Jonathan Wilson's Blog, page 44

Ange Postecoglou’s charisma and risk-taking has Tottenham dreaming | Jonathan Wilson

Early days but the Tottenham Stadium swings with an excitement not felt in years, and all thanks to the Australian

How good could this get? What is the realistic ceiling of Tottenham’s aspirations now? After one of the most unexpected and dramatic days of Premier League football in recent memory, almost unnoticed amid the fury over Luis Díaz’s incorrectly disallowed goal and the two Liverpool red cards, Spurs lie second in the table, still unbeaten. And at the end, striding unflustered through the sulphur and the chaos, there was Ange Postecoglou to point out his side should have varied their attack more against depleted opponents but not to worry because these are still early days.

And they are early days. Tottenham’s 2-1 win over Liverpool on Saturday was just their seventh league game under Postecoglou but already he’s generated more memories, more moments that will be recollected fondly in 20 or 30 years, than his three predecessors combined. The doubt 10 days ago was that Spurs hadn’t played anybody of any note yet, that’s it’s one thing to see off a sickly Manchester United or outplay Bournemouth or thrash Burnley or score twice in injury-time to beat Sheffield United, quite another to do it against an in-form member of the elite. But they were the better side after half-time in drawing at Arsenal and, while decisions certainly went their way against Liverpool there was no sense in which they outclassed. They looked Liverpool’s equals when it was 11 against 11.

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Steve Cooper is an inspiration for newly promoted strugglers – and Chelsea too | Jonathan Wilson

Forest manager and his team have flourished despite an owner whose ambitions seem unchecked by reality – sound familiar?

How, you wonder, did the chat between Chelsea’s directors go after their 1-0 defeat by Nottingham Forest at Stamford Bridge on 2 September? Perhaps there had been some thought that by signing 28 players over the past three transfer windows they had destabilised the club, made the life of their manager harder. Could that be possible?

Then maybe somebody asked how many Forest had signed in the same period. “You’re not going to believe this,” some lackey perhaps replied. “They signed 43.” To which the only possible conclusion for Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali is that they should have signed more players.

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Do Liverpool have the strength to take on champions who never have an off-day? | Jonathan Wilson

The early weeks of the season have seen high-quality teams rise to the top of the Premier League. The only problem: they face Manchester City

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Imagine what a title race this could be, if only Manchester City didn’t exist. On Sunday, Arsenal and Tottenham played out a thrilling and high-quality 2-2 draw; both have dropped only four points this season. Brighton are averaging three goals a game and have dropped just three points in six games. And as Manchester United and Chelsea struggle – because at least one big team has to be in crisis to offer a sense of light and shade – Sunday’s win over West Ham would have carried Liverpool top of the table having won five in a row, as their midfield rebuild begins to mesh with the rejuvenated forward line.

But City do exist and their excellence means Liverpool are only second. City have won five of the last six league titles and with each passing week it becomes increasingly likely they’ll make that six out of seven. And while much will – rightly – be made of their ownership, and of the 115 charges they face relating to alleged breaches of the Premier League’s financial regulations as they built to this position of strength, they are also an extraordinary football team.

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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Kai Havertz’s struggles to fit in sum up Arsenal’s unsettled start to season | Jonathan Wilson

The Gunners remain unbeaten and already have injury problems, but the weaknesses which cost them last season appear evident again

The ball sat up for Kai Havertz at the edge of the box. Very briefly, the possibility loomed that he might be about to arrive. This was the perfect moment for him to cast off all the doubts. Smash this into the top corner, win the north London derby with a brilliant late winner, and in an instant his journey in fans’ affections from puzzlement to embrace would have been completed.

It was not an easy chance, far from it, but so much the better: nobody becomes a hero with a tap-in. But the ball bounced fractionally higher than he’d anticipated, he made contact with the outside of his boot and the shot flew harmlessly high and wide. Havertz chewed the collar of his shirt: he knew what that moment represented.

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Time-wasters spoil the spectacle but a spot of extra only benefits the big sides | Jonathan Wilson

It may be exciting to see Premier League games turning after 90 minutes but will it only make the predictable more predictable?

On the one hand, you could see Paul Heckingbottom’s point. Seven minutes into injury time at Tottenham last week, his Sheffield United side led 1-0 and seemed about to pull off perhaps the most surprising result of the Premier League season so far. They then conceded twice and so, rather than being able to celebrate a great smash and grab, Heckingbottom was left to reflect on the fact his side have already dropped seven points with goals conceded in the 88th minute or later this season.

