A title win this season would come in spite of a string of injuries – whether it ends up being Liverpool or any other teamRetaining the title is hard, proverbially harder than winning it the first time – although that clearly to an extent depends on what you’re up against. But if Liverpool do become the 27th side in English league history successfully to defend their crown, they will have done so in conditions more different to the initial success than any of their predecessors. Quarter of the way through the season, their record unbeaten home run extended to 64 games, they are level on points with the leaders and, despite all their injuries, look by far the most likely...
Just because his methods can elevate players to unanticipated heights does not mean his squad is not subject to strainThe temptation after a team, particularly a promoted team, has lost back-to-back games 4-1 is to suggest they need to go back to basics, rein in their exuberance and keep things tight. But Marcelo Bielsa will not do that. Leeds have lost three of their past four games and slipped down the table – albeit they went into the weekend with a four-point lead over the bottom five – but he has never compromised before and he is not about to start at home to Arsenal on Sunday afternoon.That is Bielsa’s greatest strength and his greatest weakness. His style is high-risk...
Critics wanting a team built around a great creator ignore that successful national sides tend to play without riskThey’ll tell you football is a simple game, but it’s not, not really, not at the very highest level. It is still just about possible to win games by telling nine of your outfielders to stay behind the ball and whacking it long to the big bloke or the quick bloke up top, but not often and not consistently.Top-level club football these days is about complex structures, about pressing at the right time and in the right disposition, about disrupting the internal dynamics of the opposition while keeping your own varied enough that they are hard to disrupt. Related: Liverpool blow as...
Forget the Nations League: this is a rare opportunity for the England manager to perfect his tactics against superior sidesThere is a website called The Size of Belgium that for more than a decade has been dutifully tracking the Anglophone world’s curiously enduring habit of using the country’s area as a rhetorical unit of measurement. For example, “an area the size of Belgium” is lost globally to deforestation each year, according to the United Nations. The search area for missing flight MH370 was described in several media outlets as “the size of Belgium”. The Lonely Planet guidebook, meanwhile, refers to Yorkshire as “half the size of Belgium”.How did Belgium ascend to this exalted status? Not, you have to assume, through...
Prolific captain has added assists to his game and could thrive in a deeper role in Gareth Southgate’s 3-4-3 formationIt was the second game of Gareth Southgate’s tenure as England Under-21s head coach – away to Finland in 2013 – the team were trailing 1-0 and they needed a creative spark. On the bench was Harry Kane. “Which showed what we know about talent observation,” Southgate says with a smile.Southgate brought him on in the 58th minute, he played him as a No 10 and, nine minutes later, he watched him accept a pass in midfield, squeeze in between two challengers and drift away from a third before releasing Wilfried Zaha with a perfect ball around the full-back. Zaha crossed...