Jonathan Wilson's Blog, page 31

The Championship to Premier League gulf is becoming harder to bridge | Jonathan Wilson

For the second time in league history, the three promoted sides will be relegated. And the underlying numbers paint a grim picture for the English pyramid

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Luton Town’s defeat at West Ham and Burnley’s at Tottenham on Saturday mean that, barring something astonishing on the final weekend (a Luton win over Fulham and a Nottingham Forest defeat at Burnley with a goal-difference swing of 12), the three sides who came up last season will be the three teams who go down. For those who fear the gulf between Premier League and Championship is becoming impossible to bridge, that is a worrying sign.

The truth is that, but for Forest’s four-point deduction for breaches of the league’s Profit and Sustainability rules, it wouldn’t even have been close. The other interest at the bottom came from Everton, before their recent run of 13 points from five games. But they wouldn’t have been in the mix either had it not been for their own 10-point deduction, subsequently reduced to six. The feeling that if you had to have points deducted this was the season to do it has been proved accurate.

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Arsenal capitalise on Arteta’s belief in set-piece specialism – unlike Spurs | Jonathan Wilson

Set plays are giving Gunners an edge, yet Ange Postecoglou’s weak spot is not singling them out for specialist coaching

Ange Postecoglou isn’t worried about set pieces, as he has made clear repeatedly over the past few weeks. Football being football, the more he is asked and the more he plays down their importance, the more goals Spurs seem to concede from set pieces. At the same time, as Arsenal score more and more from set pieces, their set-piece coach, Nicolas Jover, has become an increasingly prominent figure, bouncing up from the bench every time Arsenal are awarded a corner or free-kick near the box.

Set pieces feel like the new frontier. It may look familiar as Declan Rice bends one in, Ben White checks the keeper and a phalanx of big blokes charge to the near post, but the blocking runs are more carefully plotted that ever before.

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Ange Postecoglou has reinvented Spurs. But the path forward is murky | Jonathan Wilson

The grumblings have begun. But Tottenham’s improvement from a year ago should not be forgotten

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The good news for Tottenham is that they did not concede a goal from a set play against Liverpool on Sunday. But there wasn’t much else. A 4-2 defeat meant they had lost four successive league games for the first time since 2004 and if Tottenham are to clinch fourth place from Aston Villa, they have to win their remaining three games, one of which is against Manchester City, and hope that Villa don’t win either of their two.

A measure of perspective is essential. Spurs finished eighth last year and the season ended in rancour and recrimination. Antonio Conte had left at the end of March, by which point he had made clear he didn’t much want to be at the club, while fans had tired of his grindingly negative football; what can be tolerated when it’s bringing results soon palls when those results dry up.

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Mature Foden and brutal Haaland rev up City’s relentless winning machine | Jonathan Wilson

Pep Guardiola’s side have not come near to scaling the heights of last season but remain unbeaten for five months

Perhaps this is just what happens when a team gets into the habit of winning: they keep on winning. They don’t have to dominate, they don’t have to carve out dozens of chances, they don’t have to hold possession for hours at a time. They just have to be, and by the quality of their being, they find goals when they need them.

Manchester City aren’t Real Madrid, not quite. They’re not yet able to doze away from kick-off, watching idly on as the opposition squander a handful of chances before, yawning, taking the first chance that comes their way. But equally they have gone 32 games unbeaten since the defeat at Aston Villa in December without being anywhere near the exceptional standards they set last season. Having exceptional players capable of turning games in a moment really helps.

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Erik ten Hag’s Ming the Merciless act has given United only flashes of glory | Jonathan Wilson

Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Ineos have a big decision to make but will an unlikely FA Cup final win be enough to save the manager?

And so the real business begins. The four months since Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Ineos bought a little over a quarter of Manchester United have been the phoney war. No transfers could be done, so little could be changed on the pitch. The task of Ratcliffe and his advisers was to watch and learn and rejig the executive tier so that when the window opens they are ready to act.

That rejig has been more dramatic than many anticipated. The chief executive, Richard Arnold, and the football director, John Murtough, are just the highest profile departures. Omar Berrada will come in as chief executive from Manchester City when his notice period expires on 13 July while Murtough has effectively been replaced by Jason Wilcox, the new technical director, and Dan Ashworth, who will come in once the terms of his severance from Newcastle have been agreed.

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Liverpool have run out of steam. But Klopp’s legacy is already cemented | Jonathan Wilson

An end-of-season wobble has ended any hopes of a dream send off. But it’s characteristic of Klopp’s managerial career

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And so there will be no glorious farewell for Jürgen Klopp. Saturday’s 2-2 draw with West Ham, coupled with victories for Manchester City and Arsenal, means any realistic hope of a second Premier League title is effectively over. Klopp is exhausted, his team is exhausted and the manic emotional energy that gripped the side during the League Cup final and immediately after has dissipated.

