Jonathan Wilson's Blog, page 105
December 2, 2019
No new manager bounce at Arsenal as Liverpool march on – Football Weekly
Max Rushden, Jonathan Wilson, Gregg Bakowski and Tim Stillman discuss a change of manager at Arsenal, Liverpool’s inexorable march and juggling homework with stopping Cristiano Ronaldo
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We take a look back at the weekend’s football, starting with Arsenal’s 2-2 draw at Norwich, which came two days after they relieved Unai Emery of his job after a disappointing season-and-a-bit in charge.
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December 1, 2019
Silva’s side lift the clouds but VAR denies them a silver lining | Jonathan Wilson
There is something deeply disconcerting about Everton. They are like some creature of myth, shapeshifting, ethereal, beyond the grasp of mortal perception. Every time you think you have worked them out, every time you think you know what they are and reach out towards them, they slip away. They are a team of the mist, intangible.
Related: Leicester’s Kelechi Iheanacho turns the screw on Everton’s Marco Silva
Related: Brendan Rodgers says he is committed to Leicester despite Arsenal link
Continue reading...November 30, 2019
Unai Emery’s broken kaleidoscope was a small part of Arsenal’s problem | Jonathan Wilson
As so often when big clubs go bad, the manager carries the can for errors in recruitment and in the boardroom
A nd so the grumbling of the Emirates has claimed another victim. By the end, Unai Emery cut a hapless figure, mumbling incoherently after defeat to Eintracht Frankfurt as the world collapsed around him. He was a scapegoat, as managers always are, barely less a patsy in his role as Arsène Wenger’s successor than he had been as Neymar’s minder at Paris Saint-Germain. He certainly should not be immune from criticism, but equally nobody should think his replacement will bring about improvement merely by not being Emery.
Emery joined as a Europa League manager for a Europa League club; he will leave as somebody who has struggled in three jobs outside Spain, compromised, despite his best efforts to speak English, by an inability to communicate.
Related: Arsenal sack Unai Emery and appoint Freddie Ljungberg interim head coach
Related: From unleashing Pépé to dealing with Xhaka: six things Ljungberg must do | Nick Ames
Continue reading...November 24, 2019
Manchester United’s thrilling comeback masks an abysmal display | Jonathan Wilson
Half-close your eyes, squint a little, do not think too hard and you could just about persuade yourself this was nearly a classic Manchester United comeback. But just as they were preparing to hail the youthquake, three goals by players aged 22 or under including one from Mason Greenwood, the third-youngest Premier League scorer in their history, Oli McBurnie popped up to point out that this is an imperfect simulacrum.
It bears certain clear similarities to Manchester United, it has a manager who is clearly Manchester United, it plays with the tropes of Manchester United and yet somehow it is not quite Manchester United.
Related: Sheffield United’s Oli McBurnie grabs point in Manchester United thriller
Related: Sheffield United 3-3 Manchester United: Premier League – as it happened
Continue reading...November 23, 2019
Demise of Premier League clogger means fewer teams play the long game | Jonathan Wilson
Football has amassed a vocabulary of territory but, more and more, the game at the top level is about possession
D uring the World Cup last year, the thriller writer Jeremy Duns, who by his own admission is not much of a football fan, asked why so many goalkeepers tended to punt the ball long down the pitch, which meant possession was lost more than half the time. It is one of those questions that seems at first sight naive but that, once you try to answer it, makes you interrogate a lot of basic assumptions about the game.
Goalkeepers kick it long because, well, why? You try to formulate an answer: to get the ball away from their goal and nearer the opponent’s goal. But then you imagine @jeremyduns’s scorn – and given he is a notoriously tenacious Twitter combatant, imagined conversations with him are a good way of testing any theory. Given there is a (significantly) greater than 50% chance of possession being lost, that means the keeper is giving away the ball, the thing you need if you are going to score. Doesn’t that simply gift the initiative to the opposition?
