Scott Murray's Blog, page 40

Wolves 0-1 Liverpool: FA Cup third round replay – as it happened

Wolves scrapped hard but couldn’t find an answer to Harvey Elliott’s fine early goal, as the holders set up a fourth-round tie at Brighton

5 min: The power cut that affected the floodlights has by all accounts wiped out the screens for the VAR. What a technological debacle this tie has been so far, when you also factor in the VAR chaos that arguably cost Wolves the win at Anfield.

3 min: Traore gets a chance to cross with the lights on this time. His ball is met by Jimenez, who heads harmlessly wide right. A fast start by the hosts.

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Football Daily | Moral victories, caveats and Wolves’ long wait to add to their FA Cup haul

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Wolverhampton Wanderers have a good record in the FA Cup. They’ve won the famous old tournament four times, which may not sound like much to younger ears, but is in fact not bad going at all. Only 12 clubs in history have done any better, and one of those, which Football Daily has decided not to name for fear of muddying the water, doesn’t exist any more. Oh all right, it’s five-time-winning London-based posho collective Wanderers, dissolved 1887. Having said that, Wanderers (see?) – by which we mean Wolves – haven’t added to their haul since 1960, when they beat Blackburn 3-0 in the Wembley final and were pelted with match programmes and apple cores by Rovers fans for their trouble, and … well, No 5 and a more dignified celebration is well overdue for a club of their size.

Re: the Spurs fan being punished with a lifetime ban for the attack on Aaron Ramsdale (yesterday’s News, Bits and Bobs). That’s fine but what about a punishment?” – Ben Gibbes.

While Shakira may have dissed Gerard Piqué for, among other things, apparently trading down from a Rolex, it’s not an unprecedented change. Barcelona have done the same, with one fancy watch-wearer out and a Casio-aficionado in. But that seems to be working out alright for now” – Paul Vickers.

Given that they are a Birmingham team and that the group came from Birmingham, I’m surprised and a little disappointed that you haven’t come up with a witty reference to Aston Villa’s signing of Jhon Durán. Is there something I should know?” – Alan Mannings.

This is an extract from our daily football email … Football Daily. To subscribe to the full version, just visit this page and follow the instructions

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Manchester United 2-1 Manchester City: Premier League – as it happened

United came from behind to win the Manchester derby, thrusting themselves into the title race as a result

The teams are out! United in red, City sky blue. A lot of friendly banter between both sets of players in the tunnel. Some post-World Cup catching up no doubt. In a studio somewhere, Roy Keane and Gary Neville are studies in apoplexy. Amid all the friendly hubbub, Erling Haaland stands tall, alone at the back, staring straight ahead in a world of his own, in the zone, preparing for action. Jock Wallace would approve. We’ll be off in a couple of minutes.

… and while we’re on the subject of fans telling it the way they see it …

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Southampton 2-0 Manchester City: Carabao Cup quarter-final – as it happened

Saints swarmed over City from the start and deservedly booked their place in the last four, where they’ll face Newcastle United

City get the ball rolling. Saints snaffle possession quickly and Walker-Peters advances down the left. He reaches the edge of the City box before falling over, allowing Ortega to claim.

The teams are out! Southampton are in their inverted Rank Xerox shirts, while Manchester City wear third-choice Stabilo Boss highlighter green. Ah, those early 80s Saints shirts! Any old excuse to post the greatest First Division goal of all time. We’ll be off in a minute.

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Football Daily | For every Chelsea financial fiasco there’s been a success story to match

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Chelsea have always spent big. They’ve been spendthrifts since time immemorial. Full marks for ambition, though you never quite know how their sprees are going to work out. In the 1930s and 1940s, for example, they broke the bank for stars such as Hughie Gallacher and Tommy Lawton, only for the former to spend most of his time being cashiered through saloon doors along the Kings Rahd, and the latter to take about five minutes to decide he’d rather play for third-tier Notts County instead. Or how about the ££££££s spaffed in the 1970s on the luxurious state-of-the-art East Stand, a behemoth that nearly bankrupted the club? Or the cash Ken Bates spent in the 1980s on electric wire and other gear? Actually we’re not quite sure how to quantify that. Robert Fleck for £2.1m was a bum deal, we know that much for sure.

Re: memories of Gareth Bale (yesterday’s Quote of the Day). Among the other better-known moments, picture a warm summer’s evening at the County Ground in 2013 for a pre-season friendly of Swindon against Spurs. During a first-half run largely by Tom Huddlestone, Bale – playing on the right – broke through and leathered it in from outside the box. What did we just see, was the collective thought? So many more obvious moments but that was a special one. Thanks Gareth” – Jeremy Foxon.

