And so to Milan’s Stadio Giuseppe Meazza, more familiarly known as the San Siro, for our Wednesday evening Champions League match against Internazionale with the mini-league phase reaching its half-way point.

Yet again, it falls to my lot to preview a football match against a club whose roots lie with cricketers. Inter was a breakaway from the Milan Foot-Ball and Cricket Club, now simply AC Milan, whose own origin story involves a drunken evening of British expats (che sorpresa!) waxing nostalgic in 1899 about the games they played in the Old Country.

The nub of the Milanese schism was the Italian Football Federation’s attempt in 1907 to limit the number of foreign players. It had the cockamamie idea of restricting the Italian championship to teams with only Italians while creating a junior competition for teams that included foreigners. This prompted the leading teams, including Milan, to sit out both competitions in protest. However, for the following season, some proposed boycotting just the championship, making the lesser competition the superior one. 

It is not definitively clear how the arguments broke within the Milan club: to be all-expat, all-Italian, mixed, limited mixed. However, it is beyond doubt that its officials and members were deeply riven. In March 1908, the club’s assistant secretary, Giorgio Muggiani, a Milanese who had discovered a love of football while in boarding school in Switzerland, led a breakaway group of 43 other members who wanted the club to keep accepting foreign players alongside Italians. They set up their own team and named it Internazionale because, as Muggiani famously declared, ‘we are brothers of the world’.

Muggiani was an illustrator who became a distinguished Futurist graphic artist and created celebrated advertising posters for the likes of Pirelli, Campari and Martini. A story attributed to his son is that Inter’s colours derive from the crest his father drew for the new club. He wanted that to be as diametrically opposed to Milan’s predominantly fire-red insignia as he could get. The colour on the other end of his two-coloured red drawing pencil was blue. 

It sounds apocryphal, but perhaps no more incredible than Muggiani’s assertion that the midnight blue night sky over the l’Orologio restaurant, the artists’ hang-out where the separatists met, inspired Inter’s black and blue.

Black, blue and silver

The Nerazzurri have seen plenty of silverware of the non-culinary variety since that night: 20 league championships, nine Copa Italia, eight Supercopa Italia, three Champions League trophies, the same number of UEFA Cups and a World Club Cup. 

They wear the scudetto this season as defending Serie A champions and sit second, a point behind Napoli, whom they play next weekend. They have won seven of their 11 league games; their only defeat came in the Milan derby. In the CL, they have drawn at the Etihad, beaten Red Star at home and Young Boys away — all without conceding a goal, but neither have we. In the CL mini-league, we both have seven points. They sit two slots above the eighth-place cut-off for automatic qualification for the knock-out phase; we are one place below.

Simone Inzaghi, now in his fourth season in charge, consistently starts a 3-5-2, but it quickly becomes a 2-3-3-2 with the ball and a 5-3-2 without it. His team does not press high but looks to control the game with a mid-block and create the space to attack behind an opponent’s back line. Its wing-backs will put a lot of early crosses into those spaces, and its deep-lying playmaker, Turkey’s Hakan Calhanoglu, will also target those areas with long cross-field balls and late runs into the box. 

Without the ball, falling back into 5-3-2 blocks the centre and forces the opposition to work around the flanks. Inter allows the opposition plenty of shots (sixth highest among this season’s CL teams for shots conceded), but they have not yet led to any goals. In his pre-match press conference, Inzaghi stressed the importance of not letting us do anything with the ball when we have it. We have found breaking down that sort of defending tough sledging this season. The game has the makings of an attritional one.

Inter

With first-choice centre-back former Italian international Francesco Acerbi just returning from a hamstring injury, expect Inzaghi to start Switzerland’s keeper Yann Sommer, who has kept seven clean sheets in his 10 CL games with Inter, in front of a back line comprising veteran Dutch international Stefan de Vrij, France’s Benjamin Pavard, and Alessandro Bastoni, who has a propensity to drive high up the pitch in the manner of Calafiori, whom he plays alongside in the Italian national team. Promising young German defender Yann Bisseck will be on the bench.

Calhanoglu played 20 minutes off the bench at the weekend after missing the previous two games with a muscle injury. Thus, he will likely share the midfield duties across the 90 with Italy’s Nicolo Barella, Davide Fattesi, who arrived from Sassuolo in the summer, Piotr Zielinksi, who was picked up on a free from Napoli in the off-season and skippers Poland when Lewandowski is not playing, and Henrikh Mkhitaryan, formerly of this parish but enjoying an Indian summer to his career at 35. 

