The Chelsea midfielder often looks the part but put in a couple of frustrating displays and Gareth Southgate has other optionsThere comes a point when a Ross Barkley run starts to feel like Ross Barkley’s career: rich in promise, low on substance. The signature Barkley burst certainly looks good when it starts. It certainly feels exciting. It definitely feels as if something important is going to happen when he picks up the ball in his own half and sets off on a charge into opposition territory.Then the wait begins. The momentum stalls. The deeper Barkley goes, the less threatening he looks. One finds oneself willing him on, urging him to pick the right pass, but the moment slips away and...
The England midfielder is running further, passing more accurately and satisfying Maurizio Sarri’s need for goalsThere is perhaps no group of players so used to adapting themselves to the ways of a new manager as those at Chelsea, where the only consistent philosophy of the Roman Abramovich years has been one of perpetual revolution, but even by their turbulent standards this season has been one that has brought significant change. Everything is different under Maurizio Sarri. Eden Hazard is trusted to be the left-sided floating No 10 he has always wanted to be. César Azpilicueta has gone from centre-back to right-back. N’Golo Kanté thrusts forward from midfield rather than shielding the defence. And Ross Barkley gets on the pitch.The turnaround...
After frustration and in some cases ridicule, players who have suffered from injury torment will be desperate to show what they have to offer as a new season gets under wayHarry Redknapp used to be tickled by the notion that top professionals would move clubs primarily for sentimental reasons. Many times he made the sort of quip that he delivered in 2012 when there were suggestions that Carlos Tevez might take a big pay cut to leave Manchester City for Redknapp’s Spurs. “He’s always wanted to play for Tottenham,” said Redknapp, deadpan as you like. “Ever since he was in Argentina he had a picture of Hoddle on the wall and Ricky [Villa] and Ossie [Ardiles]. I want to play...
Chelsea’s Antonio Conte, rather than his debutant midfielder, should be the focus of any scorn after Barkley’s traumatically raw and rusty hour against ArsenalThere was a funny start to Ross Barkley’s Chelsea career on Wednesday night. As Willian prepared to limp off the Emirates Stadium pitch midway through the first half Barkley, his obvious replacement, was still dutifully gambolling up and down the touchline in his tracksuit.This didn’t go down well with Antonio Conte who seems, even at the best of times, to be in a state of constant eye-boggling rage at every detail of his sentient existence. This is Conte’s default mood, his baseline. But he still managed to find some even deeper gears, letting out a shriek, waggling...
Everton’s loss can be England’s gain in a World Cup year if Antonio Conte can do the trick for a real confidence playerThere was a time, going back a few years, when Everton envisaged Ross Barkley being a different kind of player to the one we see now. Ask David Moyes and he will tell you that at 15 Barkley was the closest he had ever seen to a young Norman Whiteside. Barkley could get up and down the pitch, he had the same kind of rare quality that saw Whiteside bend the ball past Neville Southall in the 1985 FA Cup final and, more than anything, he was utterly fearless in the tackle. Moyes and the youth-team coaches would...