Jonathan Wilson's Blog, page 76

A striker isn’t everything, but might solve Pep Guardiola’s all-or-nothing problem | Jonathan Wilson

Score early and Manchester City can be devastating – but they often lose heart if their rivals strike first

The temptation watching Manchester City’s 1-0 win at Chelsea last Saturday was to think we were witnessing the very best of modern football. It might not have been rip-roaring, but here were two squads stocked with exceptional talent, guided by exceptional managers, engaged in a great cerebral tussle. Chelsea had won the previous three meetings, but this time in the Premier League they were stifled by the perfectly executed press of City. It all felt thrillingly high-level. And then came defeats for both sides in the Champions League.

That may not be hugely consequential. Both made changes for difficult away trips in Europe, and both can be confident of making the last 16 despite the setbacks. But still, the defeats demand a resetting of perspective. Last Saturday, City pressed perhaps as efficiently as any side has in the Premier League, and looked like a team about to embark on one of those remorseless unbeaten runs that have decided recent titles. But Tuesday’s defeat in Paris highlighted one statistic in particular: in five games away from the Etihad this season (including the Community Shield), City have scored only twice.

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Ronaldo’s winner fuels Solskjær myth but success seems as far away as ever | Jonathan Wilson

Manchester United’s Champions League win against Villarreal was ill-deserved – the team are too open and will be punished for it

How much time does love buy you? That Manchester United fans want Ole Gunnar Solskjær to succeed is understandable. It’s not just that he scored vital goals, it’s that he embodied a golden age. Who would not want a returning hero to restore the club to glory? But wishful thinking will not organise a midfield.

The win will part the clouds a little. Solskjær has survived another mini-crisis, but each one leaves him slightly weaker. And this one comes with Cristiano Ronaldo. It may not be fair, given Ronaldo is 36 and, for all his goalscoring ability, increasingly an anachronism, but his signing has increased the pressure on the manager.

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PSG’s forwards are brilliant but how far can they go with a ‘broken team’? | Jonathan Wilson

Messi, Neymar and Mbappé leave side playing almost 4-3-0-3. It earned a win against Manchester City but may not always work

Lionel Messi scored a brilliant goal. Gianluigi Donnarumma kept a clean sheet. Paris Saint-Germain won, easing immediately any sense of unease that might have been threatening to develop after the opening-week draw against Club Brugge. All is well for Mauricio Pochettino and Nasser al-Khelaifi. The crowd at Parc des Princes can relax, take their celebratory selfies and send whatever gleeful WhatsApps they like. Perhaps this will, at last, be their season.

And yet, comfortable as Tuesday’s win over Manchester City ultimately was, fitting as it was that Messi should get off the mark for his new club with a strike of that nature against a fellow petroclub, the one managed by the coach with whom he twice won the Champions League, there must still be concerns.

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Chelsea miss Mount as Guardiola wrestles control back from Tuchel | Jonathan Wilson

Starved of creativity, Chelsea were swarmed by Man City’s press as Pep Guardiola beat his German rival at the fourth attempt

It’s dangerous always to elevate players in absentia, to assume that if only they had been there they would have produced a flawless game and performed absolutely to their maximum, but perhaps the biggest lesson from Saturday’s clash at Stamford Bridge was just what a good player Mason Mount is.

Chelsea so far this season had been the most impressive of the title contenders because they had seemed to have such balance between attack and defence – a quality that has become increasingly rare as the financial imbalances of the modern game have led superclubs to focus on the sort of glamorous signings more useful for breaking down stubborn but lesser opponents than controlling big games. But the longer Saturday’s game went on, the more it became apparent that Chelsea were not holding Manchester City and waiting to spring out on the counter; they were simply penned in, unable to free themselves from the excellence of City’s press.

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Struggling neighbours offer Spurs a grim warning of their own mediocre future | Jonathan Wilson

Tottenham play mid-table football in a shiny new stadium and fail to bridge the gulf to the rich elite – just like their derby rivals

The phantom slowly, gravely, silently approached Spurs. It was shrouded in a deep black garment, which concealed its head, its face, its form, and left nothing visible save one outstretched hand. It pointed to the south-west and in that moment Spurs understood. Spurs looked at Arsenal and saw not a rival but their own future. Could it be that Arsenal are a vision of Tottenham yet to come?