Dutch international Denzil Dumfries and Italian veteran Matteo Darmian are the right-wing-back candidates. Darmian did Inter’s pre-match press conference with Inzaghi, so he may be the one to get the nod. Brazilian Carlos Augusto is an injury doubt, so Italy’s Frederico Dimarco should start on the left. At 26, Dimarco is relatively youthful for this Inter side; the average age of the likely starting XI is approaching 31.

Club captain Lautaro Martinez and French international Marcus Thuram will be up top. The pairing will arguably be Gabriel and Saliba’s sternest test this season. Thuram is Inter’s leading goal scorer this term in the league with seven, plus five assists, followed by Martinez (5+3). The prolific Argentine was Serie A’s top scorer last season with 24 and headed the winner at the weekend from a Dimarco cross.

Mehdi Taremi, who captains the Iranian national side, for which he has scored 51 goals in 89 matches, and Marko Arnautovic (120 caps for Austria), a former West Ham teammate of Declan Rice, will be available from the bench. However, the Austrian is struggling to get over an eye infection. At 32 and 35, respectively, they were a couple of bargain pick-ups in the off-season to add seasoned squad depth. 

The Arsenal

After the meh-ness at St James’s Park, we need a lively response in a sold-out San Siro. The injury list is getting shorter but shifting: Rice has unexpectedly joined its ranks. While the return of Martin Ødegaard to training is heartening, we would see him on the bench at best; it looks from the training pictures that his ankle is still strapped. I’m not sure White and Timber have 90 minutes in their legs yet, but we will need Partey’s verticality in midfield even more in Rice’s absence. Thus: 

Raya

White, Saliba, Gabriel, Timber

Partey, Merino, Trossard

Saka, Havertz, Martinelli

We have played Inter only twice before, in the CL group stage in 2003-04. After losing 3-0 at Highbury, we had a glorious 5-1 win in the San Siro with goals from Henry (2), Ljungberg, Edu and Pires. Since then, we have failed to win or even score in our last four CL away trips to Italy.

A draw against Inter would not be terrible. Yet I will latch onto the fact that the Nerazzurri have never kept four consecutive clean sheets in the CL, and thus, we shall end a run of three winless games by grinding out a classic 1-0 to the Arsenal.

Enjoy the game ‘holics, near and far.

Tomorrow we embark on the longest journey in our Premier League schedule to visit the capital of Geordieland and the pinnacle of their ‘culture’. Interestingly, the name of this conurbation has mutated over two millennia to reach its present form: المخفر الرياضي الشمالي (almakhfir alriyadiu alshamaliu).

The site first appears in the historic record in 211AD as Pons Aelius at the north of the Roman legions’ bridge over the Tyne where they subsequently built a minor fort that played second fiddle to Corstopitum, a few miles east. 

After the Romans withdrew in 411, the site was again relegated from the historic record and presumably nothing of consequence occurred. It remained anonymous throughout the Anglo-Saxon era, even during the ‘Golden Age of Christian Northumbria’ and while at some point it was named ‘Munnaceaster’ (Monkchester) suggesting ecclesiastical activity, the venerable Bede made no reference to it.

Following the Norman conquest, the Northumbrians proved to be an awkward and belligerent bunch (quelle surprise?) and the Norman response was the merciless ‘harrowing of the north’, devastating the whole region so that it remained ‘poor and backward until the Industrial era’. In 1080, The son of William the Bastard built a wooden motte and bailey on the site of Monkchester which was subsequently replaced by a rectangular stone keep providing its new name, ‘New Castle’. This became England’s principal northern fortress in the centuries long border wars with the Scots.

Highlights of its subsequent history were the town declaring for Charles 1 in 1642 and them shutting their gates to the Old Pretender’s army in 1715 which is said to have earned residents of the town the moniker ‘Geordies’ after newly crowned George 1. Thus demonstrating that their leaders are as likely to make bad strategic decisions as good ones.

The football club was founded in 1892 from the amalgamation of Newcastle East End and Newcastle West End and joined the Football League in 1893 spending 92 seasons in the top flight since. As the only senior club in the city, it have become a cultural focus for the populace. United were most successful between 1904 and 1910 when they won an FA Cup and three of their four league titles. They have won five other FA Cups but have won no major domestic trophies since 1955 and were relegated from the Premier League in 2009 and 2016 returning promptly each time. After a brief period of flattering to deceive under John Hall and Kevin Keegan and then under Bobby Robson, they settled back into mediocrity and flirting with relegation.

