Sunday in London and all you can see is fumes: hot breath on cold air and vape smoke and dope smoke and steam rising from sweaty heads and a hype they can finally believe in. Of course Eddie Nketiah is delighted and of course Oleksandr Zinchenko is delighted, but have you ever in your life seen such happy unused substitutes? Sunday in London and it doesn’t matter whether you’re in the back row pressed against the stained glass, or so close you can grasp the hem of the preacher’s garment. Everyone in this congregation gets saved in the end.
The post-Christmas Emirates is a different place to what it was pre-Christmas. There’s a swagger and an arrogance here now, the sweet spot where old certainties meet new stirrings. And they no longer ask, they demand. Even the sticky periods are waited out with measured impatience rather than dull dread. OK, Marcus Rashford. Nice header, Lisandro Martínez. But what time do we actually win?
