Jonathan Wilson's Blog, page 4

Pep Guardiola says Manchester City ‘forgot to play’ in defeat at Brighton

City lose two of first three games for first time in 21 years

Fabian Hürzeler turns match with quadruple substitution

Pep Guardiola said his team “forgot to play” after they gave up a lead to lose 2-1 at Brighton. It was Manchester City’s second defeat of the season, the first time they have lost two of their first three league games in 21 years.

City had taken the lead through Erling Haaland and seemed to have the game under control when the Brighton manager, Fabian Hürzeler, made a quadruple substitution after an hour and levelled from a James Milner penalty seven minutes later.

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Gruda fires late winner in Brighton’s comeback win over Manchester City

When a team lose the aura of champions, it can go absolutely. Opponents suddenly look at them and ­wonder what on earth once seemed so intimidating, how on earth a bunch of ­players in these shirts, even with this manager, could seem so unbeatable.

At half-time Manchester City led, and seemed comfortable in their lead against opponents who had never got going. But by the time Brajan Gruda calmly rounded James Trafford and dumped Rayan Aït-Nouri on his ­backside before rolling into an empty net, a Brighton winner had come to seem almost ­overdue.

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Slot’s revamped Liverpool are vulnerable in a way that they weren’t last season | Jonathan Wilson

Injury-hit Arsenal face ill-at-ease champions struggling to fit the new cogs in their hitherto well-oiled machine

The mechanisms of a football team are delicate. You win the league then add nearly £300m of talent and it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll win it again, doesn’t necessarily make you better, even if you’re not doing something as obviously likely to cause imbalance as adding Kylian Mbappé to a Real Madrid team already stacked with left-sided attackers.

Liverpool go into Sunday’s home game against Arsenal having won two out of two in the Premier League and scored a healthy seven goals. But those aren’t the statistics that tell the whole story. If you include the Community Shield, Liverpool have conceded two goals in each of their three games so far. The defensive problems are obvious and the return of Ryan Gravenberch at Newcastle on Monday did not magically solve them.

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Blockbuster Champions League draw is intriguing but ultimately irrelevant | Jonathan Wilson

Fans will continue to lap up massive games but perhaps the teams involved will conclude they are not that important

Liverpool v Real Madrid! Arsenal v Bayern! Chelsea v Napoli! Madrid v Manchester City! Bayern v Chelsea! Newcastle v Barcelona! Inter v Liverpool! PSG v Bayern! City v Napoli! Madrid v Juventus! Chelsea v Barcelona! It can’t be denied that the Champions League draw threw up some ties that look like massive games.

These are games that have massive teams in them. They are happening in a massive competition. There will be famous players in famous kits in famous stadiums. There will be Champions League branding. They will play the Champions League theme tune. They will use the Champions League ball, taking its cues this season from the night sky and featuring hand-drawn zodiac signs in gold that symbolise heroic deeds and heavenly destiny. It will all look like something really important.

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Grimsby’s glory and Scottish sides slump in Europe – Football Weekly

Max Rushden is joined by Jonathan Wilson, Robyn Cowen, Mark Langdon and Ewan Murray to discuss Manchester United’s shock defeat to Grimsby, a disastrous week for Scottish football and look ahead to the weekend’s Premier League action.

Rate, review, share on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud, Acast and Stitcher, and join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter and email.

On the podcast today: Grimsby 2-2 Manchester United (12-11 pens), a fourth-tier side knocks United out of the Carabao Cup on a wet, chaotic night at Blundell Park. The panel discuss The Mariners’ magic, United’s crisis under Ruben Amorim, and whether anything can actually change at Old Trafford.

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Early missteps show Guardiola’s rebuild of City remains a work in progress

Questions around goalkeeping and style of play raise questions about whether Man City can regain the aura of invincibility that once surrounded them

The truly great sides always come with an aura. One of the elements that makes them so hard to beat is that beating them seems so inconceivable. Even when they hit a bad run, the expectation is always that at some point they will rediscover their form. To some extent, Manchester City did that last season. As miserable as much of the campaign was, after losing to Nottingham Forest at the beginning of March, they put together a run of 10 games unbeaten and ended up third – even if defeat to Crystal Palace in the FA Cup final demonstrated the shortcomings that remain.

