Jonathan Liew's Blog, page 36

Son signs off in style as Tottenham sink Bournemouth to close gap on top four

The more Tottenham change, the more they stay the same. They tried to make life easy for themselves here, they really did. They scored early and scored late, weathered the long periods of Bournemouth pressure, the occasional scare and a very Tottenham kind of rain: one that came in furious, intense squalls before disappearing entirely for about 20 minutes at a time.

But texturally this was largely the same substance Tottenham have been serving up all season: a spirited but uneven performance in which the fun is basically indistinguishable from the suffering. Pape Sarr scored a fine goal before going off injured; Bournemouth were the better side for much of the first half; Spurs improved markedly in the second, making the points safe through Son Heung-min and Richarlison, and yet still ended the game on the scramble after Alex Scott’s two late goals, one legal and one ruled out for offside.

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Luke Littler demolishes Raymond van Barneveld to keep adventure going

Teenager into quarter-final after beating former championBrendan Dolan next as draw opens up nicely for Littler

This was always going to happen, you know. That there would eventually come a point in time when genetics, circumstance, opportunity and doner meat combined to produce the perfect darts specimen. It’s a simple enough skill and the barriers to entry are invitingly low. Statistically speaking, there have probably been humans born who were as naturally talented at darts as Luke Littler. All that was required was for one of them to realise it.

And now he’s a world championship quarter-finalist at the age of 16, and he’s a little beamish, and he’s a little bewildered, but – crucially – he’s not in the least bit surprised. Nothing about his demeanour or his carriage suggests he didn’t see all this coming at some point. Maybe not now, but then again why not? After all, he’s always known how good he is. He’s been feeling the tactile thunk of a treble bed since before he could properly walk. It’s everyone else who needed to get up to speed.

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PDC world darts: Van Gerwen makes strong start but Wade falls at first hurdle

Dutchman beats Keane Barry 3-0 in second roundJames Wade suffers shock 3-2 defeat by Matt Campbell

It was, in the words of Michael van Gerwen, no better than “OK”. And of course when you are the three-time world title winner and one of the greats of the sport you pitch your standards higher than most. Even so there was a vaguely stirring quality to this second-round demolition of Keane Barry, a 3-0 victory secured with just two legs dropped.

It’s hard to put your finger on what exactly. The roars and the fist-pumps were a little more bullish than usual, the gaze a little more focused. There was a sublime 167 checkout that was basically an act of pure will, eliciting an explosion of noise from the Ally Pally crowd and completely reversing the course of a set that the Irishman was threatening to nick.

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Steve Beaton: ‘I’ve never been on a sunbed. And I’ve never had a perm’

The ‘Bronzed Adonis’, the last competitive link to the oche’s smoky golden age, is laidback before his 33rd year at a world championship

“You’ve obviously seen the video of me in the Jacuzzi,” Steve Beaton says in a languid, assumptive tone. As if this is simply a statement of fact. Imagine being able to say those words to a complete stranger with the utter confidence that they are, indeed, true. The clip in question dates from 1993, and Beaton – then one of the world’s greatest darts players – is conducting an interview with the BBC’s Dougie Donnelly from the hot tub at the Lakeside Country Club: luscious locks flowing, moustache proud, a gold chain around his neck.

Thus was born the legend of the Bronzed Adonis. For a generation that grew up watching darts in the 1990s, Beaton is one of the last remaining links to that smoky golden age. He was the 1996 British Darts Organisation world champion, an icon of his era, a 6ft 4in tower of suave sophistication and sex appeal. And he may be pushing 60 these days, the curly mane pared sensibly back, the shirt now mostly buttoned up. But somehow the nickname coined early in his career by the commentator Tony Green still fits him perfectly: the easy charm, the smooth fluid action, the way he strolls on to the stage as if he’s just stepped off of a sunbed.

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Liverpool and Manchester City drop points in the title race – Football Weekly

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Barney Ronay and Jonathan Liew as Manchester City draw once again and Liverpool fail to make chances count against Manchester United

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 City’s comparatively poor form continues. The panel debate what problems Pep Guardiola needs to address and whether we should all just brace ourselves for an inevitable 20-game unbeaten run.