Related: Before England’s 1,000th, the story of the first full football international | Simon Burnton
Related: Ederson leads the way as a ball-playing Premier League midfielder in gloves
Continue reading...November 20, 2019
Pochettino pays price for Spurs’ failure of renewal but Mourinho is a big gamble | Jonathan Wilson
Fifty years ago this season Liverpool went to Watford, then struggling near the bottom of the Second Division, in the sixth round of the FA Cup. On a dreadful pitch, its central third rutted and bare, they lost 1-0 to a diving header from Barry Endean. Bill Shankly called Watford “the worst team that ever beat us”. He was aware the upset could be as epochal as the defeat to Worcester City that had led to him replacing Phil Taylor as manager in 1959 and was provoked into action. “I knew I had to do my job and change my team,” he said. “It had to be done and if I didn’t do it I was shirking my obligations.”
Although Liverpool had finished second the previous season, they were enduring a major stutter, having won only five of their previous 18 in the league. He raged in the Vicarage Road dressing room, telling a number of players they were finished. Over the following weeks Tommy Lawrence, Ian St John, Ron Yeats and Geoff Strong were all discarded. Peter Thompson, struggling with cartilage problems, departed a few months later. The players changed, but the method did not. “The policy of the new team was the same as that of the old,” Shankly explained. “We played to our strengths. We pressurised everybody and made them run.”
Related: Tottenham love to talk of glory, but for Daniel Levy business is business
Spurs have paid £12.5m to release a well-respected and in-demand manager with a proven record of working on a budget
Related: Mourinho brings good, bad and ugly, but in what ratio at Tottenham?
Continue reading...November 18, 2019
No sweat for England, Ronaldo's 99th and the WSL weekend – Football Weekly
Max Rushden, Barry Glendenning, Jonathan Wilson and John Brewin discuss England winning at a canter, Wales’s Hungarian shootout, Ireland’s Groundhog Day, debutants scoring goals and keepers hitting light fittings
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We take a look back at the weekend’s football, starting with England’s two Euro 2020 qualifying wins over Montenegro and Kosovo.
Continue reading...October 26, 2019
Daniele De Rossi’s adventure with Boca Juniors confirms football’s fall in Argentina | Jonathan Wilson
Italian has shown humility and commitment but the country is suffering as players in their prime choose to play abroad
D aniele De Rossi came to Buenos Aires to follow a dream. He was 36 and had a fine career behind him. He could have retired. He could have opted for a sinecure in the Middle East or China. He could have gone into coaching or television punditry. But instead, having spent his entire senior career at Roma, he signed for Boca Juniors.
Things haven’t gone according to plan, however. A persistent hamstring injury has restricted him to 334 minutes of football since arriving in July. De Rossi was on the bench for Tuesday’s Copa Libertadores semi-final against River Plate but he did not come on as Boca won 1-0 and went out 2-1 on aggregate. His presence seemed less about him potentially playing than about trying to use his experience to calm others and perhaps even letting him feel a superclásico close up.
Related: River Plate make Copa Libertadores final despite defeat to Boca Juniors
Continue reading...October 22, 2019
River Plate make Copa Libertadores final despite defeat to Boca Juniors
Not for the first time in a Superclásico, events off the pitch were rather more impressive than what happened on it. Boca Juniors’ fans were just as raucous as reputation demands and for half an hour before kick-off La Bombonera was a writhing mass of blue and yellow.
Related: Conspiracy theories cast shadow over River Plate v Boca Juniors reunion | Jonathan Wilson
Related: River Plate beat Boca Juniors in tense Copa Libertadores semi-final first leg
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Continue reading...Conspiracy theories cast shadow over River Plate v Boca Juniors reunion | Jonathan Wilson
Memories of last year’s shambolic Copa Libertadores final have dominated the build-up to this season’s semi-final second leg
The history of River Plate v Boca Juniors games in the Copa Libertadores is long and on Tuesday evening Buenos Aires time they go again in the second leg of this season’s semi-final.
Related: Pace, precision, power, joy: Real Sociedad storming in La Liga | Sid Lowe
Related: Daniele De Rossi completes move to Boca Juniors after 18 years at Roma
Related: Ligue 1 clubs turn to experienced French managers to right wrongs
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