Jonathan Liew's Blog, page 103

Manchester United risk more drift if they stick with Ole Gunnar Solskjær | Jonathan Liew

At a club only ever two matches from a crisis, there is a decision to be made over the manager’s future after the latest debacle

For Ole Gunnar Solskjær, perhaps space will be the final frontier. Specifically, the 70 yards of clear space Manchester United left behind them as they trotted forward for a corner in Istanbul that would in vanishingly swift order end up in their own net.

“We forget about the man up top,” Solskjær said by way of explaining how Demba Ba was left with half a football pitch all to himself. When put like that it sounds like a fairly innocuous mistake and maybe in the grand scheme of things it was. Yet the manner of United’s 2-1 defeat by Istanbul Basaksehir on Wednesday felt emblematic of something deeper: a team desperately out of balance, walking the tightrope between heroism and comedy, often in the same week, occasionally even in the same game.

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Published on November 05, 2020 13:03

Manchester United malaise, pressing and handball – Football Weekly Extra

Max Rushden is joined by Jonathan Wilson, Natasha Henry and Jonathan Liew to discuss Manchester United’s defending, wins for Chelsea, Dortmund and Barça, the dress code for managers and a weekend preview

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Max and co ask if Manchester United’s Champions League defending is now worse than Sunday League standard. With apologies to the Sunday League.

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Published on November 05, 2020 07:11

Jürgen Klopp's newer Liverpool faces offer a glimpse of next generation

Diogo Jota and Curtis Jones were big figures against Atalanta and are living proof that the Reds are reinventing themselves

Perhaps, if we really stretched ourselves, we could envisage ways in which this evening could have gone even better for Liverpool than in reality. An Alisson hat-trick. A performance so uplifting that it instantly cured Virgil van Dijk’s knee injury. Takumi Minamino rising from the bench to announce he had invented a vaccine for Covid-19. But we’re clutching at straws here. The grins and chuckles at full time said it all: this was Liverpool’s Christmas, and in the traditional rather than the Tier 3 lockdown sense.

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Published on November 04, 2020 00:00

Fans without football have been left staring into a howling void | Jonathan Liew

With the singing crowd silenced, supporters are taking to virtual outlets to unleash their reservoirs of rage

Complete the following phrase: football without fans is … In the current climate, it can feel like the only acceptable response is “nothing”. This is a conceit in which we are all, to greater or lesser degrees, complicit. Not least in the media, where certain journalists have built entire careers on exalting the intrinsic nobility of the humble matchgoing supporter while sitting in their complimentary press box seats consuming free food. Without fans, the game is nothing. It simply ceases to exist. It’s a travesty. Send tweet. Eat sandwich.

Except that is not quite true, is it? At least, certainly not on the evidence of the last few months. The players and staff certainly care just as much. The levels of effort do not appear to have dropped, even if the levels of performance appear increasingly erratic. Most importantly of all, football is still happening. The cameras are still running. We’re still talking about it. Football without fans may well be colder, stranger, less lovable, less equitable and by most measures less good. But it’s not nothing.

Away fan culture feels under threat: the priority for clubs is getting their own supporters back in, not the opposition’s

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Published on November 02, 2020 14:00

Gareth Taylor targets two FA Cups in a season for Manchester City women

‘We want to make history’ says City manager after Wembley winEverton’s Willie Kirk says team will learn from defeat

Gareth Taylor paid tribute to the desire and patience of his Manchester City side as he celebrated his first trophy as a manager in Sunday’s FA Cup final. City had made a subdued start to the Women’s Super League season and endured some difficult periods at Wembley against a spirited Everton side.

But Taylor said Everton “did not look especially dangerous” and challenged his players to make history by becoming the first club to win the Cup twice in a season.

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Published on November 01, 2020 12:15

Manchester City beat Everton in extra time to win Women's FA Cup

Finally, after 110 minutes of the thickest tension, gravity and reality collided. The coronation of Manchester City as winners of the 50th Women’s FA Cup had long felt pre-ordained, perhaps even inevitable. But not until Georgia Stanway managed to squeeze the ball under the body of Sandy MacIver, with City’s 26th shot of the match, did it feel certain.

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Published on November 01, 2020 09:43

Dembélé and Messi restore order to Barcelona's chaos against Juventus

There were times in Turin when you could just about glimpse the Barcelona that had once been, and the Barcelona they were trying to become. For a club desperate to shrug off its fetid present, that at least must represent progress. Ousmane Dembélé’s early goal and Lionel Messi’s late penalty were good enough to see off Juventus. A more clinical Barcelona might even have won by more. But this was a good night for Ronald Koeman’s side; and how rarely we have been able to say that of late.

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Published on October 28, 2020 15:10

Jofra Archer: 'You’re just counting the days down until you’re free again'

Fast bowler has spent most of the year in biosecure bubbles but has been on top of his game in the Indian Premier League

Jofra Archer is thinking of buying a calendar. “Just to cross them down and feel like the days are going faster,” he says. As he nears the end of his latest confinement, with the Rajasthan Royals in the Indian Premier League, the days and nights have begun to weigh heavy. There are worse places to be imprisoned than a luxury Dubai hotel with access to a private beach. He gets that. Even so, he craves escape. “It will be over soon,” he says. “You’re just counting the days down until you’re free again.”

Freedom will be sweet and fleeting. Rajasthan’s last fixture of the regular season is on Sunday. But get all the way to the final on 10 November and Archer – like his England teammates Ben Stokes and Jos Buttler – will have five days to enjoy the comforts of home before flying out for the white-ball tour of South Africa. The next assignment. The next bubble.

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Published on October 28, 2020 08:58

ECB should break the global silence on Pakistan's sad and strange IPL exile | Jonathan Liew

The unspoken, unexamined decision of the Indian Premier League to ignore one country has turned the dressing room into a proxy battlefield, the auction into a theatre of war

Last week, the England and Wales Cricket Board announced it is in the process of organising the first official England tour of Pakistan in 15 years. This is, self‑evidently, the right thing to do. Since England’s last visit in 2005-06, Pakistan have toured this country eight times for various tournaments and series. From the ECB’s perspective, their decision to brave the pandemic and send a team this summer may well have proven the difference between financial ruin and mere recession.

And so naturally the decision to consider the possibility of maybe, potentially, exploring the idea of touring Pakistan for a very short Twenty20 series in early 2021 – subject to all the usual security and logistical caveats – has been spun in many quarters as an act of supreme munificence. Yet if England are genuinely keen on extending the hand of solidarity to Pakistani cricket, then there is something else it could do. It could politely but pointedly use its voice at next month’s International Cricket Council board meeting to ask why Pakistani players continue to be excluded from the world’s biggest cricket tournament.

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Published on October 26, 2020 12:00

Phil Foden rescues point for out-of-sorts Manchester City against West Ham

Something really needs to be done about these humdrum mid-table Premier League games. Perhaps the next mutation of Project Big Picture will have something to say about fixtures like these: two flawed, ambition-free sides in pure survival mode, both ultimately grateful for the point. Maybe it’s time for the likes to Everton and Aston Villa to cut the Manchester Citys of this world loose.

We’re joking, sort of. But it said a good deal, not just about this game but about the trajectories of the two clubs involved, that at full-time both sets of players looked equally disappointed. West Ham may have ridden their luck a touch. They may have spent most of the last half-hour defending. But this was a game that could just as easily gone their way. They know, as do most of their rivals, that this City is currently there for the taking.

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Published on October 24, 2020 06:37