The widely loved Scot and the apoplectic Irishman dominated fans’ discussions this week, ahead of the games they coveredIt’s approaching half-time at Elland Road on Tuesday night and Leeds United have a free-kick deep in the Crystal Palace half, about halfway between the corner flag and the penalty area. It could only be described as “in a dangerous position”. Raphinha stands over it.“This is going to get whipped in with unbelievable pace, that’s my prediction,” says a supremely confident Ally McCoist. The Brazilian raises his right hand and proceeds to smash the ball about 30 yards over everyone and out for a goal-kick. Continue reading...
Liverpool are not so much sloppy as playing the popular high-risk game that late-period Alex Ferguson eschewedFootball has changed. Most disagreements between managers and pundits are tedious affairs, rooted in complex and broadly impenetrable codes of respect and of concern only to professional axe-grinders. But the slightly spiky exchange between Roy Keane and Jürgen Klopp after Liverpool’s 3-1 victory over Arsenal on Monday was fascinating, less for the soap opera element of a bullish Klopp interrogating an awkwardly smirking Keane, or for Keane’s dry “touchy … imagine if they’d lost” rejoinder, but for what it revealed about how the two men view the game, and what that says about its evolution.️ "Did Mr Keane say it was a sloppy performance?...
He will do well at Manchester City, but for the national side he represents a genuine point of difference in a midfield too conservative to succeed regularlyThere’s a game you can play that involves listing the most random internet voice to have brought you a disproportionately grave piece of world news. This is something that happens more and more at a time when just having internet access means everyone, everywhere is suddenly a source of breaking news.And so we get to hear about the abdication of the Queen via a retweet from the bass player in Shed Seven, or discover Europe is about to be consumed by a tsunami through a trending online spat between Fiona Bruce and Darren Bent....
Today’s football pundit must drive engagement, stir debate and emotions – never mind nuance, ambiguity or ebb and flowIt’s thrilling, visceral television. The sort of raw, unbridled authenticity that makes Roy Keane one of the most compelling pundits not just in football, but in any sport. “I’m fuming here,” he says at half-time, with Tottenham 1-0 up against Manchester United and Keane sitting in the Sky Sports studio. And in those words lie a sort of mission statement, a definitive affirmation of an irrefutable truth: football is back, and how we’ve missed it.No, that doesn’t really work. Let’s try it this way. It was unhinged, unsettling, shocking for all the wrong reasons. As he tore apart Harry Maguire and Luke...
Chief executive can often be found amid the revellers when things are going well for the Republic of Ireland but that has not been the case recently and something had better changeThe decision to end the reigns of Martin O’Neill and Roy Keane was the right one for the Republic of Ireland, even if it may not have been reached for entirely the right reason and does not go far enough. As so often in such cases, the effect of letting the manager and his assistant know that it would be best if they relinquished their positions is that the chief executive, in this case the Football Association of Ireland’s John Delaney, may also have made his own position a...