Amid a frenetic opening at Newcastle, the midfielder retains his composure and resolve to keep his team’s faint title hopes aliveLast year, Martin Ødegaard returned to Drammen, the small town in Norway where he grew up. He went back to the pitch where he learned to play and found that the gravel surface he remembered had been replaced with artificial grass. The kids kicking a ball about on the pitch, he observed, didn’t seem as committed as he had been. In his day, these games had really mattered.The tone couldn’t have been more middle-aged. Of course things were better in his day, of course they were tougher. They didn’t have these fancy facilities and it didn’t do them any harm,...
It was a team performance against Arsenal that verged on a kind of physical, technical and tactical perfectionWhen did it become not just clear but utterly unavoidable that Manchester City were winning this game? And not just winning it but offering up the most refined of sporting strangulations?Perhaps it was the moment on 25 minutes when Rob Holding came skittering out wildly, like a drop of water on a hot pan, as Kevin De Bruyne hared in behind him, a moment of total positional panic, when the game just seemed suddenly to fall apart in the face of that sky blue pressure. Continue reading...
Throwing away two-goal leads twice in a week is partly the result of knowing Manchester City are closing inObjects in the rear-view mirror may be closer than they seem. For what feels like at least a decade now, from way back in the early years of this endless Premier League season, Arsenal have maintained their lead over Manchester City at the top of the table, keeping that sky blue vessel of sporting perfection in the near slipstream all the way from autumn into spring.At the final whistle on a muggy, sullen afternoon at the London Stadium five of Arsenal’s outfield players slumped intothe same position, bent at the waist, staying on their feet, but kidney-punched, feeling that wash of late-season...
Manchester City are peaking at the right time, Brentford risk their season petering out and Spurs live in the land of uncertaintyAfter Manchester City’s 3-0 humbling of Bayern Munich, next up at the Etihad is the Premier League’s second-bottom team, Leicester. This will be the champions’ last league game before a seismic clash with Arsenal on 26 April. Pep Guardiola’s men are in ripe form just as the treble roves into sight, with next Wednesday’s return at Bayern in the Champions League coming three days before a Wembley trip to take on Sheffield United in the FA Cup semi-finals. Erling Haaland is adding assists to his goal-gluttony, Bernardo Silva’s dancing feet are back, and Rúben Dias is a colossus in...
Goalkeeper makes sure his side leave Anfield with a point as he showed his full array of incredible skills to deny LiverpoolWhen the season-crowning montages are spliced into shape a few weeks from now, and depending on how the story shakes down from here, it may be tempting to suggest Aaron Ramsdale saved Arsenal’s league title challenge at Anfield.In fairness, he seemed to save pretty much everything else on a wild, thrilling afternoon. This was a 2-2 draw that could end up being anything, points saved, points thrown away, corners turned, but which is perhaps best left to spin on its own axis, a self-contained event, elite sport pulled into stirring, ragged, angry shapes, all those patterns and plans and...