Liverpool’s search for a penalty-taker goes on, Mauricio Pochettino appeared unruffled after defeat at Old Trafford and Manchester City don’t look invincibleNext Sunday, Manchester City host Arsenal at 1.30pm and Manchester United play Chelsea at 4pm; it really is amazing just how often the fixture list throws up these coincidences! And whatever happens in the first game, the pressure will be on those playing in the second, because if City win, those teams will be fighting to stay in touch; if they do not, they will be fighting to take advantage of a rare City slip. So how do Arsenal make that happen? Well, their attacking trident of Mesut Özil, Alexis Sánchez and Alexandre Lacazette are good enough to give...
The sight of the away end emptying long before the final whistle was blown in the 2-0 defeat at Leicester City told its own storyDavid Unsworth spent the majority of this match standing on the edge of his technical area. Occasionally he instructed his players to do something, while there were other moments when he could be seen encouraging those in white and grey with a firm clap. But more often than not he simply stood there, staring forward and perhaps wondering what on earth he has got himself into. Related: Leicester City 2-0 Everton: Premier League – as it happened Continue reading...
Former centre-half can bring back bite but a harder task will be to get everyone at the club, including the owner and chairman, pulling in the same directionDavid Unsworth has been in charge of Everton for only a week but has quickly become adept at saying all the right things. Yes, he would like the job permanently. Yes, Everton can climb out of trouble. And yes, they can still remember how to scrap if they have to.That last detail could be important, because Ronald Koeman appeared to have smoothed out all the rough edges of Everton’s old dogs-of-war approach before leaving, but Unsworth happens to be a paid-up member of the dogs‑of‑war era. And just to be on the safe...
Many top-flight clubs have been stripped of the right to dream of anything grander than existing. The result is boredom in some places and anger in othersSummer is a time of optimism for fans. The combination of new signings, managers and beginnings is the recipe for a heady, fantastical concoction. Forget about everything that went wrong in the 12 months before, the slate has been wiped clean. Hope trumps cynicism and everything feels possible as the season gets under way, at which point reality begins to take hold.This isn’t new. One of the more counterintuitive joys of fandom is revelling in negativity to the point where it almost becomes a competition to see who can absorb the most comic ineptitude....
Like Frank de Boer and Frank Rijkaard, Koeman is the latest in a line of managers to stumble outside the Ajax and Barcelona models in which they were schooledLong before he was sacked, a criticism of Ronald Koeman at Everton was that he seemed to regard the club as a stepping stone. “He called us Everton, he never called us ‘us’,” as the former Everton captain Kevin Ratcliffe put it on Monday. Koeman’s ultimate ambition, as he has made clear since he took his first steps in management with Vitesse in 2000, is to manage Barcelona.That seems ridiculous as he slinks away from Goodison Park after an unprecedented summer spree with Everton in the relegation zone. Perhaps now there have...