This is a tale of Daniel Levy, of course, and of Mauricio Pochettino and Harry Kane and dozens of others, but it is also about the broader sweep of history. Football, as we know it today, may have been born in London with the formulation of the Football Association at the Freemasons Arms near Covent Garden in 1863 and the codification of the laws that still form the basis of the modern game, but after professionalisation it quickly left.

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A penalty bonanza, England’s 10-0 win and a trip to Sheriff – Football Weekly

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Jonathan Wilson, Suzy Wrack and Nick Ames to review each of Tuesday’s Carabao Cup ties in real time

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

It was the third round of the Carabao Cup and there were lots of penalties, with QPR and Stoke springing the surprises.

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Jimmy Greaves redefined perception of what a centre-forward should be | Jonathan Wilson

Like Brian Clough, Greaves was very different from the classic English No 9 and together they changed the game’s tactics
• Jimmy Greaves dies aged 81

For those of us too young to have caught the end of Jimmy Greaves’s playing career, there was always a slightly awkward adjustment to be made.

He remained the goalscorer to whom all others were compared for two decades after his retirement in 1971 and yet it was hard to equate his legend with the slightly tubby, moustachioed bloke in the V-neck jumper who was all over ITV. But then you see the footage, see the speed and elegance, the capacity to beat defenders with a subtle change of pace or direction and, above all else, the finishing.

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Brighton are making strides under Graham Potter but the hard yards lie ahead | Jonathan Wilson

The south coast club, who host Leicester on Sunday, have made a flying start but have had a favourable fixture list

xG is not a perfect tool. Models vary. They have flaws. But still, it is striking that most xG – expected goals – models for last season had Brighton finishing not 16th, as they actually did, but fifth or sixth. Imagine that had happened. Imagine Brighton, with the 15th-highest wage bill in the division, had qualified for the Europa League. It would have been an extraordinary achievement. Graham Potter might not have been named coach of the year ahead of Thomas Tuchel, but he would surely have nudged Marcelo Bielsa out of second.

More than that, Potter would have been a serious candidate to take the Tottenham job, rather than just somebody who was mentioned in passing. The (excessive) grumbling about Gareth Southgate would have a more sharply defined focus: here, the doubters would be able to say, is the ideal replacement. And yet the general tendency seems still to be to regard Potter as an oddity.

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Cristiano Ronaldo hero worship does not mask Manchester United’s flaws | Jonathan Wilson

Returning star gave fans their money’s worth in 4-1 win over Newcastle but club would have been wiser investing in midfield

They had come to celebrate Cristiano Ronaldo and they got what they had come for: not one, but two opportunities to shout “Si!” as he celebrated goals with that characteristic spread of the arms and thrust of the groin, a sort of macho version of Lionel Blair indicating he’s miming the title of a song. Everything else, for the moment, could take a back seat: the king has returned.

The announcement of Ronaldo’s name when the teams were read out at around 2.25pm was greeted by a great roar. When he jogged out to warm up, cleverly maximising his exposure by positioning himself behind Donny van de Beek, a player of translucent appearance and reputation, there was another visceral cheer. He responded with practised casualness, acknowledging the two long sides of the ground with applause and a raised thumb. Before kick-off, Ronaldo was last out of the tunnel, so the roar had grown and grown before he emerged behind Paul Pogba.

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Champions League’s group stage is oddly palatable in a stale world | Jonathan Wilson

An unusually open group stage highlights the waning power of super-clubs and offers better football than what is to come

There is, perhaps, no better indication of how broken modern football is that the return of the Champions League group stages feels almost like a palate cleanser. With the Swiss system to be introduced in 2024, and plans afoot for increasingly bloated World Cups to be staged increasingly often, the Champions League format appears by comparison a model of modest efficiency.

Sure, most people who have paid even a passing interest over the past year could probably predict 16 clubs to qualify for the knockouts now and be sure of getting a dozen right, but it will take only 96 games to sort that out. Perspectives change. What recently seemed distended and tedious suddenly looks thrillingly streamlined. Some of these games will matter. The raclette has become a sorbet.

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