Jonathan Wilson's Blog, page 32

Everton’s and Forest’s deduction derby is a deeply flawed relegation six-pointer

It’s absurd that nobody has a clue how many points might be needed to stay up as the two clubs docked points collide

It’s about the points deductions. It couldn’t not be about the points deductions. In another world, in another season, Everton v Nottingham Forest would just be 16th v 17th (at the start of the weekend). Except that in another world, the points deductions wouldn’t have happened and so it would be 14th v 17th but with 17th starting the weekend five points clear of the Premier League relegation zone and so a lot less anxious than Forest actually are. This is the points deduction derby.

At Goodison on Sunday, there will be protests and coloured cards, chants about corruption, perhaps even a sense of fraternity, two clubs united in a brotherhood of outrage. There will be a great sense of the injustice of it all, which is not entirely unreasonable: when you look at what’s happened in football over the past couple of decades – the wage inflation, the absurd sums spent – you can understand why fans might think: “Why us? How come we’re the ones who’ve been done for this?”

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Man City once stumbled in the greatest title race of all. This time looks different | Jonathan Wilson

City have not been at their overwhelming best this season, but they remain immune to the typical anxieties of a title run-in

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There are still only two points in it: Manchester City 73, Arsenal 71, Liverpool 71. It’s not over yet. If the three keep pace for the next five games, it will still be the first season since 1971-72 in which three different sides go into their final game of the season with a chance of winning the title. The hope for anybody seeking a dramatic run-in is that this weekend was just the beginning of a final month of twists and turns. But the sense is that the race has taken a decisive shift towards City and a fourth successive title for Pep Guardiola’s team.

It’s not just that City swept Luton aside 5-1. You’d expect that; they beat them 6-2 in the FA Cup in February. Nor was it just the fact that Liverpool lost at home to Crystal Palace, the opponent Jürgen Klopp had beaten more than any other, or that Arsenal lost at home to Aston Villa, managed by their former manager Unai Emery, each detail twisting the knife in a little further. It was the way they lost, coming after the way Arsenal had played in drawing against Bayern Munich in the Champions League and the way Liverpool had played in losing to Atalanta in the Europa League.

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Weary Liverpool’s title push close to petering out as familiar errors return | Jonathan Wilson

Conceding early and failing to take chances have been recurring themes and were on show in defeat to Crystal Palace

A corner, nine minutes after half-time. A clutch of players jump together. The ball drops eight yards out. Darwin Núñez pivots. All he has to do is keep it low. All he has to do is get it on target. He does keep it low, he does get it on target. But the ball hits the right knee of Dean Henderson, the Crystal Palace goalkeeper, and bounces wide for a corner. Was that the moment the title was lost?

It wasn’t, of course, in part because no season ever truly comes down to just one moment – and Liverpool anyway could yet come back. Even after that chance, in this game, there were other glorious opportunities that dribbled away. Diogo Jota hit Nathaniel Clyne with the goal otherwise open. Curtis Jones, sent through one on one, sliced wide. Harvey Elliott had a header saved. Mohamed Salah had an effort blocked by Tyrick Mitchell.

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Who needs perfection? Why flawed City, Arsenal and Liverpool bring the drama | Jonathan Wilson

This season’s title race is thrilling because all the contenders are imperfect. Sport is nothing without a sense of jeopardy

In Chad Harbach’s 2011 novel The Art of Fielding, the shortstop Henry Skrimshander is approaching the US college record for the most consecutive errorless baseball games when a throw inexplicably goes awry and hits a teammate in the dugout. At that, his confidence evaporates to the point that he can no longer execute the most basic skills; he gets the yips. What lingers from the novel, for me, is the crushing sense of pressure of having errors recorded like that, appearing even on the scoreboard, as though the sport had become less about the achievement of glory than about the avoidance of mistakes.

Avoiding mistakes is good. Some people should be judged on the avoidance of mistakes. Postal workers, bus drivers, indexers, especially surgeons and air-traffic controllers, should carry on not getting things wrong. But sport? Shouldn’t sport be about actively creating something?

