Jonathan Wilson's Blog, page 58

Just like the hat, football’s grip could suddenly go out of fashion after Qatar | Jonathan Wilson

Football – facing fans’ disgust at this World Cup – should beware a plummeting status in the face of a critical mass of frustration

Look at a photograph of the crowd at the 1923 FA Cup final and pretty much everybody is wearing a hat. Fast-forward a quarter of a century and a rough estimate would be that a little under half the crowd at the 1948 final are similarly clad. Go forward another 25 years to 1973 and although Bob Stokoe, the Sunderland manager, topped off his tracksuit-and-mac look with a trilby, almost nobody in the stands at Wembley has their head covered.

In the unlikely event that anybody at the first Wembley Cup final gave the matter any thought, it is doubtful they would have believed bare-headedness would become the norm. And yet over the course of half a century, men stopped wearing hats. Things change, often unexpectedly, and aspects of life we take for granted can drift away, almost unnoticed.

Continue reading...

Champions League’s blockbuster draw and Liverpool’s future – Football Weekly

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Jonathan Wilson and Philippe Auclair as the Champions League round of 16 is drawn

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

Today: we preview the Champions League last-16 ties, with Liverpool facing Real Madrid again amid rumours of boardroom changes at Anfield, and PSG landing Bayern Munich in a repeat of the 2020 final. Plus, Manchester United meet Barcelona … in the Europa League.

Continue reading...

Champions League last-16 draw: tie-by-tie analysis

Liverpool can cause problems for Madrid’s midfield, Leipzig’s forwards could test Manchester City and Spurs should have too much for Milan

Last month, Real Madrid’s president, Florentino Pérez, advocating for a Super League, lamented that his club have faced Liverpool in just nine competitive games. His wish for more has been granted sooner than he expected and perhaps would have liked. Real beat Liverpool reasonably comfortably in last season’s final and had few issues topping a relatively straightforward group, while Liverpool have suffered a miserable start to the season. With Mohamed Salah returning to form, though, Jürgen Klopp’s side may have improved by February and, out of the title race, can afford to focus on Europe. Aurélien Tchouaméni has joined Real and Eduardo Camavinga was beginning to make an impact last season, but the sense remains that the post-Casemiro midfield is yet to be really tested.

Continue reading...

Patched-together Chelsea at odds with Graham Potter’s wizard eye for a bargain

Injury crisis is exposing a lack of co-ordinated recruitment for a manager whose success has come on a budget

Imagine you are Graham Potter. You consider Arsenal’s probable team to face your Chelsea side today. You look at Mikel Arteta’s front three. You are not sure who will play on the right but even with Ben Chilwell injured again you have Marc Cucurella to play on that side of the defence as well as the option of a more attacking wing-back. Then you look at the other flank, where Gabriel Martinelli has been in sensational form. You remember how he embarrassed Emerson Royal and unsettled Trent Alexander-Arnold, how his pace and directness have troubled teams all season. With Reece James out, it is an obvious problem.

Potter has taken charge of Chelsea in 11 games. In seven he has started with a back three and two others, against Wolves and the home game against Salzburg, a hybrid system perhaps best described as a 4-2-3-1 when the right-back was very attacking and the left-sided forward had to shuttle back.

Continue reading...

To be in the race at all is a mark of progress for this Arsenal team | Jonathan Wilson

What Arsenal have done this season is already remarkable, even if signs of fatigue are already starting to show

Titles races often hinge on single moments – or at least our memories of them, the narratives we construct to process them, do. Stan Cullis’s non-tackle, Ray Tinkler’s idiosyncratic interpretation of offside, Steve Bruce’s header, Newcastle’s 4-3 defeat at Anfield, Sergio Agüero’s finish, Riyad Mahrez skipping by Nicolás Otamendi – far more uplifting to remember the moments of brilliance and infamy, to isolate heroes and villains, than to consider the grand sweeps of economic determinism. Gossip and goals tend to be more fun than Marxist analyses.

Manchester City will almost certainly win the Premier League and they will do so because of the collection of great players gathered under a great coach, all funded by Abu Dhabi as part of the wider geopolitical strategy of the oil-and-gas-rich Gulf states. Or, if you prefer your history more event-driven, it may be that the key moment of this campaign has already happened.

Continue reading...

