Jonathan Wilson's Blog, page 52

In this golden age for football, the threat of overkill looms ever larger

From bloated World Cups to dull club competitions excess is everywhere, but who will stand up against the exploitation?

It’s worth asking before launching into a jeremiad where you would have stood on major disruptions of the past. Have I become the old man who yells at clouds and is simply opposed to everything new? Would I have been against professionalism, the 1925 change in the offside law, the advent of European football, the foundation of the Premier League? Is this just the conservative creep of age? Perhaps. But, equally, it’s hard to look at football and where it may be headed and not feel fearful.

In some ways, football has rarely had it so good. The Premier League this season offers a title race, a battle for fourth and a nine-team relegation scrap; almost every match feels consequential. The World Cup provided a classic variant on one of the greatest narratives of all time, the ageing star triumphing at the last – and Lionel Messi’s consecration came after extraordinary tension against the Netherlands in the quarter-final and France in the final.

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Paul Pogba’s targeting by criminals is a human tragedy, he needs support | Jonathan Wilson

Midfielder deserves football’s understanding for the kidnapping and threats that are damaging his life and career

It is seven years since Paul Pogba joined Manchester United from Juventus for a then world-record fee of £89m. He was 23 and had already won four Serie A titles. He had been named young player of the tournament at the previous World Cup. He was a star on the rise, the sort of player who might conceivably drag United out of their post-Alex Ferguson slump.

Pogba had apparently only one fault: he seemed a player out of time, a box-to-box midfielder in an age that had outgrown them. Midfields had split into two bands, and he didn’t quite have the tight technical ability to play in the more advanced line, receiving the ball often with his back to goal, but wasn’t quite disciplined enough to operate consistently as a holder (which, anyway, felt a waste of his profound creative gifts). What he needed was to operate on the left of the midfield three as he had at Juve, but that was not how United played. That quibble, though, was only the start of it.

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Ellis Simms scores late leveller to rescue vital point for Everton at Chelsea

A hero is no less welcome for being so unlikely. Ellis Simms has looked a forlorn figure since returning to Goodison Park, but he came off the bench to score an equaliser that lifted Everton to 15th, two points clear of the relegation zone.

Simms had scored seven goals in 14 starts on loan at Sunderland earlier before being recalled by Frank Lampard prior to his sacking.

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Linekergate and the weekend’s Premier League verdict – Football Weekly podcast

Max Rushden, Jonathan Wilson, Troy Townsend and Nooruddean Choudry discuss the Gary Lineker fallout and actual football in the Premier League

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

Today: The panel discusses the fallout from Gary Lineker’s suspension by the BBC as well as an unusual Match of the Day, impartiality at the BBC, and the wider topic of immigration in the UK.

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Premier League goalscoring records are falling – but what does that mean? | Jonathan Wilson

Why is it only the big six – aside from Liverpool – who have all-time top scorers who played in the past decade?

Last Sunday, amid the gleeful chaos of the 7-0 win over Manchester United, Mohamed Salah became Liverpool’s leading scorer in the Premier League. There is always a slight caution about such statistics – football didn’t begin in 1992, you know – but three decades on the Premier League serves as a useful shorthand for the modern era. But what is perhaps more striking is that Salah is not Liverpool’s all‑time leading scorer. That record still belongs to Ian Rush and that makes Liverpool unique among the big six clubs.

Arsenal’s leading all-time scorer is Thierry Henry. Chelsea’s is Frank Lampard. Manchester City’s is Sergio Agüero. Manchester United’s is Wayne Rooney. Tottenham’s is Harry Kane. Those are all players who are either still playing or retired in the past decade. Which, you may think, makes sense. There are more games than ever before. Careers are longer than they have ever been. Football is in an attacking phase: there are more goals per game than at any point for 60 years.

