Jonathan Liew's Blog, page 93

Leicester give their all to the very end but the richest clubs prevail | Jonathan Liew

Brendan Rodgers’ side were unlucky to miss out on top four after a season racked by injuries, while Chelsea imploded but held on to fourth and Liverpool stormed to third

As you were, then. At the end of this most unpredictable and turbulent of seasons, a time of pandemic and insurrection, the top four places in the Premier League ended in the hands of its four biggest and richest clubs.

Eight restless months after we started, English football’s new order – it turned out – looked largely like the old.

Related: Leicester’s defeat to Tottenham hands Champions League place to Chelsea

Related: Chelsea qualify for Champions League despite stumbling at Aston Villa

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Wayne Mardle: ‘I wanted to be a clown. No one wants that any more’ | Jonathan Liew

The flamboyant player turned pundit on the ‘terrible’ attitude that held him back, his coaching school, and social media abuse

A couple of months ago, Wayne Mardle was filming a celebrity episode of the ITV gameshow Bullseye when he was gripped by a strange and unfamiliar sensation. You might think that, as a former professional darts player and now one of the sport’s most recognisable commentators, performing on television is the last thing that would faze him. But as he prepared to go on stage in tandem with the former Coronation Street actor Angela Griffin, some old demons began to resurface.

Related: Gerwyn Price: 'I care what people think but I'm out there to do a job'

Related: Taylor v Sherrock: a thrilling but bloodless glimpse of the future | Jonathan Liew

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Timo Werner can’t shake his personal raincloud but Chelsea still find a way | Jonathan Liew

German’s woes continued with two disallowed goals against Leicester but Chelsea kept control of their top-four destiny

With around 25 minutes to go at Stamford Bridge, Timo Werner’s luck finally turned. Mateo Kovacic slid a pass into the left channel, whereupon Werner gathered the ball in his gangly, maladroit stride and began the lengthy, protracted process of bringing it under control.

Somewhere amid the tangle of legs and leather, a tackle was attempted by Wesley Fofana. Why Fofana did this remains a puzzling matter, given that on recent experience the most effective way of winning the ball from Werner is simply to let him tackle himself. Still, it was a moment of well-deserved fortune for Chelsea’s ill-starred striker, albeit one largely generated by his own elephantine clumsiness.

Related: Chelsea gain quick revenge over Leicester and boost top-four hopes

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Brendan Rodgers’ record finally stacks up to the brand he has created | Jonathan Liew

Leicester’s manager has succumbed to his own hubris before but he now has ample evidence of the success of his methods

A quiz: which of these stories about Brendan Rodgers is true? Story A: when he was a youth-team coach at Chelsea he once tried to cheer up an out-of-form John Terry by commissioning a bespoke motivational poem, which he then had framed. Story B: when his Swansea side won promotion to the Premier League, he celebrated by going off to climb Mount Kilimanjaro with Chris Kamara. Story C: when he meets young players for the first time he draws them a little stick figure with a crown on its head, in order to illustrate that they are “king of their own destiny”.

Of course, they’re all true. This is the inimitable legend of Rodgers: people person, friend to the stars, all-round wit. For some this is the sort of stuff that renders him ripe for ridicule. And yet, let’s examine the evidence. A visibly moved Terry scored in his next Chelsea game and dedicated the goal to Rodgers. The Kilimanjaro jaunt was a longstanding charity commitment, raising almost £400,000 in the fight against cancer, the disease to which he lost both his parents. And when your record of youth development includes Raheem Sterling, Philippe Coutinho, Kieran Tierney, Harvey Barnes and James Maddison, perhaps it’s fair to say his methods have some merit.

Related: Kepa Arrizabalaga, Chelsea’s £71m back-up, hoping for FA Cup final redemption | Jacob Steinberg

Related: Leicester ‘very positive’ Jonny Evans will be fit for FA Cup final

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Alexander-Arnold reminds us why we love football amid outside drama | Jonathan Liew

Near the end of what has supposedly been a difficult season the Liverpool right-back treated Old Trafford as his playground

There was a decoy Liverpool bus. That was the one that ended up getting its tyres slashed by Manchester United fans on a side street near Old Trafford.

The real Liverpool bus, unmarked and unheralded, sneaked around the back entrance to avoid the hundreds of protesters out front.

Related: Firmino fires Liverpool past Manchester United and into top-four reckoning

Related: Manchester United 2-4 Liverpool: Premier League – as it happened

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Manchester City’s title and the race for the top four – Football Weekly Extra

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Jonathan Liew and Clive Tyldesley to discuss Man City’s third league title in four years

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

Manchester City are Premier League champions for the third time in four years. Jonathan Liew is on hand to discuss how Pep Guardiola shaped the team differently for probably his greatest English championship win.

