Mings the merciful and a tale of two handballs

HANDLE WITH CARE A pint of foaming shaft belonging to the hardest bloke in the pub. The wrong child from nursery. Somebody's else's suitcase at the airport carousel. Who among us hasn't picked something up by mistake and been forced to rue our error? However, few have done so as publicly as Tyrone Mings, who in front of 23,466 largely delighted attendees at the Jan Breydel Stadion, made the critical error of picking up the ball after a short goal kick had been prodded his way by Villa goalkeeper Emi Martínez during Aston Villa's Bigger Cup match against Club Brugge . While Football Daily can only guess what was going through the skipper's mind as he leaned over, picked up the ball and placed it on the edge of the six-yard box, we have a fair idea what his manager was thinking when the ref proceeded to award the home side a penalty for handball. Unai Emery's expression ran the gamut from bafflement, through withering contempt and finally settled on pure thunder.

Already on a yellow card in his Bigger Cup debut, Mings was inexplicably spared a second booking for what can charitably be described as his brain freeze, but the Belgians' captain, Hans Vanaken, scored from the spot and won the game thanks to the defender's act of absent-mindedness. As funny as it was, it was difficult not to empathise with Mings, making only his second appearance after 14 months on the sidelines with a serious knee injury, an absence so lengthy he apparently forgot the laws of the game he plays for a living. "It is a very, very strange mistake, but it's football," sighed Emery, whose side are still very handily placed in the extremely long group stage table . "We have to forget it quickly. It's the biggest mistake I have witnessed in my career. This mistake is not going to happen again for a long time – I don't think in my lifetime."

Then again, it's an error that has already happened twice in one German second division match this season, while Mings's rick was almost an exact replica of an incident in which Arsenal defender Gabriel picked up the ball from a goal kick nudged his way by David Raya against Bayern Munich last season. On that particular occasion Gabriel's blushes were spared, with the referee subsequently telling Bayern's manager that he wasn't going to punish what he viewed as "a kid's mistake". And while the decision to award Brugge a penalty prompted some pearl-clutching over "the spirit of the game", as masters of the dark arts of time-wasting and extreme faffery when it comes to dawdling over goal kicks, on balance it can be argued Villa probably deserved their licks on this occasion.

While the Mings mishap was the first recorded foul of its kind in the history of football that Arsenal got away with and another team was punished for, Gunners fans were given their own reasons to gripe later in the evening when they were denied a stonewall spot kick before conceding what looked an extremely harsh one in their defeat at Inter . "We were extremely harshly done," fumed Mikel Arteta , with some justification, after a game that could have gone either way despite the home side having just one shot on target: their penalty. "These are the margins in this game so it's very hard to accept. There's nothing unfortunately that we can do and we're not going to be able to change it." With a daunting Premier League assignment at Chelsea looming this weekend, the Arsenal manager may also want to voice his annoyance at some of his stars' noticeably weak performances.

LIVE ON BIG WEBSITE Join Will Unwin from 5.45pm GMT for hot Big Vase minute-by-minute updates from Galatasaray 1-2 Tottenham, while Scott Murray will then be on deck for Manchester United 2-0 PAOK at 8pm.

QUOTE OF THE DAY "Four days before the final, Daniel Levy called us all together to announce that, with the support of a sponsor, we would each receive a luxury aviator watch from the club. At first, we were excited to see the elegant boxes. Then we opened them and discovered he'd had the back of each timepiece engraved with the player's name and 'Champions League Finalist 2019'. 'Finalist'. Who does such a thing at a moment like this? I still haven't got over it, and I'm not alone. If we'd won, he wouldn't have asked for the watches back to have 'winner' engraved instead" – Hugo Lloris gets some Spurs-related things off his chest in extracts from his new book .

I can assure you that the fan who chucked a pig's head on to the field at Corinthians v Palmeiras ( yesterday's Football Daily ) was a Corintiano because no away fans are allowed into either stadium for derbies between these teams" – Ryan Lloyd.

In these corporate days of uber-professional football, with managers having a dozens of people in their coaching teams, marginal gains, and players having chefs, trainers and strict regimes, Mikel Arteta being so dozy he picks the ball up before it has gone out of play and Tyrone Mings being so unobservant he picks up the ball to place it for a goal kick just after Emi Martínez has already taken it is a heartening throwback to a bygone era. In which case, can we also bring back £5 admission and no waiting lists for season tickets?" – Noble Francis.

