The Warm-Up: Vote for Salah, Conte's last hurrah and Wenger says a dignified 'ta-ra'
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Updated 23/04/2018 at 07:57 GMT
Adam Hurrey observes the opening of the season's final chapters...
Mo Salah
Image credit: Getty Images
MONDAY’S BIG STORIES
Goals don’t lie: Mohamed Salah is the PFA Player of the Year
Money talks, they say, but so do goals. Just as we started to become desensitised to the goal-a-game output of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, the Premier League has received its own freak of statistical nature. Mohamed Salah, for whom a barren spell this season constituted three goalless games in early autumn, was last night voted the PFA’s Player of the Year.
Futile as it might be to gatecrash the annual vote among professional footballers to find their most impressive performer, it’s possible that Kevin De Bruyne – while hardly unsung, and certainly not struggling for attention – can consider himself unlucky. Individual awards are only a side concern, but a furious perfectionist such as he might wonder what more he could have done.
But, again, goals are the whole point of all of this. Salah has 45 of them this season, if you include his four for Egypt, two of which propelled them to a World Cup where he will now be a cover star. “Spectacular” isn’t quite the word to describe his goalscoring repertoire: it’s more the relentless penalty area composure, often at the end of a lightning-quick skip from deep, that has elevated him to Player of the Year levels.
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Mohamed Salah is leading the race for the Premier League Golden Boot (Peter Byrne/PA)
Image credit: PA Sport
He might be eight 40-goal seasons short of Lionel Messi, but he currently shares the same feeling of inevitability when it comes to the scoresheet. Assists are helpful, but goals are what people – including professional footballers – remember.
Mourinho is the perfect opponent for Conte’s last hurrah
The FA Cup semi-finals came and went this weekend, perhaps as many might have predicted: Jose Mourinho and Manchester United mustered more big-game nous than Mauricio Pochettino’s Spurs, and Chelsea dealt comfortably with Southampton.
Narrative, apparently football’s dirty word, has been perfectly served by this year’s finalists.
The FA Cup final will surely be Antonio Conte’s final public engagement for Chelsea. Even if his exit will be swifter and more low-key than Arsene Wenger’s, it still feels like a shame that it has come to this. The Chelsea hierarchy will press their Mini-Revolution button again, and hope that it still works despite the top four looking harder than ever before, but Conte’s reputation will survive as he moves his demanding managerial style somewhere else.
Meanwhile, there are other intriguing side plots. Olivier Giroud – scorer of a masterful piece of close-range escapism to break the deadlock against Southampton – surely, finally, deserves to consider himself a first-choice striker at last.
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Olivier Giroud scored the opening goal as Chelsea beat Southampton in the FA Cup (Nick potts/PA)
Image credit: PA Sport
His performance at Wembley – a masterclass in back-to-goal forward play, leading the line, and taking a chance when it comes – was everything that £58m Alvaro Morata was signed to do, only to let his fragile confidence drive him to furious distraction. Morata scored with his first touch, and then missed two straightforward opportunities – it will likely be Giroud who Conte trusts to give him a silver send-off against United in May.
Wenger knows – but Wenger also really cares
This is a managerial departure like no other. The end of Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal reign was always going to be a soul-searching affair, but its timing – with potentially three crucial games still to play – means his farewell is likely to be dragged out over the course of about a dozen press conferences.
The debrief after Arsenal’s controlled demolition of West Ham – an ideal opponent for occasions such as this, perhaps – focused on one of the more prominent subplots of the Gunners’ recent stagnation under Wenger: the fans.
“Sport is about winning and losing and you [the supporters] have to accept you will lose games, even when I will not be here anymore,” Wenger said. “But it is about something bigger than just winning or losing and that was always a worry: how the club is perceived worldwide, for kids playing in Africa, China and America and the dreams it can create for young children who want to play football.”
Even if red-tinted sentiment is beginning to take hold, we are witnessing the best of Wenger here. When has a manager ever – with complete sincerity – cared publicly about how the club he leads is perceived by young kids around the world?
This was no cheap dig at the fans who have become increasingly, and vocally, convinced that his time was up. Nor was this a commercially-motivated act of martyrdom. Nobody believes that Wenger cares about shirt sales, promotional tours or frothing YouTubers.
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Arsene Wenger is set to bid farewell to Arsenal (Dave Howarth/PA)
Image credit: PA Sport
“I am not resentful and I do not want to make stupid headlines. I just feel if my personality is in the way of what I think our club is … for me, that is more important than me staying. That is all I want to say. It is nothing to do with the fans. The fans were not happy and I can understand that. It’s my job. I have to live with that. I can accept that.”
Finally, in his last few weeks in English football, Wenger’s unwavering loyalty to his footballing principles is getting the sympathetic hearing it deserved.
IN OTHER NEWS
You’ve heard of the yo-yo club – well, here’s the no-yo club.
Over those 145 years of Trinity’s history, there have been elections, re-elections, failed re-elections and disbanded leagues – but never an official promotion or relegation.
“Today we take the poison,” club chairman Richard Kane said in a statement after relegation from the National League North was confirmed, “but we should look forward to tasting the honey next year.”
That’s the spirit.
HAT TIP
It hasn’t just been the football this season. There’s been a pervasive sense of fecklessness and incompetence encapsulated by James Vaughan’s reaction to scoring at Burton. As he cupped a hand to his ear while running towards sceptical away fans, the club’s official Twitter feed congratulated him on getting his first for the club. That evening, he pointed out it was his second. The official feed apologised, noting it had been so long since his previous goal that they’d forgotten.
The Guardian’sJonathan Wilson takes a measured look at his beloved Sunderland’s continuing fall from grace, which will soon hit League One.
RETRO CORNER
It’s a very happy birthday to late-90s Premier League dribbler Darren Huckerby, which is as good excuse as any to watch this: his excruciating interview with Californian TV channel KRON when he signed for San Jose Earthquakes in 2008.
The “legend”, signed from “the Nor-folk team in the North East of England” manages to modestly bat away the suggestion that he’s “responsible for the greatest goal ever”, as KRIN run some hastily-sourced footage of him scoring against….Birmingham.
COMING UP
Everton and Newcastle go through the motions to complete the Premier League weekend, but you can warm up for that with the UEFA Youth League final between the annoyingly talented teenagers of Chelsea and Barcelona, no less.
Tomorrow’s edition will be brought to you by Nick Miller, who has never been promoted or relegated in his 34-year history
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