Jonathan Liew's Blog, page 13

Big details costing Arsenal as Chelsea leave London rivals feeling blue | Jonathan Liew

Defeat at Stamford Bridge hits WSL title hopes and casts doubts over their killer instinct on and off the pitch

It’s the hope that kills you. Also conceding 21 shots on goal including six big chances: to be fair, that kills you. Also leaving Lauren James one-on-one with your defender, who inconveniently isn’t actually a defender: that also has a tendency to kill you. Also, the needless red card for lipping the referee. Also, not taking your own chances. Also, going into the game seven points behind in the first place. Regrettably, all fatal.

Arsenal will grouse and Arsenal will grumble. Arsenal will sigh over small details and mutter deep-state conspiracies about refereeing standards. But Arsenal are also done. Chelsea’s first league double over them since 2019-20 also marks the factual end of what we technically, and generously, have to call their challenge for the 2024-25 Women’s Super League title.

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Toby Collyer embodies eternal issue at heart of Manchester United’s flux | Jonathan Liew

Youngster looks an assured player – but only when his team move away from becoming a novelty basketball side

Finally, with a minute to go in regulation time, we got the game we came for. Rangers equalised late on and Manchester United put the ball back on the centre spot, and the Rangers fans roared and the United fans roared back, and the cold wind whipped in off the Pennines, and for a few blissful minutes Old Trafford was a whirlpool of pure blood cells.

Finally the noise began to build and the tackles flew in and every duel felt epic. Alejandro Garnacho tried to burn James Tavernier for pace, and Tavernier – eyeballs popping, 33-year-old lungs bursting – somehow held him off. A few seconds later Nicolas Raskin flew through the air and cut down Kobbie Mainoo like a second-row at a lineout. Free-kick.

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Jomel Warrican worships at cricket’s most unfashionable altar – remember the name | Jonathan Liew

Why am I writing about the fifth most famous spinner from the West Indies? Because it matters for Test cricket

There was a lovely moment after the Trinidad Test a couple of years back. With the final day’s play between India and West Indies washed out and the match drawn, Ravindra Jadeja and Jomel Warrican went up to the top of the covered stand to chat spin bowling.

And, you know, really chat about it. The dirty, under-the-counter stuff. Alignment, shoulder positions, approach angles, how to maintain efficiency of momentum into the delivery stride. The stuff that, to those uninitiated in the art and argot of left-arm red-ball spin bowling, might barely even register as English. Just two master craftsmen talking about their arcane, esoteric and very possibly dying craft.

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Happy birthday Luke Littler: champion turns double nine with world at his feet | Jonathan Liew

Darts prodigy is turning 18 having already transformed his sport while navigating the life of a teenager

Lionel Messi had scored one senior goal for Barcelona. Sachin Tendulkar had scored one Test century. Tiger Woods had played four tournaments on the PGA Tour and missed the cut in all of them. Ronnie O’Sullivan and Serena Williams had just won their first major titles. Simone Biles, though already richly garlanded at international level, was still waiting to compete in her first Olympics.

These were just the other child prodigies. What had you achieved by the age of 18? How many of your dreams and aspirations had been conceived, let alone realised? How much of the course of your life had been mapped out for you? At the age of 18, your correspondent had no idea what he wanted to do with his life and at the age of 39 arguably still doesn’t.

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Foden double helps Manchester City rout Ipswich and return to top four

Nobody left early. Nobody stopped singing. Nobody grizzled or ­grumbled or booed or barracked. Ipswich Town have spent long enough out of the Premier League’s walled garden not to take its pleasures for granted, even if those pleasures occasionally include getting spanked 6-0 by the quadruple champions. Equally, this is a result for which the rest of the division will not necessarily thank them.

Since Sammie Szmodics sensationally squeezed them ahead at the ­Etihad Stadium in August, Ipswich have now given up 10 unanswered goals to Manchester City in 173 ­minutes of football. And if that was partly stage fright, here they were more complicit: a collapse up there with their worst performances of the season, perhaps even playing an edgy City back into some kind of form.

