Klopp? Phillips? Never mind all that – we’re far more interested in Paul Scholes, beans and Turkish Delight

Now, fair warning, we’re about to devote a lot of time and, even before more recent breaking news, frankly inexplicable levels of effort to analysing a piece of absolute tish from The Sun.

Bear in mind when you consider both the existence of said tish and our analysis of it that we are, in theory, currently in the midst of the very last days of the January transfer window and that news and content should thus be easy to find for both media outlets and snarky jumped-up little pricks who take the mickey out of said content.

So the very existence of a piece entitled ‘Football’s weirdest pre-match meals including Jamie Vardy’s omelette, Gareth Bale’s baked beans and Paul Scholes’ is telling.

We are a million per cent certain this piece of emergency content was meant for February – or maybe even the March international break – but has been wheeled out early in desperation because Kalvin Phillips signing a loan deal with West Ham really isn’t doing anything for anyone is it.

And it’s not like anything else significant is going to break now is it? While we’re in the middle of dealing with this? What would the chances of that happening actually be? So low as to not be worth worrying about, that’s for sure.

Anyway. You know that Phillips deal isn’t cutting it because elsewhere The Sun have said it’s been ANNOUNCED (caps theirs, obvs) with ‘shock clause inserted’. That shock is in fact the widely reported absence (i.e. the opposite of ‘inserted’) of any buy clause for the summer. So it’s neither a shock nor insertion. But, you know, ‘routine clause omitted’ isn’t quite as exciting.

We’ve gone off topic. Careless of us. Say what you like about the Phillips deal’s lack of whelm, it is at least an actual transfer of an actual England player between two members of the Premier League’s top six, with additional significant implications for the European Championships in the summer.

Obviously, that’s of no interest to us here, though. Not when there’s the pre-match meals of players either long-retired or on the slow drift to irrelevance to consider. And not when the content contains as many baffling elements as it does.

The, headline for a start. Let’s look at that again.

Football’s weirdest pre-match meals including Jamie Vardy’s omelette, Gareth Bale’s baked beans and Paul Scholes

A belter for fans of the Oxford comma, its absence here suggesting as it does that Gareth Bale’s pre-match meal is ‘baked beans and Paul Scholes’. Which would definitely qualify as weird.

But let’s get to the content itself, because it’s really quite something.

Premier League legends have served up fireworks on the pitch – and choose some real bangers when it comes to odd pre-match meals.

Remember, we are in the last week of a transfer window. Cannot stress that enough.

You might think Jamie Vardy going from skittles and Vodka to Red Bulls, double espresso and omelette would take some beating…

Yeah, we might.

And you’d be right!

Hooray!

But Gareth Bale, Paul Scholes, Pascal Gross and Andy Carroll are juicy contenders for top honours in our list of munching madness.

What a list that is, by the way.

It also appears many of football’s stylists believe a good old-fashioned British favourite gets them blazing out of the blocks early doors.

To amend a childhood proverb, their motto seems to be: “Baked beans are good for your art – the more you eat the better you start.”

Really, we’ve only got ourselves to blame for reading on beyond that. Absolutely cannot say at this point we haven’t been repeatedly and specifically warned.

After some whimsy about Vardy’s infamous Red Bull-fuelled antics and TV’s Jermaine Jenas being really quite alarmingly baffled by Gareth Bale’s beans (but not Scholes) on toast, we really get to the good stuff.

It’s time for Scholes himself and a ‘strange twist to traditional nosh’.

But before kick-off he’d go from chocs to chocs in a curious mix of sweet and savoury food.

Literally no idea what this even means.

Appearing on the Back of the Net podcast, Scholes told presenter Gabby Logan: “Beans on toast, always, try to have it all the time.

“I always had a Turkish Delight as well, the night before the game.

Now the Turkish Delight is certainly a decision. Mediawatch doesn’t care for a Turkish Delight, personally, bringing to mind as it does a chilled body part dipped in chocolate.

But this isn’t a ‘strange twist to traditional nosh’ is it? It’s not a ‘curious mix of sweet and savoury food’ is it? It’s some savoury food followed by some sweet food. The precise make-up of it may be dubious for an elite athlete – or indeed any adult human – but it is in essence an entirely standard meal structure.

An accompanying picture caption perhaps explains this apparent confusion.

Paul Scholes added a couple of Turkish Delights to his beans

He doesn’t, lads. Read his quotes again. There is absolutely no indication here that Scholes is adding Turkish Delight directly to the beans like an actual psychopath. Where on earth have you got this idea from? Deviants, the lot of you.

But this isn’t even the maddest part. Consider these two paragraphs. Where do you start with these two paragraphs, which make up the entirety of one entry in this list and ask so many more questions than they answer.

Brighton’s ex-Tottenham full-back Pascal Gross is one of those players who in one sense eats quite normally… until you discover how he puts all the ingredients together.

The four-cap German, 32, limbers up conventionally with rice, chicken and olive oil – only to turn bizarre by topping off the combo with Weetabix.

You can’t just leave that dangling like that! Does he actually put Weetabix on rice, chicken and olive oil? You’ve not exactly earned our trust with the Scholes Turkish Delight fiasco, frankly. To be entirely honest, we simply don’t believe you.

But we need to go back here, don’t we? ‘ex-Tottenham full-back Pascal Gross’? What the? Have… have they got a 32-year-old Premier League midfielder confused with 44-year-old Skelmersdale United ‘player’-manager Pascal Chimbonda?

There are so many questions. So, so many.

Perhaps the most valid of which is ‘Just how far down this ridiculous and unwise food-based banter road had Mediawatch committed itself when that bombshell Jurgen Klopp news broke?’