Hull’s Harry Maguire is dreaming of England, Spurs are better placed than ever to best Arsène Wenger’s Arsenal and Aitor Karanka continues to divide opinionThe Dozen: the weekend’s best Premier League photos In a cartoon history of Arsenal’s ongoing run of springtime top-four escapology acts – the battle, above all, to stay ahead of Spurs – Arsène Wenger would probably be depicted right now wriggling furiously inside a sealed lead trunk, still rattling his padlocks but descending towards the seabed. Tottenham are six points ahead of Arsenal with 11 games to play, to Arsenal’s 12. Tighter spots have been negotiated. But as Spurs beat Everton to take their half of the weekend’s London-Merseyside derby exchange it was hard to avoid...
Sacking managers is the traditional response for teams in trouble but there are no easy ways to beat the drop and time is running out for the top flight’s bottom sixSack the manager? Keep the manager? Sell your best player and import seven new ones, five on loan? Go warm‑weather training in Dubai? Cancel the Gulf trip?Switch to a sweeper system? Revert to a flat back four? Play two up front? Keep the faith with a lone striker? Go cold‑weather training in New York? Go lukewarm‑weather training in Benidorm? Abolish days off? Start regretting Champions League progress? Related: Premier League: 10 talking points from the weekend’s action Continue reading...
After 14 months of failure in front of their home fans, Sam Allardyce has to throw his signings in at the deep end to have any chance of staving off relegationThose bleary-eyed Crystal Palace players who had filed into the main meeting room upstairs at the club’s training centre early on Sunday morning did so with a sense of dread. The next few hours were spent revisiting the horrors of that first-half capitulation to Sunderland, wincing at the sight of panic setting in at the first setback against the division’s bottom club, or at the paralysis which undermined any hope of recovery. A ninth home defeat had condemned this side to a place in the bottom two.Sam Allardyce and his...
Will Daniel Sturridge get a chance to regain his verve? Will Ranieri fine-tune for a relegation battle? Will Ravel Morrison return to Old Trafford?A clutch of (fool)hardy Lincoln City fans queued through Wednesday night in sub-zero temperatures in order to get their gloved hands on the last tickets for their club’s biggest and indeed only fourth-round FA Cup tie since 1976. Those fans were evidently not discouraged by the fact that the National League leaders had suffered their heaviest defeat of the season the previous night, when they were beaten 3-0 by Barrow, whose rugged approach on a treacherous pitch fairly knocked Danny Cowley’s men out of their impish stride. The Championship leaders, Brighton, will probably not resort to such...
Jesus is finally available for Manchester City, Klopp faces a choice between Origi and Sturridge and Costa may have to bide time for return to Chelsea starting XIAs Manchester United prepare to visit the Britannia Stadium, examining Stoke City’s record against the league’s best sides this season offers an indication of where Mark Hughes and José Mourinho should both be looking for improvement. Stoke’s record against the elite is awful: five of their six matches against the league’s top six sides have ended in heavy defeats. They have lost 3-1 at Arsenal, 4-2 at Chelsea and 4-1 at Liverpool, while they were thumped 4-1 and 4-0 at home by Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur respectively. Good enough to take the...