Ekitike learns his fate after ‘stupid’ red card while a ‘Premier League legend’ lands surprise new role

Everyone’s having a lot of fun with Hugo Ekitike’s ‘stupid’ red card, while there’s some sad news about a different kind of red for Cole Palmer.

There’s also a lament for Aston Villa’s demise in which they are the poor blameless victims of those Buzz Killington PSR rules.

What has mainly rattled Mediawatch’s cage today, though, is an enticing Daily Mail headline that turned out to be entirely fair and accurate. We simply cannot work under these conditions.

Red missed

Once again, something for everyone to enjoy from Liverpool last night with another of their trademark late winners but this time with the wonderful added flourish of Hugo Ekitike getting himself a spectacularly stupid second yellow card for whipping his top off in celebration.

Lovely stuff, we can all agree. Especially when the first yellow was for dissent. An unimprovable red card from a banter standpoint. And with Arne Slot coming out afterwards and literally using the word ‘stupid’ himself to describe the whole caper, one that requires absolutely no sh*thouse augmentation at all from our esteemed press, right? Right?

Alas, it seems there is simply no story entertaining enough on its own merits to escape the world of headline housery at the Daily Mirror.

What games will Hugo Ekitike miss? Liverpool striker’s suspension after ‘stupid’ red card

Really is so close. Even the emotionally charged word in quote marks is accurately reporting a direct quote, in its correct context. But there’s still housery, because there must always be housery.

The ‘games’ Ekitike will miss? Crystal Palace away this weekend, and that’s it. Because it’s a one-game suspension. The Mirror know it’s a one-game suspension. They know everyone else will assume it’s a one-game suspension. And thus, by casually implying it’s not a one-game suspension in the headline, they’ve got your attention.

Look, it’s not the most egregious thing in the world, is it? It’s not the most nefarious headline ever. Or even of the morning. But in a way that’s what makes it worse. It’s deliberately, childishly wrong just to try and mislead a few passing Liverpool fans into handing over a click and just chip away at another tiny bit of trust and faith.

Tap-in headlines of the day

Not all the headlines about Ekitike’s daftness were sh*thouse, though. Plenty of subs just accepted the easy tap-in, before presumably whipping off their tops in celebration as they ran around the office.

WHAT THE EK? – The Sun

WHAT THE EK! – Daily Mirror

Arne Slot scolds Hugo Ekitike over ‘stupid and needless’ red card after Liverpool survive late scare against Southampton and Alexander Isak opens his account with first Reds goal – Daily Mail

You plonker

Ekitike wasn’t the only prominent Premier League star to see red yesterday, though. The Sun bring us this important news from the fun and exciting world of Intellectual Property Office paperwork.

COLE SEES RED: Chelsea ace Cole Palmer LOSES battle against £750-a-bottle winery to trademark nickname & goal celebration

Mediawatch is not and has never claimed to be an authority on copyright law and intellectual property, but dare we suggest this headline constitutes – and we appreciate it’s out of character for the usually more thoughtful and considered Currant Bun – a slightly reductive take.

Palmer and his legal team haven’t lost any battle because they haven’t fought one; they’ve simply removed wine from the list of stuff he might one day potentially seek to sell under his ‘Cold Palmer’ brand, following a challenge from established Bordeaux winemakers Chateau Palmer.

But we’re not really interested in any of that, because it is all tremendously dull. What we are interested in, are two specific sentences from the story. The first is this one because it might be the most perfectly dense yet succinct passage of Sunglish ever committed to print.

Chateau Palmer opposed the ace’s bid to flog plonk under his Cold Palmer nickname.

That’s ‘ace’, ‘bid’, ‘flog’ and ‘plonk’ in the space of just five words. It’s damn near unimprovable, unless you can find a way to get ‘bonk’ or ‘romp’ in there.

The other sentence we have to draw to your attention is this magnificent closing line.

Cole is not known to be a wine connoisseur.

You can tell they’re particularly (and rightly) pleased with that closing flourish because they haven’t replaced connoisseur with ‘buff’ as the styleguide must surely demand.

Zola eclipse

Always just absolutely heartbreaking for Mediawatch when a headline with this kind of awesome potential comes along and then we click on it and… it turns out against all odds to be just absolutely and entirely fair.

Premier League legend lands surprise Ryder Cup role with Team Europe – after forging close friendship with star golfer

It’s Gianfranco Zola, for fu… What’s the world coming to when the Daily Mail are using ‘Premier League legend’ in a headline about… an actual undeniable and unquestioned Premier League legend? The game, it has gone.

We can’t even complain about the rest of it, because Mediawatch certainly does consider itself sufficiently surprised to discover he’s Team Europe vice-captain Francesco Molinari’s designated buggy driver at Bethpage this week. That is quite literally a ‘surprise Ryder Cup role’ for a ‘Premier League legend’.

What on earth are we supposed to do with that? We really had our heart set on it being Jonjo Shelvey.

Crumbling Villa

Aston Villa’s brave bid to break into the Red (and to some extent blue) Cartel that we all know runs English football appears set to run aground, with it very much feeling like a brilliant three-year cycle under Unai Emery is coming to an end.

And John Cross in the Mirror knows why it’s all falling apart. It’s because of beastly PSR.

Villa have had to sell the family silver to balance the books and it is difficult to fathom and justify why a club of this size has to sell top players to fall into line.

It’s because their wage/turnover ratio was about 96 per cent, John. They’ve only just in the last few weeks stopped paying Philippe Coutinho 125 grand a week. Maybe – hear us out – it is slightly a little bit their own fault and not entirely down to those pesky buzzkill rules?

The Premier League’s Profit and Sustainability Rules were probably not introduced to check clubs like Aston Villa. You could argue they were brought in to stop financial disasters like at Portsmouth back in the day. Or to stop mega wealthy states buying up football.

Or to stop teams paying Philippe Coutinho 125 grand a week and having wage/turnover ratios of 96 per cent. We are very much in ‘quiet part loud’ territory here, of course. Villa are a Big Club so the leopards were never meant to eat their face. Only the likes of little old Portsmouth.

Very interesting that it’s Portsmouth rather than, say, Leeds who are the ‘financial disaster’ from ‘back in the day’ upon which Cross leans here.

One could certainly argue, if one were so inclined, that Leeds – a Big Club who disastrously bet the house on securing Champions League football on the regular – are both more infamous and the more relevant example for the topic at hand.

Villa has been brilliant for Emery. And Emery has been brilliant for Villa. What a story and the European nights at Villa Park have been magnificent.

But is it really fair to have spending rules which stop Villa fans from dreaming? Dare I mention you could say the same about Newcastle. Those poor Saudis. It’s by no means a simple argument. And there is no easy solution.

Nobody ever does the flipside of this, do they? Would it be fair to have a free-for-all where clubs who don’t risk bankrupting themselves twice a year are stopped from dreaming?

PSR is demonstrably imperfect and almost impossible to apply consistently. But let’s not pretend Villa – or Newcastle, or anyone – are being unfairly or randomly singled out for no reason here. Nobody forced them to choose the paths they have chosen.