Jonathan Liew's Blog, page 18

Gary O’Neil running out of excuses and explanations for Wolves’ predicament | Jonathan Liew

Team may claim moral victory after latest near miss but they have forgotten how to manage games under pressure

Perhaps we should have known Wolves were in trouble the moment they got the dreaded Pep Guardiola vote of confidence. “I think they have less points than they deserve,” the Manchester City manager observed on Friday. Guardiola does this a lot to teams he’s about to demolish. Coaches, too. It’s his way of saying: trust me, this 5-0 humbling is going to hurt me a lot more than it hurts you.

In the event, the pain was divided on familiar lines. For Wolves, moral victories everywhere you looked. A fine battling performance; a great Molineux atmosphere; a reassuring sense of injustice. Meanwhile, actual Premier League points: zero. Current Premier League position: last. Still, Guardiola magnanimously name-checked every member of the Wolves starting XI in his press conference, so that’s something.

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Despite the frenzy of Thomas Tuchel’s England reception there is cause for hope | Jonathan Liew

Put aside the patriotic outrage and the German faces similar problems to his predecessors – but could still solve them

But what about the pathway? What kind of message does it send out to all the promising English coaches out there? What does it say about the system when the Football Association needs to import a head coach from abroad? Why won’t you sing the national anthem? Is it hypocritical for you to wear a poppy when it was your lot who, you know?

Yes: if the industrial-strength outrage generated by his appointment is any indication, Thomas Tuchel’s press conference after winning the 2026 World Cup is certainly going to be wild. Because of course we must assume that this outrage is in fact a consistent and principled intellectual stance that will be maintained throughout regardless of any victorious campaign, rather than, say, a bile reflex confected and amplified largely for clicks and attention.

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Will Thomas Tuchel deliver England a major trophy? Football Weekly - podcast

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Jonathan Liew and Paul Watson to discuss Thomas Tuchel’s arrival as England men’s team manager

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On the podcast today: Thomas Tuchel has been confirmed as the new England manager. His mission will be to win England’s men’s team their first major trophy since 1966 – but is it fair to question why there aren’t any suitable English candidates for the job?

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Lee Carsley is no televangelist in a tracksuit, he’s England’s most relatable manager | Jonathan Liew

In his repetitions, self-contradictions and slips, the interim coach is a picture of discomfort – and understandably so

Winston Churchill was not a socialist. You know this. I know this. And yet here I am, 18 years of age, inexplicably using my lips and my vocal cords to formulate, in the presence of two Cambridge University history professors who most definitely know that Churchill was not a socialist, the phrase “… and Churchill, in a very real way, was himself a socialist”.

This is an entirely new sentence; an entirely new thought that I have never in my life entertained or elucidated, and which I hear for the first time as it leaves my mouth. Indeed it’s conceivable that nobody in the span of human existence has ever expressed this exact idea in these exact terms. Because Winston Churchill – and two decades on, I really can’t be clear enough on this point – was not a socialist.

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Angel Gomes sets to demanding work as England’s goalkeeper of the outfield | Jonathan Liew

Composed midfielder demonstrated the ability to do the right thing again and again that is vital to his position

The English Toni Kroos does not exist. Nor does the English Andrea Pirlo, the English Luka Modric, the English Rodri. Instinctively, everybody knows this. England doesn’t have earthquakes, England doesn’t grow citrus fruit and England doesn’t produce technical central midfielders who can control a game and dictate the tempo of play. That’s just the way it is.

So on a clear and bracing Helsinki night, into this paradox steps Angel Gomes. Paradoxical because in many ways the player Gomes is trying to be, the role he is being fitted for, is something that doesn’t actually exist. Naturally, because football fans are impatient and adore the dopamine rush of making instant sweeping judgments, the impulse is to measure him against this stratospheric, borderline impossible standard. He’s either the English Pirlo. Or he isn’t. Good luck.

