WHY SAY ANYTHING?

(Goofy Gareth and Barmy Bobby enjoy a very short conversation about the success of their two national teams)

Now that the Premier League season is nearly over and Manchester City are about to be crowned champions thoughts can begin to turn to the World Cup which begins in June.

The usual boring group games will be supplemented by some pretty good looking group games where two teams who are actually decent will be playing each other.

Of course, what usually happens in these matches is that the two teams in question have either already qualified or are massive favourites to do so and they play out a boring draw because they don’t need anything else!

With the second half of June concentrating entirely on group games, the tournament won’t liven up until July and the knockout stages.

Whisper it very quietly but England really have a very good chance of getting through the group stage in this one. After losing to Belgium, they only have to beat Panama and Tunisia to progress. Having said that they failed, famously, to get a result against Iceland in the last tournament for which they qualified so nobody should be holding their breath.

So, after scraping through that stage, the team can start looking for flights back to Blighty as they rarely go much further and the deluded nation, despite always thinking the team will win the competition, can prepare their usual welcome home for the returning-early-yet-again heroes!

England will be independent from the World Cup roundabout Independence Day. How fitting!

Pundits and experts alike can then start pontificating about what England needs to do to win the next European Championships in 2020 and which players will be too old and which players will be ready etcetera, etcetera, and the whole sorry cycle can begin again.

No wonder Scott McTominay has opted to play for Scotland. He won’t have to spend much time worrying about World Cups and European Championships, he can just concentrate on trying to win friendlies and being plucky when failing to qualify for the real deals, rather than being kept out of the England team by Jordan Henderson or Ashley Young!

Meanwhile, up in Manchester…..

José Mourinho has decided that he needs to sell most of his Manchester United players in order to buy upgrades which will enable him to win the Premier League next year. He is now going through his longest barren spell for years and a third season without the title would be unheard of.

Consequently, only Nemanja Matić, (a Mourinho signing and his current pet), Romelu Lukaku, (another Mourinho signing and his second favourite) and Alexis Sánchez, who Mourinho assures us will be back to his best next season, (although he doesn’t explain what has gone wrong this season), seem to be safe from the chop.

Even players such as Pogba, Martial and De Gea could leave and, if that were to be the case, some good ones should be coming in!

So what will actually happen? Well, the manager will probably buy a couple of 6ft-something 29 year-olds who can play in midfield, extend Ashley Young’s contract again, do the same for Antonio Valencia and play Alexis Sánchez out of position!

We may just see the departure of the likes of Phil Jones, Chris Smalling and Luke Shaw purely because Mourinho doesn’t deem them good enough for his team but, in our considered opinion, not a great deal will change.

The guy has already spent £300 million and only Matić and Lukaku can be considered as successful to date. They account for around £100 million so the rest, up to now, has not been money well spent.

If Mourinho is to survive to manage Manchester United for a fourth season, (assuming that he wants to, of course), then he has to start getting it right in the transfer market AND on the pitch. The supporters are already growing restless and strongly object to the way he has disrespected the club’s history so it won’t need to go far wrong for them to want him out.

And finally…..

Up the road a little at Manchester City Pep Guardiola is already putting in place plans to ensure that his team stay miles ahead of everybody else next season.

He has noted that only Jürgen Klopp wants to take him on at yer actual football and has, therefore, marked the German as “the man most likely to usurp him”. To this end he is feverishly calling in favours from friends and contacts in Spain in an attempt to get either Barcelona or Real Madrid to buy Mo Salah! That would teach the man from Baden-Württemberg! You don’t mess with Guardiola and get away with it!

Apart from weakening Liverpool, Pep is looking to strengthen what is already the strongest squad in the Premier League and will be given the funds to do so.

Don’t say you and your team weren’t warned!