FOOTBALL IS BACK, BABY!
The season starts here! Or at least a bit of it does. Well, not exactly here, but now. Well, later. A bit of the season starts later, somewhere else! In what must go down as the most exciting thing ever to happen in Luton, a town so sleepy the entire county in which it resides was named Bedfordshire, the Football League curtain will be metaphorically raised at approximately 7.45pm BST this very evening, when either one of their players or one of Middlesbrough’s kicks a ball.
What happens from there is, of course, anyone’s guess, unpredictability being very much part of the game’s appeal. But what we can say with near-absolute certainty is that a further nine Championship games will be played tomorrow, another on Sunday, and so on, with games held on an approximately biweekly basis from now/later until next May, by which time 552 matches – or, to put it another way, 828 match hours – will have been completed and everything will have been decided, except for the thing that isn’t decided until another five games are also played.
Meanwhile the League One and League Two seasons start tomorrow, each of them featuring an identical 828 match hours (depending on what happens to Bury and Bolton) for a combined total of 103.5 footballing days. In other words, if the Football League season was slightly compressed so that after kicking off in Luton the next game followed immediately afterwards, and the next after that, and so on so that there is always precisely one Football League match in progress, it would end at about lunchtime on Thursday 14 November. Whereupon the play-offs would take place, concluding (depending on whether stoppage time is required) in the early hours of the following day.
Add in the Charidee Shield, 380 Premier League matches, 91 games in the EFL Cup, 123 in the FA Cup (from the first round onwards) and 127 in the EFL Trophy, and you get a further 1,083 match hours. So if you were to run all top-level English competitive football on a similar basis, with one match in progress at all times of every day from 7.45pm this evening until everything is decided, the final whistle would blow in the early hours of 30 December. It’s probably best not to get into Europe at this stage.
That’s 2,378 matches, including play-offs. Let’s say there is an average of five minutes’ stoppage time per match (that’s another eight days, eight hours and some small change), a token 48 of the cup games go to extra-time (another day) and that 25 FA Cup games go to replays (a further 37.5 hours). Now top-level domestic football is being played non-stop from 7.45pm this evening until lunchtime on 9 January, assuming there are never any penalty shoot-outs. So, to conclude, a bit of the season starts later – there’s probably still time for a pint.
… SKY SPORTS YELLOW BREAKING NEWS TICKER OF DOOM …
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LIVE ON BIG WEBSITE
Join Will Unwin for red hot minute-by-minute coverage of Luton Town 0-0 Middlesbrough at 7.45pm BST.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“We designed Crusty like this because everyone in Wigan loves pies. It took us about 30 minutes or an hour to design – it took a long time to choose the exact colours” – schoolchildren Cayden, 8, and Neve, 9, on how they created Plucky Wigan’s brilliant new mascot, who couldn’t be anything but a happy shortcrust pie, really.
FIVER LETTERS
“Apparently Fabio Paratici, Juve’s general manager, has been try to offload Mattia Perin to Aston Villa in “telephone conversations conducted in the language of Shakespeare”. You can see where he might come unstuck. Villa: ‘Hello?’ Paratici: ‘Ho! Word has come that, in full conceit thou art desirous now of just consideration of our beloved Mattia for transposition to the shores of Albion.’ Villa: ‘Albion?’” – Charles Antaki.
“Re: STOP MARITAL HARMONY (Thursday’s letters). Are David Haddock and Katie Maddock their real names? What are the chances?” – Adam Spriggs.
“Wally Downes’s get-up makes him look like a wizard trying to blend into Muggle society” – Harold Bruker.
“For me The Fiver’s ‘golden’ era is circa 1998 to 2003 when you had that ‘Best of TV’ thing and also, coincidentally, when my brother and I competed with each other for the Noble Francis Award for most published letters. A rare triumph for wee brother – 3-2 if you’re wondering” – Douglas Hardie (and no other readers suggesting ‘golden’ eras for The Fiver).
Send your letters to [email protected]. And you can always tweet The Fiver via @guardian_sport. Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’the day is … Charles Antaki.
NEWS, BITS AND BOBS
Pep Guardiola signalled that football really is back by emitting steam from his ears when asked if Jürgen Klopp’s comments about Manchester City’s spending made him feel fresh and funky. “Of course it bothered me, because it’s not true that we spend £200m every transfer market. That is not true,” he yelped. “So it’s Liverpool, you’ll never walk alone, so it’s not a small team … of course I don’t like it.”
A bitter blow for the ‘No Women At Football’ lunatic fringe, as Stéphanie Frappart will become the first woman to referee a major European men’s game when she takes charge of the Uefa Super Cup between Liverpool and Chelsea in Istanbul.
Oli McBurnie is now a Blade, having signed from Swansea for £18m. “Oli is a big piece of the jigsaw, and the squad is shaping up ready for what will be a long and demanding season,” cheered the Sheffield United boss Chris Wilder.
Salford City, the pet project of the Class of ’92 (and Pippin Neville), make their EFL bow this weekend with a home match with Stevenage. “We have got momentum and a winning mentality … and we want to kick on again,” roared captain Liam Hogan.
And top, top Brazilian jester Dani Alves, 78, has signed on a free for Sao Paulo. “He is a socially engaged citizen and passionate about our country. Sao Paulo, therefore, wins on every possible front,” trumpeted chief suit Carlos Augusto de Barros e Silva.
STILL WANT MORE?
The Premier League previews continue to pile in, with No 9: Leicester and No 10: Liverpool.
Brighton manager Graham Potter chews the fat with Ben Fisher about the power of his job, the Dalai Lama, the darkness of defeat and singing the Lapland national anthem a capella, obviously.
Bury’s plight reminds EFL fans not to take boredom and pain for granted, writes Cambridge United’s No 1 celebrity fan Max Rushden, with apologies to Joe Savins, lead guitarist with alternative rock band Mallory Knox.
Moise Kean can light up the Premier League, whoops Paolo Bandini of the imminent Evertonian.
“They told me that you will enjoy [it] but it is the worst league in the world – the most difficult, the most intense, but you will take pleasure.” Nottingham Forest’s latest victim/manager, Sabri Lamouchi, gets his Championship chat on with Ben Fisher.
“I felt worthless”: how the Homeless World Cup changes lives. By Big Website’s Steven Morris.
Oh, and if it’s your thing … you can follow Big Website on Big Social FaceSpace. And INSTACHAT, TOO!