Vesper

2020-21 English Premier League Liverpool Fulham http://www.sportnews.to/mysports/2021/premier-league-liverpool-vs-fulham-s1/ https://www.totalsportek.com/highlights/arsenal-vs-everton-2016-match/

8 teams fighting over 3 places

fuck Brighton! fucking choking cunts

2020-21 English Premier League Burnley Arsenal http://www.sportnews.to/mysports/2021/premier-league-burnley-vs-arsenal-s1/ https://www.totalsportek.com/page-3/

Friday March 5 2021 Football Nerd Why so many Premier League teams' attacking moves veer left By Daniel Zeqiri Knowing your opponent's attacking patterns and strong side is an important part of match preparation, and more often than not in the Premier League it is the left side. Fourteen of 20 Premier League teams this season have attacked down the left more frequently than the right wing or through central areas. Whenever there is a substantial bias it is always to the left. This could be because coaches are more inclined to use their left-back as an attacking outlet than their right-back, or due to the proliferation of right-footed forwards who like to cut in from the left: Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Marcus Rashford, Heung-min Son and Richarlison to name a few. Brighton, Chelsea, Leeds United, Leicester City, Newcastle United and Wolves are the only teams without a left-sided bias. In this week's Football Nerd, I analyse the data and explore the reasons why so many Premier League games seem to tilt to one side.