To make it worse, when the Sheffield United manager had protested about Peter Bankes’s attempts to get the goalkeeper Wes Foderingham to get on with the game, the referee apparently replied that if a short pass wasn’t on he should go long. It’s easy to see why that should rankle.

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Arsenal are not as fluent as last season. But they may be more resilient | Jonathan Wilson

More than most elite sides, Mikel Arteta’s team seem prone to mood swings. Their win at Everton showed a steeliness that could help their title chances

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Soccer is played always amid half-forgotten memories, at least partially conscious of its past. Arsenal’s recent record at Everton was poor and so what might otherwise have been regarded as a routine win on Sunday takes on a greater significance: they were playing not merely Sean Dyche’s struggling side, but also their own fallibility. In one sense, the fact Arsenal beat a team that has taken a single point says little about their title chances; but in another it was their most promising performance of the season.

Why had Arsenal lost on their three previous visits to Goodison Park? It might just be coincidence; chance has its role in football even if those of us paid to decipher its intricacies prefer not to reflect on that. Last season there was a sense of events conspiring: it was Dyche’s first game as Everton manager, a rare moment of positivity at Goodison, while a second-string Arsenal had gone out of the FA Cup at Manchester City the previous week, disrupting their momentum. More generally, there’s a feeling that Everton is the sort of place Arsenal have struggled since the latter days of Arsène Wenger: a tight ground with noisy fans against physical opponents.

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.

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Crisis at Old Trafford and the late late show at Spurs - Football Weekly

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Jonathan Wilson and John Brewin as Manchester United’s very poor start to the season continues

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On the podcast today; Brighton win 3-1 at Old Trafford in a result perhaps all of us did see coming – where do Manchester United go from here?

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Not in my name: are we so blinded by tribalism that we can’t see the real issues? | Jonathan Wilson

Of course governments do things that football clubs shouldn’t – but that’s precisely why sport matters

It’s a strange world that makes you yearn for the days of Ted Croker, Bert Millichip and Gordon McKeag. Football seemed so simple then. And to think that they once seemed absurd in their pomposity, with their velvet bag in the wood-panelled Football Association committee room at Lancaster Gate. The draw for the Champions League group stage, though, was something else, a festival of glitzy vapidity in which we had to be told over and over again how exciting it was that we were about to learn which pot-four side would be getting hammered by Manchester City.

And through the veneer of Euroschmaltz came the distinct sense of how broken is the competition. City’s triumph in Istanbul last season should have felt like the culmination of a great quest, but it was hard to conjure much sense of jeopardy when Internazionale were led by a 37-year-old forward City had binned off eight years earlier. It’s a paradox of excellence that hammering sides, as City did to RB Leipzig, Bayern Munich and Real Madrid, tends to diminish the sense of achievement.

Kulusevski’s late late show steals Tottenham win over Sheffield United

Some things in life are guaranteed. Manor Solomon, given the chance to run at an opponent, will cut infield into his right foot. James Maddison, challenged in the box, will go to ground, sit up and spread his arms while looking plaintively at the referee. And Tottenham, just as optimism is beginning to sprout, will find a way to lose. Or will they?

Perhaps this is the true measure of what Ange Postecoglou has achieved: it took 15 minutes of injury-time, but from somewhere Spurs found two late goals to win a game that had seemed lost.

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‘Football is beautiful, but it’s cruel’: the sadness of Paul Pogba’s decline | Jonathan Wilson

Whatever happens with his doping case, do not forget just how talented he was before the injuries and tactical struggles

“Sometimes,” Paul Pogba said, “I don’t want to have money any more. I just don’t want to play any more. I just want to be with normal people, so they will love me for me – not for the fame, not for the money. Sometimes it’s tough.” That was Pogba speaking to Al-Jazeera in an interview released on Sunday . A day later, he tested positive for excess non-endogenous testosterone metabolites.

It’s just over seven years since Manchester United broke the world transfer record to re-sign Paul Pogba. He was 23, had won four Serie A titles and had been named young player of the tournament at the previous World Cup. Since then, with the very notable exception of winning the 2018 World Cup, it feels like nothing has gone right for him.

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