Jonathan Wilson's Blog, page 17

Obstinate Ange Postecoglou must find consistency at Spurs or a crunch will come | Jonathan Wilson

Doubts are growing around the Tottenham manager and his all-or-nothing team’s lack of a plan B will be tested by Liverpool

Almost a season and a half has passed since Ange Postecoglou was appointed Tottenham manager and that means he is entering dangerous territory. He has led Spurs in 65 games. Antonio Conte got 77, André Villas-Boas 80 and José Mourinho 86. Until Thursday’s chaotic Carabao Cup win over Manchester United, he had a lower win percentage than all three, but he has now snuck past Mourinho. Sooner or later simply being not as grumpy as the bloke who came before is not going to be enough.

Since Postecoglou took 26 points from his first 10 Premier League games, that statistical quirk is particularly troublesome. There is little sense of him slowly dragging the club in the right direction, of the trend being to the better. Rather, since those first 10 games, he is averaging 1.43 points per Premier League game – enough to finish ninth or 10th most seasons. Does the fact the football is exciting – something that couldn’t be said under his three permanent predecessors – make up for what, given resources and stadium, would be a significant underachievement?

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Marcus Rashford needs a fresh start but reviving his career will not be easy | Jonathan Wilson

Forward’s disillusionment with Manchester United is understandable, but he faces a tricky task to rediscover his form

It was two years ago on Wednesday that Argentina won the World Cup. England had gone out to France in the quarter-finals and, beyond the usual kneejerk attacks on Gareth Southgate, there was a sense of general optimism. They had lost in a 50-50 game, beaten in the marginal details, and the squad looked young and fresh. When had we last seen an England attack so bristling with talent, as a front three of Bukayo Saka, Harry Kane and Phil Foden demonstrated, with Raheem Sterling, Jack Grealish and Marcus Rashford on the bench to replace them?

How quickly the world of football changes. Grealish is an intermittent presence at a glitching Manchester City. Sterling, chewed up by the Great Disruption at Chelsea, has vanished on his loan at Arsenal. But nobody perhaps has suffered a more striking decline than Rashford. He’d scored off the bench against Iran and got two against Wales on his only World Cup start in Qatar. He returned from the tournament in the form of his life. He scored eight goals in his next seven appearances. In total that season, he scored 30 goals for Manchester United.

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This season is a reminder of how hard it is to dominate the Premier League | Jonathan Wilson

Suddenly, fascinatingly, every game seems fraught with possibility, even if that has meant mostly pain for the struggling champions, Manchester City

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Sometimes the only explanation that makes sense is that football is governed not by the laws of physics, by data and xG and logic, but that it is in fact a malevolent deity, capricious and mischievous and that sometimes it turns on you and there’s really not much that can be done.

The Manchester derby had been a largely dreadful game between two tentative sides, lacking confidence and conviction, poking and prodding and giving very little indication they’ve been the two most successful clubs over the history of the Premier League. But City had had all three of the shots on target in the first half and, in that sense, were worth the lead given them when Joško Gvardiol headed in Kevin De Bruyne’s deflected cross, a goal that would have seemed freakish had it not been the eighth United have conceded from a corner this season, and the fourth under Ruben Amorim.

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Amorim’s promise of jam tomorrow at Manchester United is already spread thin | Jonathan WIlson

The banter era rolls on at Old Trafford and Sunday’s trip to City could be more clown-car rally than demolition derby

There was a moment, at about 5.30pm last Saturday, when there seemed a genuine danger that Manchester United might be turning into a serious football club. But it took only two minutes and the sight of Nikola Milenkovic soaring above Lisandro Martínez for that facade to collapse. Two further weird goals later – the sort of accidents that speak of a profound carelessness – and it was clear that the banter era still has some time to run.

That was only the beginning. By the following morning, Dan Ashworth had been mutual-consented out of the club: five months’ gardening leave followed by five months of actual work, a truly magnificent piece of living satire, even before you consider the compensation United had to pay Newcastle to secure him and the hefty payoff he must have received.

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Arsenal’s title hopes take another knock after goalless draw against Everton

Inevitability is a dangerous sensation in football. Nothing is ever certain. No matter how great the general sense of domination, no matter how impressive the possession stats, at some point a team still has to ­actually put the ball in the net.

For a long time on Saturday here the feeling was that Arsenal would score at some point. They had to. They had all the ball. There were enough chances and half-chances to maintain the general feeling that a breakthrough would come. But it did not – and so, with Liverpool dropping points, another opportunity to close the gap at the top was missed.

