The Warm-Up: Transfer limbo, 'Dildo Brothers' and one game to save a job

The So Solid Crew had 21 seconds to go, Youssou N’Dour and Neneh were a mere 7 seconds away, and now – somewhere in between – Leicester’s new £22m signing has also come agonisingly close.

Adrien Silva was signed from Sporting in the dying throes of the transfer window last week, only for his FIFA registration to miss the deadline by a whisker.

As things stand, with Leicester’s appeal flatly rejected, the 28-year-old – signed as a hasty replacement for Danny Drinkwater – will have to wait until January to feature for his new club.

“We are working with Adrien and Sporting Clube de Portugal to overcome some issues relating to the player’s registration and exploring all options to find a resolution,” said a Leicester spokesman, while Sporting’s president – who is a busy man these days (see below) – appeared to quash any prospect of Leicester getting their money back.

“The transfer of Adrien is already completed,” Bruno de Carvalho insisted. “Hopefully Leicester find a solution for him.”

This season needed a petty, public exchange to really get it going, and ol’ Bruno de Carvalho has obliged. The row over midfielder William Carvalho – in short, about whether West Ham actually made a bid for him or not – has escalated/descended to quite excellent new levels of dignity.

Having claimed that West Ham never made a formal offer, and then called David Sullivan a “parasite”, De Carvalho responded to the news that the Hammers’ co-owner would be taking legal action with this moderate statement to Sporting’s in-house TV channel:

“Where is it? Proof? Now, approaches, for sure. I’ve had them for almost the whole squad: West Ham supporters call Mr. David Sullivan and his brother, the Dildo Brothers…These messengers, these offended virgins, the president of West Ham… We must tell the truth!”

West Ham have declined to comment. Perhaps this belongs in the “In Other News” section. Still, that’s international week for you.

Now for some enlightening dispatches from the international break. First, from Colombia’s draw with Brazil, here’s Tottenham’s new £40m defender Davinson Sanchez eliminating all doubt about his preparedness for the rugged Premier League by, ahem, shepherding Dani Alves out of play.

Secondly, some compelling CONCACAF action from USA vs Honduras, which could politely be termed as “a bout of head tennis”.

It goes on a lot longer than you think it will. A bit like the international break!

We’d usually preface this sort of story with a wider point about “footballers” and how they’re just human beings like us. But perhaps we should let Theo Walcott’s letter to two Arsenal fans mourning the loss of their baby son speak for itself.

The closing line of “I am in utter admiration of you both” rather stops you in your tracks. Well done, that man.

The latest from the world of utter footballing impatience is that Frank de Boer “has one more game to save his Crystal Palace job”. Three goalless Premier League defeats before the international break set alarm bells ringing about his methods.

He will now have the unpleasant-sounding 90 minutes that is a trip to face Burnley at Turf Moor to try and convince the Palace chairman Steve Parish that he should be given a stay of execution. The question then is: how many more games does he get to save his job after that?

If managers are accountable for their poor performances, when will Premier League boardrooms finally pay for their scattergun recruitment strategies?

The Telegraph’s Jason Burt has an exclusive chat with the world’s most expensive footballer who isn’t Neymar, French teenager Kylian Mbappe.

On this day in 2005, Northern Ireland gave Sven-Goran Eriksson’s England a right, royal humbling at Windsor Park, thanks to international goal machine David Healy. Typical stuff from the Golden Generation, this:

Not much today, although there is a Russian second division game involving a club called Energomash, which sounds like some sort of musical sub-genre I’m too old to enjoy.