Jonathan Wilson's Blog, page 59

Arsenal’s ascent continues and one year on at Newcastle – Football Weekly

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Barney Ronay and Jonathan Wilson to review the weekend’s action and major news

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

Today: the pick of the weekend games sees Arsenal stay top of the league with a 3-2 win at home to Liverpool. Are we really still talking about Trent Alexander-Arnold’s defending? Yes, yes we are.

Continue reading...

Liverpool have lost balance and confidence. Regaining both is not easy | Jonathan Wilson

Jürgen Klopp’s malfunctioning side were exposed by Arsenal’s pace and youth to continue a surprising poor start to the season

It’s never just one thing. Football, whatever the cliche may say, is not a simple game. A team is a hugely complex organism: a malfunction in one area can have profound consequences elsewhere. Everything is connected and contingent; nothing is independent. Jürgen Klopp must feel at the moment as though he is engaged in a game of Whac-A-Mole, bashing at problems here and there, and yet also knowing that these moles are related, that a mole in one corner is breeding moles elsewhere.

But let’s begin with the most obvious issue, the great culture war of our time: the Trent Alexander-Arnold Conundrum. Already it’s one of those issues that has become almost impossible to discuss properly, arguments yielding to meta-arguments as everybody rushes to deeply entrenched positions.

Continue reading...

Faltering Liverpool are at a crossroads and Klopp is hard-pressed to find answers | Jonathan Wilson

As the manager begins to forge a new Anfield team, it’s clear they cannot overwhelm sides as they did at their peak

Football never stops. Brian Clough despaired of the exhausting churn, the sense you could never enjoy a win because there was always another game – and that was before European group stages, Covid-afflicted calendars and winter World Cups. And it never stops changing: there are always new ideas or ways to thwart the old ideas. Standing still, as Peter Reid observed, is moving backwards.

That’s why the Hungarian double European Cup-winner Béla Guttmann spoke of the third year as being fatal for a coach. Your players get used to you, so your words lose their impact and minor irritations can become major frustrations. Other teams get used to you and work out strategies to counter you. Familiarity is stagnation is failure. That’s why the best managers, or at least those who aspire to build a dynasty, exist in a state of permanent evolution.

Continue reading...

Manchester City’s continuing dominance feels uncomfortably routine | Jonathan Wilson

United were lucky to lose the derby by only three in a game that posed important questions about the state of football

What was strange about Sunday’s Manchester derby was how routine it felt. When Hungary beat England 6-3 at Wembley in 1953 it was a scoreline heard around the world, the death knell for any lingering sense of English footballing pre-eminence and confirmation of the excellence of Gusztav Sebes’s side. It opened the most complacent eyes to football’s new era and, even in those free-scoring days, it was a result unusual enough that to speak of “the 6-3” was to conjure images of Nandor Hidegkuti shredding English pretension amid the Wembley fog.

Sunday’s 6-3 was, well, what exactly? Like the game in 1953, it didn’t seem anything like a full expression of the gulf between the sides: the team who got three should have felt simultaneously chastened at the magnitude of the defeat and very fortunate to have got away with only a three-goal margin. To read the reports from 53, to hear the accounts of those who played in it or were there, is to glimpse what it felt like to witness a paradigm shift, the dawning awareness, slow and then sudden, that nothing is the same any more, that everything you thought you knew has to be reassessed, recalibrated. Sunday had none of that.

Continue reading...

Erik ten Hag and Pep Guardiola have taken very different roads to Manchester derby | Jonathan Wilson

Despite their similarities, the two managers have little in common with Ten Hag inheriting a mess at Manchester United

Two bald men with gimlet stares. Two coaches united by a Cruyffian vision of football and trying to impose it in a foreign land. But as Sunday’s Manchester derby approaches, it doesn’t feel as though Pep Guardiola and Erik ten Hag have that much in common.

Ten Hag’s star is rising. After his successes at Ajax, only now are his ideas reaching a truly global public and being tested at the highest level. Guardiola is the old master, with 10 championships in the big five leagues to his name. His philosophy is not merely well-known but has shaped the modern game at elite level. It doesn’t appear imminent but, given his intensity and the consistency of his achievement, there are already whispers about his possible retirement.

Continue reading...

World Cup 2022 power rankings: how the 32 look with two months to go

With most teams having played their final matches before the tournament in Qatar, who appear most likely to lift the trophy?

It is three years since Brazil lost to anybody other than Argentina, a forward line of Neymar, Richarlison, Vinícius Júnior and Raphinha potent enough that Gabriel Jesus was left out of the recent friendly wins over Ghana and Tunisia. One defeat in 29 is an exceptional record; the only doubt is that they haven’t played a European team since losing to Belgium at the last World Cup. JW

Continue reading...

Are England going backwards under Gareth Southgate? – Football Weekly

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Jonathan Wilson and Paul Watson to discuss the latest from the Nations League

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

England’s defeat against Italy has the panel questioning what Gareth Southgate can do with a World Cup less than two months away. Can he take anything positive away from the Nations League games?

Continue reading...

Against all odds, Lionel Messi has one last shot at World Cup glory with Argentina | Jonathan Wilson

Questions remain for Lionel Scaloni’s side but there is a growing sense that a glorious finale could be on the cards

Argentina went to Russia in 2018 with a sense it was now or never. They had lost in the final of the previous World Cup. A great generation of attacking talent was ageing. Lionel Messi was 31 and two years earlier had flirted with international retirement after a second successive Copa América final defeat to Chile. And at last the Argentinian Football Association had managed to appoint, in Jorge Sampaoli, a dynamic and progressive coach who promised to restore the days of Bielsista optimism.

Messi scored one brilliant goal, against Nigeria and there was a spirited exit against France in the last 16, but the last World Cup was a huge disappointment. There was a drab draw against Iceland and an embarrassingly comprehensive defeat to Croatia.

Continue reading...

Football tacticians bowled over by quick-fix data risk being knocked for six | Jonathan Wilson

Analysis only makes sense in football when used by those who understand the limits of what statistics can tell you

England won the Second Test against South Africa comfortably enough, but there was a frustrating spell before tea on the first day as Kagiso Rabada and Anrich Nortje added 35 for the ninth wicket. Having bowled relatively full earlier in the day, England switched to a short-pitched attack to no great effect. Notably it was a full-pitched ball from Ollie Robinson after tea that delivered the breakthrough as Nortje was lbw.

So why had England changed approach? Perhaps they had been swayed by the Test against India at Lord’s when they had successfully bounced out the tail, or perhaps it was a reaction to the nature of this season’s Dukes cricket balls which have been losing menace more quickly than usual, demanding something different from the bowler. But there was also, seemingly, data that the South Africa tail was susceptible to short-pitched bowling. The problem is that if every ball is short-pitched, batters come to expect it and can set for it; far more dangerous is the surprise short-pitched ball.

Continue reading...

Postponements, Potter and delving into the mailbag – Football Weekly

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Ed Aarons and Jonathan Wilson to answer listener questions in a special edition of the show

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

Today: with games across the United Kingdom postponed over the weekend, the panel ponder whether this was the right course of action and how the various football bodies should proceed with fixtures this week.

Continue reading...