Jonathan Wilson's Blog, page 18

Manchester United 4-0 Everton, Chelsea 3-0 Aston Villa and more: Premier League – as it happened

Cole Palmer starred for Chelsea as Aston Villa were overwhelmed, Manchester United thumped Everton and Tottenham drew with Fulham

Here we go.

Maresca has made 10 changes from the midweek win at Heidenheim. Jadon Sancho is the player to keep his place in the lineup.

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Tom Cairney equalises but then sees red as Fulham earn point at Tottenham

It would be tempting to talk of Tottenham at least being predictable in their unpredictability, of the way they cannot but follow up a great result with a disappointing one, of the inevitability of them, having beaten Manchester City 4-0 last weekend, failing to beat Fulham at home this. But actually the story on Sunday was far more about Fulham, how well they played and how mystifying it was that they didn’t take all three points having had much the better of the majority of the game.

What made their performance all the more impressive was that they did it without the midfielder Andreas Pereira. Marco Silva denied that he had been left out after giving an interview to Brazilian media in which he seemed to suggest he would quite fancy a move to Marseille to play under Roberto De Zerbi. “He’s going to be back to help the team like he’s been helping us every week,” Silva said. “I don’t make decisions around interviews. I don’t protect players because of social media. My decisions come from daily sessions with the players. He was not ready. It was a technical decision from myself.”

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All played out: Guardiola’s City look broken and Liverpool can inflict knockout | Jonathan Wilson

An extraordinary sense of a club imploding is taking hold and the champions’ title rivals have the chance to make it worse

On 30 January 2015, Bayern Munich lost in the Bundesliga for the first time that season, going down 4-1 at Wolfsburg. Pep Guardiola was worried. They had dropped six points in the first 17 league games and the title was almost certainly theirs already, but Wolfsburg, inspired by Kevin De Bruyne, had picked them off on the counter.

The space Guardiola’s teams leave behind the high defensive line had always been a vulnerability, could not but be a vulnerability, but something had gone wrong with the press, allowing Wolfsburg freedom. And if Wolfsburg could exploit it, Europe’s elite would certainly be able to.

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No empire lasts forever. Pep Guardiola’s struggle against entropy will be fascinating

Manchester City’s struggles could be a blip or the start of terminal decline. We will see how one of the all-time great managers handles the conundrum

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Five defeats in a row. Three defeats in a row in the Premier League. A 52-game unbeaten home record shattered. An eight-point gap to the leaders. Pep Guardiola’s joint-biggest home defeat – and to Tottenham, whose previous game was a home defeat to Ipswich. For empires, the end comes first gradually and then all at once and, while Guardiola is genius enough and Manchester City are rich enough that nobody should be writing them off just yet, there is a sense that parameters have shifted, that this is not the league we thought we knew. Jürgen Klopp must be wondering whether he went a year too soon.

Since this is City, the tendency is to find explanations, to pre-suppose a return to the status quo. It’s true they tend to stutter in the late autumn. It’s true even that Guardiola’s record against Tottenham is improbably bad; in his managerial career he has lost against Spurs nine times, more than against any other club. It’s true that amid a raft of injuries and general fatigue, they’re without both the Ballon d’Or winner Rodri and the nearest thing they have to a replacement, Mateo Kovacic. And it’s also true that they could easily have won any of those recent five games: even on Saturday, although they lost the xG 2.5-2.1, they had 23 shots to Tottenham’s nine and could have won quite comfortably through Erling Haaland shots alone.

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Southampton are doomed but it’s clear why Russell Martin will not change | Jonathan Wilson

Few managers are idealists but the truth for the man in charge at St Mary’s is that his players aren’t good enough to stay up

There has, at least, been a win to break the pattern. But Southampton’s victory over Everton was followed immediately by defeat by Wolves and so they spent the international break bottom of the table. They have taken four points from 11 games. In only two games this season have Southampton had the better xG – on the opening day, when they lost 1-0 at 10-man Newcastle, and in the 1-1 draw at Ipswich. They are, barring something miraculous, doomed.

