WHY SAY ANYTHING?

(Raheem works on the theory that, if he goes down BEFORE he is tackled, he will reduce the chances of injury!)

Having had a downwards pointing gun tattooed on his leg which, understandably, raised some questions about his sanity, especially before he gave his reasons, Raheem Sterling then proceeded to shoot himself, metaphorically, in the foot.

The gun, he explained, was in memory of his father who had been shot dead when Raheem was just a child. Now we may be missing something here or it may be that Sterling, as he has intimated, hasn’t yet finished his memorial to his late father but, to our way of thinking, a tattoo of his late parent might have made more sense than one of a gun which is the weapon which killed him. Still, each to his own.

Anyway, instead of keeping a low profile after this latest bashing from the media he managed to turn up for England duty 12 hours late. This was because a flight he was catching from Jamaica was delayed and then he ended up getting back to England via Miami and maybe he shouldn’t have been a few thousand miles away when his team were about to play a match at Wembley, even if it wasn’t important!

According to Gareth Southgate, England’s incumbent headmaster, he did think about dropping Sterling from the game against Nigeria but then, seeing the flak he was receiving, decided to protect him by putting him in front of thousands of people at Wembley!

Everybody, including Sterling himself, would have understood if there had been some kind of punishment meted out to the player. Indeed the impression is that older heads such as Sam Allardyce or Roy Hodgson would have left him out of the team altogether for this infraction. After all, it was only a friendly and discipline within the squad is rather more important than the result of a practice game.

Still, it didn’t happen and Sterling played quite well in a match which England won 2-1. They now have one more meaningless friendly before they can think of doing some light packing for a short trip to Russia.

Pochettino staying put…..

Mauricio Pochettino took time out from his latest modelling assignment to explain that he is happy at Spurs because Daniel Levy has told him that he is!

Mauricio Pochettino won’t be the next manager to be sacked by Real Madrid after winning La Liga or the Champion’s League. That’s because he won’t be the next Real Madrid manager at all!

He has, quite wisely, explained that anybody wishing him to be their next manager must first grovel at the feet of Daniel Levy before offering him lots of money as compensation and, even then, still running the risk of being turned down.

Given that Pochettino signed a new five-year contract only last week which means that Madrid, if they can even get permission to speak with the Argentinian, would probably have to pay more for him than they have for most of their players, have suddenly decided that they don’t have anybody who speaks English and the secretary who knows how to use Google translate is on holiday.

So they will turn their attention elsewhere, much to the relief of Spurs’ fans who can now look forward to another trophy-less season but with a top four finish and a shiny new stadium!

Sarri not for Chelsea…..

Another Maurizio, (note the Italian spelling due to him being Italian), this time Maurizio Sarri also won’t be joining a club with whom he has been recently linked.

According to totally unreliable sources, he has been removed from the list of potential Chelsea managers due to past behaviour of an insulting kind, namely he was fined €20,000 and banned for two games for allegedly “directing extremely insulting epithets at the coach of the opposing team”.

Roberto Mancini – The Italian manager was once, allegedly, the subject of one or two insults from Maurizio Sarri!

The coach in question happened to be Roberto Mancini, the ex-Manchester City manager, who will have heard much worse on his visits to Old Trafford while in Manchester, although probably without understanding any of it!

Anyway, Sarri won’t be joining Chelsea and it has nothing to do with Abramovich falling out with Theresa May over his visa and his refusal to spend any money on his club because he now hates all things English!

No, the thought of Sarri costing around €8 million in compensation to Napoli didn’t once enter Roman’s head. In fact, he doesn’t care any more and was last seen in the Tottenham area of London trying on yarmulkes before boarding a private plane to Tel Aviv.

And finally…..

Vincent Kompany is injured again!