The football season is just days away. Next weekend is the Community Shield/Charity Shield/No-one-cares Shield at Wembley, the traditional season opener between the winners of the League and FA Cup. Chelsea against Arsenal. Lovely. And the following weekend its all, literally, kicking off.

And I find myself a bit numb to it all. It seems distant and meaningless. Rather than immediate and depressing, as football normally is. But that’s just probably the effect of all the friendlies being played. Of which I’m no big fan.

Arsenal won the Emirates Cup yesterday, as they would, with Theo Walcott scoring the winner against Wolfsburg. After which Wenger was extolling ‘young’ (is he still ‘young’? as he seems to have been for the last 27 years? He must be about 50 by now, surely) Theo’s skill and natural striking ability. Arsene said he had a lot of ‘offensive players’. I too find most Arsenal players offensive, and Arsene and I seldom agree. And he thought Theo was best suited to ‘playing off’ a bigger, stronger striker. Even though he looks like a winger and spends a lot of time winging it up the sidelines. Odd really that after so long in an Arsenal shirt no-one yet knows where to play him.

But this weekend was really about wheels. Lots of them. Bikes and cars.

Chris Froome showed that you can hurl all the urine you like at him; he can still pedal better than anyone else in the world. But cycling is all about the team. Yet they only make one yellow jersey? The finer points of the Tour de France are beyond most people. What it isn’t is just a race from one end to t’other. In between its all about teamwork and other cycly things and drugs. And then England won. Yippee.

An Englishman didn’t win the Grand Prix in Hungary yesterday. He came 6th. A German driving an Italian car won it. For his team-mate Jules Bianchi, who died last week, although he really died last year when the awful crash happened. The drivers had a minute’s silence before the race in his honour yesterday. And what goes through your mind as you stand head-bowed in mourning over a mate who had a massive racing car wreck, when you’re (in 60 seconds; 59, 58, 57…) going out there yourself to fly round a track at almost 200mph with no more than about 70 million quid’s worth of safety measures between you and that life-support machine? Probably along the lines of ‘there by the grace of God…’

Its almost enough to make you drive slowly. Almost.

Spurs first match; August 8th. Away to Manchester United at Old Trafford. Easy peasy. Three points in the bag already.

Happy Monday

A xxxx