Fortunes on the pitch have changed this season but, as global super-clubs, they resemble each other more and moreIt was October 2021 and Jürgen Klopp was in a knife-twisting mood. “United never look happy when they play us,” he told his Liverpool squad in their final team meeting before their visit to Old Trafford. “They always want to use this game to sort out everything. We are different. We want to squeeze everything out of this amazing situation we have here.” The subtext was clear enough: this was a team liable to shatter on first contact. In for the kill.Before the game, as Liverpool coach Pep Lijnders recounts in his book Intensity, Klopp and his staff homed in on United’s...
Graham Potter pleads for patience, while Trent Alexander-Arnold’s form is a cause for concern – at least to someCasemiro wins things. Before arriving in Manchester he had claimed five Champions Leagues, three La Liga titles, one Copa América and 15 other trophies for club and country. He’d won 10 of the 12 major finals he’d played. Now he has a Carabao Cup. Manchester United signed a player with an intimate knowledge of that winning feeling. But would any of that experience count in a team that had forgotten what was required to get over the line? Without him they had lost three finals in five years while finishing second in the league on two occasions. How fitting that his headed...
After a decade of entropy the Dutchman’s simple competence has the club enjoying the present and looking to the futureThere was a funny moment at the end of this controlled, slow-burn, oddly inevitable Manchester United Wembley victory. As the final whistle blew and the players fell to their knees and shrieked and yelped, Diogo Dalot found himself running past the slender figure of Erik ten Hag, who was basically just standing there, hands still in his coat pockets.Dalot howled and danced and flexed his neck muscles, apparently expecting some kind of answering victory frenzy. Ten Hag politely shook his hand. Dalot froze, yelped some more, then basically ran off. Continue reading...
Some of Eddie Howe’s team are not likely to stay for much longer but Saudi fortune should see them continue to improveTrafalgar Square, Saturday evening. White smoke against a red sunset, the hot breath of a thousand singing voices wafting into the cold London air like pissed little doves. Wembley is still a day, a three-zone Oyster card journey and several cans away. But in a way, the 2023 League Cup final has already been under way for several hours.They’ve braved the trains, the traffic and London prices. Whole towns have emptied for the weekend. Sam Fender and his band have come along for the party, and pump out a raucous version of Local Hero. Everyone wants a piece of...
Antony and Fred took the game by storm at Old Trafford after a first-half horror show that ended with a brilliant Casemiro blockWhat a night, what an equaliser from Fred, what a winner from Antony, in a tale of two Brazilians who downed Barcelona and lit up Old Trafford for Manchester United.Fred blazed his equaliser home moments into the second half - off his right shin - and 10,000 volts jolted through the stadium because United had just turned frustration to joy. Whatever occurred from that juncture, Erik ten Hag’s men had already stunned Barça, informing Xavi’s side that they intended to keep on keeping their fans bouncing – and singing. Marcus Rashford and Antony raced in, and the congregation...