Saturday round-up: Lost words, Gyokeres builds fitness

Morning.

Apologies today’s blog is a little later than usual. I woke up around 6am, which is more or less my usual time, but the weekend alarm isn’t set so I dozed back off. Before that, I had a Billie Eilish song going around in my head, and I also came up with the greatest line to open a book anyone has ever thought of. It was so good I almost got up to write it down but I mentally wrote the first page of my novel in my head and, in the process, drifted back to sleep.

I’m sorry to have to tell you now that this work of potential literary greatness, which would have been up there with your Dickenses, your Joyces, your Flann O’Brienses, your Twainses (not Shania), is now lost. Gone. It existed in my mind for about 8 minutes this morning and is no more. Oh well. Saves me the hassle of actually writing it though. I have enough going on. Including a book whose story I can visualise as a kind of amorphous shape/feeling, but which I struggle to put into words. And that’s a look inside my head nobody needs today.

Right, let’s look at what our lads got up to on international duty yesterday. First up, Viktor Gyokeres played the full 90 minutes as Sweden drew 2-2 with Slovenia. Normally I’d like the minutes to be more sparse for our players, but after a summer when his pre-season wasn’t ideal because of all the hanging around/not training with Sporting, I don’t think it’s a bad thing for him to get competitive minutes under his belt. He’s a big lad, and he feels like one of those articulated trucks who takes a bit of time to get to top speed, but once he does he motors along really well.

I guess it’s something he shares with Swedish teammate Alexander Isak whose own pre-season was disrupted by going on strike at Newcastle. Physically though, he’s very different from Gyokeres. Liverpool released some pictures of him in the gym the other day and the contrast is significant. I looked at Isak and thought ‘Who is this pencil man? Is this Mr Ozempic?!’, but it’s just evidence that we come in all kinds of shapes and sizes and there’s no right or wrong. It hasn’t stopped him scoring goals, that’s for sure, but you know in a cartoon when someone gets run over by a steamroller and they come out all flat … he reminds me of that a bit. Maybe that’s how he ghosts through defences.

Gyokeres, by the way, got an assist for Sweden bit didn’t score mostly because he didn’t have any shots. I’ve found that’s typically an impediment to ending up on the scoresheet, but don’t worry. I suspect he’s just saving all his shots and goals for us. Elsewhere, Riccardo Calafiori played the full game as Italy beat Estonia 5-0. On-loan Arsenal man Karl Hein was in goal at the other end.

Today, England are in action against the mighty Andorra, who manager Cassian Andor has that nominative determinism going on like Arsene Wenger at Arsenal, Wolfgang Wolf at Wolfsburg, and Dick Wanker at Sp*rs. There could be action for Declan Rice, Myles Lewis-Skelly, Eberechi Eze and Noni Madueke. One of those games I suspect Mikel Arteta will be looking at and keeping his fingers crossed.

And that’s it. So keep fingers crossed for all those lads. I’m gonna leave it there, the sadness of losing that book is overwhelming now, so I need a bacon sandwich to correct the course of history.

Have a great Saturday folks.

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