Watching Spurs and Harry Kane against Monaco this week it was hard not to think about the chalk spot employed by Pep Guardiola for Raheem SterlingFootball managers often like to make an entrance, to impose their own eviscerating personality from the start. Brian Clough kicked things off at Leeds United by telling the players to throw their medals in the bin because they were cheats. Bill Norman, moustache-twirling managerial hard-man of the 1920s, announced himself to his Hartlepool squad by stripping naked and rolling around in the snow in front of them after sensing a reluctance to follow him outside on a bitterly cold day.More recently José Mourinho seems to have decided the best approach at Manchester United is to...
Chelsea v Liverpool could be a Friday night thriller, Leicester and Tottenham both need a routine home win, and Mark Hughes is feeling the heat at StokeLiverpool are in rampant attacking form, Eden Hazard seems to be on song again, Diego Costa is back to his magnificent and provocative best and David Luiz is set for his second Chelsea debut: everything points to the most entertaining Premier League match of the season so far and another momentous match between two clubs who have built up a rich back catalogue of classics together. Given the wonderful maelstrom that is likely to be unleashed, it will be a big and surprising vote of confidence from the respective managers if Daniel Sturridge and...
It was an apt defeat, for the culture shock was not about moving up the road, it was about Spurs finding themselves in elite European footballDon’t blame Wembley. Don’t blame the spiffy dressing rooms or the slightly different tone and timbre of the noise around those deeply tiered stands on a close, sweaty night in London.In many ways Tottenham’s 2-1 opening Group E defeat to an excellent Monaco team was perfectly apt, entirely at home in its surroundings, a fine metaphor for the Premier League’s wider engagement with elite level European football. Wonderful staging. Endless hunger for the spectacle, with that record crowd announced over the PA even as Spurs attacked at the end. All combined with a sense of...