at all the managers at the top level. I don’t know how many of them look happy on a daily basis.
You’ll need to hand over actual, cold, hard, well-earned, poorly-earned, ill-earned money to read it, but Gregor Robertson’s interview with Paul Warne, the manager who doesn’t really want to be a manager in The Times will be well worth the cash.
RETRO CORNER
Manchester United play Benfica tonight, and obviously the most famous fixture between the two sides was in the 1966 European Cup final. But a couple of years earlier United went to Lisbon with a slender lead from the first leg of their quarter-final. They proceeded to blow away the Portuguese side, Eusebio and all, claiming a 5-1 victory. They would ultimately lose to Partizan Belgrade in the semis.
COMING UP
It’s another piping hot night of Champions League action, the excitement around which is very slightly dissipated by the fact it’s the same games as two weeks ago, but still – it should be good. As mentioned United host Benfica, Chelsea travel to Roma and Celtic are in for a fearsome hiding at Bayern. Plus there’s a full slate of Championship games to enjoy: the Derby of Infinite Sadness between Sunderland and Bolton is probably the pick of those. If by ‘pick’ you enjoy watching thousands of northerners sadly staring at their shoes.
Tomorrow’s Warm-Up will be brought to you by Alex Chick, a chirpy character who is always there to give you a pep up.
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