Mason Greenwood’s goal at Brentford came straight from the Rangnick playbook of swift turnovers and direct runningWith 62 minutes gone at the Brentford Community Stadium something startling happened.Ralf Rangnick’s Manchester United – this collection of jumbled limbs, soldered and bolted together on its gurney – sprung unexpectedly to its feet, arms raised towards the light. Continue reading...
Arsenal should stay positive, Potter shows Benítez a trick and VAR makes refereeing harderOn the first Sunday of 2021, a first-half Chelsea capitulation against Manchester City hastened Frank Lampard’s exit and deepened a despondent mood. Twelve months on, Liverpool’s two early goals at Stamford Bridge could have induced Groundhog Day feelings. Instead, Thomas Tuchel’s side roared back and showed that, whatever other problems have recently beset the Chelsea manager on and off the field, this is a team that plays for him. Though they did so in a rather un-Tuchel-like manner. The intense atmosphere generated by the Premier League debut of safe standing was met with the kind of front-foot, high-tempo performance more associated with a Jürgen Klopp side. Chelsea...
The sudden Covid outbreaks at clubs threatens to derail the busy festive programme with fears of another shutdownMidnight on Monday is an unusual hour to announce a fixture postponement. Manchester United would not be playing Brentford on Tuesday, a Premier League statement with a timestamp of 23:53 said, because of “an ongoing Covid-19 outbreak within Manchester United’s squad”. If the news had to be released under the cover of darkness, it was tempting to wonder, how ongoing might the outbreak actually be?Clubs do not publish data on Covid cases within their squads and the Premier League doesn’t breakdown its division-wide stats, either. But earlier on Monday a record number of positives across the league had been confirmed, 42 in a...
Manchester City are leaking goals, Crystal Palace are not scoring enough and David Moyes has a quandaryThe teams that came second and third in last season’s Championship –and now sit in the form table’s bottom four – meet in what looks a seriously important encounter. Brentford go into it without Ivan Toney, who has tested positive for Covid, and Sergi Canós, suspended after getting a fifth booking of the season for taking off his shirt when celebrating a goal against Leeds last weekend. Watford also have significant injuries, most notably to the winger Ismaïla Sarr, and after a run of encouraging performances in extremely difficult fixtures must seize the opportunity presented by their next few games to haul themselves away...
Liverpool stepping up their title charge, Manchester United old boys scuppering Solskjær and Brighton letting it slipIt is a footnote to the weekend’s biggest story, but the final nail in Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s coffin was partly hammered in by four players who were at various points deemed not good enough for Manchester United. Ben Foster, Craig Cathcart, Tom Cleverley and Joshua King all made vital contributions to a Watford performance that brimmed with energy, intent and endeavour. United’s class of 2021 lacked all those qualities, and plenty more. They were simply overrun and, while Solskjær’s departure was both inevitable and correct, they might wonder whether a better engagement with the basics might have helped their old manager’s cause. After the...