Jonathan Wilson's Blog, page 11

The race for Europe gifts the Premier League run-in a quiet chaos

With the title and relegation all but decided, fourth and fifth are the main spots of intrigue as the end of the season approaches

Sign up for Soccer with Jonathan Wilson here

Southampton’s relegation from the Premier League was confirmed on Sunday, with a record seven games remaining. Wolves beat Ipswich, so there is now a 12-point gap between the bottom three and the rest: Ipswich and Leicester look doomed.

The gap at the top, meanwhile, remains a seemingly unassailable 11 points. Leaders Liverpool lost at Fulham but, with Arsenal only drawing at Everton, it didn’t really matter.

Continue reading...

Ivan Juric tells players ‘be thankful’ for Southampton fans after relegation

Juric: ‘For me this is something completely new’Ange Postecoglou focusing on Europa League

When the final whistle went, Ivan Juric advanced on to the pitch and stared across at the corner where the away fans were gathered. Southampton had just suffered the earliest relegation in Premier League history, with seven games still remaining, but there was no bitterness. Juric, who seemed almost moved by their reaction, ensured his players applauded them.

“For me, this is something completely new, a new experience,” Juric said. “I said to the players they have to be really thankful that they have fans like this.

Continue reading...

Southampton endure historic Premier League relegation after defeat at Spurs

It may be that Southampton pick up the two points they need to surpass Derby’s 2007-08 tally of 11 so as not to be ranked the worst team in Premier League history, but no side has previously been relegated with seven games of the season remaining. In that sense, and that alone, this was a historic day, a new high in abjection. A facile win, though, did not bring a huge amount of joy for Tottenham.

It is remarkable just how bad a team in Southampton’s position can become. As with Spurs’ 5-0 win at St Mary’s in December, the game that led to Russell Martin being dismissed, there was a sense it was almost too straightforward to be ­meaningful. Yes, the knife cut through the ­butter; that doesn’t make it a good knife.

Continue reading...

Get Real: serial Champions League winners Madrid face fresh threat | Jonathan Wilson

Paris Saint-Germain, who beat Liverpool with verve and energy, are the upstart newcomers among big-name quarter-finalists

Narratives are never as straightforward as they may appear. One era does not yield easily to another. What constitutes an era changes over time. While history is happening it’s often hard to make sense of it; patterns seem to emerge that, from the perspective of 20 years later are meaningless, or culs-de-sac. That seems particularly true this season. As the Champions League reaches its quarter-final stage this coming week, it feels that one age has ended and another has yet to materialise.

The past was a simpler place. First there was the age of dominance by Real Madrid and Benfica, teams from the capitals of Iberian nations under right-wing dictatorships, packed with great individuals. Then came systematisation, catenaccio and the Italian ascendancy, followed, with a brief period of crossover, by the era of domination by the northern European industrial powers, skipping swiftly over Celtic and Manchester United to the Dutch and Total Football and then Bayern Munich. Then came the long period of English superiority before the Heysel ban, after which everything gets more complicated.

Continue reading...

Liverpool close on title after derby delight against Everton: Football Weekly Extra - podcast

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Jonathan Wilson and Dan Bardell as Liverpool move one step closer to the Premier League title with a 1-0 derby win over Everton

Rate, review, share on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud, Acast and Stitcher, and join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter and email.

On the podcast today: Liverpool win a slightly nervy Merseyside derby at Anfield to send them 12 points clear of Arsenal in second place. Should the Diogo Jota goal have stood and should James Tarkowski have been on the pitch when it happened? Not the best night for VAR.

Continue reading...

Are some clubs cursed? The narrative can be as powerful as the truth

Leeds’s history of dark weirdness lends credence to the idea that ‘club DNA’ is real, even if reality may be more mundane

Sign up for Soccer with Jonathan Wilson here

A month ago, Leeds were merrily on top of the Championship. They had just beaten Sunderland with two late goals and Sheffield United with three. They had gone 16 games unbeaten and were playing with authority and conviction. More than that, they seemed to have the deepest squad in the Championship. The Sunderland game had turned when they brought on Willy Gnonto and Largie Ramazani; nobody else in the division could bring that sort of quality off the bench.

