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...
Arsenal might fancy their chances at Anfield and three new managers begin survival bidsThis will be the fourth meeting between Leicester and Chelsea this calendar year, clubs of differing resources whose fortunes nonetheless seem tangled together. Leicester went top after beating Chelsea 2-0 at home in January, James Maddison scoring the second goal before cheerfully claiming: “We knew they switched off at set pieces,” an observation that felt terminal to Frank Lampard’s employment. Having played some part in Thomas Tuchel’s arrival, Leicester won the FA Cup final against him in May, before league defeat at Stamford Bridge three days later helped to ensure the Foxes would narrowly miss out on the Champions League yet again. Chelsea are now European champions...
The energetic manager watched his side fail to have a shot on target in his Premier League comeback at Goodison ParkTributes to Nuno Espiríto Santo had been few and far between this week until Antonio Conte found a fitting way to mark his predecessor’s reign. In the Italian’s first Premier League match in charge of Tottenham, just as in the Portuguese’s last, Spurs had no shots on target. Perhaps Nuno nodded on approvingly from afar.The paradox is that 0-0 felt the definitive Nuno scoreline, but his Tottenham never secured a stalemate in his ill-fated reign. Instead, after the breathless excitement of Conte’s bow against Vitesse came a game where, although Giovani Lo Celso struck the post, the only efforts on...
The manager spent £1.7m in the summer and is doing his best but structural flaws overseen by Farhad Moshiri and Marcel Brands are the root of the club’s problemsThe reaction to Everton’s 13-minute collapse against Watford was telling. Scorn rained down on players and manager alike after a 2-1 lead in the 78th minute became a 5-2 defeat by the 91st, but a sizeable number of fans in the main stand at Goodison Park headed for the directors’ box to accuse the major shareholder, Farhad Moshiri, and the director of football, Marcel Brands, of deep-rooted mismanagement. Anger has understandably risen to the top.After three successive Premier League defeats, one win in seven matches and a woeful response to the Watford...
Everton manager’s rice-and-vegetables approach is not to all tastes but who better to lead the club to the game’s high table?What we want and what we need are often very different things. You get home weary in the evening and look around the kitchen. You probably could knock something reasonably tasty together from the vegetables and the brown rice, but you feel the urge of the delivery. Perhaps you go for the familiar pizza, the comfortingly big easy flavours. There’s the greasy satisfaction of feeling full, but in the morning you feel bloated – and then a glimpse at the receipt provokes another wave of regret.Or maybe you try the fashionable new German or Swiss place everybody’s raving about. It...