After enduring the trials and tribulations of Mike Ashley’s ownership from 2007 to 2021 during which managerial quarrels, sackings, crowd dissatisfaction and austerity became the norm – a reprise of the ‘harrowing of the north’ – the Geordie nation wholeheartedly embraced the takeover of their club by a consortium dominated by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), hoping that their beloved ‘Mags’ would become a second dodgy, Middle Eastern sports-washing, petrodollar-fuelled, silverware magnet. This, despite Saudi Arabia’s notorious record on human rights, its authoritarian absolute monarchy and its clear aim of using that proud old club to sports-wash its appalling public image. A decision that matches their 1642 support of that believer in the ‘divine right of kings’, Charles 1.

Eddie Howe saved them from relegation in his first season after they had failed to win any of their first 14 games. The club then spent a fortune in 2022 bringing in Pope, Trippier, Botman, Burn, Targett (!), Guimarães and Isak while adding Gordon in January 2023 to build a strong team that qualified for the Champions League in fourth place in 2022-3 only to be eliminated in the group stage. The expectation that they would push on to reduce the Premier League to a two-way petro-dollar fuelled slugfest was palpable. They then added Barnes, Hall, Tonali, Minteh and Livramento in 2023.

However, the Premier League’s introduction of Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR) primarily to prevent clubs getting into financial difficulties but with an eye on the alleged questionable financial activities of the other Middle Eastern outfit, which was then under investigation, have considerably constrained that ambition as inflated sponsorship deals, under-the-table salaries, disguised owner largesse and dodgy financial statements are now on the PL check list. This summer, their imminent breach of the debt limits due to that 2022-3 splurge forced the sale of two talented young prospects in Elliot Anderson for £35m to Forest and Yankuba Minteh for £30m to Brighton to prevent the sale of one of their ‘crown jewels’, Isak, Guimarães or Gordon. Due to this stricture no-one of any consequence was signed this summer. 

This recent constriction of transfer incomings has put a dampener on Geordie euphoria though adding bitterness against the Premier League and the so-called ‘Red Cartel’ (expect an even more vitriolic reception, lads) whilst adding support for C130y in their case against the Premier League and their defence of charges of financial malfeasance. The team’s performances to date suggest a similar dampening effect on the players who had no doubt been lured to the club with promises of national dominance, silverware and parity with the other Arab mob. There were rumours that Gordon might have defected to the Mugsmashers this summer but, in the end, he did not; meanwhile, Guimarães was flashing an ankle at PSG and Isak is said to be considering a move soon (Arsenal are allegedly in the frame) and the internet is awash with speculations on potential replacements for the latter. 

Meanwhile, reports have appeared that those who control PIF on behalf of the one true king have diverted resources towards other sports less likely to acquire opprobrium from the backwash of sewage that may result from the C130y case. After all, chaps, what’s the point of sports washing? It’s not to gather more negative press!

The club currently sits twelfth in the league after nine games with three wins, three draws and three defeats, nine goals scored and ten conceded. In four home games, they have beaten the Saints 1-0, the Marshdwellers 2-1, notably drew 1-1 with C130y and lost 0-1 to Brighton. In five away games, they have drawn 1-1 with Bournemouth, won 2-1 at Wolves, lost 1-3 at Fulham, drew 0-0 at Everton and lost 1-2 at Chelsea. Their goals have come from Barnes (3; 1 assist), Isak (2; 1 assist), Gordon (2), Schär (1) and Joelinton (1). I think we can expect a tight low-scoring contest!

Newcastle United are likely to line up in a 4-3-3 with the probable starting eleven of Pope, Livramento, Schär, Burn, Hall; Tonali, Guimaräes, Joelinton; Murphy, Isak, Barnes/Gordon. Botman, Lascelles, Wilson, Targett, Dubravka and Trippier are currently listed as injured.

Talking of injuries, it’s time to consider the Arsenal…

Without doubt our accumulation of defender injuries plus Saliba’s suspension (job done, Gillet?) contributed directly to our failure to take the three points off the Mugsmashers last weekend, which our first half performance fully merited. The midweek victory over Preston North End reassured us that Timber has 45 minutes in him but Gabriel and White did not recover sufficiently to travel. Kiwior’s performance in Gabriel’s place was reassuringly strong (not to mention two assists) while Zinchenko did manage an hour before being replaced by MLS.

