Jonathan Liew's Blog, page 54

Graham Potter and Chelsea still searching for a plan amid the chaos | Jonathan Liew

First leg against Dortmund shows Chelsea’s manager is torn between long-term renewal and short-term impact

So, that plan. Everyone wants to see the plan, to see the world in a grain of sand, to see the nuts and bolts of a sophisticated modern footballing philosophy in a promising 15-minute spell either side of the break. The truth is, there is no plan yet. Just the kind of mid-tempo chaos you get when you are still at the thick end of one of the most audacious experiments ever seen in elite football. The bottom line is that Chelsea still can’t keep the ball and they still can’t keep it out. Everything else is bubbling test tubes and incomplete data.

There were 21 shots in the 1-0 defeat at Dortmund, which is at least something. João Félix probably should have had a couple of goals, Gregor Kobel made several fine saves for the hosts and, naturally for a Graham Potter team, the xG was off the charts. You might even argue that this was the sort of game Chelsea deserved to win. All the same, they keep failing to win them, largely because they keep doing the sort of things that teams do when they have no map, no structure to fall back on, no collective consciousness to drag them through the tough bits.

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Nathan Jones’s exit robs us of the funniest manager in Premier League history | Jonathan Liew

Former Southampton head coach had a strange approach to building team spirit but he also inherited a weak squad

You’ve probably heard the story about Nathan Jones and the ping-pong table, but just in case you haven’t. It’s 2016 and Jones is in his first spell at Luton Town, desperately trying to instil a winning culture at an underachieving League Two club, and he decides that the squad table tennis league is becoming a problem. So he does what comes naturally to him. He burns the table down.

Perhaps my favourite part of this story – narrowly pipping Jones’s admission that he had to “smash the table up first to get it flammable” – is the way he rationalises it afterwards. “There was a big table tennis culture,” he says. “So I thought, ‘I can either cajole them and try to get them into the gym. Or I can burn the table’. It was far easier to burn the table.” In the mind of Nathan Jones, these are the only two options: persuasion or immolation. And after Jones exited Southampton after a chaotic 94 days, it struck me that this was roughly the same binary he applied to Premier League management.

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Liverpool refind glimpses of their old selves, helped by youth of Bajcetic | Jonathan Liew

Spanish teenager was brave on the ball, as was Cody Gakpo, although Liverpool also enjoyed the luck against Everton

Well, they always say the form book goes out of the window on derby day. At the conclusion of this game, as Liverpool’s players shared backslaps and embraces on the pitch, as Jürgen Klopp strode over to the Kop to punch the air with his harpoon-fist, as Anfield buzzed to the strains of “going down, going down, going down”, it was possible to sense a curious and unfamiliar vibe around this place. Two-nil against Everton. Salah on the scoresheet. Was this … normality?

Things have not felt normal at Liverpool for a while. It’s not just the football, which has been cold and insipid. Nor Klopp himself, who for the last few months has borne the tetchy disgruntlement of a Hollywood A-lister now reduced to doing commercials for price-comparison websites. Even Anfield in the hours before this game felt devoid of its usual crackling electricity, its heaving optimism. For Liverpool, 10th in the Premier League, this was a fixture pitched somewhere between juddering apprehension and pure terror.

The hopeful reading is that this comfortable win against their favourite opponents can restore a little of the old swagger, set them back on an upward path. There are reachable prizes to aim for here. Brentford, Fulham and Brighton can all be overhauled. Tottenham remain resolutely Tottenham. Beat Newcastle this weekend and suddenly fourth place is only six points away with a game in hand. Real Madrid visit next week. Time to move.

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Leeds the losers as game of steaming chaos shows up leadership void | Jonathan Liew

Ugly atmosphere ended with Manchester United demonstrating ability to move the game on to their own terms

Dawn breaks in Leeds with a smell of menace. Police out by breakfast, a slow-moving filet of yellow hi-vis beating the streets, lining the alleyways, scanning the trains for trouble. In the stands, songs about Munich and Istanbul, Mason Greenwood and Jimmy Savile. On the pitch, skewering tackles, crunching limbs, collisions you can physically hear. The atmosphere is magnificent, even if it comes from the ugliest of places.

Leeds have committed the most fouls in the Premier League this season, Manchester United are fourth in that list, and the two clubs have hated each other for decades. Perhaps this was the inevitable result: a kind of bestial melee, RB Leipzig v RB Leipzig, in which for long periods neither team could get a foothold on the game because they were too busy getting a foothold on each other.

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Sean Dyche, the underdog manager, is perfect voice for Everton right now | Jonathan Liew

Survival, hard work, staying in the game, protecting what you have: this is not simply Dyche’s football tactic but an identity

There is a tantalising alternative history of English football in which Sean Dyche does not get offered the Burnley job in October 2012. Instead, he continues to plug away in the position he had started a month earlier, as an assistant to Stuart Pearce in the England Under-21 setup. Perhaps over the following years, it is he and not Gareth Southgate who emerges as the natural heir of English football’s new dawn.