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United stoop to trench-digging for pragmatic draw at Liverpool | Jonathan Liew

Erik ten Hag secured a good point at Anfield, but the way it was achieved shows how bare his cupboard is right now

The new plan is no plan. Men standing, solemnly, in a place. Covering the spaces, and then the spaces in between the spaces. Block, buffer, deny everything. You didn’t get Harry Kane and you didn’t get Frenkie de Jong and you didn’t get Declan Rice, and so here you are: watching Jonny Evans punt long balls up the touchline in the hope – nay, the dream – that Antony can maybe get on the end of it and win a throw.

And for Manchester United there should be no shame or chagrin in any of this, in the jubilation of their fans in the Anfield Road Stand as the curtain fell on this grizzled and forgettable game. This is, quite frankly, a club that could use a little more of this kind of humility, a more realistic recognition of where they stand in the taxonomy of English football. Sir Alex Ferguson was in the stands here, and even his champion sides rarely regarded a point at Anfield as a bad point.

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Luke Humphries: ‘If I’ve got to be boring to win majors, no problem’

World championship favourite on his ‘stage presence’ secrets and how mental health struggles have improved his darts

Luke Humphries remembers the day he felted his last roof. It was 1 March 2018: the day before his first UK Open, his first major tournament as a professional. Roofing was in the blood: his father, Mark, worked on the roofs, and so did his brother, Stuart, and ever since leaving school five years earlier so had he. Start at 6am, home at 5pm. But he had always felt a higher calling. At the end of his shift he clocked off, hoping never to clock on again.

So began a journey that would take Humphries from the roofs of Newbury to the roof of the darting world. On Sunday night, when he begins his world championship campaign, his introduction to the crowd will take a little longer than usual. The new World Grand Prix champion; the new Grand Slam champion; the new Players Championship Finals champion: a remarkable hot streak that has made the 28-year-old the bookmakers’ favourite to end the festive season at the very top of the tree.

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Checking out: the slow decline of the London darts scene

The city once produced a succession of fine players but just one player at this year’s world championship lives in the capital

Out of the tube station and up the hill they file, drawn to the bright lights like moths to a warm flame. At the top of the hill, a snake of buses spits out convoys of German tourists. For the next three weeks London is the centre of the darting universe, and Alexandra Palace is its friendly local: a place of long tables and four-pint pitchers, of old songs and familiar faces.

More than anywhere else, London is where the soul of darts resides. It was in the Red Lion pub in Wandsworth in 1926 that the rules of the sport were first agreed and codified.

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PSG edge through behind Dortmund as Zaïre-Emery hints at exciting future

And a very merry Christmas to you too, Luis Enrique. It was looking pretty hairy there for a while, as his Paris Saint-Germain side teetered on the brink of a group-stage humbling in the only competition that has ever really seemed to matter to them. Borussia Dortmund were ahead and so were Newcastle, and for all their vigour and enterprise the champions of France were doing their level best to push their coach towards the one door of the Paris Advent calendar you really do not want to open.

But just as the cracker jokes were beginning to write themselves, Paris were saved from a ghost of their past by a ghost of their present, and a ghost of their future. Kylian Mbappé created the equalising goal for the electrifying 17-year-old midfielder Warren Zaïre-Emery and, even if Milan’s late goal on Tyneside gave the closing minutes an unbearable jeopardy, Luis Enrique’s team progressed by virtue of their head‑to‑head record.

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Joey Barton’s far-right rebrand points to sad malaise among football’s lost boys | Jonathan Liew

While Barton’s empty intellectual shtick was just that, his misogynistic rants are symptomatic of something more sinister

First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win. Then, several years after you’ve won, a former Queens Park Rangers midfielder inexplicably tries to fight you again in an attempt to promote his podcast. Like a catchy maxim ripped from the pages of the philosophy books that he has almost certainly only skim-read, the tale of Joey Barton can be interpreted pretty much however you want.

Perhaps the first reaction to the former Rangers substitute’s latest wave of attention-seeking is also the most natural: ignore, starve of oxygen, move on. Partly this is because his motivations for railing against female pundits in men’s football are so cynically transparent.

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