The Warm-Up: Klopp clears the air, and good news about Ryan Mason
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Published 24/01/2017 at 08:15 GMT
Plus: the match abandoned in second-half injury-time, and why Leicester are heroes to us all.
Klopp
Image credit: Imago
TUESDAY’S BIG STORIES
Kloppo clears the air
There are several categories of ‘talks’ in football. You’ve got your ‘showdown’, your ‘preliminary’, your ‘late-night’ and of course, the classic, ‘clear-the-air’. It seems Jurgen Klopp has been engaging in the latter with his Liverpool players, the friendly German trying to sort out why his team have been in such stuttering form recently.
Klopp held a ‘long’ meeting with his players after the 3-2 defeat to Swansea on Saturday, in which various topics were discussed, broadly on the subject of them suddenly not being much good.
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Liverpool gegen Swansea
Image credit: Imago
“We had a very intense period around Christmas and new year,” Klopp said. “Fair enough, so did everybody else, but before the Swansea game I actually thought we were back on the right track, with the freshness coming back. But what I spoke most about was enjoying what we do.
“We are Liverpool, a really good football-playing side, and we don’t enjoy the job we have to do. It is not as though we are a team at the bottom of the league that has to defend 80% or 90% of the time. In most of our games we are dominant, so we have to enjoy this, even when we don’t come through after five minutes.”
What can we put this down to? The absence of Joel Matip? Sadio Mane being away? Just an inevitable slump for a good team that are a way from being a superpower? Or that their pre-Christmas good form was the exception, and they’re not actually that brilliant? You decide. Well, obviously Klopp will decide…but you get the point.
Wenger to get a touchline ban
The sight of Arsene Wenger, the learned professor of football, trying to start a fight remains pretty funny. But it seems Wenger himself won’t be laughing much, as the FA have charged him for being sent from the touchline then laying his hands on fourth official Anthony Taylor, in Arsenal’s 2-1 win over Burnley on Sunday.
Some have called for long bans, community service, being put in the stocks and so on, but in reality Wenger will probably be banished to the stands for a couple of games and given a fine, which those who huff at these things will huff about. But it does raise the possibility of short-wearing kitman Vic Akers moving up a couple of steps in the decision-making process. Make it happen, Arsenal.
Mason should be back next season
A bit of good news about Ryan Mason, who remains in hospital but is conscious, and talking about the incident in which he fractured his skull by clashing heads with Gary Cahill on Sunday. The Hull midfielder was operated on but is now awake and has received visitors, able to talk to team-mates who have been to see him.
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Hull City's Ryan Mason is stretchered off injured
Image credit: Reuters
The chances of him returning to action this season are slim, but Hull are reportedly hopeful that he will have made enough of a recovery to start next term in the Tigers’ team. Good luck, Ryan.
IN OTHER NEWS
Match abandoned…in injury-time
Hats off to everyone at Hendon and AFC Sudbury, for producing the game that we all wish we’d been at this weekend just gone. The Ryman League Premier Division game had been trundling along without significant incident, Sudbury leading 2-1 until the clock ticked over into second-half stoppage time, but that was when all hell broke loose.
A mass brawl broke out, involving not just the players on the pitch but those off it, to the extent that the referee decided he had little choice but to call the game off. There has thus far been no decision on whether the result will stand, although we’d like to be in the room if the authorities tell Sudbury that it has to be replayed.
An interesting post-script is that Hendon’s Kevin Maclaren, who had been substituted earlier in the game, managed to nonetheless get himself sent off for violent conduct. Maclaren had not long returned from an 18-month ban from the game, given to him after he and his brother were the lead players in a bar brawl after a match in 2015. Thus, it was mutually decided that Maclaren would leave the club after this latest incident. “His emotions got the better of him on Saturday in his first game back for eight weeks in a crucial fixture,” said Hendon manager Gary McCann.
DIRTY LAUNDRY
Leicester: heroes
In yesterday’s Warm-Up, Adam Hurrey categorised Leicester as the ‘Zeros’ in the popular ‘Heroes and Zeros’ section. But today we say no, no these men are not ‘zeros’. Not because of their feats last season, but because of what they’re doing now.
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Leicester City manager Claudio Ranieri
Image credit: Reuters
Imagine, if you will, the magnificence of defending champions Leicester being relegated. That’s not happened since 1938, and seems almost more impossible now given that quality of teams does not tend to fluctuate these days as it did back in the days of black & white TV and knickerbockers. Should Leicester go down it will merely emphasise what a glorious, magnificent, sense-defying freak last season was, and would perhaps rank among the most spectacular achievements ever in football. Well, if they won the Champions League and got relegated – that would be even better, but we’ll take simple relegation for now.
HAT TIP
For many years I felt uncomfortable whenever I saw a player stall or stutter on their way to taking a penalty. I always thought he’d miss. Only in recent years have I thrown off my British conditioning that football is a serious game and started to revel in the cockiness of it. It’s supposed to be entertainment, after all, and there is something very satisfying about seeing a player send the goalkeeper one way and roll the ball the other from 12 yards. But I still hear the voices around me in the stands, ready to whine at the player who ‘f**ks about’ when it’s time for business; ready to have a go at the ‘clown’. I decided to get to the bottom of this very British footballing prejudice. Why do we have it in for the checked-step penalty?
English people and penalties have a…difficult relationship. Here’s Dominic Bliss over on the Set Pieces to ponder why.
RETRO CORNER
For absolutely no reason at all, here’s the Goal of the Season rundown for 1994/95. Features multiple Matt Le Tissier. Obviously. Also, if you make it to the end Arsenal fans…sorry.
COMING UP
The Africa Cup of Nations is approaching The Business End…or at least the start of The Business End, and tonight sees another couple of fixtures as that encroaches. And it’s a nervous old time for Ivory Coast, who absolutely, positively, must beat Morocco to go through to the knockout phase, while group-topping DR Congo are basically through but can seal top spot with a win over Togo. The latter have an outside chance of going through, but it’d require quite the selection of results to do so. Meanwhile, back in Blighty, a couple of decent Championship games are on the menu, as second-place Brighton host in-form Cardiff and Reading face Fulham.
Tomorrow’s Warm-Up will be brought to you by Alex Chick, who apologises in advance.
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