The Warm-Up: Brazilian brawls, joyriding with Gareth Barry and Rochdale earn their Spurs
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Published 19/02/2018 at 08:53 GMT
Adam Hurrey joyrides his way through the weekend's football news...
Steven Davies equalises for Rochdale
Image credit: Getty Images
MONDAY’S BIG STORIES
Spurs get into a Spotland of bother in the FA Cup
The trouble with battling on three or more fronts after the turn of the year is that you have to raise yourself for a 2-2 draw in Turin one day…and then do it all again in Rochdale a couple of days later.
Mauricio Pochettino attempted to handle that change of gear by making a full set of tweaks to the side that salvaged a Champions League draw from the jaws of defeat against Juventus. In came the £25m Lucas Moura for a capable full debut, only to be temporarily upstaged by Ian Henderson, a 33-year-old who once considered quitting football to be an orthodontist.
With that in mind, the FA Cup (ahem) braced itself for the latest underdog to get their teeth (yep) into one of the big boys…only for Spurs to really start taking it seriously. First, Moura skipped through to finally exploit a gap in the home defence and then Harry Kane, summoned from the bench, punched home an 89th-minute penalty with all the concentration and determination that he would a vital European spot-kick.
Just as we feared that might be all the magic we’d get for one teatime, up popped big Steve Davies with a Premier League-worthy finish to keep the League One strugglers in the Cup, with the bonus (in every sense) of a trip to Wembley for the replay.
For Spurs, it’ll be an inconvenience; for Rochdale, it’s history.
‘Taxi-gate’ sends West Brom into an uber-crisis
The cult contender for story of the Premier League season unfolded quickly over the weekend, but there was plenty to enjoy.
To recap, if you were perhaps away in Barcelona for example: Alan Pardew took his West Brom squad for some “warm-weather” training in Catalonia (average temperature last week: about 12°C) only for 1,236 Premier League appearances’ worth of senior players to ruin everything by joyriding back to their hotel in a taxi from a drive-through McDonalds. Meanwhile, Pards himself had his wallet and phone nicked.
Anyway, with morale duly restored, West Brom welcomed Southampton to the Hawthorns in the FA Cup about 48 hours later – by which time Jonny Evans, Jake Livermore, Boaz Myhill and Gareth Barry (Gareth Barry!) had apologised for breaking Pardew’s curfew by six hours or so, plus other unspecified wrongs.
Evans was stripped of the captain’s armband, West Brom were 1-0 down within 11 minutes, and are now out of the Cup to concentrate on yo-yo-ing back to the second tier once again.
Paul Pogba’s Day Off
“I think it’s just one of those 24-hour things” – you, phoning in sick, with the most reliably vague medical reasoning ever.
Still, that’s what kept Paul Pogba out of Manchester United’s FA Cup win at Huddersfield, after he reportedly fell ill on Saturday morning. His manager Jose Mourinho was informed by the club doctor that Pogba wouldn’t travel, and told BT Sport that “I don’t know and honestly I don’t care” when his £89m man would be back.
Anyway, Pogba duly trained on Sunday morning – apparently having recovered from whatever it was – and is expected to join the squad on the plane to Seville for the resumption of their Champions League campaign.
Between this, and Mourinho spending a press conference painstakingly listing all the midfield combinations he’s played so far, it’s all gone a bit weird up there.
IN OTHER NEWS
What’s your favourite reason for a match being abandoned? That’s right, it’s “an insufficient number of players on the field for one team” by a country mile. Over to Brazil we go for some mixed martial soccer action between Vitoria and Bahia (or the Ba-Vi derby, if you prefer) which was halted 11 minutes from time when the hosts received their fifth red card.
The Warm-Up’s South American correspondent Jack Lang reports:
Not that it was a complete loss of control: video footage later emerged of Vitoria coach Vagner Mancini apparently instructing one of his players to engineer the fifth and decisive red card to ensure the match would be abandoned. What use he thought that would be – with the score at 1-1 – isn’t entirely clear, because Bahia are likely to be handed a 3-0 walkover. Well done, everyone.
HEROES AND ZEROS
Hero: Witham Town FC’s travelling support
The Isthmian League North Division is clearly only for the hardiest of souls, so Grays Athletic’s accommodation for away supporters was unlikely to be tested to its limits for the visit of Witham Town this weekend, but they might have expected to receive more than one.
Why was he on his own, you ask? Because there was nobody Witham.
Zero: VAR’s finer details
The decision – thanks to the thickness of a Juan Mata kneecap – was technically correct. What happened in the 90 seconds or so before Mata’s goal was disallowed against Huddersfield – at least for BT Sport viewers – has probably earned VAR a few more naysayers.
Whoever has to file the final report on VAR to the powers that be is presumably going to have to address “Wide Ridicule on Social Media” as one of their points for consideration. There will be plenty of supporting material.
HAT TIP
The woman he married that day is dead, Sukur’s father has been imprisoned and the player capped 112 times by Turkey finds himself in exile. Should he ever return to his native land he would face charges of insulting the president and rebelling against the government. Life imprisonment would be certain and he could even face the death penalty. He will never see his father again, all the adulation he once had is lost. Sukur has lost his country.
The Guardian’sBob Lewis tells the story of Turkey’s greatest ever striker, now living in enforced exile in the US.
RETRO CORNER
It’s Monday morning. It’s (probably) raining. It’s also the anniversary of this, the footballing representation of a rainy Monday morning.
COMING UP
The FA Cup fifth round is completed tonight, as the Manchester City Quadruple Roadshow™ rolls down the M62 to Wigan. Kick-off is as at the weird time of 7.55pm, so be warned.
Tomorrow’s edition will be brought to you by Nick Miller, who will be previewing Barcelona 4 Chelsea 0
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