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Eden Hazard out of place at super-serious super-club Real Madrid | Jonathan Liew

The Belgium forward is an outlier in an elite football world that reveres the single-minded pursuit of success at all costs

Zinedine Zidane gets Real Madrid. What he gets above all is that the institution is not really interested in him as a person, even one as decorated and venerated as he is. The machine is the thing, and your importance extends only as far as your immediate usefulness to it. The part of you that is not Madrid is not relevant. Perhaps this is why Zidane cuts such an inane, inobtrusive figure on the touchline: like a man who possesses the secret to life, but is permitted to communicate it only via handclaps.

Sergio Ramos gets Real Madrid. On Sunday night, as Real strove for a late equaliser against Sevilla, Ramos was leading his troops into battle: screaming, fists pumping, heading every ball, crunching into every tackle. The fact that he was injured and watching from the stands was but a minor inconvenience: what Ramos gets above all is that even if you are not wearing the uniform, when you are a Madrid player you are never anything else.

Related: La Liga keeps on giving. And taking away. And then giving back again | Sid Lowe

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Faded sluggers Derby cling to survival in football’s great pyramid scheme | Jonathan Liew

Wayne Rooney basked in relief after his Derby team stayed up via a desperate 3-3 draw against a Sheffield Wednesday side laid low by boardroom chaos

Fittingly, nobody won. Even for Derby, there would be no crowning glory, no moment of triumph and precious little dignity. Certainly Wayne Rooney had the decorum and sense of place not to go charging across the turf as if his side had finished any higher than 21st. Instead, vaguely abashed relief and very probably an urge to go and lie down in a dark room for several hours.

On a day of high drama and occasionally high farce, it was Derby who staggered to safety, pipping Sheffield Wednesday and Rotherham despite conceding three goals at home in a must-win game.

Related: Waghorn hits spot as draw keeps Derby up but relegates Sheffield Wednesday

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How rugby star Maro Itoje found his voice: ‘For black people, the road is often trickier’

From highlighting black history to tackling everyday racism, the powerful athlete is determined to use his platform for change

Just under a year ago, Maro Itoje popped into his local branch of Waitrose to do some shopping. Despite being one of this country’s finest and most recognisable rugby union players – a 6ft 5in second-row forward who has played in a World Cup final and won virtually every major prize in the club game with his team, Saracens – he still enjoys the luxury of being able to walk the streets of his quiet London neighbourhood largely undisturbed. This, however, would not be one of those occasions.

“So basically, a member of staff mistook me for one of the workers,” he remembers. “This is not the first time this has happened. Normally it’s a member of the public asking me where they can find the milk. This was an actual member of staff; she asked me what time I was starting my shift. Which is ludicrous.” He speaks quietly and evenly. “But it highlights some of the biases people have. And I think this is an experience that’s shared by many people of colour. It shows you how deep-rooted some of these things are.”

I wouldn’t tell my younger self anything. It's the experiences you go through that make you the person you are

At school, we never got a proper look at African history. It made it seem as if it all started with European invasion

Rugby has a certain stereotype. Growing up, there weren’t many individuals who looked like me. Representation matters

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New age of austerity: Guardiola, Tuchel and the case for the defence | Jonathan Liew

Despite all their luxury attacking players it is back-to-basics defending that has been key to Manchester City’s and Chelsea’s success this season

Several epochs ago, back in the long-forgotten wilderness of October 2020, a good deal of airtime and column inches were expended on the curious deluge of high-scoring thrillers that had occurred in the first few rounds of the new Premier League season. Aston Villa put seven past Liverpool. Leicester put five past Manchester City. José Mourinho’s Tottenham, who pretty much everyone agreed were a team going places, put six past Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s Manchester United, who pretty much everyone agreed were sinking without trace.

Everywhere you looked, defences were on fire. By the end of the fourth round of fixtures, the average number of goals per game was a scarcely credible 3.79. As ever, football’s content-industrial complex kicked into gear. Various airy theories were propounded. The lack of crowds. The truncated pre-season. The new handball laws. Dodgy keepers. In a newspaper column, the former England striker Stan Collymore declared that “the art of defending is dead”, a pronouncement he had previously made in both 2016 and 2014.

Related: Pragmatist Guardiola has fine-tuned City’s balance between press and defence | Jonathan Wilson

Related: Thomas Tuchel's transformation of Chelsea rooted in rejigged defence | Jacob Steinberg

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