Isak breaks leg, silence as ‘perfect replacement’ identified and Arteta makes ‘shocking call’ | OneFootball

A festive game of Guess the Icon from the Mirror sets us off on our Christmas Eve Mediawatch that also features broken silences and ideal replacements and shocking calls.

Or at the very least, it features things that claim to be those things.

Merry Christmas, ya filthy animals.

Icon ick

Who wants to play a fun and festive guessing game, courtesy of the Mirror? Guess who this is about.

With Liverpool suffering some pretty high-profile injury troubles you might think it an odd time for them to be making any player, never mind an ‘icon’, available for free in January after TERMINATING a contract.

And that’s because of course they have not done that. Milan have. It’s Divock Origi because ffs.

A Simple Plan

Those Liverpool injury and absences are mounting up to the extent that even the usual p*ss-taking ‘could be without eight players’ stories about their next game are in fact only counting actual members of the first-team squad rather than swelling the numbers with some children who once sat on a Carabao bench.

Really, the only misleading element about those tales is trying to inject a sense of panic and jeopardy about a game that, for all those very real and valid absences, is still against Wolves.

But there’s even more good news, courtesy of the Daily Express.

A perfect replacement identified already, so soon after his injury setback? That’s good. But that £69m figure is a bit troubling. They… they surely can’t have written a whole story simply pointing out that big-money Liverpool striker Hugo Ekitike – a player who literally started ahead of Isak in the very game in which he was injured – exists?

It takes several paragraphs of advert-strewn waffle to arrive at that destination but: yes, yes they absolutely can.

We’re mad at ourselves, really. Of course that’s what’s ‘now clear’. It was never going to be anything else.

Silence is olden

Yesterday was also the day that Alexander Isak, who has had a bit on what with having surgery on his broken leg and all, finally made his first public utterance on the matter. He Took To Instagram, of course.

And inevitably it gets the standard headline treatment from the Liverpool Echo.

We are genuinely struggling to identify the ‘admission’ contained within Isak’s (understandably – again, he’s got a bit on) generic statement.

That he’s gutted? That he’s out for a while? That he will work hard? None of these really feel like admissions. And why would he be admitting anything anyway?

But of course our favourite bit is the idea that he’s broken his silence. We genuinely await the day this process can be streamlined to the point we get headlines that simply say ‘[Player X] breaks leg, silence’.

Shock and or

Just plain odd this one from the Daily Star, attempting to convince themselves as much as anyone that Mikel Arteta made a ‘shocking call’ as Arsenal – and we can’t stress this enough – went through to the semi-finals of the Carabao Cup.

It’s a weird tone all round, frankly, one that suggests literal FA Cup holders Crystal Palace should have been mere cannon fodder for the Gunners rather than actually having the temerity to give them a game.

Details of the ‘shocking call’ emerge late in the piece, and we’ll let you be the judge.

Dunno, guys, just seems like ‘shocking call’ might be a bit of an over-the-top reaction to bringing on Declan Rice instead of the inevitable goals that Viktor Gyokeres has famously guaranteed this season, and doing so after 85 minutes instead of 81 minutes. And then still going through anyway.

Ethan hunt

Football.London have the big scoop from Arsenal-Palace, though.

This looks like a headline stitch-up job on Arsenal reporter Tom Canton, to be fair.

He doesn’t claim to have anything like as definitive an answer as the headline promises to the question everyone is apparently asking.

There are various clues to how significant he considers what he concedes from the outset is only a ‘theory’ that Arteta is reluctant to trust the youngster in tight games, citing the fact his only recent appearance came when the Gunners were already 4-1 up against Tottenham.

It’s perfectly sound, but absolutely not a decisive answer and not one that’s come from Mikel Arteta or Arsenal themselves, and outside the headline it never claims to be.

The biggest clue to Canton’s own view of the significance of his Ethan Nwaneri Theory, though, is the fact the words ‘Ethan’ and ‘Nwaneri’ don’t appear in his actual copy until the 12th paragraph.