The fields of St George’s Park resound to the gospel of 4-4-2. Danny Ings wins 100 caps and a World Cup Golden Boot. England beat Italy in the Euro 2020 final because let’s face it, there’s no way a Dyche side is letting Leonardo Bonucci get a free shot from three yards. The world feels like a simpler place, but in many ways a happier one too. Does Dyche forge the connection with England’s hardcore fans that Southgate never enjoyed? Does Brexit still happen? Does the “red wall” stay red?

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Qatari owners would take more from Manchester United than Glazers ever did | Jonathan Liew

Ownership by one of the world’s most savage governments would forever tarnish the legacy of Britain’s most famous club

Perhaps, in a way, this had to happen eventually. Football’s narrative arc demanded nothing less. The numbers simply made too little sense. Perhaps like Batman v Superman, Godzilla v Kong, the cronut, Manchester United and Qatar was simply a crossover concept begging to be brought into existence. Indulge me for a second. I’m thinking pre-season tours to Doha. I’m thinking an Mbappé/Rashford reality TV job-swap. I’m thinking luxury party barges on Manchester Ship Canal. A hologrammatic New Trafford to sit directly above the old one. A Phil Jones mural visible from space.

And so to the news that Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani – a private Qatari individual with no direct connection to Qatar itself, unless you churlishly count the fact that he is its head of state – is interested in purchasing United. Or perhaps simply a stake in United rather than a full takeover. Or, according to which report you read, not necessarily Thani himself but a fund linked to the royal family, or perhaps the Qatar Investment Authority sovereign wealth fund.

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Leeds’ no-manager bounce and a big weekend ahead – Football Weekly Extra

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Jonathan Liew and Lucy Ward to preview the upcoming round of Premier League fixtures

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

Today: Leeds draw 2-2 away at Manchester United in the first game of the post-Jesse Marsch era. Where do they go from here? Well, straight to Old Trafford for a rematch on Sunday.

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Jürgen Klopp and the strange ritualistic power of the press conference | Jonathan Liew

The whole encounter is a kind of pantomime, a verbal arm-wrestle in which the protagonists have largely conflicting goals

Jürgen Klopp takes a seat in the press conference room at Molineux and answers questions about Liverpool’s latest defeat. He looks a little haggard these days, like a homeless wizard: the face worn and weathered, a thick Arctic forest of a beard hanging from him. Deep breaths. Voice cracked and familiar. Baseball cap drawn low over sad eyes. On the walls at Liverpool’s training ground there are photos from his arrival, a younger and handsomer man staring him down every day he comes into work. Seven years. How has it only been seven years? How has it already been seven years? Somebody asks a question about Liverpool’s slow starts. Something about mentality. Suddenly he recognises a face, a name, some words, a feeling. A brief and powerful memory flickers and ignites inside him.

“It’s really difficult to talk to you, if I’m 100% honest,” Klopp snapped at James Pearce, a Liverpool reporter from the Athletic, on Saturday night. “You know why. For all the things you wrote.” Of course Klopp’s outburst seems to have provoked all the usual trimmings of shock and outrage from all the usual places. Personally, I’m surprised this kind of thing doesn’t happen more often. Particularly when you consider the rawness of the emotions involved, the artificiality of the setting, the staggering gulf in expertise between those doing the asking and those doing the answering.

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Women’s Super League: talking points from the weekend’s action

Spurs have a puzzle to solve, Liverpool find midfield inspiration and Manchester United and Arsenal may pay for blanks

Feed Beth England and she will score. That much Tottenham will have known long before they signed her for a British record transfer fee last month. The big question is how they build a wider game around her: runners beyond, good-quality crosses, service from midfield. It is a puzzle they are still trying to solve, with the occasional promising opening against her former club Chelsea on Sunday interspersed with three offsides and plenty of pointless long balls. But her movement and finishing is a clear upgrade, and her goal was her third in four games. Plenty to work on, but an encouraging start. JL

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Lauren James hits the accelerator as Chelsea leave Tottenham in the dust

We should probably talk about the Lauren James goal first, if only because it was the one thing that appeared genuinely unequivocal, the single brilliant shaft of light in this cracked mirror of a game. It came 27 minutes in, the score 1-1, the surface weathered, the terms of engagement still tentatively being negotiated. Jess Carter had headed Chelsea in front. Beth England had tapped in an equaliser shortly afterwards and dutifully refused to celebrate against her former club.

James is having a fabulous season, a player who seems to be operating on a different plane at the moment, a kind of artificial intelligence that allows her to glide through a game more frictionlessly than anyone else. Emma Hayes held her back a little last term, allowing her to find the size and shape of her game, allowing her once more to trust a body that has let her down more than is really fair for such a supremely talented 21-year-old.

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