Hello world, and happy Friday!
Yes, we are all one day closer to finding out if there are any new depths for our teams still to plumb, which is certainly an exciting prospect for my fellow Watford fans.
In unusual coincidence news, this Premier League weekend sees all four English teams who were in action in Europe last night play each other on Sunday – Bournemouth v Sunderland, Brighton v Crystal Palace – while the two Scottish teams who played in Europe last night also play each other on Sunday, with Hearts heading to Celtic.
Meanwhile table-topping, relegation-bound Manchester City host Ipswich and second-placed Arsenal head to Nottingham Forest, while Fulham and Spurs, like Bournemouth winless in the league this season, seek those magic three points at home to promoted teams, Fulham v Hull on Saturday and Spurs v Coventry on Monday.
But we get the ball rolling with an apology, after Lisandro Martínez begged forgiveness not for what he said about the shambles at Manchester United, but for the fact that the “time and place … perhaps were not the right ones”, which the way I read it is very much a partial climbdown rather than the fulsome version that some are interpreting it as.
Anyway, read all about it!
Martínez apologises to Manchester United’s director of football Wilcox after outburst