What should Germany do?
Well I think we can all agree that nobody envisioned the Germans, the reigning world champions, going out of the World Cup as early as the group stage. Hell, I predicted them to repeat as champs with Timo Werner winning the golden boot. Obviously that never happened. Joachim Löw has already confirmed he will not be stepping down as head coach, and as such he must learn from his mistakes, most notable of which was the emission of Leroy Sané from the final 23-man squad. Germany lacked a cutting edge which Sané would lend in abundance with his pace and dribbling skills, not to mention learning from Pep Guardiola for a couple of years, which has done both he and Raheem Sterling the world of good. As well as including their best players in the squad, which kind of seems like an obvious move to me, Germany needs to improve significantly in a few areas of the squad, most notably central midfield and full-back. Whilst Toni Kroos is comfortably one of the best central midfielders in the world, Germany lack an N'Golo Kanté-type player who hustles around in front of the back four, harassing opposing attackers and freeing up space for the more attack minded players in front of him. Moving Joshua Kimmich into central midfield seems like the obvious choice, but with so many top international teams employing the skills of wingers like Neymar and Eden Hazard, the full-backs really need to be able to compete at the top level, and as good as Germany are, they don't have that quality in those positions. Whilst the rebuild looks on the surface to be simple enough, Löw will also apparently have to work to heal a rift in the squad that derailed their World Cup defence, with player factions led by Kroos and the flashy Jérôme Boateng clashing in the lead up to the tournament. However, Germany are too good to be held down for long, and will no doubt be back in contention come 2020.
Run the damn score up!
Another week, another unwritten baseball rule that makes no sense to me. The average salary in MLB is $4m. Four million dollars to be paid to play baseball. Throw, catch, hit, run. That's it, essentially. And if you make it to the very highest level, you'll be paid an average of four million dollars. Of course, some are paid more and some are paid less, but if you underperform on a certain day, you should expect to be punished. Baseball players have long been known as slightly petulant, retaliatory, and really really bad losers (case in point Hunter Strickland and Sergio Romo both being dickheads in the past couple of weeks, and their teams weren't even losing/losing badly). Here's my thought: If you are paid these amounts of money to play baseball, you should be able to suck it up and strap on a pair when you have an off day and get tattooed all over the park by the opposition, rather than what seems to be the MLB default of crying foul when down by more than 6 runs and drilling any player who dares try to score against you. Last night the Washington Nationals went 9 runs down in the second inning, and instead of rolling over and having their bellies rubbed, they cracked on, and came back to win 14-12. Do more of that, baseball. Make the game interesting all the way through, rather than checking out midway through the fifth. Nobody wants to see that.
Return of the (French)man?
If the rumours are true, and they're coming from a pretty reliable source (@ExWHUEmployee on Twitter), Manuel Pellegrini has been in talks to bring Dimitri Payet back to West Ham (I almost wrote Upton Park there, how sad.) The deal is apparently worth more than what we sold him for 18 months ago, and he's now 31 years of age, but would bringing him back be worth the hassle that inevitably comes with Payet in claret and blue? You cannot deny the man's talent. He is the most talented and exciting attacking player I have ever seen in a West Ham shirt, and would undoubtedly fill the hole in the team left by Manuel Lanzini's horror knee injury. But the relationship with some of the fans would need patching. The majority of the younger generation that I have seen on Twitter would take him back in a heartbeat, and the same goes for a lot of friends I talk to, but I fear that the older generation would get on his back from the very first day and immediately expect the same results that he delivered in his first spell. All I would say is that the circumstances surrounding his departure from the club were somewhat cloudy, and apparently the players are keen on having him back in the squad, so if we can get the transfer over the line, why not? It will only take three or four classy performances that we saw in 2015/16 to turn the tide and get the crowd singing his name again. Bring it on, I say.
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