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Neglectful PSG lack discipline and heart – qualities that cannot simply be bought | Jonathan Wilson

Latest Champions League failure confirms gathering egos is no route to big trophies but maybe Qatar cares more about image and influence

It’s just as well Qatar’s investment in football isn’t to be measured in anything as tangible as silverware. In the 12 years since it took over Paris Saint-Germain, Qatar Sports Investment has spent a little over £1.5bn on players – or, to put it in terms Nicolas Sarkozy would understand, the equivalent of 16 Dassault Rafale multi-purpose fighter jets. It has inflated football’s transfer market, changed the landscape of the sport, brought the emirate to unprecedented prominence, and got past the quarter-finals of the Champions League twice.

You can see why a vocal contingent of Manchester United fans dream of something similar, of a Qatari takeover of their own. Who wouldn’t want this? Which fan, raised in a Salford terrace on stories of Eddie Colman and Paul Scholes, Ian Curtis and Albert Finney, on George Best v Benfica and Bryan Robson v Barcelona, hasn’t yearned in their heart of hearts to become a rabble of egos promoting a petrostate with a questionable human rights record?

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Liverpool’s front three show future may have arrived in Anfield rout | Jonathan Wilson

Cody Gakpo, Darwin Núñez and Mohamed Salah all scored twice in Liverpool’s 7-0 humbling of rivals Manchester United

There are few things harder in football management than the dismantling of one side and the construction of another. As Jürgen Klopp’s first Liverpool team has aged, it has been reasonable to ask whether he was equipped to build another. One game, even a record victory over Manchester United, is nowhere near enough to assert that a new Liverpool is being born, but it felt a lot closer at the final whistle than it had at kick-off.

Cody Gakpo, Darwin Núñez and Mohamed Salah all scored twice but the goals were only part of it. The front three had a coherence and a zip that has been rare this season. There is clearly still work to be done. The midfield is not what it was, an awkward combination of the ageing and the developing with not much in between, but, perhaps for the first time, there is the sense that a front three of Salah, Núñez and Gakpo could represent a viable future.

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The aura has gone but can Jürgen Klopp summon another great age at Liverpool? | Jonathan Wilson

An ageing, tiring, injury-hit squad, a backroom in flux, a tactical mindset flagging – a great manager finds himself at a crossroads

Almost all managerial lives end in failure. That’s the nature of the job, or at least of the way modern football tends to interpret it. You arrive and you win, or you are ousted. And if you win, you had better keep on winning, or you’ll be ousted.

There are very few second acts in modern English football, at least not at the same club. Bill Shankly had one, defeat by Watford in the FA Cup in 1970 bringing him to the belated acceptance that his first great Liverpool side was over and he needed to build another. But that was Shankly, and that was then. Today’s pressures are different: everything moves much quicker.

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Manchester United’s win may herald start of new glory and end of old football | Jonathan Wilson

Carabao Cup final showed Ten Hag is a leader capable of bringing prolonged success but it also brought ownership into sharp focus

It wasn’t a classic final. It’s hard to imagine anybody, not even the most devout of Manchester United fans, watching it back over and over, relishing the key moments.

Here’s the bit when Antony jinked about a bit and got fouled. Here’s the bit when Rafaël Varane won a header in a crowded box. Here’s the scrappy bit when Lisandro Martínez broke up an attack. If you like angry men shouting at each other in Portuguese, then you’ll have loved this: otherwise it was a game of note less for what it was than for what it meant.

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Timing and luck: there is more to Graham Potter’s strife than a lack of passion

Brighton’s recent progress under Roberto De Zerbi emphasises the role other factors play in a manager’s success

He’s not good enough. He’s not cut out for this level. He can’t handle the club. He’s out of his depth. It is never hard to propose simple explanations for why things have gone wrong for managers. But football is rarely simple. Everything is contingent; very little is true in itself. There is no simple explanation for Graham Potter’s struggles at Chelsea.

And these are struggles, even before you consider expenditure in excess of half a billion pounds over the past year. Chelsea started the weekend as close to the relegation zone as the Champions League qualification places. They are averaging a goal a game. They haven’t beaten a top-half side this season. They haven’t won a domestic cup tie and trail Borussia Dortmund after one leg in the Champions League last 16. And yet before Sunday’s game against Tottenham, Potter’s job is apparently not under threat.

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