Anfield feels it has lost its key man but statistics do not back that up and suggest that, while Barcelona have signed a fine player, Jürgen Klopp has alternativesNo sooner had Philippe Coutinho’s frenetic scribble sealed a £142m transfer to Barcelona than he was forced to hurdle the first attempted tackle on him at Camp Nou. What, one interrogator asked at his unveiling, did he make of his fee? “It’s an honour but I’ll leave the topic of money for the clubs,” he deftly replied. Yet the question is bound to scratch and linger, and could potentially turn poisonous. Is such a sum – the second biggest transfer in history – for the 25-year-old Brazilian justified?Barcelona’s thinking is easy to...
Mark Robins’ eye-catching Coventry deserve their headlines, Liverpool have a bargain in Andrew Robertson and Wolves are already good enough for top flightAmid all the hoopla over the departing Mark Hughes, it is right to take a moment to praise Coventry City. They were deserved winners of the third-round tie at the Ricoh Arena, despite giving up the greater number of chances to the visitors. The Sky Blues played with a determination and energy you might expect of a team assuming the David role in a Goliath encounter. But they were also calm on the ball and often quite cute on it, too. Their play was all the more striking, given the starting XI had an average age of 24...
The new £75m central defender had a comfortable bow in the FA Cup third-round win over Everton at Anfield and even managed to score the late winnerA sledgehammer to crack a nut was the expression that came to mind as Liverpool’s new £75m defender made his debut against a side with only one goal in their last four games and no shots on target in either of their last two home matches. Everton supporters were clinging to the slender hope that Jürgen Klopp might have taken a risk in throwing Virgil van Dijk straight into the heat of a Merseyside derby.There were few worries on that score, even before the centre-half scored the winning goal five minutes from the end....
The former Everton captain Kevin Ratcliffe reminisces about past FA Cup ties between his club and Liverpool as the teams prepare to face each other in the third round at Anfield on FridayMy first experience of a Merseyside derby was also my first win over Liverpool – the FA Cup fourth round tie of January 1981 – but it is remembered for different reasons. We won 2-1 with Imre Varadi scoring our second goal and he celebrated by running straight over to the paddock at Goodison Park where the Evertonians would usually be. He didn’t realise that, because it was an FA Cup tie and Liverpool had been given more tickets than usual, the paddock had been given over to...
By taking a stand over racial abuse he has received, Liverpool’s 17-year-old striker shames those who run the game but offers hope for the next generationIt isn’t easy knowing whether the people occupying football’s ivory towers have actually noted what Rhian Brewster has had to say in the past few days. Unless I have missed it, the executives at Uefa and Fifa have not uttered a word in response and, frankly, that is no surprise whatsoever. Anyone calling Uefa since 22 December would get a cheery answerphone message saying its offices are closed and the lights are out until 4 January. Fifa, meanwhile, is on its own extended Christmas break. “Hope you are not in a hurry,” one of its...