The routine has become familiar. Southampton play their goal-kicks short. They pass the ball neatly. They have a lot of possession; 56.6% – only three teams in the Premier League are averaging more. They don’t take their chances – no side have hit a lower percentage of shots on target this season. Somebody makes a mistake – perhaps one of their players, perhaps the referee – they concede and the game is lost.

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Nwaneri scores first league goal as Arsenal beat Nottingham Forest

It was the first day of the rest of their season. After a patchy start to the campaign, littered with red cards and brain fades, double saves and points needlessly dropped, what Arsenal needed more than anything else was a straightforward win.

It’s in the routine Saturday 3pm kick-offs, just as much as in the live televised clashes, and in wins ticked off almost without incident, far more than in the great expenditures of emotion, that championships are decided.

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Amorim arrives as Guardiola extends stay in Manchester – Football Weekly Extra podcast

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Jonathan Wilson and Jonathan Liew to preview the Premier League action this weekend

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On the podcast today; Pep Guardiola will stay at Manchester City beyond this season. The panel debate whether it is good for the Premier League and how it will affect the players before their game against Spurs on Saturday.

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Kylian Mbappé’s Real Madrid career is in danger of wasting everyone’s time | Jonathan Wilson

The president of the European champions is addicted to expensive footballers. But his predilection often harms the club and the players themselves

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People will tell you there’s no such thing as club DNA. How could there be? The managers change, the players change, the directors and backroom staff change. So how can a club have a distinctive identity? How can Spurs be Spursy? How can Bayern have Dusel? Why are Ajax still be banging on about playing the game the right way?

Often it makes little sense. A mood transmitted from the fans, perhaps? A culture passed on from player to player, director to director? Something in the very air around the stadium? But occasionally there are times when it’s perfectly obvious why a club is the way it is, why it is apparently locked in a cycle of otherwise inexplicable behaviour. Real Madrid act like Real Madrid because the club’s president is, as he has been for all but three years since 2000, Florentino Pérez. And there is nothing Pérez likes more than a famous, expensive footballer.

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

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No organisation, leadership or direction: Ghana are wasting a generation of talent | Jonathan Wilson

They should be one of the Africa Cup of Nations favourites, instead Ghana are facing up to another chaotic failure

What made it especially painful was that, just briefly, it seemed they might get away with it. But they did not. Ghana did not get the win they needed in Angola on Friday and so Mohammed Kudus, Thomas Partey and Antoine Semenyo will not be at the next Cup of Nations, which begins in Morocco in December 2025.

Ghana have been terrible in the qualifiers. Their elimination is deserved. They went into their final pair of games needing to win both and hope Sudan lost both of theirs. The likelihood was that it would all be over on Thursday, when Sudan, managed by the former Ghana coach Kwesi Appiah, which has added a whole other tier of complication, went to Niger. But Niger won, 4-0. Nobody had expected that. For Ghana there was a glimmer of hope.

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Manchester City shouldn’t panic but they are struggling in unfamiliar ways | Jonathan Wilson

Pep Guardiola’s team have lost four in a row. While they have overcome hurdles before the nature of their problems this season present a fresh challenge

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The danger is always of overreacting. We’ve seen Manchester City have a blip at this stage of the season before. But still, defeat to Brighton on Saturday means that, for the first time in his career as a manager, Pep Guardiola has lost four successive games. It would be extremely premature to suggest the empire is crumbling but, equally, for the first time in a long time there is a sense that City’s aura may be beginning to wane.

But first, some context. One defeat was in the Carabao Cup and another was in the Champions League, where City sit 10th in the table; even if they do miss out on the top eight who go through to the last 16 automatically – they have Feyenoord (home), Juventus and Paris Saint-Germain (away) and Club Brugge (home) next – they will surely at the very least be in the play-offs. But two of the recent defeats were in the Premier League, away at Bournemouth and then Brighton, and as a result City sit five points behind Liverpool.

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

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