This season is fantastic. The whole thing - the parity, the empty stands, the Covid-stricken Birmingham car salesmen - is like a shuttle returning to the atmosphere, its shuddering fuselage rapidly shedding heat resistant panels, the whole thing barely hanging on.

Answer me this: were the Premier League as an entity returning to earth in the above scenario, who would be at the helm of its shuttle? A big part of me likes to think it would be Kasper Schmeichel. The Leicester City keeper is a reliable presence, but with a look about him that says “focused, but only to a point.“ You sense that if things went tits up onboard, Kasper would look for a solution, but finding none would fall easily into the role of consoling raconteur.

It’s not every day you hurtle into the Pacific Ocean nose down at terminal velocity. Schmeichel's consoling arm around your shoulder might just slacken the pace some.

Everyone must love Marine

By now you must be aware of Marine AFC, the Liverpudlian part-timers that yielded 5-0 to Spurs in the FA Cup two Saturdays ago. Stories abound of the club’s charming ground, and disappointment at not being allowed to host fans for the historic day.

But what you may not know is how much money Marine actually made from the game. By selling more than 30,000 virtual tickets at £10 a pop, the club raked in over £300,000, a sum said to have set them up financially for a decade or more.

And that’s before merchandise and whatever else you flog when you’re in the money (brand equity?): Arsenal legend and all around vibesman Ian Wright wore a Marine hat on-air during the BBC’s match coverage and declared himself a ‘Marine Ultra’. That's gotta ship a few tops to Ohio, anyhow.

As a fan of snickering at things I’ll tell you that it’s easy to snicker at this story. It feels quaint until you remember that it underlines why the lower leagues are so important to football's health. The game matters to communities large and small. It unifies and entertains. It lets us buy things, and sell things. And it lets us get hopped up on champagne in the garden and watch Gareth Bale trample past like the brittle talisman of hope that he is.

The John Stones scoring race

Manchester City’s resurgent centre back, John Stones, scored twice against Crystal Palace on Sunday, including the game’s opener, a towering header past Vicente Guaita off a ridiculous-per-usual Kevin DeBruyne cross.

As an aside, which header is better? A towering one or a diving one? Tough call, pals.

City went on to roger Palace 4-0, but the real story is this clip of John Stones cutting LINES after City won the Premier League back in 2019. Maybe you’ve seen his moves making the rounds; try as I do I can’t get them quite right, but I’m all over the vibes that Stones is throwing out.

An honourable mention goes to Leroy Sane partying like a one man gang in the background, and seemingly only a few beers away from a shotgun wedding in Dubai, which may not even be possible, but doesn’t make me any less happy.

Bernardo Silva: a revelation

I discovered Chicken Shop Date last week on a break from work. I’m certain it appeared in my feed because of Pengest Munch (aka Chicken Conoisseur), which is another London-based chicken shop-inspired YouTube show that I've watched, which is furthermore very, very hard to come to terms with.

I’ll start by saying that I understand everything and nothing about Chicken Shop Date. The show is a 3/10 compared to some of the mad shit on YouTube, and the fact that I find it so confusing speaks to my limited capacity for accepting the Internet as anything other than a vehicle for live At-The-Drive-In videos.

Regardless, one episode features host Amelia on "dates" with Jesse Lingard and Bernardo Silva. Lingard is as expected (loud, goofy, charming, loud), but Silva is a different animal, and a surprising one at that.

Soft-spoken and mischievous, at one point the City winger expresses mild concern at eating a french fry (“They will kill me at the club”). In another instance he displays an intentionally wobbly facility with English (“What’s your favourite food?” “Breakfast”). Throughout the segment Sliva appears on the verge of either laughter or tears, which is a good summary of my Internet life, such as it is.

What to make of this?

1. I enjoy Bernardo Silva now more than I used to

2. Neither Chicken Shop Date nor Pengest Munch was not made with me in mind

3. Very few things these days are