Luton’s return to the top flight, a return of Everton’s anxieties and a big showdown at Stamford BridgeVincent Kompany’s old club provide a litmus test for his current one for the second time in six months. Burnley were storming towards the Championship title and unbeaten in 18 matches when pitted away at Manchester City in the FA Cup quarter-finals in March. Club officials, as the new Mission to Burnley documentary reveals, viewed the tie as a gauge of Burnley’s Premier League credentials while Kompany fired up his players with talk of Wembley. They were swatted aside 6-0. There is no shame in a sound beating at the home of soon-to-be treble winners but Kompany will expect a more competitive display...
Goalkeeper could soon have competition from David Raya but he produced fine saves to thwart Manchester CityIt didn’t take long for Joe Hart to realise the writing was on the wall for him at Manchester City under Pep Guardiola. “He said: ‘Of course you’ll be given the opportunity, but …’ As soon as there are any buts at the end you know there’s a decision,” the former England goalkeeper recalled last year. “It was a two-hour conversation that kind of ended with him saying: ‘I can’t see this working.’”Hart is by no means alone. Yaya Touré, Raheem Sterling, Gabriel Jesus and Oleksandr Zinchenko are some of the big names jettisoned by the City manager in his pursuit of perfection since...
The game’s stakeholders must meet with Jewish bodies to take guidance and spell out the penalties for discriminating against my communityFootball is rooted in love. As kids, we love the simple joy of the game, and as we grow alongside it we love how it melds with what we love – community, family and friends. Football is who we are.But where there are in-groups there are out-groups, and while as fans our antipathy to everyone who is not “us” mainly constitutes harmless fun … sometimes it doesn’t. The WhatsApp conversations of the Ashburton Army, a prominent Arsenal supporter group, were riddled with antisemitism that included references to Israel, the Holocaust and circumcision. Though I wasn’t surprised when I heard about...
The effort required to compete with Manchester City caught up with Mikel Arteta’s side in their defeat at Nottingham ForestIn recent months Mikel Arteta has, on occasion, brought a young olive tree into team meetings. It resembles a bigger equivalent that stands outside the manager’s office, whose occupant cites it as a club symbol and an exemplar of the need for sound roots. On a warm mid-May evening, Arsenal’s title pretensions were finally lost in the forest: it was the Tricky Trees, nourished by a relentlessly positive home environment, who handed Manchester City the most bloodless of triumphs while guaranteeing their own survival.Such a low-key coronation befits what this title race ultimately became: City, operating at a consistent high-tempo purr...
This was no choke but Manchester City simply have a better squad, all-time great manager and nation-state wealthIn the moment of full operatic collapse, the pain of a season of dashed and throttled glory reaching its narrative end point, the Emirates Stadium was treated to the sight of Roberto De Zerbi doing a knee slide.A slightly creaky one but with sufficient momentum to get a little purchase on the lime green early summer turf, fist pumping, head up sedately. Brighton had just gone 3-0 up in this game, playing a lovely, breezy, light kind of pass‑and-run football. And De Zerbi had marched and pranced and barked around his technical area all afternoon, chest puffed, like an alpha squirrel taking control...