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Liam Delap stands alone as the classic English No 9 of the future

Improbable hype around the Ipswich forward is growing as he faces the club that reared and discarded him

This season: one of the best strikers in the Premier League. Last season: not in the Premier League, and if we’re being honest not even really a striker. Kieran McKenna remembers Liam Delap coming to Portman Road with Hull late 2023 and starting on the right wing: trying to use his pace to beat the offside trap, trying to get in behind and fashion chances for Aaron Connolly, and mostly failing to do either. Hull lost 3-0.

The blooming of Delap for Ipswich under McKenna has been one of the unlikelier underdog yarns of recent months. Until recently, this was another young, gifted age-group forward whose career appeared to be meandering towards frustration, another item of floating big-club debris trying to pick up whatever scraps were left on the table. We’ve seen this film before. It ends with a series of unsatisfying Championship loans, three moderately successful seasons in League One and then a long extended dotage recording podcasts.

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What’s the reality of this Spurs team: supremely unlucky or unforgivably naive? | Jonathan Liew

Ange Postecoglou has a good side in there somewhere, but also one addicted to danger, impulsive and impatient

Pedro Porro hit the post in the 94th minute. It was an opportunistic shot from a tight angle, about 20 yards out. No kind of angle for a shot, really. But it was struck well, fierce and swerving viciously away from David Raya in the Arsenal goal, who probably wouldn’t have saved it. The frame was still rattling several seconds later.

So, here’s a thought exercise. What are the consequences if Porro’s shot goes in? Does it make this Tottenham team any better? Does it change our assessment of their season so far? Does it render the club any better run or better coached? It shouldn’t, right? A hopeful pot-shot going an inch to the left shouldn’t mean anything beyond itself.

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Arteta must revive Emirates roar as much as Arsenal’s fortunes on pitch

With Tottenham next up at home, Gunners manager must restore the positivity of the 2022-23 season

Mikel Arteta was sitting in the Emirates Stadium away dugout when he realised the scale of the task that awaited him. It was December 2019, and although he was still nominally the assistant manager of Manchester City, cruising to a 3-0 victory against Arsenal, thoughts were naturally beginning to turn towards the project he had secretly decided to take on. And – to put it mildly – he was alarmed.

This wasn’t simply a case of how bad Arsenal were on the pitch. Performance is a fickle thing. There are known variables, measurable objectives. Performance you can fix. But the energy in the stadium, the disgruntlement, the disconnect between the players on the pitch and the fans in the stands: as Arteta contemplated his first job in management, this was the challenge that worried him the most.

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Kyle Walker’s talents deserved so much more than his crude tabloid caricature | Jonathan Liew

One of the most successful full-backs of the modern era, Walker has been dogged by a prurient obsession with his personal life

England ace Kyle Walker has SENSATIONALLY asked Manchester City for a divorce – and pals fear the sharp decline of his recovery pace could be to blame. According to insiders, jilted Pep Guardiola was HEARTBROKEN on hearing about Walker’s decision to walk out on their seven-year partnership, having publicly defended the 0.06-non-penalty-expected-goal-contributions-per-90-minutes right-back on numerous occasions this season. One source exclusively told the Guardian: “It’ll be an amicable split given everything they’ve been through together. But there’s a mutual recognition that a club of City’s standing can’t go on carrying a player averaging 7.7 possession losses per game and a career‑low 5.8 final-third passes per 90.”

Walker, 34, dropped his BOMBSHELL news last week to City’s head honcho Txiki Begiristain, 60, amid persistent rumours over a budding romance with Italian stallions Milan, 125, whose new coach Sérgio Conceição, 50, could see Walker, 34, as a better fit for his dynamic, transition-based defensive buildup style than either Emerson Royal, 25, or Davide Calabria, 28.

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Manchester United hit the spot and Tamworth come so close: Football Weekly - podcast

Max Rushden, Jonathan Wilson, Jonathan Liew and Nedum Onuoha review all the action from the FA Cup third round

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

On the podcast today: Manchester United win on penalties at Arsenal. Altay Bayindir was the hero for the visitors, but Arsenal missed so many chances – are you ready for another conversation about whether they need a striker?

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