Arguably Celtic's best European display for two decades received a paltry 22 words of coverage in my third favourite tea-time daily football email newsletter (yesterday's News, Bits and Bobs, full email edition). That's almost short enough to be conveyed in haiku form, in fact: Celtic roars at home, Leipzig silenced, three to one, Press turns a blind eye" – Joe Brown.

Flogging the dead horse which is the 'great headlines' thread (Football Daily letters passim) while simultaneously patting myself on the back, I humbly submit one I wrote when working as a sports reporter/sub for the Slough and Windsor Observer. Windsor and Eton FC were knocked out of the FA Cup in the qualifying round by the Met Police and our headline was: 'They fought the law ... and the law won.' Enough years have passed that I can confess that although I covered the fortunes of W&E, I was hoping they would lose solely so I could use that" – Andy Stiff.

Send letters to . Today's letter o' the day winner is ... Andy Stiff, who lands a Football Weekly scarf . Terms and conditions for our competitions can be viewed here .

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It's David Squires' latest flamin' Australian football cartoon on ... the Make Ronaldinho Rich Again tour .

SKY BLUES FALL IN Despite describing Mark Robins as one of the Sky Blues' "greatest ever managers" for helping them from the depths of League Two in 2017 to the brink of the Premier League, Coventry's board have mercilessly given him the boot . "There is no doubt that Coventry City today would not be where it is today without the inspired actions of Mark and his team," parped a club statement after a 2-1 home defeat by Derby left them 17th in the Championship, in which Robins had been the longest-serving manager. "[He] was able to galvanise players, staff, fans and the club as a whole to incredible feats." He'll now be able to do that elsewhere.

NEWS, BITS AND BOBS The Lionesses face a tasty test after being drawn alongside Spain for next year's Nations League. Portugal and Belgium complete the group.

There's no place for Kylian Mbappé in France's latest Nations League squad. "I've had discussions with him, it is a decision that I took for this block of matches only," tooted head coach Didier Deschamps. "Kylian wanted to come."

Lee Carsley is signing off with an England squad that includes Newcastle's Lewis Hall and Southampton's Taylor Harwood-Bellis . "They're both players who have played a lot of minutes this season and have shown they can consistently play in the Premier League at a high level," he whooped.

Julen Lopetegui could be in a bit of trouble, with West Ham to review his position if they lose again on the weekend.

Welcome to hell? Ange Postecoglou doesn't mind a visit and is expecting an "unbelievable atmosphere" when Spurs face Galatasaray in Bigger Vase.

What did André Onana get up to on Tuesday, you ask? He kept an eye on his new boss , who was masterminding Sporting's victory over Manchester City.

It's not looking good for PSG in Bigger Cup . That and more in our roundup from Wednesday night's action.

And Millwall are racking up the wins in the Championship, with Japhet Tanganga striking the winner against Leeds to send them fifth.

STILL WANT MORE? The latest Bigger Cup review is here, from John Brewin .

VAR has magnified handball injustices in the game so it's time to adjust the penalties, writes Max Rushden .

Arsenal, with two wins from their last six, have regressed as an attacking entity, reckons Barney Ronay .

Arne Slot's loving his new gig , having taken Liverpool to the summit of the Premier League and Bigger Cup, too.

And Sid Lowe reports on the troubles at Real Madrid , with Carlo Ancelotti, usually the calmest man in the room, admitting: "We have to be worried."

MEMORY LANE Joe Jordan is a cult hero at Milan, with the Scot's goals in the early 1980s helping the Rossoneri back to Serie A. The former striker returned to Milan in February 2011 as the assistant manager to Harry Redknapp at Tottenham, and wasted no time in getting to grips with another famed Milan hard man, Gennaro Gattuso. The Italian put his hands around Jordan's neck during Spurs' 1-0 win in their Big Cup round-of-16 first leg, with the two men nearly coming to blows.

"He lost the place," Jordan would later explain to Sky Sports. "He's captaining his club but had a problem with the players, a problem with the referee and a problem with himself. And then he picked on an old man like me . I don't hold any grudges, just a pity I wasn't playing ... he did invite me to the training ground six months later to be his guest there but I never got the chance."

Gattuso received a yellow card (!) for the incidents, ruling him out of the second leg in which Spurs secured a goalless draw to progress to the quarter-finals, where they were trounced by Real Madrid. Gattuso has since spoken on that night: "I made a mistake and I feel ashamed. It's something I did and it was an unjustifiable error," he told Corriere della Sera in 2022. "I could say that these things happen on the pitch, but I am ashamed of it. I have a 14-year-old son. Do you think I am not ashamed every time he rightly asks me why I did it?"