There has been little sign of improvement since Solskjær took over and he looks ill-equipped to turn things aroundO n Friday 5 March 1909, Manchester United went to Burnley for an FA Cup quarter-final. The pitch was frozen, there was heavy snow and with 18 minutes remaining the referee, Herbert Bamlett, decided the match couldn’t go on. For United, the abandonment was fortunate: they had been 1-0 down but won the rearranged game 3-2 and went on, for the first time, to lift the FA Cup.Bamlett, having refereed the 1914 FA Cup final, turned his hand to management, taking charge of Oldham, Wigan Borough and Middlesbrough, guiding the latter to the verge of promotion when, in April 1927, he was...
Desperate negativity of his approach to playing Liverpool at home is José Mourinho’s management style in microcosmChampions aren’t flawless. It’s just that you only glimpse their flaws for a fleeting instant – a shadow you think you saw in the mirror – before they are gone.For around half an hour on Saturday evening, Liverpool looked flawed. Roared on by a capacity crowd, Tottenham slung themselves forward in waves: attacking the spaces, pinging crosses across the box, getting shots away. The substitutes Giovani Lo Celso and Érik Lamela grabbed control of the game in the middle third, often by sheer force of will alone. The irrepressible Lucas Moura scrapped and slalomed his way into threatening positions. Big chances came and went....
The manager’s entire career feels a rebuke to the idea that life is measured by trophies and his methods have ignited a regionA t teatime last Sunday came perhaps the broadcasting highlight of the festive period, a moment both dramatic and farcical that was soundtracked by a high‑pitched Ayrshire voice shouting the phrases “Big Wes!” and “His own net!” in various combinations, the delirious syntax conveying the sense of the moment far more eloquently than a finely turned sentence could ever have done. As Alan McInally screamed himself hoarse, Leeds fans went berserk, players celebrated and coaches cavorted, Marcelo Bielsa took a walk across his technical area in his big padded coat, seemingly no more moved by the injury-time own...
As so often when big clubs go bad, the manager carries the can for errors in recruitment and in the boardroomA nd so the grumbling of the Emirates has claimed another victim. By the end, Unai Emery cut a hapless figure, mumbling incoherently after defeat to Eintracht Frankfurt as the world collapsed around him. He was a scapegoat, as managers always are, barely less a patsy in his role as Arsène Wenger’s successor than he had been as Neymar’s minder at Paris Saint-Germain. He certainly should not be immune from criticism, but equally nobody should think his replacement will bring about improvement merely by not being Emery.Emery joined as a Europa League manager for a Europa League club; he will...
Football has amassed a vocabulary of territory but, more and more, the game at the top level is about possessionD uring the World Cup last year, the thriller writer Jeremy Duns, who by his own admission is not much of a football fan, asked why so many goalkeepers tended to punt the ball long down the pitch, which meant possession was lost more than half the time. It is one of those questions that seems at first sight naive but that, once you try to answer it, makes you interrogate a lot of basic assumptions about the game.Goalkeepers kick it long because, well, why? You try to formulate an answer: to get the ball away from their goal and nearer...