Jonathan Wilson's Blog, page 13

Manchester United’s collapse leaves the FA Cup nearly free of superclubs | Jonathan Wilson

Exiting the FA Cup on penalties at home to Fulham is a new low in a season full of them for Ruben Amorim’s side

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What links Jack Robson, Lal Hilditch, Herbert Bamlett and Ruben Amorim?

They’re the only permanent managers in Manchester United history with a career negative goal-difference. Other than Amorim, the other three worked between 1914 and 1931. Sunday’s FA Cup exit against Fulham, admittedly, did not contribute to that. It was possible, even, in the aftermath of a penalty shootout defeat, to argue it had been one of United’s better recent performances. They’ve only lost two of their previous eight games. But it’s also just 3 March and United already have no chance of winning any domestic competition this season.

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All played out: Raheem Sterling in startling decline after hitting the fateful 500 mark | Jonathan Wilson

The Arsenal forward, once England’s key player, is only 30 but his confidence is shot and his career on a downward curve

In Rafa Benítez’s first season in English football, he rested Steven Gerrard for an FA Cup tie at Burnley, who were in the Championship. When Liverpool lost, there was a predictable backlash and, from certain quarters, derision as Benítez explained his rotation policy and the need to manage the number of minutes each player played.

Social media being in its infancy, it wasn’t quite the culture war that it would have become today, but certain old-school football men clearly felt that players should just get on with it: hard work never hurt anyone. But at the same time a piece of ancient wisdom kept surfacing, usually from elderly coaches who had spent a lifetime in the game: as a rule of thumb, however much they play, whatever age they start, a player has 500 games in them.

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Chelsea return to top four after Nkunku and Neto sink sorry Southampton

When you have lost three games in a row, any win is a good win. And there is no such thing as a bad win by four goals. But equally, the context is unavoidable. This is a Southampton side who are doomed, who are letting in 2.41 goals per game, who have lost 14 of their past 17 league games and who have nothing to play for this season beyond trying to scrape together the three points that would take them above Derby’s record low of 11.

The Premier League’s unique selling point is supposed to be that anybody can beat anybody, but it’s hard to square that with this Southampton. “I’m frustrated,” said Ivan Juric, who pointed out his team had defended well for 20 minutes. “It’s a really tough situation.”

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A sense of acquiescence has pervaded Arsenal’s stuttering title challenge | Jonathan Wilson

Mikel Arteta’s team have suffered unfortunate injuries but they also have far less self-belief than a Liverpool side who look destined to win the Premier League

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And with that, surely, the title race is over. Liverpool had drawn four of their previous eight games which had created an opening. Had Arsenal beaten West Ham and Liverpool lost at Manchester City this weekend, the title would have been in Arsenal’s hands, at least to the extent that they would have won it if they had won every game they had remaining this season, including away at Liverpool. But, after Arsenal limped to a 1-0 defeat, Liverpool produced their best performance in weeks to win 2-0. The gap is 11 points and, even though Arsenal have a game in hand, it’s very hard to imagine either Liverpool dropping sufficient points or Arsenal winning enough for that to be overturned.

Arteta described himself as “very, very angry” after his side’s defeat, admitting they were “nowhere near the levels that we have to hit to have the opportunity to win the Premier League”. But there’s been an element of that all season. This was only Arsenal’s third league defeat of the campaign, but there has been something distinctly underwhelming about them. Too many points have been frittered too cheaply. Too often they have failed to grasp chances. And too often ill-discipline has let them down.

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Liverpool take charge and the top-four fight heats up: Football Weekly - podcast

Max Rushden, Barry Glendenning, Jonathan Wilson and Dan Bardell discuss the weekend’s action in the Premier League and beyond

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On the podcast today: Liverpool stamp their authority on the title race with a comfortable 2-0 win at Manchester City. The panel discuss whether the title race is done following Arne Slot’s tactical masterclass and asks if Pep Guardiola’s prowess is waning.

