While all the focus was on the Chelsea striker going into the match, Spurs were so chaotic that he faded into the backgroundYou have to hand it to Tottenham defenders. Whatever their faults, at least nobody can doubt their entertainment value. After all they even managed to pull off the impossible during the first leg of this Carabao Cup semi-final, somehow dragging the spotlight away from Chelsea’s extremely apologetic record signing with a performance of spectacular slapstick at the back.This must have been a form of rare torture for Antonio Conte. Even with Romelu Lukaku straining for touch and composure, Chelsea were dominant after welcoming their former manager back to Stamford Bridge for the first time. Thomas Tuchel had come...
Arsenal should stay positive, Potter shows Benítez a trick and VAR makes refereeing harderOn the first Sunday of 2021, a first-half Chelsea capitulation against Manchester City hastened Frank Lampard’s exit and deepened a despondent mood. Twelve months on, Liverpool’s two early goals at Stamford Bridge could have induced Groundhog Day feelings. Instead, Thomas Tuchel’s side roared back and showed that, whatever other problems have recently beset the Chelsea manager on and off the field, this is a team that plays for him. Though they did so in a rather un-Tuchel-like manner. The intense atmosphere generated by the Premier League debut of safe standing was met with the kind of front-foot, high-tempo performance more associated with a Jürgen Klopp side. Chelsea...
Since the manager’s arrival players such as Dele Alli and Harry Winks, who looked shot, suddenly look like footballers againThere is, the statswallahs tell us, no such thing as new-manager bounce. Our brains, attuned to spotting patterns, spy a regression to the mean and attribute it to the arrival of a new manager. And probably in the long term that is largely true. But it does seem to ignore the way the replacement of one manager by another can lead players to reset and refocus; a project that had gone stale can, at least temporarily, be refreshed. It also ignores Antonio Conte.Five Premier League games since he took over at Tottenham have yielded 11 points and, while beating Leeds (narrowly),...
João Cancelo continues to shine, Dele Alli shows his worth and Blackburn are looking upJürgen Klopp spent much of the pulsating 2-2 draw with Tottenham frothing with rage at some of the refereeing decisions and his anger was more than justified. We all have bad days at the office, but certain elements of Paul Tierney’s display were inexplicably poor. Diogo Jota was denied a blindingly obvious penalty in the first half, before Harry Kane escaped with a yellow card for a potentially career-ending tackle on Andy Robertson. Robertson was smart enough to jump, without which the damage would have been severe. “That’s definitely a red card ... if Robbo’s leg is on the ground, it’s a broken leg,” Klopp correctly...
In their anarchic draw with Liverpool, Spurs looked like a team shifting gear and becoming an obstacle for opponents againWho are you exactly? And what have you done with Tottenham Hotspur? At the end of a week menaced by illness, schedule horror and lurking event anxiety, something unexpected happened in north London, as the players of Spurs and Liverpool dished up a glorious, ragged, startlingly carefree game of football.Both teams might have scored four or five, or none at all, although in the end a 2-2 draw felt fair enough. Both managers had complained in advance about a lack of planning time. Antonio Conte was forced to train with a set of static mannequins, a state of affairs that presents...