There will be questions about the wisdom of revealing when he did that he would be leaving. This has been a truism if English soccer since Alex Ferguson announced in 2001 that he planned to quit Manchester United. Do that, even if you’re as fearsome a figure as Ferguson, and the danger is that authority wanes. Something similar seems to have happened with Emma Hayes, who will leave Chelsea Women in the summer after a hugely successful 12-year stint to take charge of the USWNT. Would Saturday’s touchline spat with Mohamed Salah have happened had the Egyptian thought that Klopp would still be his manager next season? (It now seems likely that Salah, who has only a year left on his contract, will also leave in the summer).

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Arsenal and Manchester City set up a two-horse race – Football Weekly

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Jordan Jarrett-Bryan, and Jonathan Wilson to discuss latest Premier League action and beyond

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On the podcast today: the panel discuss all the weekend’s Premier League action, including the north London derby, as Arsenal put the pressure on Manchester City with a 3-2 win over Tottenham. With a routine win for City despite Forest playing well and West Ham holding Liverpool to a 2-2 draw, surely we can now conclude that the Premier League is a two-horse race?

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Forest see conspiracy everywhere but ability on the pitch lets them down | Jonathan Wilson

Maybe all things Luton are behind Forest’s difficulties but against Pep Guardiola’s men, they failed to get the basics right

There is no better way to rally the base than to insist there is an external conspiracy. Everything would be fine if it weren’t for them. We’re being derailed by – delete as appropriate – the Rosicrucians, the Illuminati, the Masons, giant lizards or, most fearsome of all the shadowy string-pullers, the celebrity Luton fans.

Nottingham Forest are threatened with relegation not because they cannot defend set plays, because they do not take their chances or because they bought 34 players over two transfer windows, a splurge that put them in breach of profitability and sustainability regulations and led to them being docked four points. No, they sit a point above the drop zone because of the nefarious forces ranged against them. Who was the referee when Forest beat Luton in the 1959 Cup final? Jack Clough of Bolton. Can it be coincidence that he shares his surname with Forest’s greatest manager? No wonder Luton are out for revenge.

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Ange Postecoglou the 'plastic' manager is perfect fit for a club at odds with its fans | Jonathan Wilson

There’s always been a tension between connection to place and the commercial reality – but it has never felt more acute

Charlie Hurley, the greatest player Sunderland ever had, died on Monday. He was tough, powerful and composed, captain of Alan Brown’s promotion side of 1963-64, which may have been the best of all postwar Sunderland teams. Certainly it was the side my dad talked about the most, far more than the FA Cup-winning team of nine years later. Montgomery, Irwin, Ashurst, Harvey, Hurley, McNab, Usher, Herd, Sharkey, Crossan, Mulhall: names that flitted through my childhood as legends of a greater age. Imagine if Brian Clough hadn’t done his knee.

George Mulhall, the Scottish outside-left, was his favourite, I think, but only because there was no point celebrating Hurley; everybody did that. Decades later, fans still sung Hurley’s name and bought No 5 shirts with his name on the back. His popularity at this remove is hard to explain. Other than promotion, Hurley won nothing. He wasn’t even local: born in Cork, he moved to Millwall at an early age and spoke with a pronounced London accent.

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Bayer Leverkusen’s success is a reminder of soccer’s community power | Jonathan Wilson

As the Premier League continues to hike ticket prices and shut out local fans, Bayer’s Bundesliga title shows the value of a club rooted in its home town

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A corner from the left, seven minutes into injury-time. The Croatian defender Josip Stanišić rises at the near post. His header is too firm to be described as glancing, but it is well directed and flashes across goal and in for an equaliser. The black and red corner of the Signal Iduna Park erupts. Several minutes after the game they were still celebrating with their players. The Bundesliga title is already won but there should be no doubt that Bayer Leverkusen care about their unbeaten record.

Until that moment, there had been a sense of anticlimax about Borussia Dortmund against Leverkusen. What had, a month or so ago, looked like potentially being the game at which Xabi Alonso’s side would wrap up the title instead became, thanks to Bayern Munich squandering a two-goal lead against Heidenheim two weeks ago, the first game on their five-game victory lap. Dortmund, similarly, were on a comedown after Wednesday’s Champions League quarter-final win over Atlético. Fifth place is all but secure and, with Germany looking very likely to have five Champions League slots next season, it doesn’t much matter whether they catch RB Leipzig, who are two points clear in fourth.

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