Five of the big six return to Champion’s League action this week with all of them in a good position to qualify.
The only ones not in a good position to progress to the next phase of this season’s competition are Arsenal, mainly because they are not in it.
They are, however, in a good spot in the Europa League, a competition in which they find themselves competing for the first time in 137 years. (more…)
The early kick-off this week saw the meeting of Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur at Old Trafford.
Much had been made of the fact that Harry Kane would miss the game through injury but very little had been said about United being without Pogba, Fellaini, Rojo and Carrick which, collectively, is surely a bigger miss than just one player!
The game itself was a forgettable affair with United in particular guilty of their usual ineptness in possession and displaying their regular propensity for giving the ball back to the opposition far too easily. (more…)
It’s a bit of a rhetorical question as it is a situation unlikely to happen to ALL of them, and certainly not at the same time, but we like to speculate and it is quite interesting to debate which one would suffer the most.
The obvious caveat here is that it depends upon the games the player in question is likely to miss. Will they be title deciders against big clubs or just end of the season run-outs with little or no meaning?
So we have assumed that, when they lose the player in question, all six have a run of games identical in importance to each other. See if you agree with our choices. (more…)
The stand-out game of this weekend’s Premier League fixtures is undoubtedly the one at Old Trafford between Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur.
Mauricio Pochettino will be hoping that his team can bounce back, a little like West Ham did in the second half of their mid-week game, by taking something positive from Manchester.
He will also want to prove that Tottenham are not the “Harry Kane” team, as Pep Guardiola described them. Although meant as a compliment to Kane, it was wrongly taken as a slight against the team as a whole yet Spurs did little to prove that they can win without Kane, by losing without Kane, at home, to West Ham. (more…)
José Mourinho has decided that the loss against Huddersfield Town was entirely the fault of his players. He is right, to an extent, in that it is they who take to the pitch and, therefore, they who have the major say in how the game is going to be played and whether or not they will win.
He is also right if they fail to carry out his instructions and leave the field having lost the game.
He is wrong to think that, by publicly blaming the players, it makes him in some way safer in his job. (more…)
Is anybody going to challenge Manchester City for the title this season?
Arsenal and Liverpool have already proven themselves far too inconsistent and may even struggle to get into the top four. As they both play on Sunday we may get an idea if they have managed to improve on their recent form.
Arsenal appear to have the easier game as they are going to Goodison Park to play a totally out of form Everton, while Liverpool travel to White Hart Wembley to play Tottenham who, if they can ever work out how to play there, could be considered serious challengers themselves! (more…)
Unless you have a different idea to the rest of us on how the game of football should be played, it is difficult to disagree that Manchester City are the form team at the moment. Not only that but, when in full flow, they are without doubt the most attractive of the top teams to watch.
But who comes next? Forget parking the bus, forget different tactics and formations for different games. Who, when in full flow and playing all-out attacking football, is next in the list of “must watch” teams? (more…)
This is a question we would like to be able to put to José Mourinho and Pep Guardiola. It would also get interesting replies from Arséne Wenger, Antonio Conte and Jürgen Klopp, not to mention Mauricio Pochettino.
To be fair they all set out, at the beginning of each season, to play open attractive football. Football is, after all, part of the entertainment industry and it’s success is measured, to an extent, by the amount of people who watch the games. This, in turn, dictates the quality of sponsorship attracted which determines the money paid into the clubs by these sponsors, and so on and so on. (more…)
Tuesday night saw Manchester City take on Napoli at The Etihad. As has often been the case this season they started like an express train and were soon two goals up. It looked for all the world as though they were going to score four or more goals again.
Unusually though, for City anyway, they laboured a little in trying to find a third goal and it was actually Napoli who should have scored but Mertens penalty was straight down the middle, a route whereby the ball will often catch the goalkeepers legs whichever way he is diving, as it did in this case. (more…)
It has been another successful weekend for Manchester.
City, in particular, looked mightily impressive against Stoke and United managed to keep the back door shut against Liverpool.
Despite Mourinho being criticised, totally ridiculously, for Liverpool’s inability to score, a draw is still a good result at Anfield.
Certain pundits, such as the idiot Garth Crooks at the BBC, thought United should have attacked Liverpool and tried to win the game, a tactic which could easily have gone pear-shaped and resulted in the first loss of the season. No, JosĂ© got it spot on and, had Lukaku not shot straight at Mignolet when clean through, he could have been celebrating another one of his famous smash-and-grab acts. (more…)
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