Reds’ talisman broke the back of his former club before Roma hit back with two goals as he caught his breath on the benchTen minutes before half-time on a wild night of Champions League football Mohamed Salah did perhaps the best thing so far of the many wonderful things contained in his dreamy first Liverpool season.By that stage Anfield was in one of those periods of constant uproar, jiggled and tickled and dragged into a state of intoxication as Liverpool battered away at Roma without drawing breath. It is no secret this Liverpool team play in surges, moments when the day seems to turn a shade of deep red and when the front three become a whirl of malevolent action....
Harry Kane is out of sorts, Joe Hart soars before being floored, and Stoke must choose between youth and experience up frontWhile Southampton will take something from getting this far in the world’s most celebrated domestic cup competition there are other, more pressing priorities, such as making a late dash for safety in the Premier League. Can they take any hope from their performance? Not from the first half. Olivier Giroud’s goal at the beginning of the second period forced Mark Hughes to change things, however, and it was to his team’s benefit. A 3-5-2 became a 3-4-3 and suddenly Charlie Austin was getting service. Southampton will feel they could and should have had an equaliser before Chelsea settled the...
Roberto Firmino defies easy categorisation and while he may not have done enough to warrant a place in the PFA’s team of the season he is a vital part of Jürgen Klopp’s attacking armoury“We like lists because we don’t want to die,” the highbrow novelist Umberto Eco said a few years ago, going on to talk at length about the artistic urge to preserve, the Homeric tradition of listing generals and soldiers as a means of glorifying human existence and the fact he was being paid to promote a big exhibition all about lists at the time.This may be true. But it does overlook the other type of list, lists that make you actively question the value of life itself....
Jürgen Klopp has shown that you can improve a side while selling your best player – it is a victory for team functionality, philosophy and identityI have heard Jürgen Klopp cite inspirations as varied as heavy metal music and Rocky Balboa so I wouldn’t be surprised if the Liverpool manager was also familiar with Aristotle. After all, Klopp showed in January that his football philosophy is very much in line with the great Greek thinker who believed that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”.Klopp shocked many in the football world when almost four months ago he sanctioned the sale of his most technically gifted player, Philippe Coutinho, who had been outstanding in the first half of the season and...
José Mourinho needs to make drastic changes, Rafael Benítez is getting best out of his players and Jordan Ayew is on a missionHaving so meekly allowed Manchester City to claim the Premier League title, a process of rebuilding Manchester United into future champions starts now. The non-inclusion of Marouane Fellaini, Daley Blind, Matteo Darmian and Luke Shaw in José Mourinho’s match‑day 18 for this game at Old Trafford indicated where a long-awaited clear-out of David Moyes and Louis van Gaal recruits is likely to begin. But it will take more than that to revitalise United. The shapeless sludge of this performance against West Brom was no anomaly. Chief among the reasons United have been left in City’s wake is Mourinho’s...