Manchester United’s man-marking tactics shut out the Premier League leaders and Antonio Conte may find others trying the same approachJosé Mourinho’s Manchester United are not the first side to defeat Antonio Conte’s Chelsea or even the first side to defeat Conte’s Chelsea since their season-changing switch to 3-4-3 back in October but no other side has nullified Chelsea’s attacking threats so effectively. This was the first time for a decade that Chelsea did not have a shot on target in a Premier League match. Suddenly, with Tottenham only four points behind, the title race is back on and Chelsea’s remaining opponents have a tactical template to follow. Related: Tottenham's Mauricio Pochettino fires early shot at 'artificial' Chelsea | Sachin Nakrani...
Zlatan Ibrahimovic makes chances out of nothing which covers up his team’s lack of creativity, but Mourinho could help his striker with braver team selectionThroughout Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s long, varied career across eight different clubs in six separate countries, his teams have consistently benefited from his genius while also suffering from so-called Ibra-dependence. The Swede is so consistently brilliant, and conjures up moments of magic from seemingly unthreatening situations, that his teams become reliant on him to a staggering extent.Manchester United’s dependence is hardly an overnight development considering his sensational first Premier League campaign – he has now scored 17 and assisted five of Manchester United’s 46 goals – but his opener against Sunderland was a perfect demonstration of how he...
The Barcelona and Bayern Munich players were already familiar with Guardiola’s complex juego de posición theory – at City he was virtually starting from scratchThe fashion these days is to knife a manager at the first sign of trouble. Nobody is allowed to build, nobody is allowed to learn from a mistake. Move to a new country, take over a new team, try to adapt to a new environment and if you’re not winning titles six months later you’re a fraud. Neither Jürgen Klopp nor Pep Guardiola are under pressure as such heading into Sunday’s game at the Etihad, but both are facing grumblings of discontent.When Steve McClaren was sacked by Derby last week it meant that a quarter of...
Antonio Conte has been praised for his bold use of Victor Moses and Marcos Alonso but history suggests it is part of a wider trend dating back to the 1960sBarring an extraordinary collapse, this season’s Premier League title will have been decided at half-time at the Emirates Stadium on 24 September when Antonio Conte moved from a back four to a back three. The game was already lost but Chelsea, adapting remarkably swiftly to the new shape, then embarked on their record 13-match winning run.It was a change that, rightly, has earned Conte great praise for his decisiveness and his capacity, albeit unhindered by the demands of European football, to instil a new formation. But its radicalness has passed largely...
Defeat at Swansea made it 610 minutes since Leicester’s feted forwards last found the net in the league – and the riddle is at the heart of Leicester’s worriesIt may have been defensive lapses that cost Leicester City defeat at Swansea, inflating their relegation worries, but at least as significant is the fact that they haven’t scored a league goal this year, a run that now stretches to 610 minutes. It is a problem with many sources, but the bare fact is that Jamie Vardy and Riyad Mahrez, the two forwards whose brilliance was instrumental in them winning the title, simply are not firing.Claudio Ranieri made clear last week he had spoken to both players, trying to coax out of...