Three defeats in four games for Jurgen Klopp’s side hint at a vulnerability to be found on the flanksEnter: the wobble. On a chilly, slightly wild night at Stamford Bridge Chelsea progressed to the quarter-finals of the FA cup at the expense of the team previously known as Jürgen Klopp’s Irresistible Red Machine.Sport loves a premature note of crisis. Perhaps one or two will now be offered, although Klopp has probably earned a little breathing space before the cleaver is unsheathed. Liverpool played well in patches and might have wrenched the game their way with better finishing. But there was something else here too, a sense of a pattern emerging. Even, whisper it, of some more systemic vulnerability being winkled...
Underrated Pearson has transformed Watford, Wolves’ unsung hero comes to fore and Messi and Griezmann just don’t clickThe sound of a top-flight stadium reverberating to “We’ve got super Nigel Pearson, he knows exactly what we need” (tune: Bad Moon Rising) can be filed among the things few envisaged in August. But Watford’s win against Liverpool was a measure of the uplift one of the season’s less likely appointments has contrived. “He is always about feet on the floor, he [has] never overreacted and you have to stay focused,” said Abdoulaye Doucouré. “He showed us videos and said we can do it. Nigel is a great, great manager, a great lad, and now he will keep everyone on the floor to...
Caretaker manager has brought in new rigour at Bayern, something lacking so far at Chelsea under Frank LampardBayern Munich may not have all the answers, but they know all the right questions. They can finish you in more ways than almost any other team on the planet. You play through the press and they smother you with possession. You lock the front gate and they find a way around the side. You sit deep and they weave their dainty triangles around you. You commit high and they make you turn and run. Thwart their slick passing game for one half, and they simply take you to pieces in the next.This, essentially, is what happened to Chelsea here: after maintaining a...
The French striker made up for lost time and Giovani Lo Celso was a guilty pleasure, but anticlimax was the overall sensationThere was still plenty to love, of course. There always is in this game: whatever the standard, whatever the stakes. Here, it was Chelsea’s two smartly taken left-footed goals, the first a sharp chance for the irrepressible Olivier Giroud, the second a thunderous finish by Marcos Alonso, a player who for all his manifold qualities never looks happier than when trying to leather a football as hard as he can.Giroud was a delightful, puppyish presence: starved of a first-team start since November and eager to make up for lost time. Perhaps his greatest quality is the disruption he creates:...
Liverpool, Manchester City, Spurs and Chelsea face differing challenges in a Champions League group stage that is likely to be one of the last in the competition’s current formatThe Champions League returns on Tuesday with Liverpool back at the stadium where they won their sixth European crown last year. Atlético Madrid will represent a formidable obstacle as Jürgen Klopp and his players attempt the unlikely feat of reaching a third successive Champions League final in addition to claiming a first English title in 30 years, though of the four English teams aiming for a place in the last eight it could be argued that Liverpool have been best favoured by the draw.It is true that Tottenham’s opponents, RB Leipzig, have...