Good morning. Here is your Monday briefing.
It’s a League Cup week and so you’ve got eight fixtures spread nicely across Tuesday and Wednesday. But before that, there’s tonight to consider. Athletic Bilbao play Sporting Hee-Hon on Sky Sports 5 or you can reacquaint yourself with Vincent Tan’s Cardiff as they play Bristol City on Sky Sports 1. If you’re really eager for football, and you can get out of work on time, Sky Sports 1 is screening the junior version of what we’re obliged to call El Cashico with Chelsea’s U21’s playing Manchester City’s U21’s at 1730. Daniel Taylor wrote an excellent piece on City’s youth policy for the Observer, should you need any background.
Arsenal have had a splendid week, beating Bayern Munich and Everton and bounding, very briefly, to the top of the Premier League table. How Arsenally would it be for Arsenal to lose to Sheffield Wednesday on Tuesday? Very Arsenally. You can catch that on Sky Sports 1 at 1945. If English domestic cups don’t do it for you, then you’d be better off with Bolgona vs Internazionale on BT Sport Europe. If the domestic cup bit is fine, but the English bit annoys you, Bayern Munich play Wolfsburg in the DFB Pokal on BT Sport 1 and Bastia play Rennes on BT Sport 2.
Bournemouth were rather unlucky to lose at Anfield earlier this season and they can get their own back on Wednesday when they return for their cup tie. The Cherries are ravaged by injury and just got battered by Tottenham, so it doesn’t feel like a likely outcome, but when has football ever made sense? That’s on Sky Sports 1. BT Sport have SIX Serie A games for you to choose from across their network, the pick of the bunch probably being mid-table (mid-table!) Juventus against high flying Sassuolo. There’s also the option of German double bill on BT Sport 2, then BT Sport 1 with Borussia Dortmund vs Paderborn followed by Schalke vs Borussia Monchengladbach.
1991/92 title winners Leeds United meet 1994/95 title winners Blackburn Rovers on Thursday in a battle of who can look the most troubled. Rovers lost to local rivals Burnley at the weekend and are owned by the Venky’s while Leeds have only won twice all season, are owned by Massimo Cellini and have just hired one man charm generator Steve Evans on what is laughably referred to as ‘a permanent basis.’ That’s on Sky Sports 1, but if you can’t take that much pathos at once, BT Sport Europe have Sampdoria against Empoli.
For those whose circumstances force them to sit indoors on Friday while their windows rattle to the sound of other people’s revelry, compensation comes in the form of shit-loads of football. You can see if Bayern Munich can make it 11 wins in a row when they play Eintracht Frankfurt on BT Sport Europe, you can see if PSG can overcome Rennes on BT Sport 2, you can catch Atletico Madrid away at Deportivo on Sky Sports 5 or you can tune in to Sky Sports 1 and find out what happens when recruit-by-numbers Brentford face off against hopeless-with-numbers Queens Park Rangers. Oh, and total perverts can watch Grimsby against Cheltenham in what used to be the Vauxhall Conference on BT Sport 1.
Full TV listings can be found over here on the Live Football on TV page.
BEST ARTICLES OF THE MORNING
In the Daily Telegraph, Gary Neville goes down the ‘intriguing tactical battle’ route when he describes the first half of the Manchester derby as, “probably the best 45 minutes I have seen anywhere in the Premier League this season.” Annoyingly, he makes a very good point.
“A disgraceful lack of discipline laced with pathetic paranoia.” No, it’s not the annual review of editorial standards at The Set Pieces, it’s Neil McLeman in the Mirror giving Jose Mourinho both barrels.
You can’t see it online yet, but if you go and pick up a copy of The Football League Paper, you’ll find a very interesting interview with Leeds United boss Steve Evans. “Football is a game of jealousy,” he says. “Of resenting others’ success. We have this British trait of building people up to smash them down. What happened at Boston was 14, 15 years ago. Most of the people who abuse me on social media weren’t even born.”
GO TO A GAME
Outside of the League Cup, there isn’t too much going on this week. Everyone should go to Millwall once in their life, so why not tick that box on Tuesday when they host Darren Ferguson’s Doncaster Rovers? We should warn you that it’s not cheap. The club’s odd decision to make this fixture ‘Category A’ means that tickets are up at £26-£30. For a cheaper option in the south that night, you could go to Basingstoke to see them play Whitehawk in the Conference South. It’s only £12, but be aware that the stadium is a mile and a half from the train station. If you drive, this site has details on parking.
Scottish readers, can we tempt you with Inverness Caledonian Thistle’s League Cup clash with Ross Country? It’s £20 a ticket for adults, but if you want to take your kids, you can get two in free per grown-up, which is the sort of thing that should be encouraged. Unaccompanied U16s can get in for a fiver.
BOOK OF THE WEEK
This week, we’ve mostly been enjoying Chris Bruce’s The Five-A-Side Bible. We must declare an interest here and remind you that publishers Backpage Press were responsible for Football Manager Stole My Life, but that book is three years old now. They’ve surely handed over all the royalties that we’re going to get, so there’s no need to suck up to them anymore. This is a very similar tome in that it’s a series of features and essays rather than a single narrative, and it’s a chirpy, informative affair. The 15 Players You Always See At 5-a-Side is very astute and Arsene Wenger’s strategy guide is fascinating. Weirdly, it was the nutritional pages that really perked our interest, especially the explanations of what words like ‘isotonic’ actually mean. It’s a very entertaining read, but if you play 5-a-side, you’ll find it very useful as well.
Next on the list is Bill Beswick’s One Goal: The Mindset of Winning Soccer Teams. Football Manager 2016 comes out soon and we need to be ready.
FROM OUR VAULT
Here’s one from the opening day of The Set Pieces; a long read on the extraordinary 1971/72 season by Nick Miller. It’s Clough vs Shankly vs Mercer vs Allison and you can expect more stuff like this in the coming weeks. We like old football here.
BEST NON-FOOTBALL THING
If you have notions of emulating Lewis Hamilton, you need to head to Horley, near Gatwick Airport, to play on the UK’s only Formula One simulator, Let’s Race. They have a darkened room filled with 10 full motion racing cockpits, all wired with surround sound and plugged into a simulator so accurate that professional drivers frequently come along to prepare for races. The cockpits slam left and right with your movements, three screens above the wheel give you a fully immersive experience and everything is linked up so that you and nine rivals can battle out against each other. It is daunting, draining and slightly terrifying, but it’s also ludicrously good fun. They’ve just opened Let’s Golf in the same venue and the food, provided by Blacks Burgers, is excellent.
If you’d like to recommend something for next Monday’s briefing, get in touch by emailing [email protected]
