Man Utd and Arsenal deliver good news, bad news and great news to England ahead of World Cup – The Warm-Up

MONDAY’S BIG STORIES

The good and great news

Yeah we meant what we said in that little bit above when it comes to England fans wanting the best for Manchester United this next fortnight. It’s for a bigger cause.

The great news is that Marcus Rashford is growing in confidence by the game under Erik ten Hag, and a purple patch heading towards the World Cup can only be a great thing for England, with the 24-year-old slowly but surely securing his spot on the plane.

Sure, that different can include a frustrating power over placement side when it comes to shooting, but overall Rashford feels like a name moving from pencil to ink when it comes to Southgate’s plans.

England fans should also celebrate a Harry Maguire and Luke Shaw clean sheet. That is likely to be either two quarters or two fifths of the defence in Qatar, and while Maguire bashing has been the easiest and laziest sport going this year, knowing that Southgate is going to take him and probably is going to start him means now might be a good time to single him out for some praise after a solid second half helped preserve United’s lead against West Ham. Credit where credit is due.

That’s the good news, then, that a likely England starter is actually getting some game-time at his club, and so with two weeks to go until Southgate names his final 26-man squad, expect talk of this list to ramp up in the coming days, as there are still a few spots up for grabs.

That’s our bad news, but hopefully it isn’t any worse, with Mikel Arteta saying the forward is “hopefully not” a World Cup doubt, adding: “It was a bad kick. Right from the beginning he was limping, but I don’t see any further than that. Let’s see how he is in the next couple of days. He got kicked a few times and he wasn’t comfortable.”

England are first in World Cup action three weeks TODAY.

Arsenal the only hope

Good morning to those of you, like us, who are now one day old when it comes to realising Reiss Nelson is playing football in this country.

For Arsenal’s sake, seeing players like Nelson step up is a superb sight, showing off their strength in depth at a time where Arteta has plenty of regular Premier League starters and will need more from his bench options.

“I think it gives me all the confidence in the world,” Nelson said. “I’m just going to keep training every day, like I can, hard as I can. If I get another opportunity just to keep going, helping the team really – and just keep pushing on.”

Liverpool labouring

Losing to one Premier League relegation candidate in a season is bad enough, never mind two back to back, and you can’t help but shift the sense that the whole team could do with taking the six-week World Cup break off. That will at least be the case for Mohamed Salah, and a good handful of others, but it remains to be seen what will happen for Trent Alexander-Arnold, who gave a frank admission after Saturday’s home loss to Leeds.

“Clearly as a team something’s not going right,” he told Liverpoolfc.com. “It’s not going as well as we want it to go.

“That’s something for everyone to think about, for everyone to address and make sure we put it right, especially next week against Spurs, top-four rivals.

“We kind of need to go there and get some points if we’ve got any chance of reaching our aims and aspirations for the season.”

The one saving grace from Liverpool’s defeat, mind, is that we don’t have to hear or read about that Virgil van Dijk stat ever again. See also: the Trevoh Chalobah stat too. No one needed those weekly/fortnightly reminders, especially them.

IN THE CHANNELS

Yeah the original tweet was decent, but the zoomed-in reaction is better. Gary Neville knew what was coming!

IN OTHER NEWS

“Controversial referee decisions prevent Real Madrid from winning,” their official said.

COMING UP

Quiet night, mainly as there’s Champions League tomorrow and Wednesday – the final round of group fixtures. We’ll have that covered in spades.