Crunch time for Manchester City, Liverpool and Spurs, while Watford could be sent downFor the second week in a row, Liverpool can get their work done before sitting back to see how Manchester City fare. The extent of any European bounce or, in City’s case, hangover may be hard to predict but Jürgen Klopp’s men have certainly built up a fearsome head of steam to carry into the final four games. Like Liverpool, Spurs have a rival sitting just above them who, by and large, keep on winning: falling five points behind Arsenal this weekend could prove very costly going into Thursday’s north London derby and it adds to the sense that neither team can really afford anything but victory...
While few would claim Pogba has been a success at Manchester United, his decline reflects the deep dysfunction at the clubThat first training session. Has ever a training session been so romanticised and mythologised as Paul Pogba’s first for Juventus in 2012? Is there a training session you would rather have been there to see in the flesh? “He is not real,” Giorgio Chiellini remembers thinking as they watched their new teenage magician at work. “Are they blind in Manchester?” Gigi Buffon exclaimed. “We were just laughing in total disbelief,” Andrea Pirlo later wrote. “That a player with so much obvious quality was able to leave a club the size of Manchester United for free.”Well, you can write your own...
The marathon wait for a VAR check at Arsenal could have been tolerable if we could have listened inDuring the four minutes and 39 seconds that passed between the ball hitting the back of the net for Arsenal’s disallowed second “goal” against Manchester United on Saturday, the subsequent VAR check and Bukayo Saka wheeling away in celebration after scoring the consolation spot-kick awarded in its place, there was plenty of confusion. On the pitch, in the stands, in households around the country and even in the BT Sport commentary box – nobody except the referee, Craig Pawson, and his assistants seemed quite sure what exactly was going on.The big screen informed fans a possible offside was being checked and Eddie...
Their top-four hopes are all but over as Bukayo Saka helped Arsenal to a 3-1 victory in a fun, slightly delirious gameIn the days since Erik ten Hag’s announcement as Manchester United’s next manager the talk has turned, hungrily, to the scale of the task. There is a kind of relish in this. How many years are we talking now? What’s the current bid? I hear five. I hear six. How about 10 years. How about 100 years. How about infinite years.It is a pointless discussion. Partly because it has no content, nothing but numbers plucked out of the air. Let’s face it, if you’re walking in the wrong direction you’re not going to get there at all. But there...
Erik ten Hag will inherit the worst Old Trafford team since the late 1980s and has it all to prove in a comprehensive rebuild “Big place, this,” Sir Alex Ferguson would say as he gazed around Old Trafford in the early days, a sense of awe in those gruff tones. Big job, too. When Ferguson took over from Ron Atkinson as the Manchester United manager in November 1986, the club were fourth from bottom of the old First Division and the culture was all wrong, especially in the playing squad, where there was too much boozing and not enough achieving.There will doubtless be a moment when the scale of it all hits Erik ten Hag, who was confirmed on Thursday...