Ruben Loftus-Cheek shines for Chelsea to give timely reminder to Southgate | Jonathan Wilson

Nearly four years on from his last England appearance, the 26-year-old showed why he could yet make the World Cup squad

A quick quiz question: can you name each of the six players who played in midfield for England at the 2018 World Cup? Dele Alli and Jesse Lingard, with their goals, perhaps spring most immediately to mind. Then there was the penalty that Eric Dier converted in the shootout against Colombia and the one that Jordan Henderson did not. That’s the easy(ish) four, but a special bonus prize to anybody who recalled Fabian Delph’s two starts against Belgium or the fact that when Alli was injured against Tunisia he was replaced by Ruben Loftus-Cheek, who retained his place for the group games against Panama and Belgium and then started the third-place play-off as well.

It has been Loftus-Cheek’s fate to exist on the periphery of English football’s consciousness. His talent was obvious, a brooding grace encapsulated in a muscular 6ft3in frame but denied pitch-time by the superclubs’ habit of stockpiling players. It’s not insignificant that when he made his England debut, only eight months before the last World Cup, it was having impressed during a loan spell at Crystal Palace.

Continue reading...

As football slips into the mire, it must remember it is first and foremost a sport | Jonathan Wilson

Every match should be a challenge, teams rewarded for success, but not so that superclubs’ domination becomes permanent

It’s been another fine week for the people’s game. The Super League Three – two of whom will probably be eliminated from the Champions League at the group stage despite the enormous advantages they enjoy both financially and via the coefficient system – continue to agitate for a competition that would make them even more money.

Fans chant disgracefully about tragedy and find their club not merely not condemning them, but blaming the manager of the other side for having made an entirely reasonable observation about the financial advantages enjoyed by state-run clubs. That manager, on the very weekend local referees had gone on strike to highlight the abuse suffered by officials, is sent off for abusing an assistant referee. Team buses are attacked, social media becomes a battleground of the basest insults, managers who are the de facto agents of authoritarian states lecture others about touchline behaviour.

Continue reading...

Liverpool make their mark on title race as Arsenal go clear – Football Weekly

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Jonathan Wilson and Jordan Jarrett-Bryan after Liverpool beat Manchester City 1-0 at Anfield

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

Today: Mo Salah’s brilliance and Liverpool’s resilience sees them beat title favourites Manchester City – did Pep Guardiola overthink it and did the Anfield crowd rattle him?

Continue reading...

This is Anfield? This is Manchester City’s vulnerability to the counter, actually | Jonathan Wilson

Pep Guardiola seemed on edge even before the start at Liverpool and this season’s first spin of his tactical kaleidoscope failed

Night. The man looks back over his shoulder, mouth open in horror. Too numb to offer more than token resistance, he acquiesces as his assistant ushers him away. “Forget it, Pep,” he says, “It’s Chinatown.” Streetlights flare as the camera pans back. A policeman shouts. As sirens wail, a mournful saxophone tremors through the darkness. It’s one of the great endings: our hero has done what he can, but this is a place where he cannot win, a place governed by forces far stronger than him, a place with its own laws. This is Anfield.

On Sunday, after Manchester City’s 1-0 defeat by Liverpool, Pep Guardiola repeated the phrase over and over: “This is Anfield.” He said it to the written press. He said it to the radio. He said it to Sky and he said it to the BBC. “This is Anfield.” And his point was clear: you cannot win here. Certainly he struggles: Guardiola has won once at Anfield, but that was during lockdown when the stands were empty. On the seven occasions he has led a team there with fans, Guardiola has managed two draws and five defeats.

Continue reading...

Kylian Mbappé’s tantrums and feuds a fresh twist in tiresome PSG pantomime | Jonathan Wilson

Absurdly wealthy owners with scant regard for the game placating absurdly remunerated players – is this really football?

Was there a moment, back in August, when Christophe Galtier wondered what the fuss had been? Did he watch his Paris Saint-Germain team smacking in 21 goals in their first four games of the season and think how easy this all was? Take what is probably the starriest forward line in the history of the game, let them play and watch the brilliant goals stack up. Lionel Messi, after a disappointing first season in Paris, was re-energised. Neymar, playing alongside his mate, was thriving. And Kylian Mbappé …

Well, what was Mbappé? He was still impossibly quick. He scored four goals in those first four games of the season, but the signs of discontent were already there. Of course they were, for this is PSG, where discontent is ever-present, a club described by a recent former manager as “a nest of vipers”. Mbappé may have just, thanks in part to the intervention of the president of the republic, Emmanuel Macron, snubbed Real Madrid to sign a three-year contract extension worth around £50m a year and with a £100m signing-on bonus, but he wasn’t happy.

Continue reading...