Faced with the club missing out on Champions League football again, Manchester United’s manager makes the point that it is harder to buy successDoes José Mourinho have a point about power being divided in the Premier League, or is the manager of Manchester United simply trying to get his excuses in early?United still have a job on their hands to crack the top four this season, let alone get back to winning titles, and should a third season in four arrive without achieving Champions League football questions are going to be asked about the effectiveness of his stewardship in the light of all the money spent. Perhaps in anticipation of that scenario, Mourinho has just observed that winning anything in...
Pep Guardiola saw his side score six and concede six across two legs of the Champions League last 16 but blamed his high-scoring attack, not his high-conceding defence, for failurePep Guardiola was hired to win the Champions League for Manchester City and on Wednesday night they crashed out in the last 16 at the hands of Monaco. This is the unpalatable truth Khaldoon al-Mubarak, the chairman, and the chief executive-sporting director axis of Ferran Soriano and Txiki Begiristain have to digest with year one of their Get Guardiola master plan in tatters.If the Catalan was not required to win the competition in his first season the absolute minimum was to elevate style and offer clear evidence City are only fractions...
Gruelling festive fixture lists may not be good preparation for playing Champions League football in February but Tottenham were already out by ChristmasEnglish football may be about to plunge into one of its regular periods of introspection now that Leicester City are left as the only standard-bearers for the Premier League in the Champions League quarter-finals, though the rest of Europe will not find anything too surprising in this week’s developments. Related: Monaco’s Tiemoué Bakayoko condemns Manchester City to away-goal defeat Related: Arsène Wenger has been living on borrowed time at Arsenal for too long | Richard Williams Continue reading...
The frustrated manager faces a grilling after his cast of stars sleepwalk out of the Champions League at the hands of MonacoAttack is only the best form of defence if a side attack. This truism haunted the ultimate shock‑and‑awe manager, Pep Guardiola, as Manchester City sleepwalked out of the Champions League.Listless, confidence-shot, just not good enough: the list to describe City until they finally seemed to wake up before Leroy Sané’s 71st-minute goal is not pretty reading for them. Related: Monaco’s Tiemoué Bakayoko condemns Manchester City to away-goal defeat Related: Monaco 3-1 Manchester City (agg 6-6): Champions League last 16, second leg – as it happened Continue reading...
It was raining goals in Manchester on Tuesday but where does City’s 5-3 win over Monaco stand alongside other great Champions League nights?Dynamo Kyiv’s wonderful team of the late 1990s deserved a Champions League final – but on a pulsating night at a packed Olympiyskiy they threw away the best chance they would ever have. It was exquisite fare for much of the evening and, when Andriy Shevchenko squeezed in his second goal of the night two minutes before half-time, seemed to be going precisely as the old master Valeriy Lobanovskiy had designed. Moments later Michael Tarnat’s daisycutter of a free-kick restored some doubt but Vitaliy Kosovskiy’s 50th-minute goal – capitalising on some sloppy defending – suggested Dynamo would cut...