In his pre-match presser MA8 suggested that the Friday training session would determine whether Gabriel would be available but he confirmed that White and Ødegaard won’t make the trip. The recent performances of Nwaneri and MLS should give us confidence that we have the manpower to ride out this storm. Therefore I expect a starting 11 akin to the following with the variance primarily dependent on how well Gabriel performs in today’s training session and tests and with my personal first choices in bold:

Raya

Partey/Timber Saliba Gabriel/Kiwior Timber/Kiwior/MLS

Nwaneri/Partey/Trossard Rice Merino

Saka Havertz Martinelli

Partey has been a revelation recently as an inverted right back so I think he will get first call for that position but we do have the option of playing Timber there if MA8 wants to stiffen the midfield with three strong giants rather than giving Nwaneri another platform to demonstrate his talent which he might see as too big a gamble. His final option in midfield would be to play Trossard alongside Rice and Merino, a role in which his interchange of field positions with Havertz has proved fruitful in the past. It must be nice to have so many options.

We have been playing well and that first half against The Mugsmashers was truly magnificent. Meanwhile it’s five matches since the hosts have won in the Premier League. That should give us the confidence that we can take all three points home from Wali Yacoub Park so I predict a fine 2-0 to the Arsenal, though not without a struggle. 

The Bookies also think we are favourites to take all three points and both Paddy Power and Bet365 offer an Arsenal win at 19/20. Betfair offer a more tempting punt at 13/5 for Arsenal to win without conceding. However the Holic Pound is still going to support Ukraine’s struggle.

As you watch the match from your comfortable perch, wherever in the world, have a thought for CER and 21CG who, after their midweek nocturnal journey home from their visit to Deepdale, face a 3.00am start to attend this game and must then climb the north face of the Eiger ((c) C100) to get to their seats before taking the interminable road home. Courage mes braves!

The final conundrum in this match is wondering which diabolical reinterpretation or non-application of the Laws of the Game the PGMOL muppet with the whistle or Jared Gillet (whom I believe to be the VAR official – again!) will employ to ensure that we fail to take the points?

Nonetheless, enjoy the game, Holics!

And so to Deepdale, the long-standing home of Preston North End, for Wednesday evening’s fourth-round Carabao Cup tie.

Deepdale was initially a cricket ground. Preston North End CC leased a field on Deepdale Farm in 1875, and the cricketers started playing football three years later to keep fit during the winter after a failed flirtation with rugby to the same end. Preston North End FC was formally founded in 1880.

Deepdale was also used for baseball. Preston North End Baseball Club, run by the same men who ran the football club, competed in the professional National Baseball League of Great Britain’s sole season, 1890. Aston Villa, Derby County and Stoke were other football clubs involved, as were the county cricket clubs of Gloucestershire, Essex and Staffordshire. 

The same summer, PNE’s amateur side won the Amateur Championship Baseball Cup of Great Britain, sponsored by US sports equipment maker Spalding, whose eponymous founder, Albert Goodwill Spalding, was a tireless proselytiser of the game in Britain. It gained some traction in Yorkshire, which had 90 teams at one point, and the East Midlands. Older ‘holics may remember that Derby County used to play at The Baseball Ground.

Preston holds that Deepdale is the oldest ground continuously used for football. There are other claimants to that accolade. The original stadium hosted its record crowd of 38,000-42,000 (accounts vary, but contemporary ones cite the lower figure) for our top-of-the-table league visit in 1938. It was demolished in four phases around the turn of the Millennium and morphed into the modern 23,000-seat Deepdale of today. We last visited in 2017 for an FA Cup tie won by an 89th-minute Olivier Giroud goal.

Rock bottom

Preston was the inaugural winner of the Football League in 1888-89. Its team went unbeaten, winning 18 of 22 matches, and lifted the FA Cup without conceding a goal. Thus, it was the first team to do the double and the first Invincibles. Its starting XI contained seven ‘Scotch professors’, the skilful pioneers of short-passing ‘combination play’ lured by the lucre of the Football League clubs from the still amateur game north of the border when English football was still getting over being little more than a rugby maul without handling.

Preston would win the league again the following season, but their unbeaten run ended in the second game, a 5-3 defeat at Villa Park. Yet by the time we first visited Deepdale in September 1901, all that history was history. Preston had fallen into the Second Division, and over the decades that followed, they would spend as many seasons out of the top flight as in. Their only additional silverware was a solitary FA Cup in 1938. 

Following the retirement of the legendary Tom Finney, they again dropped out of the old First Division in 1960-61. It would only get worse. In 1985-86, they had to apply for re-election to the old Fourth Division and nearly folded. The Lilywhites have since stutteringly climbed back to the Championship, where they have settled since 2015 after nine Play-Off attempts across the second, third and fourth tiers. 

