The Warm-Up: Tottenham's Grand Design is going awry
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Updated 14/08/2018 at 09:00 GMT
Plus, a very intentional goal, and one man's fight against the unstoppable march of banter...
Tottenham's new stadium will not be ready for next month's planned opening
Image credit: PA Sport
TUESDAY’S BIG STORIES
Tottenham’s Grand Design not going to plan
Those of you familiar with the TV show ‘Grand Designs’ will know how this goes. Someone plans a lavishly ambitious building project, it all starts with the best intentions, it goes wildly over budget and is still a pile of implausibly over-priced windows and stripped down steel beams two months after they were supposed to have finished it.
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Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy has not overseen any incoming transfers this summer
Image credit: PA Sport
But rather than a part-time reiki healer and a trainee fire-breather who have somehow scraped together £1million to convert a 17th century castle into a giant wigwam, Tottenham seemed to have everything for their own grand design sorted. Until, of course, things started to go wrong, and after whispers emerged that they had given Wembley the nod that they might need to squat there for a little longer, Spurs confirmed they would not be able to host at least the first two Premier League games scheduled to be held at the new White Hart Lane.
Which isn’t perhaps colossal surprise to people that have been following the building, but is still a significant kick in the pants for fans who have paid the absolute toppest of dollar for season tickets at their new home. They were only going to get 18 league games there to start with: now it’s going to be 16 at most, and you wouldn’t be surprised if they pushed things back even further.
So, after not signing anyone in the transfer window, potentially therefore alienating the manager that has made all of this possible, taking the fans’ money for a stadium that now won’t open nearly on time…it’s not been a great summer for Daniel Levy.
Something tells us Willian didn’t like Conte
It’s always enjoyable when footballers give absurd excuses for inadvisable things that appear on social media. Like when Willian reckoned it was his daughter that covered up Antonio Conte with emojis in an Instagram post after the FA Cup final. That sort of thing.
It’s almost as enjoyable waiting a few months, when dust has settled and the problem has gone away, to wait and hear what they really think about it. And so, Willian was asked if he would still be at Chelsea this season, had Conte stayed.
“No chance. No. I’m here because I want to play for Chelsea. I will only leave if Chelsea want me to go.”
So what do we reckon? Do we think Willian and Conte were good pals, or…?
David Silva takes a deserved rest
If anyone has earned the right to stick their feet up for a bit, it’s David Silva. A harrowing last year or so has seen the pint-sized maestro still somehow perform with brilliance, despite his child being gravely ill, and he would have been forgiven for curling up in a ball and wanting everything else to simply go away.
But he didn’t. And having played at the World Cup, Silva has now decided that’s him, Spain-wise. He announced his international retirement yesterday on Twitter, and did it in the sort of lovely manner you’d expect from such a lovely man.
It is not easy, after all I’ve lived through, to sit and write these lines. It has been days and weeks of reflection and analysis to take the decision to end my era in the Spanish national team. Without a doubt it’s been one of the most difficult choices of my career, which I make with gratitude and humility.
Kick back David. Take a load off. Have a rest. You’ve earned it, kid.
IN OTHER NEWS
On the off chance you haven’t already seen it, here’s England’s Lauren Hemp scoring the oddest goal of all time in the Under-20s World Cup. And she very much took the “look in the paper tomorrow morning…” approach to her, erm, strike…
HEROES AND ZEROS
Hero: Jordan Nixon
Quite a way to get the season started here, for Guisborough Town goalkeeper Jordan Nixon. This, by the way, was quite literally the last kick of the game in their FA Cup Extra Preliminary round tie against Newton Aycliffe, which they were losing 3-2. Until Jordan popped up, of course…
Zeroes: The Bayer Leverkusen social media team
We’re all for engagement. We’re all for football clubs acting a little less like brutal, relentless money-guzzling corporations. But we are not for one thing: banter. Petr Cech is on our side too, having got understandably annoyed that Bayer Leverkusen’s social media bods decided to riff on an error Cech nearly made in Arsenal’s defeat to Manchester City, highlighting their old boy Bernd Leno’s abiity to play from the back, as opposed to Cech nearly passing the ball into his own net.
Cech’s response was basically a very polite eff you to Bayer’s boys, but you wouldn’t have blamed him for being less courteous. Bayer apologised…
…but frankly by then it was too late. The banter train had already been set in motion, by them. And we simply cannot have that, particularly from organisations that are supposed to have a little dignity. Or, if they don’t have any dignity, they could at least pretend.
RETRO CORNER
It’s a very happy 45th birthday to Jay Jay Okocha. Above, we have him in his blooter-hitting prime at Bolton, and below playing in a charity game a couple of years ago confirming that he does indeed Still Have It.
HAT TIP
Slavia Prague’s first title in a decade forced even the most cynical supporters to admit that perhaps the club’s mysterious Chinese owners were not such a bad lot after all. A year later, and as the club are preparing for the Champions League return leg of their qualifier against Dynamo Kyiv on Tuesday, fans are free again to exercise the extraordinary Czech talent for scepticism as Beijing dismantles CEFC China Energy.
The fairy story at Slavia Prague is rather rapidly collapsing. Here’s Tim Gosling to flesh out those bare details.
COMING UP
Quantity rather than quality is the theme for the football on offer this evening. How about 34 first round Carabao Cup games? Ten Champions League qualifiers, featuring Celtic’s trip to face AEK Athens? 20 Scottish Challenge Cup fixtures? So much to choose from, so many other things you could probably do with your time.
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