Only 10 months after Tottenham reached the European Cup final they hit the buffers in Leipzig – it looks like a long way backSo farewell then, Tottenham. Who knows when our paths will cross again? A fixture they embarked upon with a puncher’s chance and plenty of underdog spirit ended merely in crippling defeat and more questions. A broken team that under the joyless stewardship of José Mourinho has been broken still further, they looked here exactly what they are: the eighth‑best team in the Premier League, exhausted and error-prone, bad in defence and bad in attack, with no discernible long-term strategy and no identifiable short-term plan. Related: RB Leipzig leave Lloris squirming and hurry Mourinho's stale Spurs to the...
Sympathy for Spurs player’s action reflects an age where anonymised abuse isn’t just aimed at sporting celebrities“Where can there be a place in the game for a man of such extravagant talent, a man of such wicked temperament? A man who has now … OH MY GOODNESS ME!!! He has KICKED … He has PUNCHED A FAN!!! Eric Cantona has jumped in and SCISSOR KUNG FU KICKED a fan. I have never seen such a disgraceful incident in all my years in football. Cantona must be thrown out of the game. I care not one jot about his supreme talent!!”The words of the young firebrand Jonathan Pearce there. Pearce was commentating on the radio as Cantona scissor kung fu kicked...
A chance for Bournemouth at Anfield, Burnley and Spurs battle for European slots and Fernandes can seize big derby stageGiven their 22-point lead at the top of the table, no one at Liverpool is likely to be concerned by three recent defeats in four games across three different competitions. Of course, while a win against Bournemouth would help steady the ship and halt the onset of anything approaching mild jitters, Eddie Howe’s men will head to Anfield to face hosts recently derobed of what had previously resembled a cloak of invincibility. With Fabinho in poor form and Jordan Henderson still sidelined with injury, Liverpool look uncharacteristically vulnerable in midfield and are crying out for on-field leadership. While it ought to...
Underrated Pearson has transformed Watford, Wolves’ unsung hero comes to fore and Messi and Griezmann just don’t clickThe sound of a top-flight stadium reverberating to “We’ve got super Nigel Pearson, he knows exactly what we need” (tune: Bad Moon Rising) can be filed among the things few envisaged in August. But Watford’s win against Liverpool was a measure of the uplift one of the season’s less likely appointments has contrived. “He is always about feet on the floor, he [has] never overreacted and you have to stay focused,” said Abdoulaye Doucouré. “He showed us videos and said we can do it. Nigel is a great, great manager, a great lad, and now he will keep everyone on the floor to...
The French striker made up for lost time and Giovani Lo Celso was a guilty pleasure, but anticlimax was the overall sensationThere was still plenty to love, of course. There always is in this game: whatever the standard, whatever the stakes. Here, it was Chelsea’s two smartly taken left-footed goals, the first a sharp chance for the irrepressible Olivier Giroud, the second a thunderous finish by Marcos Alonso, a player who for all his manifold qualities never looks happier than when trying to leather a football as hard as he can.Giroud was a delightful, puppyish presence: starved of a first-team start since November and eager to make up for lost time. Perhaps his greatest quality is the disruption he creates:...