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How Chelsea became unexpected Premier League title challengers | Jonathan Wilson

Enzo Maresca’s team started the season in chaos and uncertainty. But that was the case the last time they claimed the league crown

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Nobody saw Chelsea coming the last time they won the title. The key moment came in the sixth game of the season when they found themselves 3-0 down at half-time away at Arsenal. They’d lost at home to Liverpool the previous week and drawn at Swansea the week before that. Their manager, Antonio Conte, having tried to accommodate himself to the squad decided enough was enough: the squad had to bend to him. At half-time he switched to his preferred back three and in the comforting drabness of a goalless second half of a game that was already lost, was born the revolution.

Chelsea won their next 13 league games and by the time anybody had worked out how to deal with their 3-4-2-1, with N’Golo Kanté and Nemanja Matić an apparently impenetrable shield at the back of midfield, it was too late. There was no European football to worry about – the previous season had seen José Mourinho’s meltdown and a 10th-placed finish – and so Victor Moses and Marcos Alonso remained fresh enough to keep tearing up and down the field at wing-back. Elsewhere the stars aligned: Manchester City were still getting used to Pep Guardiola in his first season in English football, Arsenal were still in their late-Wenger drift, Liverpool still building under Jürgen Klopp, and so Mauricio Pochettino’s Tottenham were Chelsea’s closest challengers. But 93 points would probably have won the league whoever came second.

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Arsenal stumble at Fulham after Saka’s late strike ruled out for offside

The good news is that it was better for Arsenal than last season. The bad news is that their run of successive wins was ended at four and they spurned an opportunity to apply pressure to the leaders Liverpool. And worse, they were denied an 89th‑minute winner by a tight – but correct – VAR offside call.

“Emotionally that was tough,” Mikel Arteta said of the decision. He maintained his recent policy, though, of stressing the need for Arsenal to improve and take responsibility rather than looking for excuses, even if this was the eighth different back four he has named this season.

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Fifa’s Infantino and Saudi Arabia 1, Football and human decency 0 | Jonathan Wilson

The World Cup has never seemed quite so far from its founder’s ideals as it does now with the confirmation of the 2034 hosts

The greatest trick the devil ever learned was to overwhelm the critical capacities of those who would hold him to account. Use the word “garbage” once and there is a mass outbreak of close reading, drilling into the true meaning: did he say “supporters” or “supporter’s”? Be a convicted felon who splurges out insults and non sequiturs constantly, though, and the response becomes too disparate, too unfocused, moving always to the next outrage so that none ever quite sticks.

Saudi Arabia will be awarded the right to host the 2034 World Cup on Wednesday. There may not even be a vote, just the applause of acclamation. Lise Klaveness, the Norwegian Football Federation president, has been an admirably consistent critic of Gianni Infantino, and last month raised a number of questions about the bidding process for 2034, but there seems little even she can do now. Other Scandinavian federations, the only vague locus of resistance, seem already to have accepted the inevitable. When there is only one option available, what else can you do?

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Man City are spiralling. But what would it take for Guardiola to get the sack? | Jonathan Wilson

The Spaniard is one of the greatest managers in the Premier League era but his club’s aura has vanished. He still has reasons to think his job is safe though

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Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of Sunday afternoon at Anfield was how ordinary it all felt. Everybody came for something apocalyptic and what they got was a league game that felt like pretty much any other league game in which Liverpool beat a side who aren’t as good as them. For a time there was a thought that Liverpool might pay for failing to take advantage of their early domination, for missing decent chances. But Manchester City are no longer the almost supernatural force they once were; eventually they made two mistakes in quick succession, giving away first possession and then a penalty, and the game was Liverpool’s.

Even Pep Guardiola seems to have accepted it is over. After the – frankly uncomfortable – sight of him clawing at his own scalp on Tuesday as they tossed away a three-goal lead against Feyenoord, he responded to chants of “You’re getting sacked in the morning” by grinning and raising six fingers to denote the number of Premier League titles he has won. Unfortunately, it also denotes how many of their last seven games City have lost.

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Is the Premier League title already Liverpool’s to lose? - Football Weekly

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Jonathan Wilson and Barney Ronay as Liverpool beat Manchester City 2-0 at Anfield to move nine points clear at the top of the Premier League

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On the podcast today; Manchester City’s doom spiral continues to swirl, this time at the hands of Arne Slot’s brilliant Liverpool side.

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