Feeble performance by team who should be doing so much better results in 4-1 home defeat by Liverpool that provides few signs of any improvement to comeIt was four, it should have been six, it could have been 10. West Ham United have hardly prospered since moving to the London Stadium but, like the thrashing by Arsenal last season or the Friday night thumping by Brighton last month, this was a defeat that will linger like a fish under the floorboards. It truly stank.Slaven Bilic will face questions about his future as manager after this result and rightly so. He has faced such questions before in his two‑and‑a‑half‑year tenure and survived but the naivety, the disorganisation and, by the end, a...
Liverpool’s search for a penalty-taker goes on, Mauricio Pochettino appeared unruffled after defeat at Old Trafford and Manchester City don’t look invincibleNext Sunday, Manchester City host Arsenal at 1.30pm and Manchester United play Chelsea at 4pm; it really is amazing just how often the fixture list throws up these coincidences! And whatever happens in the first game, the pressure will be on those playing in the second, because if City win, those teams will be fighting to stay in touch; if they do not, they will be fighting to take advantage of a rare City slip. So how do Arsenal make that happen? Well, their attacking trident of Mesut Özil, Alexis Sánchez and Alexandre Lacazette are good enough to give...
It is early days but managerial stability is powering an upsurge in results which suggests the Premier League sides can threaten Europe’s bestThe Champions League group stage is now at its halfway point, each team having played three matches with three more to come, and before anything happens to spoil the effect it might be worth pressing the pause button for a moment to take in the unexpectedly fine view.Not only does the Premier League boast the impressive total of five entrants this time, thanks to Manchester United’s dogged perseverance in last season’s Europa League, but all five English clubs at present top their groups. The competition is still young, yet even though Tottenham have visited the Bernabéu and Chelsea...
Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool all wanted him in the summer but Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain is still no nearer to holding down a regular first-team placeAt the height of the cold war, the Soviet Union developed a deep institutional suspicion towards denim jeans. Jeans and jean‑related items were seen as an emblem of western‑style decadence, a symbol for the younger generation of intoxicatingly subversive belief in modernism, artistic freedom and comfortable riveted trousers.There were heavy penalties for those caught up in the trade of blackmarket denim, what the police called “jeans crimes”. But this was a war the authorities always looked like losing. In 1975 prohibition was lifted. The ministry of light industry announced instead that it would start to produce its own...
Arsène Wenger must continue with golden front trio; Christopher Schindler was a great buy for Huddersfield; Manchester City defence is as key as their attackThis was the first time Arsène Wenger had started Mesut Özil, Alexandre Lacazette and Alexis Sánchez in his XI. Yet until Everton went down to 10 men Arsenal were hardly a goal machine, having struggled to a 2-1 lead when Idrissa Gueye was sent off. At this point Özil was on the scoresheet, and by the final whistle Lacazette and Sánchez had also registered. Wenger, of course, cannot rely on the opposition having a man getting his marching orders every game. But even before this happened there was cause for optimism: Sánchez created Özil’s strike while...