Jonathan Wilson's Blog, page 54

Sean Dyche steps back in time with nod to a very different Everton era | Jonathan Wilson

New manager’s sheer energy galvanises team with echoes of club’s history evident during momentous victory over Arsenal

There is a lot wrong at Everton. Vast sums have been spent very badly and again the board stayed away for its own safety, but just because there are a lot of things to put right it does not mean that you shouldn’t correct the things you can. And just because clubs are often unduly impatient with managers it doesn’t mean that a change isn’t sometimes necessary. Sean Dyche’s first game in charge after replacing Frank Lampard brought Everton’s best performance and best result of the season.

It says much about how well Everton played that Arsenal seemed so flat. It’s the performance as much as the result that calls their title credentials into question. Even Mikel Arteta, usually so energetic on the touchline, seemed subdued, as though recognising how his side had been overwhelmed, in part by the weight of Everton’s history, the ghosts that have been summoned over the past few days, and in part by Dyche and his sheer energy, his obvious relish at being back in a Premier League technical area.

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Memo to Dyche: Everton have become a stepping-stone on the way down club | Jonathan Wilson

Expectations are way too high and the squad is a mess, as the Goodison club’s latest managerial hiring will soon discover

Jarrod Bowen scored with a header after a corner was half-cleared, then he scored again on a break. “Set-piece second phase, then a counter-attack …” Frank Lampard said wearily afterwards, as though the failings are so familiar to him he has started regarding them as things that just happen, acts of God he can’t be expected to influence any more than he could control the weather or the traffic on the M6.

At other clubs at other times, the criticism would have focused on the way Everton lost at West Ham. Lampard’s teams have always conceded goals from set-plays and counters. But so vast, so all-encompassing, is the Everton crisis that glitches of defensive organisation seem almost trivial.

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A throwback classic between Arsenal and Manchester United – Football Weekly

Max Rushden is joined by Jonathan Wilson, Barney Ronay and Robyn Cowen as Arsenal overcome rivals to keep their title dreams alive

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Today; a game that felt like Arsenal v Manchester United of yore, a really exciting match that keeps the Gunners five points clear at the top of the Premier League with a game in hand.

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Eddie Nketiah’s unexpected hero status is fuelling Arsenal’s title belief | Jonathan Wilson

Striker’s emergence has had no sense of inevitability and he is showing how fine the dividing lines of fate in football can be

Managers can map out the league in immense detail. They can work out when they might rest players, when training might be stepped up or relaxed. They can plot when they might use a back three or a back four. They can draw up contingencies: if he is out then he can play here or we can switch him over there. And then sometimes, even in the days of multi-layered squads, of two or more players for every position, things just happen.

Maybe that is unfair on Eddie Nketiah. Maybe Mikel Arteta always had faith he could deputise for Gabriel Jesus. Maybe it’s unfair to think of him as an unlikely matchwinner. But Sunday against Manchester United was his fifth start of the season. And it was the first day of his life when his number of Premier League starts for Arsenal (24) exceeded his age (23).

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Erling Haaland, system-based teams and the role of the goalscorer | Jonathan Wilson

Great strikers win games and yet they can disrupt tactical systems where dominating the ball is crucial – just like at City

Erling Haaland is a phenomenon. It’s not just that he has scored 22 goals already this season, plus a further five goals in the Champions League. It’s the sense he offers of being unstoppable: almost unbeatable for pace, almost impossible to knock off the ball and with a clinical eye for goal as well.

His phlegmatic, almost flippant, personality makes him more terrifying. He jokes about the secret target he has set himself for this season. He is not some driven self-improver: he scores goals in record-breaking numbers seemingly because he finds it funny. He plays football like the early developer in year eight and as such finds the game almost laughably easy. In the history of the sport there has been only a tiny handful of forwards who have combined such physical and technical prowess.

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North London and Manchester turn red on derby-filled weekend - Football Weekly

Max Rushden is joined by Jonathan Wilson, Troy Townsend and Nooruddean Choudry to discuss the dramatic Premier League matches

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Today; Arsenal make it look easy against Spurs in the north London derby, a win that puts them eight points clear at the top of the Premier League after Manchester United beat Manchester City thanks in part to a controversial offside call. The panel debate whether Marcus Rashford was interfering with play.

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Eddie Howe’s gritty Newcastle won’t win hearts but silverware is in reach | Jonathan Wilson

The cherubic figure is gone as he helps transform his new club from serial strugglers into well-organised, battling contenders

Remember the Eddie Howe of a decade ago? Remember how pleasant he seemed, with his ruddy cheeks and blond hair, how he looked less like a football manager than a minor character from Downton Abbey? Remember the compelling interviews, the articulacy and understated charisma that seemed to emphasise his fundamental niceness?

And the poor love hated leaving Bournemouth. As a player, two games at Portsmouth were quite enough and he was soon back to his spiritual home. As a manager, well, Burnley, with its wild moors and dark energy, never seemed a natural fit. Best to stay amid the familiar beaches and boarding houses of Bournemouth, where Pep Guardiola could praise the quality of his football (which is to say the ease with which Manchester City could beat them) and nobody was too bothered by them conceding an average 66 goals per season – it was after all, a miracle they were in the Premier League at all. Bless him, good old Eddie, with his pretty, unthreatening football and his inability to organise a defence.

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Absurd offside law cannot disguise shifting of sands in Manchester | Jonathan Wilson

United’s controversial equaliser exposed a major flaw in the rules but also gave them a platform to close the gap on City

A forward makes a run for a through-ball. The defender steps up. The ball is played and the forward is in an offside position. The forward chases the ball, following it, escorting it. Something in his head – perhaps Bruno Fernandes screaming – warns him that he might be offside and so he pulls away, allowing another forward (let’s call him “Bruno Fernandes”) to sweep the ball into the net. Is that forward offside?

He hasn’t touched the ball but can he be deemed to not have been interfering? Did his presence not prevent the initial defender charging back and trying to hook the ball away? It’s the sort of question that could have kept medieval theologians occupied for a lifetime. Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas would have written controversial tracts upon it, then those tracts would have been analysed and those analyses themselves analysed. Whole libraries would have been devoted to the theme. To what extent, if God is omniscient, can we have free will? If our thinking is flawed, can any revelation escape flaw? What is interfering?

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Stevenage and Wrexham star amid the FA Cup shocks – Football Weekly

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Jonathan Wilson and John Brewin to also discuss Owls, parakeets and pressure for Potter

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Today: Stevenage pull off the shock of the round with a last-gasp win at Aston Villa, Sheffield Wednesday earn a great victory over Newcastle and there are still three non-league sides in the fourth-round draw.

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FA Cup a grand old stage for Manchester City’s youth | Jonathan Wilson

Pep Guardiola has slowly eased academy products into the first team squad while Chelsea’s have been thrown in at deep end

To be the leading man in slightly smaller productions, or to be an understudy for the elite? It’s not the most significant consequence of the financial stratification of modern football but what the division of the game into superclubs and the rest has done is make that decision far more urgent for promising young players. Which is why, quite apart from anything else, the domestic cup competitions matter. It’s hardly the romance of old, the epic tales of knockout glory that thrilled previous eras, but the FA Cup offers a stage on which the next generation can test themselves.

But there are supporting casts and supporting casts. Manchester City, in the 15th year of the Abu Dhabi project, boosted not merely by the extent of the resources that have been invested but the intelligence with which that money has been spent, can look to their bench and call upon a World Cup winner who has started only three league games this season.

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