The Warm-Up - Goalscorer: Ben Woodburn; Gareth Southgate; penalties are not a lottery

Liverpool’s 2-0 League Cup win over Leeds last night saw Ben Woodburn become the youngest scorer in the club’s history at 17 years and 45 days.

Of course, for us monsters in the media, it’s another young player to saddle with unrealistic expectations, another teenage personal life to pick over in forensic detail.

Hence Jurgen Klopp’s nervousness talking about Woodburn after the game in which he said he was afraid of overblown media coverage.

Given Klopp’s understandable concerns about hype, you might wonder why he considers it necessary to blood such a young player, who also made his Premier League debut on Saturday.

But then we’re already at it – expecting Klopp to make his selections based on PR considerations, not what’s best for the team and his players.

Woodburn represents Wales at age-group level, but is also eligible for England – come on Ben, make the switch. Work hard, keep your head down, and four years from now you could be condemned as a ‘footie idiot’ for buying your mum a sink.

You might want to take a seat before hearing this news: Gareth Southgate will be confirmed as the new England manager today.

Following a kinda-sorta-successful caretaker spell and an arduous interview process in which he was the only candidate, the FA will give Southgate a four(!)-year contract running until Euro 2020.

Nobody, including Southgate’s own mother, would expect him to set pulses racing, but as a semi-decent coach who is unremarkable enough to pose little risk of off-field embarrassment, he represents a safe enough pair of hands.

It does rather make a mockery of the FA’s obsession with process that it has handed the job to a man who six months earlier was nowhere near contention for the role, declaring himself unready.

But look, he’ll do for now. And there’s no higher praise than that.

Yesterday morning a plane carrying Brazilian side Chapecoense to the Copa Sudamericana final crashed on its approach to Medellin airport in Colombia.

77 people were on board. Only six survived. The dead included players, coaches, club staff, journalists and flight crew.

Football has united in grief at the tragedy, and last night fans gathered at Chapecoense’s Arena Conda stadium to pay tribute to their team.

NO THEY AREN’T

4.11am! Stop tweeting and hit the snooze button...

Yes, it’s only a bit of fun – but do Leeds and Liverpool fans really want to play a League Cup quarter-final and make it about United? You know their fans love this, right?

It’s been a particularly brutal 24 hours to be a football fan, with the Chapecoense disaster and Barry Bennell being charged with eight child sex offences.

So maybe 30 November offers a notable birthday, a chance to enjoy a much-loved football hero whose silky skills remind us why we love this sport.

OK, who was born on this day?

Ben Thatcher... nope.

Nigel De Jong... don’t think so.

Alan Hutton... this is getting ridiculous now.

Abel Xavier... well, there’s this clip from January 2002, notable as much for the headline ‘Former Holland boss Louis van Gaal confirms interest in becoming next Manchester United manager’ as it is for Gazza’s interruption.

Phil Babb! Ah, that’s the stuff...

Honestly, what has the world come to when we fully expect a Jose Mourinho side to suffer embarrassing failure in a cup quarter-final? Join us tonight as Mou’s boys royally stuff up their pens against West Ham.

Elsewhere Arsenal and Southampton attempt to suppress the feeling that they’d rather have their feet up at home, and battle it out for a semi-final spot.