The Real Football Man

And relax. After what has been a tumultuous summer of low-level international tournaments, pre-season tours to far flung corners of the world, Women’s football and Neymar we have finally reached the promised land, and that ladies and gentleman is the return of the Premier League.

Now by the time you would have read this the season would have already started, whether the season starting on a Friday night is truly in keeping with traditions I’m not too sure. It’s like the equivalent of opening all your presents on Christmas Eve.

Then to make matters worse, what with Arsenal and Leicester being the first two teams that are served up it is like opening those aforementioned presents early and then remembering that you forgot to go to Argos and get the necessary batteries.

If you are a football puritan and refused to watch Friday Night Football then you will be rewarded with starting your season in the proper fashion. That being a whole host of ludicrous accumulators, a bacon sandwich and maybe even a sneaky 11 am can of lager (Real Football Man always encourages responsible drinking at irresponsible times)

And with that, there is always the optimism that the first day of the season brings. The kind of optimism that can be blown out of the water by 4:45 pm when your team has lost at home as the new signings that offered so much promise have failed to impress.

That optimism can also be blown out of the water if you are Danny Rose. Danny, Danny, Danny what are you doing. There are ways about angling for a move to a new club, but unfortunately for Tottenham, the England international picked the worst possible way in which to do so.

Not only that, but he picked the worst possible time also as when his comments went to press, Mauricio Pochettino was just three days away from giving his first team talk of the season. In a summer where Tottenham have lost Kyle Walker in Manchester and Daniel Levy has lost his wallet, this was the last thing that they needed.

It’s as if Danny Rose is the shop steward (ask the 1970’s) of this particular factory and he is representing all the workers at this footballing factory. A great victory for workers rights you say, or just a massive own goal just before the season starts?

The problem that Tottenham will face now is that the rest of these so called “under paid” players are now going to be knocking on the chairman’s door asking for their wage increase. The house of cards could now be set to collapse at Spurs especially if this Wembley transitional season goes awry.

The rest of the squad will privately be thanking Rose now as he has said the comments that they have all been thinking. There’s no secret that Daniel Levy loves to drive a hard bargain is this relative penny pinching finally going to end up being an expensive mistake.

In terms of on pitch action, we’ve been treated to life a whole host of EFL action in both league and cup. Here are a couple of things I have learned:

Crawley Town will now officially be called “Harry Kewell’s Crawley” for as long as he as in charge.

Sunderland really need to invest some money in fixing those pink seats, it’s quite ironic that it is called The Stadium Of Light but it now looks awfully faded.

Yeovil may as well just pack up and drop down into the National League now and save themselves the hassle of a long and arduous season.

While not forgetting some more transfer news, PSG are also set to now buy Kylian Mbappe for something in the region of £160m. I guess that’s Qatar for now

And finally, Arsenal won the Community Shield by virtue of ABBA penalties. I guess the winner takes it all

Until next week,