Man Ud manager Erik Ten Hag would like a striker for Christmas at Old Trafford – The Warm-Up

FRIDAY’S BIG STORIES

Not Quite Enough

Yesterday evening, we made a terrible mistake. We decided to attempt, via a multiplicity of screens, to keep track of everything that was going on in the last round of Europa League and Europa Conference League group games. After that, we remember nothing. They found us some hours later, sitting quietly in a bus stop on the other side of town, muttering under our breath. “Thursday nights. Are Europa nights.”

There were positives for United. Alejandro Garnacho took his first goal very nicely, David De Gea did some more cool saves, and that slime green kit actually looked a little less horrible that usual. It went very nicely against the home team’s blue-and-white stripes. And everybody knows that United have been looking for is a bald Johan Cruyff disciple who gets right inside his own head on big European nights. Bruno Fernandes on the right, Harry Maguire up front: that’s the good stuff.

Maguire didn’t run onto the pitch with a sign around his neck – BUY ME A STRIKER – but the overall effect was much the same. After the game, Ten Hag drove his message home: “We need options. We have problems there … We won tonight. It was a clean sheet. We created some great chances, but we had some problems in the front line. It’s clear we have to work on that. We have to score more goals.” And my current striking options are a crock, an egomaniac, and a lovely lad who plays better on the left, he didn’t add.

Following this inadequate win, United will move into the knock-out playoffs, which means two extra games in February. We’ll find out on Monday who they play, but we can all agree that United against Barcelona would be the funniest possible combination, right? The worst-run superclubs of England and Spain going head to head for a place in the last 16 of a competition they both consider beneath them.

But while the prospect is exciting, we’re all going to have to go into Monday’s draw knowing that we know nothing. Between now and the knockouts there is first a World Cup, and then a transfer window. Ten Hag wants a striker. United need a striker. A collection of the world’s strikers are going to put together a showcase right before the transfer window. The stars are coming into alignment, and we’re going to get a proper, old-school, ‘had a good World Cup’ transfer. Yes, Manchester United are going to sign Stephane Guivarc’h.

Ta-ra, Gerard

When you know, you know. Gary Neville retired as a player after realising, after a stressful half against West Brom, that he just couldn’t hack it any more. We can’t help but wonder if Gerard Pique had a similar moment of clarity last month against Inter, when he held out his hands and let the ball sail over his head to Nicolò Barella, whose presence he just hadn’t registered.

Certainly, that was the moment when we wondered how long Pique would carry on. Just a few weeks, it turns out. Here is his retirement video, and if you’re a fan of adorable home movies or portentous shots of Pique’s back, this is definitely for you.

Unless a player does a Cantona and goes out at or near their peak, it’s probably inevitable that their latter years come to mind first of all. Humans are creatures of the now. And it is unfortunate for Pique that he’s been getting slower just as his club have been getting stranger; that the last act of his career has coincided with Barcelona completing their transformation from the best and biggest club in the world to the best and biggest basket case in the sport.

Look past the moment, and the pile of trophies speaks for itself. There can’t be many footballers who have achieved their dreams so greedily and so specifically: with Barcelona, his family club, he won eight La Liga titles and three Champions Leagues. Whether he dreamed of picking up a few extra medals with Manchester United and winning the World Cup and the Euros with Spain, well, the video doesn’t mention that. Kids are big dreamers, though. He probably found time.

Great central defenders are rare and precious. Great central defenders that look stylish doing it are perhaps the rarest and most precious creatures of all. That “Piquenbauer” nickname spoke to his ability to carry the ball forward, but it also brought out his easy superiority, the way he moved through the game like he owned it. He even managed to look like a convincing threat when he headed forward in search of a late goal; most central defenders end up wandering around looking like baffled tourists. Round here, they face towards the goal.

Anyway, he’s a businessman now. Kosmos Holdings (founder, CEO, president: one G. Piqué) owns FC Andorra and the Davis Cup, and allegedly made a good pile of money out of moving the Spanish Super Cup to Saudi Arabia. It’s not clear if that was in his childhood dreams either, but at this point it’s probably a lot more fun than getting called a waster twice a week by football’s twitchiest fanbase.

IN OTHER NEWS

This is a very good, very silly goal, and we enjoyed it immensely.

RETRO CORNER

Happy birthday to Luís Figo, who made a controversial transfer once upon a time. Then he went back to Barcelona with Real Madrid and got told all about it. This wasn’t the game with the pig’s head; this was the game when he decided, perhaps for the best, that he wouldn’t take corners at all. You can see the grin on Florentino Pérez’s face early on; afterwards he admitted that “The atmosphere got to us all.”

HAT TIP(S)

Not quite a call for the abolition of commentary, he notes that “for decades televised football has gone one way: more talking, more curation, more voices, more product,” and wonders if “in a splintered market, there may just be an audience out there for the very opposite: football without any commentary. Just a viewer, a screen and the seductive ambient noise of the game.” After all, “Football sounds amazing. Perhaps it’s time we let it talk.”

Instead, he reckons we could do without the co-commentator, or at least as much of the co-commentator as we currently get. Once “a splash of colour to be used sparingly,” the sidekick has “become less and less sparingly used over the years, to the point that modern football commentary often feels like listening to a conversation between two people in a pub.”

That sounds about right to is. Not an overheard chat between two people. Instead, give us commentators talking to the audience, reporting, telling the story and conjuring the place. Then give us co-commentators when there’s something to be added, or not at all.

COMING UP

It’s the FA Cup first round! Hereford play Portsmouth tonight, by way of an appetiser for the weekend. But if you’re not feeling the magic, then maybe Reading vs. Preston in the Championship will take your fancy. Or Borussia Monchengladbach vs. VfB Stuttgart in the Bundesliga.

Have a lovely weekend. The Warm-Up will be back on Monday.