Scotland’s big two merrily portray themselves as global powerhouses so let’s leave the superlatives over reaching last 32Incongruous though it feels to state Celtic and Rangers can be happy, mutual cohabitors anywhere, the Europa League has supplied the perfect backdrop as a domestic title race – for now – rumbles on. The Old Firm’s progression to the last 32 of Europe’s second-tier domestic competition has left supporters and supposedly neutral onlookers grasping for superlatives. We’ll be subject to a few more days of this yet.Steven Gerrard can be forgiven giddy analysis, given it arrived in the immediate aftermath of Rangers’ 1-1 draw against Young Boys. It is, Gerrard insists, a “magnificent achievement” for his team to reach the knockout phase...
Recent history suggests that even under their charming, streetwise manager, Nuno Espírito Santo, they will do well to maintain last season’s form given the added burden of the Europa LeagueOnce more unto the breach. A new Premier League campaign is under way, but unlike at the outset of more recent August dawns, the dreary hegemony of the Big Six elite looks heartwarmingly under threat. Last season, the current top-flight grandees finished as expected: the thoroughbreds of Manchester City galloping first past the post, winning on the nod from Liverpool. Meanwhile, back at the furlong pole, Chelsea, Tottenham, Arsenal and Manchester United duked it out for the minor placings – so no major shocks there. Related: ‘We all got a free...
Club’s highest earner has underperformed this season and his manager has also left many fans underwhelmed. But the board does not appear to have the conviction to make a hard decisionAs Mesut Özil trudged, head bowed, around the pitch at the end of it all in Baku it was pertinent to wonder what has become of him and where it all goes from here. He is the lost playmaker. His once proud joy in the assist, his once delicate ability to be the subtle architect of a game, has dwindled to the point where it is really worth revisiting a highlights reel from previous years to remember how – even with that idiosyncratic languid style which means he seldom looks...
The manager could go after winning the Europa League and a top-three finish. Eden Hazard is on his way. It sums up ChelseaYou hope Maurizio Sarri enjoyed his first trophy in professional football – but this, surely, was not how he imagined it when he whiled away the hours working on the foreign exchange desk at a bank in Florence. Perhaps he had dreamed of one of the great citadels of European football, of Wembley or San Siro, of the Camp Nou or the Luzhniki, but instead he got the Olympic Stadium in Baku. It is a place so ill-conceived that not only is the stadium inaccessible to most of Europe but the pitch seems inaccessible from most of the...
Unai Emery’s side capitulated against Chelsea and, with such an important summer ahead, the damage may be severeThere was something almost pitiful about Unai Emery gesturing enthusiastically from his technical area, urging his team forwards, in the 90th minute at 4-1 down. He suddenly looked like a footballing King Canute, trying to stem a tide that washed all over Arsenal and left their present and future ambitions shipwrecked.The scale of the capitulation left Arsenal in shock. At the end of it all, the shattering despair felled their players. They had been banking on this, hoping that the Europa League final would bring a happy ending to this season and positivity for the next with a return to the Champions League....