Enter: the Carsley-verse. Look back just a couple of weeks and the Football Association’s decision to install an internal temporary replacement for the men’s senior manager, thereby delaying any permanent decision while relegitimising the architecture of the existing pathway structure, still felt like an act of such mind-numbing dullness that even reading these words now is likely to induce a form of narcolepsy, insomnia, haunted dreams, night terrors.
Cut back to this weekend and that trial appointment has already achieved one significant thing, specifically lending a mild air of jeopardy and intrigue to an otherwise unwanted back-to-school September international break.
