Morning.

Early one from me as I sit and watch the cricket. Hopefully England can get the white wash and finish the year on a high.

The warmer weather and rain has cleared the snow,. With the World Cup now done football should be getting back to normal.

We also have 5 working days of no posts strikes, so hopefully Royal Mail can clear the backlog and get you all your gifts out this week (I have had post once this month!).

I watched some of the final yesterday whilst I went from pub to pub doing some last minute Christmas shopping up town.

As we blogged yesterday, I did not care who won the final; but it seems like plenty were overly excited to see Lionel Messi lift the trophy.

I’ve seen him play live and he is a fantastic footballer. The second best I’ve seen after Thierry Henry.

To still be performing at such a high level at 35, 19 years after making your debut is testament to both his mentality and fitness.

Messi is still one of the best players on the planet – if not the best – and has a drive and determination to stay there I do not see in other footballers.

The only comparisons I can see if Rafa Federer and Rafael Nadal, as well as Jimmy Anderson.

if Messi is still doing it at 40, then we can talk about him as one of the greatest sportsman of all time, alongside Anderson. And let’s remember that Anderson has done it on a cold evening in Burnley!

I’d imagine this week we will see the likes of Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli in the training pictures.

Both would have been given a week off following Brazil and England’s exit last weekend. A chance to relax the mind.

We play next Monday, so an easy session for them today to ease their way back in before we begin to focus on West Ham.

It will be interesting to see if William Saliba is straight back into training considering how little he played at the World Cup – although losing the final will be as mentally exhausting as physically.

Would not be surprised if he is given the week off and we see Rob Holding start against West Ham.

Anyway, I’m glad the World Cup is over. As predicted “the best World Cup ever” line was put out by FIFA as they continued to be a useful idiot in Qatar’s sports-washing.

All the pundits out there are also complicit, and many showed themselves up as hypocrites.

Alex Scott “taking a stand” whilst holidaying in Dubai. Pick a side.

And Gary Neville using his job as a pundit to make a party political broadcast, slamming workers rights in the UK in an attempt to defend the Qatari’s. H

Neville has spent the last month on beIN, Qatar’s main sports broadcaster. So maybe he should stop lecturing the rest of us on workers rights whilst being paid by a regime that built a World Cup through modern slavery and the death of 1000s of migrant workers.

I am sure Qatar put Neville up in a nice 5* hotel whilst Bangladeshi, Pakistani and other south Asian workers lived in horrendous conditions.

At least now we can concentrate on our football. Although our game, and Arsenal, are infected by middle-East businesses acting on behalf of the Emirati, using the Premier League and Premier League clubs to promote their states to take the focus off the human rights, the slavery, and more.

Pakistan have got 15 runs in the course of me writing this. Lead by 41, 4 wickets down.

Ball is spinning so this game is not over. Anything over 150 will be a tricky chase on this wicket.

Enjoy your Monday.

Keenos