PREMIER LEAGUE OUTRIGHTS
Manchester City @ 6/5
Chelsea @ 11/4
Liverpool @ 4/1
Manchester United @ 6/1
Tottenham @ 33/1
Leicester @ 80/1
view odds
“I will be staying at Tottenham this summer.”
Thus spake Kane, direct from Mount Twitter, ending weeks of speculation regarding his future. All those words, the broadsheet paragraphs, all those pundit opinions…are now just handfuls of sand and dust. It’s over. There is no more to be said on the matter.
Which is exactly what Kane wants you to think. It’s all part of his masterplan, you see!
Note the curiously imprecise usage of ‘this summer’. Kane does not wish to be exposed as a liar, so he is careful not to include next summer too. ‘I won’t be at Tottenham next summer’ is essentially what he is saying here.
This wording also, rather cleverly, does not preclude him appearing for another team this autumn – which begins on September 22nd, but a few short weeks away.
I hereby put it to you that Kane has signed a secret contract with Manchester City, and he has also found a way to declare his current contract with Tottenham void.
Kane will play for Tottenham this weekend, business as usual, then he will sustain a mystery injury during the international break that will cause him to miss Tottenham’s last two fixtures of the summer; against Crystal Palace and Chelsea.
Rumours will then begin to circulate over the specifics of his latest injury. Intrigue and conjecture will intensify.
Come Gameweek 6, commencing on the 25th of September – ie. in the autumn – during the lunchtime kick-off between Chelsea and Manchester City, a now bearded Kane will run out onto the pitch from the crowd, possibly holding a steel chair, and will score a stunning winning goal. He will then rip off his tracksuit top revealing a pristine Manchester City shirt beneath, he will kiss all the badges he can possibly find upon it, right in front of the Chelsea fans, and will maintain in all the post-match interviews that he isn’t a liar. And he will be right.
Commentators, however, will be screaming hysterically: ‘You can’t write this kind of drama!’ And they will be wrong. Because I just have.
Kane’s actions will complete what the world of professional wrestling calls a ‘heel-turn’ – the moment when a crowd favourite becomes a boo/hiss baddie – and as a consequence of this action he will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
This was his plan all along.
And what if City sign Ronaldo? What if Utd sign Ronaldo? What if they have both already signed Ronaldo by the time you read these words? Well, then you should give fulsome praise the almighty gods of football banter and creative accountancy.
Even if they get neither and somehow end up with Eric Choupo-Moting leading the line, City should be feeling fine heading into their Saturday lunchtime pop-corn clash against Arsenal. (Yes, a lunch can consist of just pop-corn.)
Although still an extremely daunting fixture for the Gunners, fans will have received a delicate sprig of hope in the form of their midweek obliteration of West Brom in the Carabao Cup, and the sweet Aubameyang hat-trick contained within.
The Man City/Arsenal clash does have the potential to collapse into broad comic relief, however; so, for fans of a more serious, epic brand of drama the game of the weekend arrives late on Saturday afternoon, when Chelsea travel up to Liverpool.
This will be the first encounter of the new Premier League season between two genuine title contenders. Will it, therefore, be a tense, protracted, weigh-in stare-down…or is there a chance decisive, psychologically damaging body-blows could be landed?
Following a decent 45-minute spell against a porous, papier-mâché Arsenal backline, Romelu Lukaku has been proclaimed by one and all as The Greatest Striker Who Ever Lived. Liverpool fans, who have never encountered a hyperbole they didn’t love, consider Virgil van Dijk The Greatest Defender Who Ever Lived. So who will come out on top in this battle between The Irresistible Force and The Immovable Object? (I’ll let you decide which one is which…)
There will be no last-minute switches from me this weekend then: my allegiance, as always, is firmly with the couch and the TV…and maybe some lunchtime pop-corn…
