Liverpool field Mohamed Salah BAN calls as 1500/1 Champions League play-off looms | OneFootball

Liverpool should ban Mo Salah ahead of a potential 1500/1 Champions League play-off clash, while the real hero of Aston Villa’s Europa League triumph emerges.

There’s also some guff about referees and whatnot.

Mediawatch is quite looking forward to the season finishing, to be honest.

Missing Words Round

Always fun game, isn’t it? Shut up, it is.

Here’s today’s, from the Mirror, featuring a bit of bonus CAPS for good measure.

The extra vital, story-killing words for which there is sadly no room here? Those would be ‘by Sam Allardyce’.

We know what you’re thinking now, though. “But please, Mediawatch, tell us, was Sam Allardyce having this spicy Mo Salah opinion for money on a bookmaker’s podcast?”

Reader, of course he was.

Although the bar for football journalism is now so firmly on the floor that we’re actually grudgingly impressed that the capped-up BAN is at least a word Sam Allardyce used in his spicy Mo Salah opinion for money on a bookmaker’s podcast.

Most Valuable Prince

No doubting the star man in Aston Villa’s drought-busting Europa League victory, with one name dominating the headlines.

In the Mirror…

And The Sun…

And the Mail, obviously, with trademark pith…

And the Express…

They also give us this belter, in which they helpfully reveal for all of those wondering that, yes, the literal heir to the UK throne does indeed possess greater wealth than Aston Villa footballers.

Mad to think that there are still some people out there whose coverage of Aston Villa’s long-awaited success focused on things like Emery’s transformative impact on the club or his spectacular Europa League record, or humdrum fare like the magnificent goals scored by Morgan Rogers and Emi Buendia, when they could have been coming up with far, far more important work like this.

All that and the star man in a Europa League win. Not bad.

Play-off drama

We do get it. We do understand the appeal of this kind of story, gleefully reported here by the Mirror.

It was the same thing before the City-Arsenal game at the Etihad, where a 1-1 draw would have set up the tantalising prospect of the title having to be settled by a one-off play-off game after the season was finished, should the two contenders happen to run out from there and wind up on the same points, goal difference and goals scored.

It was not impossible when it was excitedly touted, but it was vanishingly unlikely. Of course, the vanishingly unlikely element is all part of the appeal. The excitement about a winner-takes-all play-off match at the end of a Premier League season is so captivating precisely because it has never happened and almost certainly will never happen. Whether for the title, Europe or relegation.

But, sure, it would be magnificent. It would definitely be dramatic. And the City-Arsenal example did also only require a 1-1 draw to get the ball rolling, and a 1-1 draw between the two best sides in the country is not a particularly outlandish starting point for a speculative punt.

Bearing that in mind, let’s have a quick look at the latest specific example, and what’s required to make it happen. Because that ‘could’ is doing an astonishing amount of heavy lifting.

We’ll just stop you there. The scenario you’ve just described is, give or take, around a 1500/1 correct-score double with the bookies. We fear that the wait for a Premier League play-off is, alas, set to continue.

It’s just a shame Spurs are ahead of West Ham on the head-to-head away goals tiebreaker; otherwise we could all be looking forward to a relegation play-off after West Ham’s highly probable 12-0 win over Leeds while Spurs play out an undeniably on-brand 8-8 thriller against Everton.

Salisbury plain

We did give the Mirror some grudging credit for an accurate if perhaps dramatic bit of CAPS LOCKING earlier. But the Mediawatch giveth and the Mediawatch taketh away.

Was he, though? Was he DROPPED? And don’t think that just because we aren’t going to dwell on it we didn’t spot the implication that he’s been dropped after a ‘Howard Webb intervention’ when that is actually about him reaching out to Nottingham Forest following that handball caper last weekend.

But to the dropping itself. Michael Salisbury has indeed not been given a game to referee in the final round of Premier League fixtures this weekend.

However…

So has he been DROPPED (or even just plain old dropped with no over-dramatic capitals) as a result of that specific controversy or has a referee who on average gets a gig every third Premier League matchday simply not been given one this time around?

Mediawatch must admit it does not know for sure the answer to that question. But what we do know is that neither do the Mirror, because if they knew he’d been DROPPED as a result of the handball call at Old Trafford we’re pretty sure they’d say so, something they are very careful not to do.