WHY SAY ANYTHING?

The impending international injury window has already seen Raheem Sterling pull out of the England team for the two utterly meaningless games against Spain and Switzerland.

It shows a little forethought from a player not deemed to be blessed with one of the higher IQs in the game because he obviously knows that he is not really good enough to play for Manchester City so, the last thing he wants, is to be injured whilst with England and then fail to get his place back in the City team.

In our book he would be behind Bernardo Silva, David Silva, Leroy Sané, Ilkay Gundogan, Riyad Mahrez, Pep Guardiola, Mike Summerbee and uncle Tom Cobbley in the pecking order. Yes he really is that average.

Don’t be fooled by the occasional great goal because, as the saying goes, even a blind squirrel will find a nut and Sterling’s habit of giving the ball away cheaply, failing to control it or just plain being caught in possession, far outweighs any positives he may bring to the team over the course of a season.

Yes, he scores a few goals. He scores with one out of every four or five chances he gets and his misses are woeful. If Bernardo Silva had been given the number of starts Sterling got last season he would very likely have scored more goals than the Englishman.

So he has shown wisdom, probably beyond his years or knowledge, by refusing to go and play football in that there London against those big foreigners. He may reap the benefit from his decision to remain in Manchester.

Meanwhile, down in London…..

And Tottenham Hotspur have shown everybody who was remotely interested how not to meet a deadline with a project. They will now have to play even more games at Wembley and, subject to EFL permission, maybe a couple at the MK Dons’ stadium as well.

This is just rank bad management by Daniel Levy who has now had to make grovelling apologies to Spurs fans for their new home not being ready on time.

The additional cost is his own fault and he should not even be mentioning it. What does he expect? Sympathy? He should try telling Manchester City fans about additional cost and see if he gets their sympathy.

Once again the London based FA have shown remarkable bias in favour of a London club by allowing Tottenham to play their home game against Manchester City on Monday 29th October because the original date on the Sunday has the stadium booked for an NFL match! How pathetic is that?

So now, instead of travelling down to London on a day off, which is bad enough, City fans will have to take a day off if they want to attend the game or they will have to travel after work which will still involve at least half a day off.

Does Daniel Levy’s extra cost involve compensating City fans for their added expense to watch their team? It should do because the fans themselves can hardly be held responsible for Levy’s inability to fulfil a simple obligation.

As per usual, the FA is bending over backwards to help a London club but you can bet your bottom dollar that if this was a team from anywhere north of Watford then they would get no help and would be being fined for not having a home ground at which to play their opening fixtures.

Time to resign Mr. Levy, this is one big mess entirely of your own making and you obviously do not have the necessary management skills required to run a football club.

And finally…..

Having spent the last couple of weeks boring everybody with how good he was ten years ago José Mourinho has now changed tactic. He has seen that he didn’t receive much good press or sympathy for his previous approach so has now gone on a charm offensive, although which of those two words will prove to be the operative one is, as yet, a mystery.

He is being nice to supporters after games and giving them little presents like his used coat, or his used water bottle or even his used notepad, (does he have nothing new to give away?).

He is smiling and even has the players trying to win games rather than not lose them. It’s all very good, but how long will it last? Well, nobody knows because this is his third season and he appears to want to stay at United which, when at other clubs, wasn’t always the case.

Maybe this is the way to do it, we certainly hope so.