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Arsenal still have demons and Bayern show they will not be slain easily | Jonathan Wilson

The error that led to Serge Gnabry’s equaliser changed the game and helped end notions Arsenal might pull off their own 5-1 win

It wasn’t supposed to be this hard. In the opening 15 minutes, it didn’t look as though it was going to be this hard. In the end, it could have been a lot worse for Arsenal and a draw still gives them a reasonable chance of progression to the semi-final. They did have the wherewithal to find an equaliser. They got away with it. But the bigger issue is how they allowed a game they were dominating to slip from their grasp.

A penalty shootout win against Porto was evidently not enough to banish Arsenal’s European demons. But those demons are perhaps not confined to the Champions League. This has been a highly impressive season for them, a clear improvement on last year. But one doubt remains: when the going is good, Arsenal are very, very good, but what happens when things go awry?

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Liverpool and Villa drop crucial points in Premier League drama – Football Weekly

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Jonathan Wilson, and Dan Bardell to discuss all of the weekend’s Premier League action, along with paying tribute to the late Joe Kinnear

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On the podcast today: the panel discuss all the weekend’s Premier League action, including the 2-2 draw at Old Trafford between Manchester United and Liverpool. Were the visitors wasteful, or was it all part of Erik ten Hag’s plan to play on their opponents’ complacency?

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Is Jürgen Klopp entering a bold new age of psychological warfare? | Jonathan Wilson

The Liverpool manager delivered a message to Arsenal after his side’s 2-2 draw at Manchester United

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It’s a long time since the Premier League last enjoyed a bout of mind games, but Jürgen Klopp’s reaction to Liverpool’s 2-2 draw at Manchester United on Sunday suggested that we may be about to enter a bold new age of psychological warfare.

This, it should be acknowledged, was a long way from Alex Ferguson suggesting Leeds United might go easy against Newcastle because they subconsciously wanted to stop Manchester United winning the league, and perhaps even further from José Mourinho’s lurid provocations. But what Klopp said still stood out, if only because managers these days so assiduously follow the code of saying nothing remotely negative about other Premier League sides.

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Joe Kinnear’s success with Spurs and Wimbledon outweighs Newcastle chaos

Former full-back, who has died aged 77, won trophies in north London and managed Wimbledon to league prominence

It is part of the tragedy of life that what we did last tends to remain fresher in the memory than what we did best. It is part of Joe Kinnear’s tragedy that his final stint as a manager, at Newcastle in the 2008-09 season, contained one of the great openings to a press conference …

Kinnear: “Which one is Simon Bird?”

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Ongoing sense of shambles at Manchester United is unsustainable | Jonathan Wilson

Ten Hag’s side have conceded 308 shots in 14 games but goal stats show weird openness is hard for opponents to deal with

Everybody’s done it. The door looks heavy or stiff, so you give it an almighty shove, only to find the expected resistance isn’t there so you tumble through, falling flat on your face. Erik ten Hag’s genius has been to take an everyday pratfall and turn it into a philosophy.

On Sunday Liverpool, astonishingly, fell victim to the trick for the second time in three weeks. The first time put them out of the Cup; this second, although a draw rather than a defeat, cost them leadership of the league.

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Champions League needs true golden eggs to bring back unmissable spectacle | Jonathan Wilson

The same old teams in the same old patterns – which is why last eight must not be yet another procession for Europe’s elite

This time, nobody can blame the draw. The last 16 of this season’s Champions League was a drab, largely unimpressive thing, salvaged to an extent by its final week as Arsenal came through a fraught second leg against Porto and Atlético Madrid came from 2-0 down on aggregate to eliminate Internazionale on penalties. But for the most part it was a plod of the predictable and the uninspired.

To an extent that was simply a function of the ties, a mixture of mismatches and clashes between sides who for one reason or another have been out of sorts this season. Even the meeting of the Spanish and Italian champions felt weirdly insignificant given how disappointing Barcelona and Napoli have been.

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