An engorged international break is looming, and the weekend before it serves up a gala of derby fixtures. Some are familiar, some have been a long time coming, and some are derbies by the loosest of definitions, shoehorned into the schedule for convenience.
Celtic’s build-up to the Old Firm/Glasgow derby could hardly have gone worse. Thursday night brought defeat by Ferencváros, three days before the meeting with Rangers and four days after Celtic had already lost to Rangers in the same fixture. It was not a great result for Martin O’Neill’s side.
In Spain, Atlético Madrid against Real Madrid will see Diego Simeone and José Mourinho bring the morbo — the needle — to the sidelines. A football match might break out too, though that cannot be guaranteed with those two involved.
There is plenty of anticipation for Millwall against West Ham, if not from the Metropolitan police, who have set up a Section 35 dispersal zone stretching across most of the map. Saturday’s match-up will have been ringed when the fixtures came out, and it is the first meeting between the clubs since 2012. The “Dockers derby” takes its name from supporters whose ancestors worked for rival firms on either side of the Thames. That four points separate the two clubs in the battle for promotion has become a side issue.
Wrexham against Southampton has gained extra Spygate fizz, after the club’s co-owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney released a social media advertisement for their official web browser, on the “importance of privacy”.
Elsewhere in the Championship, Wolves and West Brom are reunited for a first league fixture in five years, with a Sunday high noon kick-off reflecting West Midlands police concerns of the sort their London counterparts hold, following a 2024 cup date. Rather more genteel is the university challenge between Oxford and Cambridge, both League One playoff hopefuls, with first-class honours at stake after Oxon and Cantab split the men’s and women’s Boat Races.
Then come the desperation derbies. Manchester United really must beat Fulham on Sunday. Michael Carrick’s side were beaten by Brighton in the Littlewoods Cup, and anything other than a win at the weekend would leave him staring down three weeks in which “United in crisis” becomes blood in the water for needy hacks. Fulham, for their part, have Álvaro Arbeloa taking on the look of a lame-duck manager.
Tottenham may provide some cover. Their goal drought has been mocked by try-hard pizza companies, though a visit from Aston Villa — whose summer reboot has yielded just one point — could end Spurs’ hosepipe ban.
Away from the derbies, Thomas Tuchel faced questions about what he had discussed with his FA superiors in the post-Geopolitics World Cup review. “I got told off for the substitutions I made. Only joking!” he said, adding that “99.9% of fans don’t talk about the substitutions I made” against Argentina. He recalled Trent Alexander-Arnold and Cole Palmer in his first squad since the tournament, and even found room for Liverpool’s teenage winger Rio Ngumoha.