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Carsley is not the problem – something feels rotten at the core of this England | Jonathan Liew

This squad cries out for a coach who could imbue a sense of purpose that goes beyond simply wanting to win something

There is perhaps a certain bitter comic timing in the fact that England’s next opponent is the country serially ranked as the happiest on earth. Prosperous, equal, well-educated, socially supported and with few delusions of global grandeur, Finland offers our own disgruntled and perennially troubled nation an abundance of useful life lessons, most of which you can guarantee will go unheeded.

And so to Helsinki, where Lee Carsley apparently has just three games left to save the job that was apparently his after two games, slipping away after three games, and which he does not actually appear to want anyway. Perhaps it was inevitable, given our evident lack of enthusiasm for the Nations League format in general, that English football would use this autumn lacuna as an opportunity to turn entirely in upon itself, to give full rein to its rolling psychodrama, an extended Lee In/Lee Out referendum campaign.

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Jürgen Klopp shakes English football’s God delusion with embrace of Red Bull | Jonathan Liew

Often painted as an anti-corporate good guy, the former Liverpool manager was never anything of the sort

Jürgen Klopp could not be more excited. Jürgen Klopp’s passion for football is as strong as it ever was. Jürgen Klopp wants to work with incredible football talent. Jürgen Klopp is joining Red Bull as their head of global soccer. One of these sentences, clearly, is not like the others.

Which is not to impugn the sincerity of the official statement issued jointly by Klopp and the world’s stickiest energy drink on Wednesday morning, announcing his new role with the corporate giant. On the contrary: this is a job that positively exudes passion, excitement, connection. Klopp tearing through the boardroom after delivering a successful seminar. Getting mobbed by delirious data scientists. Firing up the Microsoft Teams call with his famous fist pumps.

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Viva la vida: Hull KR’s rise to Grand Final and a revolution built from the ground up | Jonathan Liew

Willie Peters’ side have earned their place at Old Trafford by staying true to themselves and serving the local community

To date, it’s still not entirely clear why Coldplay are coming to Craven Park. There was a certain bemusement last month when one of the world’s biggest and most unashamedly commercial bands announced that they were complementing their London residency next summer with two nights at the modest 20,000-capacity Sewell Group Craven Park, home of Hull Kingston Rovers. These, along with six nights at Wembley, are the only European shows Coldplay will play next summer. Even the city council described the news as “absolutely bonkers”.

Why Hull? Well for one thing, this is a city with a rich musical heritage in its own right, from the Housemartins to Everything But The Girl to Mick Ronson. And according to Neil Hudgell in a recent interview with The Times, the message came through that Coldplay wanted to play somewhere “northern and gritty”: authentic, out of the way, a little bit quirky. Hudgell is the owner of Rovers, and the man responsible for securing what we now have to describe as the second-hottest ticket in town.

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Manchester United locked in holding pattern waiting for something to happen | Jonathan Liew

Ghost ship will only right itself with painstaking progress – but that didn’t make 0-0 draw less torturous to watch

My favourite Benjamin Disraeli story – in a crowded if largely apocryphal field – comes from a dinner party the then prime minister attended in the late 1870s. War is raging in the Balkans, and with public opinion overwhelmingly in favour of a British intervention, the mood at the table is understandably tense. Eventually one guest, unable to bear the awkward silence any longer, bursts out: “Mr Disraeli, what are you waiting for?”

“At this moment, madam,” Disraeli replies, “the potatoes.”

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Wolves lose essence while balancing top-flight status for little outlay | Jonathan Liew

Underlying numbers show Gary O’Neil’s side should improve but the board’s strapped cash policy is joyless

What happens when you throw the Premier League’s slowest starters up against the club that has scored in the first minute of their past three games? For Wolves, the first 60 seconds against Brentford on Saturday carry their own curious quantum of danger. Which is not by any stretch to suggest that things get any easier for them after that.

It has become a commonplace to blame Wolves’s start to the season – they are bottom of the table with a single point – on the cruelty of the fixture computer. Their first six games were against Arsenal, Chelsea, Nottingham Forest, Newcastle, Aston Villa and Liverpool, with Manchester City and Brighton lying in wait.

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