Another handball horror show, Calvert-Lewin is benefiting from Ancelotti effect and sentiment alone will not save LampardOle Gunnar Solskjær said Manchester United had “three or four weeks to catch up to a few teams”, and how it showed. United could not get out to prevent crosses or track Brighton’s runners. Their lack of match sharpness is a consequence of their lack of a pre-season. It was interesting to hear Gareth Southgate say the players in his England squad in early September who had played in European competition until mid‑August were the fittest because they had, effectively, played all the way through. Solskjær has a different view and feels comfortable in advancing it as mitigation, essentially because it is not his...
Bielsa’s side were fun to watch and wildly entertaining but the champions were far more dominant than 4-3 scoreline suggestsOn his first day in his new prison, Marcelo Bielsa walked into the yard and, following the time-honoured precedent, approached the biggest fellow. convict he could find, and smashed him in the mouth. He may have lost the fight that ensued, but he landed sufficient blows for the wider point to be made. El Loco hasn’t changed. There will be no tempering of the approach – not that anybody should ever have thought there would be. Leeds are dangerous and demand respect.Or at least that was how it felt during Liverpool’s breathless 4-3 win at Anfield on Saturday. The spectacle, the...
Leeds went toe to toe with the champions in a majestic opening half-hour that broke all the rules of football as we know itOh yes, you can definitely come again. This was, frankly, a bonkers game of football. At 5.30pm Michael Oliver blew the starting whistle on Liverpool’s defence of their Premier League title. At which point, enter: the Bielsa zone.In that opening half-hour the hands of the clock seemed to spin, the sun turned a shade of purple, the birds above Anfield flew backward through the sky. Related: Liverpool finally sink Leeds with Mo Salah hat-trick in thriller Continue reading...
Will Marcelo Bielsa’s team be another Sheffield United or more like Norwich? Much may depend on record signing RodrigoGuardian writers’ predicted position: 10th (NB: this is not necessarily Louise Taylor’s prediction but the average of our writers’ tips)Last season’s position: 1st in the Championship Related: Premier League 2020-21 season preview No 8: Fulham Broadly rise and fall, triumph and disaster, rinse and repeat. Since their foundation in 1919 Leeds have won three top-tier league titles, one FA Cup, a League Cup and two European Fairs Cups. The glory days arrived with Don Revie’s installation in 1961 and their re-emergence as a major force came under Howard Wilkinson in the early 1990s, winning the 1992 title. In 2001, managed by David...
The Premier League and EFL organised lavish trophy presentation ceremonies inside football grounds. What did they expect to happen?If only they had known. If only there had been some kind of clue. A recent precedent from which they might have learned a thing or two. A well-documented and much-traduced pandemic-unfriendly, massed gathering of jubilant football fans outside an Anfield-sized, Anfield-shaped football stadium called Anfield, for example. If only.Then maybe, just maybe, the decision-makers at Premier League HQ would have seen incontrovertible evidence that might have helped them to decide upon doing the decent thing. To realise that, in the interests of public health during a global pandemic, staging a trophy presentation inside an Anfield-sized, Anfield-shaped football stadium called Anfield may...