Hugo Lloris ends his madcap day on a high, Everton work out how to stop Chelsea and Salomón Rondón proves his worthUnai Emery delivered an overdue update on Danny Welbeck, the Arsenal striker who was stricken against Sporting in the Europa League last Thursday. Welbeck, the manager reported, underwent surgery last Friday to repair his badly broken ankle and he will be out for some time. With Welbeck’s contract due to expire at the end of the season, has he played his final game for the club? Emery had more pressing matters with his strikers against Wolves and he made a tactical change at half‑time, switching from 4-2-3-1 to 4-3-1-2 in order to allow Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang to come in from...
Manchester City’s golden pair of old lags proved the dominant forces as the champions ran rings around Manchester UnitedOn an afternoon of cold, imperious dominance at the Etihad Stadium, two things stood out. First Manchester City produced passages of football that were utterly breathtaking, so beautifully engineered in their movement and passing that at times the result felt like an inevitability.And second David Silva and Sergio Agüero, the two most bizarrely gong-free superstars in the Premier League, were once again the dominant forces. It is an unarguable truth of this City project. For all the hundreds of millions spent, the renovation of every surface, the best trick City ever pulled was signing Silva and Agüero eight and seven years ago...
All Mourinho’s instincts will be to kill the game but going for broke represents his best chance of another famous winWhen people said they wanted José Mourinho to make Manchester United more like Alex Ferguson’s treble winners, this, presumably, isn’t quite what they meant. The capacity to fight back, to score late goals and to win games that have seemed lost is undoubtedly a useful one, but it does raise major questions about how Mourinho should approach Sunday’s Manchester derby.Wednesday’s victory at Juventus was the third time in the last six games that United have found a winner in the final five minutes, but it was also the fifth time in those six matches that they had conceded the opening...
José Mourinho to antagonise Manchester City, Mark Hughes on the brink and an Everton reunion for Ross BarkleyThe moments Jose Mourinho has cherished most in his career are those when he could thumb his nose at expectation and the established order. Wednesday night’s post-match gurning and chuckling in Turin showed he has lost none of his appetite for personal vindication and vindictiveness. Such occasions were in short supply at cash-rich Chelsea, an Inter Milan dominating Serie A or when managing Real Madrid. And his attempts to paint Manchester United as bedraggled underdogs have usually defied credibility. Sunday at the Etihad, though, is an occasion he can paint himself as a freedom fighter. The Premier League title is all but surrendered...
Whatever the objections, video technology in the Champions League cannot be worse than what happened at the EtihadThe first thing to say about the Raheem Sterling “penalty” incident that caused so much amusement and embarrassment in Manchester City’s 6-0 rout of Shakhtar Donetsk at the Etihad is that Viktor Kassai, the Hungarian referee who immediately pointed to the spot, was directly behind the chasing defender and probably thought a foul had been committed. Related: Manchester City paid Roberto Mancini extra money via Abu Dhabi club, leak says Related: VAR enjoys largely positive World Cup debut to confound football’s luddites Continue reading...