Jonathan Liew's Blog, page 117
January 27, 2020
Chucking Jos Buttler from England’s Test side would be hasty and foolish | Jonathan Liew
England’s golden sapling has been underperforming in South Africa but it would be silly to apply normal rules to one of the game’s most thrilling talents
Spoiler alert: it’s Joe Denly next. And then Zak Crawley. Then, it’ll be time for Ben Stokes to be taken down a peg. Then probably Dom Sibley. Then, sometime next summer, Rory Burns or Jofra Archer. Then Denly again. Welcome to the England Test team in 2020, a toxic chalice of confected jeopardy in which somebody must always be in crisis. Somebody – anybody – must always be hovering just above the trapdoor.
Related: Paul Collingwood insists Jos Buttler will be ‘backed to the hilt’
Related: ‘The sky’s the limit for this team,’ says Joe Root after series victory
Related: Jos Buttler’s batting struggles demand a rethink from England | Chris Stocks
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January 25, 2020
Iheanacho’s early strike sees Leicester through FA Cup battle with Brentford
Griffin Park’s last Cup tie and a sign of changing times, in more senses than one. For Brentford, a chance to blaze their club’s impressive development by knocking out one of the country’s best teams in front of a national television audience; a chance to etch one more memory in the fading chronicle of their grand old ground before a move to Kew Bridge this summer. It was an opportunity they passed up, in favour of keeping some fresh legs for their Championship game against Nottingham Forest on Tuesday.
For the rest of us it was a salutary lesson in just where this competition now sits in the order of things. There was certainly no lack of buzz, particularly in the dying minutes, as Brentford strained for an equaliser, roared on by a packed crowd. There was no lack of effort or passion from the makeshift Bees XI, who after going an early goal down hounded and pressed Leicester and might even have snatched a replay at the death.
Related: FA Cup fourth round: Southampton v Tottenham and more – live!
Related: Brentford v Leicester: FA Cup fourth round – live!
Continue reading...January 23, 2020
Smiling Solskjær offers empty cliches to defend Manchester United | Jonathan Liew
Fifth place feels about right for United but problems lie in the difficulty of separating sporting and commercial ventures
The protest songs began around the hour mark, shortly after Burnley had scored their second goal: swelling and swirling around the tired, peeling old ground like hymns to a hazily-remembered past. One was about wanting their United back. Another proposed chopping Ed Woodward up from head to toe: the same grisly verse that had greeted the Glazer family when they first rolled into Old Trafford in the summer of 2005. Another beseeched fans to stand up if they hated the Glazers. Thousands of fans got to their feet. To be fair, they might simply have been heading for the exits.
For his part, Ole Gunnar Solskjær is very much a ground-half-full rather than a ground-half-empty kind of guy. After being pasted by Manchester City in the Carabao Cup semi-final, he took heart from the fact City had put out their strongest team. After being outclassed by Liverpool, he paid tribute to the fact they had been “in the game until the last kick”. And again, despite going down 2-0 to Burnley at Old Trafford amid an unprecedented fan exodus and the worst start to a league season for 30 years, the Manchester United manager was keen to look on the bright side.
Related: Manchester United’s Ed Woodward: admired by Glazers, despised by fans
Related: Manchester United standing by Ole Gunnar Solskjær despite fans' ire
Continue reading...January 22, 2020
Gabriel Martinelli shrugs off Arsenal’s shackles and lets hope fly again | Jonathan Liew
“I’m not the Messiah!” “I say you are, Lord, and I should know – I’ve followed a few.” – Monty Python’s Life of Brian
Has a goal ever looked so breathtakingly easy and ludicrously difficult all at once? As Gabriel Martinelli gathered the ball in his own half on Tuesday night, he found himself all on his own, 80 yards from goal, with N’Golo Kanté blocking his path. And yet within a few seconds the ball was rolling past Kepa Arrizabalaga into the Chelsea net, the 18-year-old Martinelli having simply run the length of the field in a very fast straight line, dumping perhaps the world’s best covering midfielder on his backside in the process. You know, as you do.
Related: David Luiz’s red card leaves Arsenal pondering philosophical matters | Barney Ronay
Continue reading...January 20, 2020
Nigel Wray’s gold rather than an ideology paved The Saracens Way to success | Jonathan Liew
From the Champions League to Test cricket to Team GB: where money flows, success often follows. But as a country we don’t really like to talk about that
In September and October last year, with what we now have to say is slightly unfortunate timing, Saracens issued a series of short videos to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of “The Saracens Way”, the cultural transformation that is said to have turned them into one of the most irresistible forces in the history of English club rugby union.
“The Saracens Way, quite simply, is the club,” Will Fraser beams into the camera. A former flanker who retired through injury, Fraser now sells Brand Saracens to a bulging catalogue of corporate clients. For a competitive day rate, including lunch and refreshments, Fraser and a current Saracens player or coach will instil in your company the cornerstones of the Saracens winning ethos: cultural change, strong values, an emphasis on happiness and making memories. “If we create good people,” Fraser explains, “we create good rugby players.”
