West Ham have the talent to cause Manchester City problems on opening weekend while David de Gea has a point to proveWhile there is plenty of excitement to be drawn from Liverpool’s much-lauded front three, a good argument could be made that the two most thrilling players in Jürgen Klopp’s side are defenders. Technically, anyway. In reality, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Andy Robertson spent last season making a mockery of their job descriptions, zooming forward with exuberant abandon and each laying on more goals than any of the side’s so-called attackers. Meanwhile, down in the Championship, a similar operation was in progress. Norwich’s full-back duo, Jamal Lewis and Max Aarons, are under strict instructions from Daniel Farke to play with the...
Gone are the days when it was enough for a new strip to look good. Designers are obsessed with spinning a complex yarnIn 1976 the groundbreaking choreographer Peter Darrell debuted Mary Queen of Scots, an attempt to tell the story of the doomed monarch entirely through the medium of dance. “Darrell’s ballet is historically pretty accurate,” James Kennedy wrote in his review for the Guardian. “The events, as here transmuted into classical dance, did (more or less) happen. Why did Darrell and his lively company do it? Well, you can have marvellous historical plays and poignant, if imperfect, historical operas, so why not a successful historical ballet?”Forty-three years have now passed since Darrell’s ballet opened to the public, a near-half-century...
The Community Shield was sufficiently even for Liverpool to have won eventually and that is good news for the Premier LeagueIt is the Community Shield. Both sides were very obviously rusty. Both sides were slack in ways one would not expect them to be. Even the spray of shiny streamers to greet the winners felt understated, a little half-hearted. It is probably unwise to draw too many conclusions from a sultry August afternoon at Wembley but, if there is a lesson to be drawn, it is that last season may not be a blip, that there really may not be much between Manchester City and Liverpool.This has the potential to be one of the great rivalries, what Sunderland v Aston...
It’s that time of the year when clubs bring out their strips for the coming season, so which ones do we look back on fondly?There’s history behind this one. It was the first ever fluorescent outfield shirt (according to Umbro, at least) and kicked off a trend that has never really gone away (no surprise given it was said at the time that it was the best selling shirt, other than England kits, that Umbro had ever produced). But more importantly, to me at least, it was a) the first away shirt I ever owned and b) the shirt Sheffield United wore as they stormed to promotion to the old First Division in 1990, which was achieved via a 5-2...
City are serial winners with a great manager and squad but their short price is unusual when they have never reached the finalThe second week of Wimbledon is probably far too early to be thinking about football and what may happen at the business end of next season, unless you happen to be an ante-post gambler looking for some value in the long-term market before the competitions get under way.In which case you may be disappointed and surprised to find Manchester City priced as low as 4-1 to win the Champions League next season. Most bookmakers and betting exchanges have the English champions as clear favourites, with Barcelona offered at around 6-1 and Liverpool, Real Madrid and Juventus a little...