Liverpool badge and Real Madrid star Trent Alexander-Arnold - copyright F365
Real Madrid star Trent Alexander-Arnold
Manchester United are back, which means looking elsewhere for content this morning. Some have settled on pretending Trent Alexander-Arnold returning to Liverpool is closer than ever.
And others have sought comfort in a double dose of Acewatch. We can’t blame any of them.
Trent bridge Mediawatch has scaled back its coverage of cut-and-shut headlines that use ‘as’ to make two entirely unrelated nothings look like one huge connected something.
Not because we’ve gone off them – they’re still our favourite, to be honest – but because to cover them properly would be to spend all our time on those and absolutely none of it on other important things like who the tabloids have called an ‘ace’, or who looks unrecognisable for daring to age across 20 post-retirement years, and who has been speaking volumes or showing true colours or breaking silences. You know, the other big and important stuff.
But we will always find time and space for the very best examples, and the Mirror have smashed it entirely out of the park here.
Liverpool news: Trent Alexander-Arnold gets new green light as star’s transfer ‘expected’
That is the very best of stuff. Not least because the Trent bit isn’t even a story at all. The ‘new green light’ is Dean Saunders saying on Sam Allardyce’s podcast that he reckons Liverpool fans would welcome Alexander-Arnold back.
And the star transfer that’s ‘expected’? That would be Federico Chiesa maybe returning to Italy in January. We’ll let you guess how many times that part of the report describes such a move as ‘expected’.
Bridge of size Oliver Holt, Daily Mail, November 3, 9.22 am:
Emery would be mad to go to United – his best route to the top is at Villa. They’re close to being giants and, with him as boss, they can bridge the gap to the elite
Oliver Holt, Daily Mail, November 3, 10.17pm
Unai Emery has closed gap between Aston Villa and Europe’s elite – but rampant Barcelona proved there is still a way to go as Lamine Yamal dazzles
‘Villa are almost there’ was always a bold gambit about a team below Spurs in the Premier League on the morning of Barcelona away.
Bogus journey And, well over 12 hours after Mediawatch first saw it, we are still trying to puzzle out the connection in this apparent non-sequitur in his intro to that second piece.
What was it like to be about to play in the Nou Camp, the Aston Villa skipper had been asked, as if this were to be some sort of spin off from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.
The best we can come up with is that Bill and Ted found themselves inserted incongruously into meetings with great figures from history and that Aston Villa playing Barcelona could be seen as similarly incongruous. But unless Aston Villa were in fact travelling back in time in a phone box to play Pep Guardiola’s Messi-inspired Barcelona in 2009, we’re not sure it really works here.
Or maybe we’re overthinking it and Holt is literally just fixating on it simply being quite literally an Excellent Adventure. Alas, it turned out to be more of a Bogus Journey.
We could totally write for the tabloids.
Bracewatch There’s an awful lot going on in the world right now, whether it’s ultimately trivial stuff like historic results in the US midterms, or real news like Manchester United being so back.
But Mediawatch assumes we can all agree that the biggest news story of this or any day is one that features not just one Acewatch but two. At the same time. A Double Acewatch? As rare and joyous a discovery as finding a double yolker at breakfast.
Who, then, are this Ace Brace? The Sun pick up the story of some handbags and fisticuffs and Scenes Nobody Likes To See in last night’s Champions League clash between Galatasaray and Stuttgart.
We should just warn you before you read on that what follows here contains some of the purest uncut tabloidese. It can make the inexperienced reader feel giddy or even nauseous, so we advise caution.
The fracas appeared to be dying out until ex-Brighton ace Deniz Undav confronted the Galatasaray star in support of his team-mate.
And that is when tensions reached boiling point as the two players got at it and players from both sides quickly got involved.
Among them were ex-Tottenham ace Davinson Sanchez trying to back his Galatasaray team-mates up.
Even without the genuinely world-class Bracewatch antics it would be lovely stuff. Fracas. Boiling point. Tensions.
It’s a great tale, but we are greedy gluttons and just wonder if there isn’t any further way we can just Barclays it up even more? Beyond the undoubted aces that are Undav and Sanchez?
Eventually, Premier League referee Chris Kavanagh managed to seize control, mainly thanks to Galatasaray manager Okan Buruk who allayed tensions.
Thank you. Any more?
And Stuttgart’s Atakan Karazor was very lucky not to be shown a direct red card just two minutes into the match when he stamped on ex-Southampton and Wolves star Mario Lemina’s ankle.
Are you telling me we’ve been getting this excited about a Double Acewatch and all this time it could have been an unprecedented Treble? Well now we’re just annoyed.
The Other Guys And we’re not at all sure whether we should be more or less annoyed by the shocking discovery that The Sun have resisted the obvious headline housery potential in INEOS-owned Lausanne sacking their manager and chosen to play it dead straight. Even the ‘as’ is valid.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe sacks other club’s manager after putting them up for sale as Carrick’s Man Utd future also in doubt
What we do like is how the first half of that makes it sound like he’s just trying to sack random other clubs’ managers, perhaps as some sort of diversion. Honestly, is there no end to these billionaires’ sense of entitlement?