Here’s Football Daily, to which you can sign up. Today’s edition centres on levelling up.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“I think the football [we are playing] is very dynamic and now we have to work on the recovery of [injured players], like Christopher Nkunku to help us have more goals and be more solid. But of course, we already start to work [on January]” – Mauricio Pochettino there, admitting that despite Chelsea’s near-£1bn-plus splurge in the past two seasons, he still needs just a couple more players to compete.
Two managers forming a mutual admiration society – Emery and De Zerbi – in Saturday lunchtime’s early kick-off.
That is where Brighton and De Zerbi come in. Before their last meeting Emery namechecked Brighton – as well as Sunderland and Andorra FC – as teams who had caught his eye and his admiration for De Zerbi dates back to the Italian’s spell at Benevento, when the club were newcomers to Serie A in 2017-18. Benevento were relegated but De Zerbi was praised for his daring, possession-hungry style, something he then transmitted at Sassuolo and Shakhtar Donetsk before replacing Graham Potter at Brighton last September.
