It is Lampard v Bielsa and a West Midlands derby in the Championship while Mansfield take on tricky NewportAway from all of the talk of peering over fences and peeking through bushes, at least 180 minutes of on-field entertainment will separate these bickering teams. Marcelo Bielsa’s side need to stop the rot, and fast, having warmed up for the tail end of the season by losing to the worst team in the division. As for Derby, they should take confidence from their recent run of four wins in six matches. History suggests Leeds, despite flagging, have the best chance of being promoted. Since 1992, the inception of the play-off system in its current four-team format involving the teams between third...
Sticking with Daniel Farke last summer,shrewd signings and players buying into the ideas of a collective spirit have lifted the Canaries into the top flightIt was just after a 3-0 home defeat that people at Norwich started to think they were on the right track. The Canaries had won just one of their first five games, James Maddison and Josh Murphy had been sold in the summer and most of the arrivals were relative unknowns. After a disappointing 14th-place finish last season, the waning faith from the stands in manager Daniel Farke was understandable.But afterwards a few Norwich players commented that for the first 30 minutes or so of that game things clicked, and they realised they could play the...
The forward known as ‘Chelé’ by fans is attracting Premier League interest after developing at non-league IlkestonThe immediate threat to Sheffield United’s promotion push is a familiar one. It was November 2014 when Nigel Clough rang Kevin Wilson, the former Chelsea striker, about taking a talented Ilkeston teenager on trial at Bramall Lane. The player was Kieran Wallace, who has since reunited with Clough at Burton Albion, but another name on the lips of scouts up and down the country inevitably cropped up during that same conversation: Che Adams.Within 24 hours the 18-year‑old striker had left Ilkeston to sign for United for £135,000. But on Wednesday evening at St Andrew’s, Adams will line up for Birmingham City, looking to derail...
Who will win the Premier League, the FA Cup and the Champions League? And who is going up and down?Dominic Fifield: Manchester City. The race with Liverpool should go to the wire but greater squad depth and experience may just tilt it towards the reigning champions. Continue reading...
The Netflix series is fascinating for many reasons, but primarily for the insight it gives into the plight of players who have fallen just below the standards of the game’s eliteAmong the many joys of the eight-part Netflix series Sunderland ’Til I Die is a glimpse of football that is seldom seen, and little discussed in the media. Not the behind-the-scenes problems faced by managers with limited budgets and a distant owner looking to sell. That’s all fascinating stuff, though not quite as warts-and-all gripping as Premier Passions, the 1998 fly-on-the-dressing-room-wall account of Sunderland’s relegation, in which Peter Reid’s team talks would have made a stevedore blush.No, what was most revealing was the plight of professional sportsmen a rung or,...