The Warm-Up: Alexis Sanchez is free!

On Wednesday afternoon, Alexis Sánchez left his house, which we’re guessing is in that posh belt of Cheshire where footballers live, and flew to Italy. He went to join Internazionale; he left behind him Manchester United, the broken dreams of Ed Woodward, and probably also a piano.

So ends one of the strangest Manchester United careers of recent times, and that’s saying something. At times it seemed that the dastardly moustache was the clue: this was not Alexis Sánchez; this was an evil doppelganger up to something no good. A cunning, dastardly plan involving huge piles of money and, er, not being very good at football. The Warm-Up just hopes Atom and Humber are safe.

Odd to think, now, that Sánchez’s signing was a coup: that he was supposed to be going to the other side of town, before United nicked him. What do you think happened, over in that other universe where Sánchez went to Manchester City? Did he stink that place out as well? Or did Guardiola find something for him to, and persuade him that he wanted to do it? He is a pretty good coach, after all, and City is a significantly more coherent environment.

Here in our universe, let’s hope that Antonio Conte manages something similar. For when Sánchez was playing well, there wasn’t anybody else quite like him. A rampaging, twinkle-toed, heat-seeking missile of a player, comprehensible only through the medium of violent mixed metaphor. Be nice to see a bit of that again.

Into round 3 of the League Cup we go, and here come the big boys. What used to be an intriguingly wide-open competition has recently been dominated by the Premier League’s aristocracy, driven on by the fact that there really aren’t enough trophies to go around so everything has to count.

But still, it’s knock-out football under floodlights, and that always looks good. So far Crawley Town, Colchester United, and Sunderland have all claimed Premier League scalps — Norwich, Palace, and Burnley respectively — and Forest Green Rovers took Bournemouth to a penalty shootout, before forgetting to score any of their penalties.

Looking at the third round draw, The Warm-Up reckons there’s two decent shouts for the big upset. The first is of course Rochdale’s trip to Manchester United: the visitors will have an entire nation behind them, while the hosts will, by the looks of things, have to give Mike Phelan a game up front.

The second, meanwhile, is Southampton’s trip to Portsmouth, a good old-fashioned Proper Derby where everybody involved can’t stand each other. Scummers vs. Skates. Week beginning 23 September, don’t walk past any windows on the south coast. You’ll get a formbook in the head.

Finally, a moderately extraordinary story concerning Liverpool and promising youngster Bobby Duncan. There we all were, minding our own business, when suddenly out of nowhere came a statement from Duncan’s agent, Saif Rubie.

In the statement, Rubie accuses Liverpool of “bullying” the 18-year-old forward, who he says has suffered “deep mental health issues” and “has not left his room for four days”. The sticking point, according to his agent, is that Duncan is unhappy at the club but Liverpool, having asked his agent to find a deal, are now refusing all sales or loan deals. Indeed, they are apparently threatening to “punish” Duncan by refusing to let him leave until January.

Liverpool have decided to keep their counsel, noting only that they are “disappointed by the unattributed comments and unfounded allegations”, and that they will continue to work privately towards a solution. Meanwhile Rubie has been having a row with Jamie Carragher on Twitter, which seems a good use of his time.

Hard to tell at this point where this story lands on the spectrum between Club Being Awful and Agent Being Awful, though Liverpool’s online army have been digging up much prior evidence of the latter. But there is one added wrinkle: Duncan is Steven Gerrard’s cousin. So if somebody needs to arbitrate, there’s an obvious candidate. He’ll be manager at Anfield one day. Might as well start getting a taste for things.

At least one Manchester United fan has more free time on their hands than common sense in their head. Or Mino Raiola’s taking things to a new level. One of the two.

(Arsenal fans, you might want to skip this bit.) Yesterday was the eighth birthday of one of the Premier League’s strangest games: that 8-2 at Old Trafford. So here are those ten goals, in all their relentless, stop-stop-he’s-already-dead glory.

Wasn’t everybody so appallingly young?

Unlike Bury, who were expelled from the Football League on Tuesday, Bolton were given a temporary stay, and a sale was announced late on Wednesday. Over on The Athletic (£), Simon Hughes goes deep on the clusterveryveryrudeword that led to this point.

And, as some extra bonus hat tippery, here’s our very own Nick Miller being righteous, and right, about Bury’s demise and the need for “universal solidarity between football fans”.

Qualifying for the Europa League rounds off today, and the most intriguingly poised game is probably Wolves vs. Torino. The English side emerged better off from a five-goal belter last week, so we’re happy to predict a dull 0-0 at Molineux this evening.