Related: ‘Punishment is not proportionate’ – Saracens fans lick their wounds | Ian Malin
Related: Saracens accept relegation and issue apology for salary cap breaches
Continue reading...January 17, 2020
Delusions, chaos and a shot at a new life at Q-School, darts’ dream factory | Jonathan Liew
At a Wigan leisure centre hundreds of hopefuls, from ex-pros to chancers, face a gruelling race to claim a place on the PDC tour
The little girl in the blue leotard grips her mother’s hand tightly, but her gaze is elsewhere. She is spellbound, perhaps even a little baffled, by the tableau she has just glimpsed on her way to gymnastics practice at the Robin Park Leisure Centre in Wigan. There, the large space she usually knows as the tennis hall is instead occupied by several hundred people, most of them middle-aged men in loud shirts, very few of them – if we’re being blunt – the usual leisure centre clientele. There’s a Body Combat class taking place in the sports hall and a sprint session going on in the cycle studio. But here, for this week only, the dream factory is in town.
From the moment the doors opened at 8am, the queue quickly stretched out into the car park. They have come from all parts: former champions and pub chancers, future icons and fallen idols, county stalwarts and armchair aspirants, in pursuit of a better life. Win one of the Professional Darts Corporation’s coveted tour cards and a lucrative new career awaits. But to do so, they’ll need to see off 500 rivals in the ruthless four-day marathon of Q-School.
Related: BDO world darts championships failing to find their target
Related: Fallon Sherrock pulls out of women’s BDO world darts after prize money is cut
Continue reading...January 13, 2020
Call the super-agent! How Arda Turan might try to get his career on track | Jonathan Liew
Arda Turan’s two-year loan at Istanbul Basaksehir has been cut short but he has no intention of returning to Barcelona. You can only imagine the conversation he might have with his agent …
At first Mino Raiola was surprised by the sound of his phone ringing. The fact that it was 1am was not the surprising part: as a football agent constantly on the move he had long since grown used to being called at all sorts of strange hours. Usually it would be one of his players with some practical issue: a leaky tap, no internet, a mysterious buzzing noise that would invariably turn out to be the fridge.
Some players wanted to talk business. A few – often players living abroad for the first time – just wanted to talk. One night, very late, Raiola answered his phone to Mario Balotelli, who in a meek voice explained that he was alone in his new house and desperate for company. So Raiola went round and together they sat on his sofa in silence, watching Michael Portillo’s Great Railway Journeys on BBC Four until Mario dozed off.
Related: Spurs fans should fear four years of Mourinho’s small-minded cynicism | Jonathan Liew
Continue reading...January 12, 2020
Spurs fans should fear four years of Mourinho’s small-minded cynicism | Jonathan Liew
Desperate negativity of his approach to playing Liverpool at home is José Mourinho’s management style in microcosm
Champions aren’t flawless. It’s just that you glimpse their flaws for only a fleeting instant – a shadow you think you saw in the mirror – before they are gone.
Related: Mourinho tries to avoid discussing Kane but bemoans lack of strikers
Related: José Mourinho calls Southampton coach ‘an idiot’ and attacks VAR power
Continue reading...January 7, 2020
Shape-shifting City almost disappear from sight as United grandees look on | Jonathan Liew
An early onslaught from Pep Guardiola’s side gave the watching Sir Alex Ferguson and Ryan Giggs nothing to smile about
You can’t hit what you can’t see. On a mild but riotous night at Old Trafford Manchester City served up a beating as swaggering and dominant as any they have managed at this ground. In front of the grandees of Red Manchester – Wayne Rooney, Sir Alex Ferguson, Ryan Giggs – City executed a coup de grâce born of pure disrespect, United taking the best part of an hour to work out just what, exactly, was going on out there.
What had happened was that City had simply disappeared from view, slipped into the cracks, eluded detection. Had Raheem Sterling been a little more clinical in front of goal, the scoreline might even have been embarrassing. United’s Plan A, meanwhile, foundered against a fluid, kaleidoscopic City side who moved the ball forwards with seamless, almost ghostly speed. It’s hard to play on the counter-attack, after all, if there’s nothing to counter.
Related: Silva strike helps Manchester City beat United but the tie is still alive
Continue reading...January 6, 2020
Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad play hits when world prefers new material | Jonathan Liew
England’s grand old double act are consummate professionals who keep honing skills that could be lost to future generations
The decline of music hall came slowly at first. By the 1930s and 1940s it had ebbed a little from its turn-of-the-century peak and was no longer the dominant form of popular entertainment. But through the Great War, the birth of jazz and swing, the spread of cinema and the gramophone, it endured. In the jaws of the television age, and to gently dwindling audiences, the stars of music hall played on, blithely oblivious to a future where people would no longer build a night out around watching a fellow singing bawdy songs about boiled beef and carrots.
This, perhaps, is what it feels like to watch Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad in the 2020s: those consummate showmen, still telling the same jokes, still playing the same classic tunes, still honing and perfecting an immaculate act that one suspects will be entirely lost on future generations. Here he comes now, young Broady – yes, we know he’s 33, but we still call him that – still putting six balls in the same place, just like they used to. Here comes old Jimmy, still finding the outside edge with the old three-inswingers-and-an‑outswinger trick. The old ones are the best.
Related: Jimmy Anderson strikes late but South Africa remain in hunt against England
Related: Stokes’s brutal second Test batting cameo lays down marker for 2020 | Chris Stocks
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