Since then they have won one of five games and slipped to second. It’s happening again.

Continue reading...

How Manchester City and the league locked horns in a financial scandal … in 1906

Premier League champions’ charges could be seismic but are not unprecedented after two major illegal payment sagas in English football

There is a sense that the 130-plus Premier League charges Manchester City are facing are unprecedented, and in terms of the potential fallout that may be true. City have the wealth and, it seems, the will to pursue extraordinarily costly legal action. If they are found guilty – and it should be stressed that they deny all charges – the implications for the club and the league could be seismic. But the charges are not unprecedented. Twice before in the 150-year history of English football, clubs have faced major investigations into illegal payments. Both had hugely significant consequences for the clubs involved.

Continue reading...

FA Cup goes back to the future as Nottingham Forest do a FAR Rabat | Jonathan Wilson

After Exeter and Ipswich, Nuno’s team became the first to win a third consecutive penalty shootout in Cup history

Even as modern life takes over, history is everything in the FA Cup. The competition’s newfound disdain for replays allowed Nottingham Forest to become the first team to win three consecutive FA Cup penalty shootouts. History was made, novelty was witnessed, but in a setting that emphasised the traditions of the grand old Cup. After Exeter and Ipswich, fell Brighton, and so Forest matched the feat of the Moroccan army side FAR Rabat, who beat MC Oujda, Wydad Casablanca and Rachad Bernoussi on penalties in successive rounds to win the Coupe du Trone in 2007.

It was a game characterised by caution, reflecting both Forest’s habitual preference for a low block and Brighton’s wariness after losing 7-0 to Forest last month. But it also perhaps reflected how much both sides cared, a welcome, if retro, feature of the latter stages of the FA Cup this season.

Continue reading...

Andoni Iraola’s impressive Bournemouth are stuck in the silverware paradox | Jonathan Wilson

Three games from their first major trophy and in with a shout for Europe but for a club their size, these moments are fleeting

The first time Bournemouth played in an FA Cup quarter‑final was 1957 when they faced Manchester United. They were still called Bournemouth and Boscombe Athletic in those days and played in the Third Division (South). They had put out Wolves and Tottenham in the previous two rounds, the excitement enticing a record crowd of 28,799 to Dean Court to see them play Matt Busby’s side.

The United centre-half Mark Jones was carried off early on and, nine years before the introduction of substitutes, Bournemouth took the lead against the 10 men, Brian Bedford nudging in after Ray Wood had flapped at a corner. Two Johnny Berry goals, the second a penalty, in the space of five second‑half minutes, though, saw United through. They went on to lose to Aston Villa in the final, when Peter McParland fractured Wood’s cheekbone after six minutes, forcing the centre-half Jackie Blanchflower to take over in goal.

Continue reading...

Are we entering the era of the quarterback goalkeeper?

In a special mailbag edition of our newsletter, Jonathan Wilson answers your questions on playmaker keepers, weird player huddles and Declan Rice

Sign up to Soccer with Jonathan Wilson here

As we enter a tactical reaction period to structured pressing; do you think we’ll see the development of the “Quarterback Keeper?” Will the Pep Guardiolas of the world have midfielders breaking from the back running post patterns while fullbacks run a curl?

– David

I’ve no idea what those terms mean but I assume they’re from American football? If so, I wouldn’t fixate on them; while it’s certainly possible for sports to draw inspiration from each other, they very rarely map precisely on to each other. Will players start moving in different patterns to now? Possibly, but football is 150 years old; there is very little new under the sun.

This is an extract from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, a weekly look from the Guardian US at the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here. Have a question for Jonathan? Email soccerwithjw@theguardian.com, and he’ll answer the best in a future edition

Continue reading...