After a 3-3 draw at the weekend against Wayne Rooney’s Plymouth Argyle, having let a 3-0 lead slip, Preston currently lie 16th in the Championship, with three wins (all at home), five draws and four losses.

Heckingbottom

Ex-Sheffield United manager Paul Heckingbottom replaced Ryan Lowe in the Deepdale dugout after the first game of this season. Heckingbottom has vacillated in the league between the 3-5-2 he favoured at Bramall Lane and 4-2-3-1. However, he played a 4-4-2 in the second and third rounds of the league cup against Harrogate Town (thumped 5-0) and Fulham (beaten 17-16 on penalties after 1-1 at full time). In the only two games Heckingbottom has managed against us, both last season, the Blades got beaten 5-0 when he used a 4-4-2 and 3-0 using a 3-5-2.

Former England U-21 keeper Freddie Woodman will be their best-known name, although some ‘holics may recall midfielder Sam Greenwood. He was with our U-18s for two years before moving to Leeds in 2020. He has moved across the Pennines on loan.

If Heckingbottom goes with a back three, it will probably comprise Jordan Storey, Liam Lindsey and Welsh veteran Andrew Hughes. All three are good in the air and have plied their trade in the Championship and Leagues One and Two, although Lindsay played 64 games for Partick Thistle in the Scottish Premiership. Former Stuttgart centre-back Patrick Bauer, who also has top-flight experience in Portugal, is out injured.

Three of club skipper Ben Whiteman, Edinburgh-born Northern Ireland international Ali McCann, Dane Mads Frøkjær-Jensen and Icelandic international Stefán Teitur Thórdarson, who arrived from Silkeborg in the summer for 830,000 euros, will provide the core of the midfield. At wing-back, Brad Potts, newly returned from injury, will likely get the nod over Josh Bowler, a Forest loanee who missed the Plymouth game because of illness. Potts would drop to right-back if Heckingbottom goes with a back four.

Robbie Brady, who has 68 Ireland caps and played over 150 Premier League games, would have been a shoo-in to start on the left but did his ankle ligaments against Plymouth. With Potts back, Kaine Kesler-Hayden, a promising youngster on loan from Villa, will likely switch from right wing-back to left. Ryan Ledson, who scored the winner in the penalty marathon against Fulham, is an option from the bench. 

Heckingbottom floods the midfield with bodies and tends to make extensive tactical substitutions there during games, so there is a good chance of seeing most of them.

Upfront, Greenwood or former US international Duane Holmes will play behind another Dane, Emil Riis. First-choice centre forward Milutin Osmajic, a Montenegro international, is serving an eight-game suspension for channelling his inner Luis Suarez and biting Blackburn Rovers’ Owen Beck. Welsh international Chad Evans and Ireland international Will Keane, both ahead of Riis in the PNE pecking order and both of whom have played in the Premier League, are long-term injury absentees. 

Despite not appearing since last month, Osmajic is still Preston’s joint top scorer alongside Riis, Greenwood and Frøkjær-Jensen — with two. Goals have been a problem — only 13 scored in 12 league games, while the defence has conceded 17.

The Arsenal

Arteta says he will play a strong team, but after the exertions of the Liverpool game and with a trip to Geordie Arabia in prospect, he will rest legs regardless. Gabriel and Calafiori likely will not be available, but Timber is. I can see him, Partey, Rice, Havertz, Trossard and Martinelli all starting on the bench, along with the lesser-spotted Zinchenko, Raya (but not Neto, who is cup-tied) and some youngsters (Nichols, Kacurri, Kabia). Predicting team selection in these games is always a lottery. I’ll take a chance on: 

Setford

White, Saliba, Kiwior, Lewis-Skelly

Jorginho, Merino, Nwaneri

Saka, Jesus, Sterling

Preston will be typical Championship opposition, full of hard-working battlers in their mid-to-late twenties, good players whose careers haven’t quite fulfilled early promise. They will be short of Premier League quality, especially with Brady missing. They haven’t lost at Deepdale this season under Heckingbottom. Their one defeat came under Lowe. They are unbeaten in five, and will see this game as a free hit. We’ll have to put in a shift, but we should have the quality to beat them by at least two or three goals.

There is no VAR for this game. It will all be on the man with the whistle, Peter Bankes, from Merseyside, you’ll be shocked to learn, although he has given us only six yellow cards in eight games, of which we have won five.

A final note for CER, C100 and other travelling ‘holics: Preston’s Victorian Black Horse pub in Friargate is a semi-finalist for CAMRA’s Pub of the Year, 2024 award.

Enjoy the game, ‘holics, near and far.