Manchester City are peaking at the right time, Brentford risk their season petering out and Spurs live in the land of uncertaintyAfter Manchester City’s 3-0 humbling of Bayern Munich, next up at the Etihad is the Premier League’s second-bottom team, Leicester. This will be the champions’ last league game before a seismic clash with Arsenal on 26 April. Pep Guardiola’s men are in ripe form just as the treble roves into sight, with next Wednesday’s return at Bayern in the Champions League coming three days before a Wembley trip to take on Sheffield United in the FA Cup semi-finals. Erling Haaland is adding assists to his goal-gluttony, Bernardo Silva’s dancing feet are back, and Rúben Dias is a colossus in...
Arsenal overcame a significant hurdle in their title quest, in large part thanks to the England winger’s excellent first goalAs Bukayo Saka sheep-crooked the ball away from Vitalii Mykolenko with his left foot, then pushed it on with his right, finding a clear, crisp square of green inside the Everton penalty area, Jordan Pickford crouched low in front of him, hands funnelled between his knees, sensing the danger close to the ground, the obvious target by his feet.Saka took one quick step and changed the subject, going high instead, pinging the ball with a thrillingly pure contact towards the smallest available space, near post, top corner, and bullseye-ing the square of netting beyond Pickford’s belatedly raised left hand. Continue reading...
Graham Potter pleads for patience, while Trent Alexander-Arnold’s form is a cause for concern – at least to someCasemiro wins things. Before arriving in Manchester he had claimed five Champions Leagues, three La Liga titles, one Copa América and 15 other trophies for club and country. He’d won 10 of the 12 major finals he’d played. Now he has a Carabao Cup. Manchester United signed a player with an intimate knowledge of that winning feeling. But would any of that experience count in a team that had forgotten what was required to get over the line? Without him they had lost three finals in five years while finishing second in the league on two occasions. How fitting that his headed...
Spanish teenager was brave on the ball, as was Cody Gakpo, although Liverpool also enjoyed the luck against EvertonWell, they always say the form book goes out of the window on derby day. At the conclusion of this game, as Liverpool’s players shared backslaps and embraces on the pitch, as Jürgen Klopp strode over to the Kop to punch the air with his harpoon-fist, as Anfield buzzed to the strains of “going down, going down, going down”, it was possible to sense a curious and unfamiliar vibe around this place. Two-nil against Everton. Salah on the scoresheet. Was this … normality?Things have not felt normal at Liverpool for a while. It’s not just the football, which has been cold and...
Survival, hard work, staying in the game, protecting what you have: this is not simply Dyche’s football tactic but an identityThere is a tantalising alternative history of English football in which Sean Dyche does not get offered the Burnley job in October 2012. Instead, he continues to plug away in the position he had started a month earlier, as an assistant to Stuart Pearce in the England Under-21 setup. Perhaps over the following years, it is he and not Gareth Southgate who emerges as the natural heir of English football’s new dawn.The fields of St George’s Park resound to the gospel of 4-4-2. Danny Ings wins 100 caps and a World Cup Golden Boot. England beat Italy in the Euro...