JJ Gabriel ‘chooses next destination’ as new manager eyes Man Utd job and Chelsea hit by fresh controversy | OneFootball

We’re only three days into a three-week international break, and already the wheels are coming off.

There’s some more JJ Gabriel nonsense. There’s some guessing what Eddie Howe might be thinking that’s been fed into a word-salad generator. There’s some terrible news for Chelsea. And, above all, there’s vital and very topical news from Phil Foden six years ago.

We shudder to think what the next fortnight might bring.

Choose leisurewear and matching luggage Just pure and total mischief from the Daily Mirror website today, having taken to clickbaiting their own headlines in other headlines.

On their football homepage we get this juicy morsel:

Like all right-thinking people, Mediawatch was impossibly bored of the JJ Gabriel discourse before it had even begun and we have even less interest in it now. But we will concede that Gabriel and family having chosen their next step would undeniably constitute news.

But the fact that theoretically significant development plays second fiddle in the headline to the musings of Wayne Rooney does set off alarm bells. And it’s no false alarm, because by the time you click on the story that headline changes really quite a lot.

That’s just not the same thing at all is it, guys? And we know that you know that. Wayne Rooney going ‘Spain probably, imvho’ (we’re paraphrasing) is absolutely not ‘Man Utd wonderkid chooses next destination’. Come on, now. We know it’s the international break but there must still exist some basic, rudimentary rules of engagement. Otherwise anarchy reigns.

Howe Soon Is Now? We spend an awful lot of time taking the p*ss out of headlines, but deep down we do have a grudging respect for the craft. There is a genuine skill in carefully constructing a compelling curiosity gap headline that falls just on the right side of ‘technically not complete bullsh*t’.

It is a lot harder than the seasoned operatives at the tabloid content factories make it look. We’re surprised more headlines don’t end up as this kind of word-salad gibberish that has been so carelessly scattered across the Daily Express website.

Barely qualifies as language, does it? Genuinely impossible to know what it actually means, which we guess kind of qualifies as a curiosity gap, in a way. Got us to click anyway.

Turns out the ‘Eddie Howe to Man Utd change after response to job’ literally just means that Howe, who is not currently the manager of another professional football club, might give a different answer if he was asked about the Man United manager’s job than he did when he was asked about the Man United manager’s job this time last year, when he was the manager of another professional football club.

To which the only acceptable response at all is partridgeshrug.gif

The word salad headline nicely complements the word salad intro, though. Mediawatch sure is eating healthily today.

When you have to resort to third-mentioning Howe as ‘the Carabao Cup-winning tactician’ within your first sentence, it does feel like it might be time to recast. That’s a 12th para piece of elegant variation if ever we saw one.

There should never be any call to be describing the erstwhile Bournemouth mastermind in such fashion at such early doors. At some point, you do just have to accept that you’ve simply referred to the Amersham-born Sagittarius too many times in quick succession.

Poll tax That won’t be the last Daily Express story about Michael Carrick’s future either.

Regular readers will know Mediawatch is a big fan (and we use that word quite incorrectly) of their fondness for taking the opinion of their readers via an online poll and presenting the findings as if they were actual news.

Given the prominent presence of this on their website this morning…

…we can safely expect ‘Michael Carrick Man Utd sack verdict reached’ headlines before the week is out.

O Brother, Where Art Thou? Chelsea news now from The Sun, in the form of something that sounds suspiciously like the start of a tall tale from the most notorious liar down your local.

Be reasonable, though. If you got the chance – however tenuous – to stick the word ‘Chelsea’ in a headline about Columbus Crew reserves sacking their coach, you’d take it too.

Federico ‘brother of Gonzalo’ Higuain, if you’re still remotely interested. Those 19 games for Chelsea in 2019 a clear career highlight for a man who also won some minor baubles elsewhere, such as three La Liga titles with Real Madrid and three more in Serie A with Juventus.

Daily Mail cram-the-entire-story-in-there headline of the day It’s possible this may never be topped. A headline that contains not one but two sub-clauses is absolutely elite work. Ready?

Rare appropriate use of ALL CAPS too. Because listen, fair play, that is a genuinely eye-catching number of wives. We really need a handy little aide memoire to remember what became of them all. Or perhaps a West End musical.

Reel big fish Day three of the interlull, and already The Sun are reduced to this:

It’s fishing. You’ve probably never heard of it. But still, you can’t deny the vital, topical newsworthiness of Phil Foden talking about his hobby of fishing. In an interview from 2020.