That game showcased City’s flatness at times going forward but also a strange openness at the back that was apparent again in the 4-3 defeat to Al-Hilal in the Club World Cup. Pep Guardiola sides, given how high their line is, will always be susceptible to direct balls played in behind them if something goes awry with the press; it’s an inevitable part of the risk-reward of that style of play.

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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Modern football’s off-field dramas are pushing games into the background | Jonathan Wilson

Owners and directors are fast becoming the stars in a sport increasingly obsessed by storylines other than actual football

Football has become the country’s soap opera. It’s a point David Goldblatt makes in his new book Injury Time: it seems absurd to think now that in 2001, the BBC persuaded Uefa to delay kick-off of a Champions League tie between Liverpool and Barcelona so viewers could first find out who shot Phil Mitchell. By 2020, EastEnders was being bumped from its slot in the schedules for an FA Cup fifth-round tie between Liverpool and Chelsea. As the big television soaps have declined, it is football that has become the great national obsession, not just in terms of what happens on the pitch but also the endless politicking off it.

Nothing could exemplify that better than Sunday’s game at Selhurst Park, a curiously patchy and unsatisfactory draw played out in an atmosphere of fraught tetchiness. Crystal Palace and Nottingham Forest are two very respectable clubs with fine traditions, but there is no great history between them.

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Ruben Amorim faces more pressure despite reasons for optimism at United | Jonathan Wilson

Club who used to inspire fear now inspire pity and the head coach, with no credit in the bank, needs a victory at Fulham

Encouraging signs. Gimmers of promises. Green shoots. It is indicative of just how far Manchester United have sunk that the reaction to their 1-0 defeat to Arsenal last Sunday was not shock or scorn or even schadenfreude; it was encouragement. United used to inspire fear in opponents; now they inspire pity.

It is not that there were no reasons for optimism for United. The new forwards who started, Bryan Mbeumo and Matheus Cunha, looked intermittently dangerous. Mason Mount offered a reminder of his quality and if he can stay fit he could have a major role to play. Patrick Dorgu dominated his flank. Amad Diallo sparkled after coming off the bench. David Raya was forced to make seven saves. Dorgu hit a post. There were plausible claims for a penalty when William Saliba appeared to go through the back of Cunha. Opta’s xG model had United winning 1.5 to 1.3.

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Arsenal’s win at Manchester United may not have impressed, but it was just what they need

Winning at Old Trafford may not prove to be as common as last season, making Arsenal’s result stand out among the title hopefuls

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There was a thought at times in the second part of last season, when the set-piece goals dried up, that Arsenal had become over-reliant on them. And perhaps that was true, but they’re a useful weapon to have. Some games are won by overwhelming opponents through superior technical ability and some games are won by organization and hard work, by finding a way to score and a way to keep their opponent out. Arsenal’s 1-0 win at Old Trafford on Sunday was definitely one of the latter.

Manchester United do not defend inswinging corners well. Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka both excel at taking inswinging corners. In that sense, the fact that the game was decided by United goalkeeper Altay Bayindir’s flap at a Rice inswinger was entirely to be expected. What was less predictable was the nature of the game that followed as United hit the post and David Raya was called into seven saves. Mikel Arteta, quite reasonably, praised his side’s “character and spirit” while acknowledging they had made “mistakes that are very far from the standards that we normally have.”

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New season, same strife between the sticks for Manchester United | Jonathan Wilson

Altay Bayindir’s susceptibility to an inswinging ball is equal to André Onana’s and Arsenal had just the man to exploit it

New seasons are never new starts, not entirely. The sun may have been shining and the temperature in the mid‑20s. There may have been new kits on the pitch and new flags in the stands. There may have been an obsessive focus on the new signings. There may, among home fans, perhaps especially those refreshed in the new marquee behind the Stretford End, have been a giddy expectation that this season couldn’t be as bad as last for Manchester United. But the roots of a game run deep, stretching back into the mulch of the past. This was a game shaped by events last December.

Arsenal are good at set pieces; United are vulnerable to inswinging deliveries. In December last year Arsenal beat United 2-0 at the Emirates Stadium, both goals the result of corners. United had André Onana in goal for that one, but Tottenham had taken notice of the susceptibility to balls arced into the goalmouth, the way United struggled to protect their keeper.

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