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Newcastle 2-0 Leicester: Carabao Cup quarter-final – as it happened

Newcastle are through to their first League Cup final for 47 years

3 min: Now Guimaraes flashes a drive wide left from 20 yards. Under no pressure to shoot, he should have hit the target at the very least. Leicester need to get their gamefaces on and quick.

2 min: What a move! What a miss! What a start that could have been. A reminder that Leicester started awfully slowly at the King Power last month, two down after seven minutes, the match gone in the blink of an eye.

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Football Daily | Newcastle leading the chase to slake their big thirst for silverware

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This may or may not be the sort of behaviour you’d expect from a long-running regular email service that changes its name on a whim, but Football Daily would like to retract everything it said yesterday about the FA Cup being the stuff of dreams. Yes, yes, Stevenage this, Sheffield Wednesday that, Boreham Wood the other, but when it comes to tales of the unexpected, the League Cup is really where it’s at. Put it this way: when was the last time a Fourth Division team got to the final of the FA Cup, like Bradford did in the 2013 League equivalent, or Rochdale in 1962? The fifth of never, that’s when! So, yeah, QED. Admittedly six of the last nine League Cups have been won by Manchester City, with Chelsea, Manchester United and Liverpool winning the other three, while Wigan and Leicester have lifted the FA Cup in the interim, but as the League Cup roll of honour also features Swindon, QPR, Oxford, Luton, Norwich and Swansea, Football Daily’s not for budging on this issue, and anyway you get the general gist.

Re: Marc White’s honest appraisal of Dorking Wanderers’ defending in their 5-1 defeat to Oldham (yesterday’s Quote of the Day). Marc is what you would call a ‘character’. His expletive-filled dressing-room and touchline rants in the ‘fly on the wall’ documentary series Bunch of Amateurs are not for the faint-hearted. But there is another side to the former player, now manager and chairman of the club. Before the heavy National League defeat on Saturday, he put a ‘kitty’ behind the bar in two pubs in the town to buy drinks for the away fans who travelled down for the game. A real character” – Ian Castle.

Surely the most conspicuous thing about Oxford United’s Kassam Stadium (yesterday’s Football Daily) is the gaping absence of a stand at one end? I suppose that is why the car wash beyond is the thing you noticed” – Steve Allen.

This is an extract from our daily football email … Football Daily. To subscribe to the full version, just visit this page and follow the instructions .

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Liverpool 2-1 Leicester City: Premier League – as it happened

Wout Faes’ unfortunate own-goal double proved enough for Liverpool to end 2022 with a win

The reason for Fabinho’s omission from the squad: his wife has gone into labour. “We hope to have some good news from him in a couple of hours,” Klopp reports. Best wishes to Rebeca Tavares and Fabinho.

Rodgers on Pelé. “You have seen the outpouring, the tributes. When he was last here [at Anfield] it was 2015 and I was still manager here. He always reminds me of my father, who loved Pelé, that was his idol, so when I seen [the news] my first thought was of my dad, who has obviously passed away as well. But the outpouring of emotion, the tributes by everyone, it really tells you what he was as a player, but also as a person, and his legend will live on forever, for sure.”

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‘A piece of footballing art’: six memorable moments from Pelé’s career

We pick out six of the Brazilian’s most unforgettable matches, from a quick impact against the USSR to a farewell free-kick

The young Pelé knew how to make a first impression. He scored four goals on his unofficial debut for Santos. He scored one on his official club debut, his goal-tending victim very much looking at his fate through the prism of a glass half full, later making a business card announcing his status as the keeper who conceded Pelé’s first. He scored within minutes of coming on for his first Brazil cap. But the true harbinger came in Brazil’s third group game of the 1958 World Cup. Thought too callow by some of Brazil’s coaching staff, Pelé and Garrincha sat on the sidelines as they watched the team beat Austria and draw 0-0 with England, the latter the first time the Seleção had failed to score in a World Cup game. That relative failure was enough to force the hand of the coach, Vicente Feola. He threw in the inexperienced duo and after 40 seconds Garrincha hit a post. One minute later, so did Pelé. The woodwork wasn’t the only thing rattled: the USSR team, one of the pre-tournament favourites, were so discombobulated they shipped a goal to Vavá another 60 seconds later. “The greatest three minutes of football ever played,” said the L’Équipe journalist Gabriel Hanot, the founder of the European Cup. The most epochal, too, given what Pelé and Brazil would get up to during the next dozen years.

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Manchester United 3-0 Nottingham Forest: Premier League – as it happened

Marcus Rashford and Casemiro were the standout players as United eased past a willing but limited Forest team

2 min: United spend the first minute pinging it around the back to get a feel of the ball. Casemiro earns the first gasp of the evening with a cute flick in the centre circle.

United and Forest take the knee – there’s no room for racism – and then the hosts get the ball rolling. It’s raining. Have we mentioned it’s raining?

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