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Championship top trio enjoy parachute payments but risk crash landings | Jonathan Wilson

Leeds, Sheffield United and Burnley are all vying for Premier League returns but fans will ask if it’s really worth it

Tibetan Buddhist monks will spend months working in cold conditions, icing their fingers, enduring significant discomfort, to create gorgeously detailed sculptures out of yak’s butter. And then they will destroy the sculptures, leaving them out in the sun to melt.

For anybody connected with a Championship club, the sentiment will be familiar. At some level, most clubs exist to feed those higher up the pyramid. So why would a fan emotionally invest in a young star, even a local one, knowing he is unlikely to hang around for more than two or three years? And if a team are promoted, at least half the side will probably have to be upgraded to offer even a chance of survival. When the gulf between divisions is so vast, everything is fleeting, team-building an act of permanent evolution. What monks do to convey the understanding that life is transient and that the artefact is far less important than the act of creation, Daniel Farke and Chris Wilder are doing because football’s economics demand it.

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Johnson’s early double sets Tottenham on way to emphatic win at Ipswich

Some afternoons come like a kick in the teeth. Not only did Ipswich suffer a fourth successive home defeat in a game that never felt as one-sided as the scoreline ultimately suggested but fourth-bottom Wolves inflicted on Bournemouth only their second defeat in 16. After weeks of bubbling along in touch with the last safe spot, Ipswich find themselves five points adrift and survival is becoming an ever more distant prospect.

There was no sense in which this was an undeserved win for Spurs, some sort of smash-and‑grab to offend notions of dignity and propriety, but equally it was not entirely convincing. Not for the first time this season, there was a feeling that if only Ipswich had been able to seize their opportunity, it might have been very different.

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Liverpool and Manchester City renew rivalry in a much more vulnerable era | Jonathan Wilson

Sunday’s clash between declining champions and their likely successors is a far cry from recent title battles

There has been something pleasingly old-fashioned about the Premier League title race this season. It may be a modern phenomenon that the side top of the table have lost only one of 26 games, and that the side in second have lost two, but after the years of champions habitually racking up 90 points and more, the general fallibility has been refreshing.

Liverpool are still on course for 89 points but they are not implacable, remorseless winners in the way Manchester City so often were. They reached a peak in their 2-0 home win over Real Madrid at the end of November and, although they were comfortable winners over City the following Sunday, there has been a sense since of a side, if not quite clinging on to the mountain top, then at the very least not striding quite so confidently along the ridge.

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Champions League last 16: tie-by-tie analysis and predictions

Aston Villa and Arsenal will fancy their chances of progress, while Liverpool will face a challenge to oust in-form PSG

Villa produced probably their worst performance of the season in losing the meeting of the sides in the group stage, Brugge winning 1-0 with a penalty awarded after Tyrone Mings, not realising a goal-kick had been taken, picked up the ball. Villa may be grateful for that: had they taken a point from that game they would have been facing Bayern in the last 16. That said, as domestic form has stagnated, the victory over Bayern, a repeat of the scoreline from the 1982 European Cup final, probably represents the high point of their season so far. Domestically this hasn’t been a great campaign for Brugge either. They lie eight points behind Racing Genk but for them too the Champions League has provided salvation. They sneaked into the playoffs with three wins but then were much the better side against Atalanta, winning home and away.

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Ruben Amorim’s Manchester United are a mess, with issues starting at the top | Jonathan Wilson

The optimism that greeted Jim Ratcliffe’s arrival as owner has given way to even more disappointment, with Sunday’s defeat at Tottenham the latest example

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Covering Manchester United these days feels a little like being a character in Silent Witness: every week you end up writing a postmortem. Their Sunday defeat at Tottenham was an engaging if bitty affair that finished 1-0 largely because the low quality of defending on show was compensated for by the low level of attacking. It was fun in its way, but it didn’t feel a lot like Premier League football.

It also meant United dropped to 15th in the table, having won just four of 14 league games under Ruben Amorim. Under Erik ten Hag this season, United were taking 1.22 points per game; under Amorim that’s down to 1.00. Nobody was under any illusions about the scale of the task he was taking on, but four months after Amorim took the job it would be very difficult to identify any concrete signs of progress. There has been the resilience of the performance in the league at Anfield, in the FA Cup at the Emirates, and not a lot else.

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