Two weeks tomorrow the new football season starts. Wow. Where’d the summer go? As usual, in a continual saga of clouds, sharp showers (they only became ‘sharp’ in 2014 and haven’t blunted yet) with the odd day yielding 32 degrees and 800% humidity. The perfect day for tube travel. Never mind, football, our ‘winter game’ is returning, with all the joy and excitement it brings. Though its really now our ‘winter, spring and autumn game, with a bit of summer too’. And I’m not sure how wintery its gonna be in Qatar in July but I suspect some way short of the ‘full arctic experience’.

So they’re playing ‘friendlies’. Good to do during August because the transfer window’s still open and you can see what’s missing. Managers earmark their preferred players and the owners and financial people go negotiate for a ‘deal’.

Like Paul Pogba. Euro failure but Manchester United want him desperately. So desperately that they’ll pay over £100 million for him. Even though they gave him away for nothing a few years ago. The price was originally less to pry him out of Juventus, then the pound suffered the Brexit crisis and the 85 mil became over a hundred.

So best buy your players from English clubs, then you don’t suffer the exchange rate hit. You can buy John Stones, the (very so-so) England defender from Everton. In pounds. But if you’re Manchester City he’ll cost an eye-watering 50 mil. Last summer he’d have been 20 mil. Maybe. But with the new tv deal payout arriving at clubs this year, its silly season for player prices. Because clubs now have much more money. And Manchester City weren’t exactly ‘short’ before that windfall.

If that deal goes through, Barnsley will immediately net 7.5 million quid. Barnsley. That’s more than they normally earn in 9 seasons. They can stop darning old socks and buy some new ones. Its part of an old ‘sell-on’ agreement from when Stones went to Everton from there. Who said that the 5 billion pound tv deal for the Premiership doesn’t ‘filter down’ to the League??

This season will be defined by the three new managers who are elevated (in their own minds, at least) to the status of gods. Morinho, the Unstable One, Conte, the Unknown One and Guardiola, the Nice One. Though the words ‘nice’ and ‘Manchester City’ share very few sentences together.

The chances of Samir Nasri featuring for City this season are slim. Unlike Nasri himself who apparently has some issues of a ‘slightly overweight’ nature. The obnoxious ex-Gooner has eaten a lot of pies this summer and is a fucking porker. According to reports. Guardiola has exacting fitness, and fatness, standards and Nasri failed at the first hurdle. In fact he ate the first hurdle.

15 days to go.

Happy Friday

A xxxx