Dear reader, on Sunday night, it was a ‘misunderstanding.’ Now it was a ‘big mistake.’ Kepa vs Sarri has sent shockwaves through the Premier League with everyone having an opinion on exactly how in the wrong the goalkeeper was to ignore his manager’s request to get off the Wembley pitch in Chelsea‘s League Cup final defeat to Man City. And where there is drama like this, there is funny football news aplenty.
Kepa has come out and apologised for disrespecting his manager Maurizio Sarri, his football club Chelsea and all their fans for his act of, er, petulance at Wembley. The club have fined him a week’s wages, about £190k, probably accompanied by a wink and knowing look of ‘we have to do this but don’t worry, he’ll be gone soon and all this will be forgotten.’
Defeat against Spurs on Wednesday will surely see Project Sarriball brought to an end with England coach Steve Holland waiting in the wings to be Chelsea’s latest interim manager.
One club not keen on an interim option, despite them being very fashionable right now, is Leicester City. They want Celtic’s Brendan Rodgers and they want him now. And, somewhat surprisingly, it looks like they are going to get him.
It will cost Leicester £5m to release Rodgers from Celtic where he is on the brink of a third consecutive treble despite never, ever beating a football club with a bigger budget than theirs in his tenure.
I wonder what this might mean for Jamie Vardy, as it is even less likely that Leicester will look to knock it in behind for him to run on to now.
The Poch has been fined for looking like he wanted to kill Mike Dean at the weekend. Christ, if that is a fineable offence nowadays every Premier League manager might want to start sticking a few quid to one side.
Rafa Benitez has probably had enough of all these other Premier League managers getting plaudits for promoting young English talent and wants in on the action. Rafa was talking up the talent of his midfielder, Sean Longstaff, an academy graduate.
Longstaff is one of the reasons that Newcastle are half-decent at the moment and Benitez thinks Gareth Southgate should be taking a look. In fairness to Benitez, Longstaff hasn’t represented England at any level (mind you, that hasn’t stopped Declan Rice) and was plucked from the academy following a couple of decent training sessions in front of the Spaniard. You see, they do still exist.
Marco Silva is calling Everton’s match against Cardiff a must-win battle, especially if he is interested in keeping his job. With Everton and Watford finally settling their disagreement over Silva last Friday, the Portuguese manager is currently proving to be a very expensive mistake.