Jürgen Klopp must solve a tricky and trippy Mersey-infused poser Oh Liverpool! Photograph: Laurence Griffiths/PA Scott Murray YOU’LL NEVER WIN AT HOME These are difficult times for Liverpool. The club hasn’t won a major trophy for nearly nine months, while it’s now a whopping 22 days since they were deposed as the world’s best club team. To quote the hooked and miffed Mo Salah’s Mr 15%: “.” ! To be fair to the club’s supporters, having waited 30 years to once again celebrate as champions, a virus that looks a bit like early-80s Graeme Souness with vengeance on his mind, has denied them the chance to do so. But while fans are permitted to feel down on themselves, there’s no need for the players to be walking around with faces like they’ve just been approached by early-80s Graeme Souness with vengeance on his mind. Which is pretty much what they did on Thursday night, as they meekly scuttled about Anfield, a timid shower, while a markedly more confident Chelsea gegenstrolled their way to a most deserved victory. Klopp plays down Salah substitution and urges Liverpool to ‘fight harder’ Read more Liverpool’s lack of collective belief was best summed up during the last knockings, when Mateo Kovacic saucily pinged the ball off Sadio Mané’s prone noggin. Mané got up with a view to engaging Kovacic in Hegelian dialectic, but while in olden days Souness would have flown in sideways to offer additional intellectual heft to the philosophical back-and-forth, Mané was left to debate the issue by himself. Now, The Fiver always thinks of the children, but brawl and haymakers please! Everyone else in red, thoroughly defeated, let it slide. Yes, yes, these guys are role models, remember that kiddies are watching, but stand by your man will you. Something doesn’t quite sit right with The Fiver here. What’s going on? “I think we agree it’s a really strange one,” Jurgen Klopp admitted on Friday, still wearing his newly trademarked thousand-yard stare and freshly copyrighted grey pallor. “Football is more rhythm than people think. We’ve never had that to build, we’ve had to change too much. That’s clear.” He illustrated his point further by reporting that Ozan Kabak has a “little problem” and may be replaced for the upcoming Fulham defeat by fellow newcomer Ben Davies, but even so, this lot had a five-point lead at the top of the Premier League in December, after a 7-0 away win to boot, while it’s only been 43 days since they were defending a four-year, 68-game undefeated home record, and now they’re on their worst run at Anfield since 1892. ! “We all have to improve, definitely,” sighed Klopp, who is now tasked with solving the most tricky and trippy Mersey-infused poser since John Lennon flung two versions of a song, recorded at varying tempi and in different keys, at Parlophone kn0b-twiddler George Martin, ordering him to meld them together. Liverpool fans will hope Klopp has similar problem-solving talents to the genius producer, whose credits also feature You’ll Never Walk Alone, because … well … there’s always next season … but this is beginning to look serious, and what are the first five words of Strawberry Fields Forever again? QUOTE OF THE DAY “We’re all disappointed, of course we are, and why wouldn’t we be? It borders on treason, if you like. It’s disgusting … there is a source feeding stuff. We are looking into it to find the culprit” – Newcastle boss Steve Bruce has got the sniffer dogs out and will stop at nothing to find the mole who leaked details of his bust-up with Matt Ritchie to the tabloids. On the hunt, earlier. Photograph: Richard Sellers/Reuters FIVER LETTERS “After watching Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s current breed of zebras lose their way in the south London mist this week, I think I’ve figured out the reason for Manchester United basing that third strip on those dazzle ships of yore. If the Allies’ ship was painted to disorientate German U-boat commanders by blurring how fast and in which direction it was travelling, might the zebra shirt not have the same effect on the person in the VAR room checking for offside? Modern football is getting too complicated. Next they’ll be employing teams of young women at Bletchley Park to break the codes on Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool corner kicks” – Justin Kavanagh. “Re: $tevie Mbe having words with the ref at Livingston (yesterday’s Fiver). Was he asking the official to change his tune, perhaps?” – Neale Redington. Send your letters to [email protected]. And you can always tweet The Fiver via @guardian_sport. Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’the day prize is … Neale Redington. But we’ve got book prizes from Monday, courtesy of those kind people at From the Jaws of Victory [UK only, apologies – Fiver Postal Ed], and you can also enter promo code FIVER and get 15% off and free shipping. NEWS, BITS AND BOBS Ifab has announced that accidental handball which leads to a teammate scoring or having a scoring opportunity will no longer be considered an offence, from 1 July. Which will be of no consolation whatsoever to Fulham, who were denied a draw against Tottenham by this nonsense disallowing Josh Maja’s equaliser. David Moyes is getting high off his own supply [not literally – Fiver Lawyers] of West Ham players. “[They] have changed my mentality because now I’m looking up to see how high I can get,” he giggled, scarfing down a bag of Doritos. “I don’t see why we can’t be around those [top four] positions.” Bobby M will not call up Leeds’ Pascal Struijk for Belgium in order to avoid a lowlands dispute or something. “It looks as if his heart lies with the Netherlands,” he sobbed. “We have to respect that, never mind how interesting his profile is. I don’t want there to be any conflict.” Michael Keane reckons if Everton qualify for Big Cup it will be all down to the £70m and change the club dropped last summer Carlo Ancelotti’s worldly know-how. “The manager has been there and done it all,” gushed Keane. “Even when we don’t play well we still believe we are going win.” And $tevie Mbe can’t wait to do some DIY around Ibrox when the Pope’s Newc O’Rangers win a 55th title, potentially as soon as this Sunday. “The important thing is to get that trophy back … knock all the 54s off the walls,” he blabbed, getting his tool kit out. STILL WANT MORE? “I never want to miss a minute of football – but I do wonder at what cost.” Burnley captain Ben Mee on the risks of concussion and why he backs restrictions on children heading the ball. Ten things to look out for in the Premier League this weekend. Make it stop! Here you go. Composite: Tom Jenkins,AFP, Getty Images, Reuters Spurs need balance if they’re to nab a Big Cup place, reckons David Hytner. Barney Ronay on why turbo-charged Timo will soon be bathing in lovely goals. Plus the resurgence of N’Golo Kanté, by Jacob Steinberg. Sunday: a short film about football, friendship and talking about feelings. Oh, and if it’s your thing … you can follow Big Website on Big Social FaceSpace. And INSTACHAT, TOO! GOOL PERAN LOWEN

Suning’s Chinese Super League collapse and what it means for Inter Milan https://theathletic.com/2425092/2021/03/04/sunings-chinese-super-league-collapse-and-what-it-means-for-inter-milan/ “I’m all for challenges and Inter is the toughest of my career,” Antonio Conte recently told Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. As someone so closely identified with Juventus, going over to their biggest rivals and accepting the brief to end the dynasty he helped build wasn’t an easy decision. Then there’s the nature of Inter Milan itself. One of Conte’s mentors Giovanni Trapattoni thinks this team is different from all the others. He likened coaching Inter to being on a spin cycle in a washing machine. It’s turbulent and hard to maintain your balance because there’s always a sudden tremor ready to knock you off your feet. Rising above it all is hard. It’s why only the strongest characters win at Inter: Helenio Herrera, Trapattoni and Jose Mourinho. Now, after runners-up finishes in Serie A and the Europa League last season, Conte is closing in on Inter’s first scudetto since Mourinho’s treble in 2010. A team that finished 21 points behind Juventus before his arrival is now seven points ahead of them. Romelu Lukaku and Lautaro Martinez can’t stop scoring, Fabio Capello thinks Nicolo Barella is one of the top three midfielders in Europe and the defence is no longer conceding. Anyone who follows Conte on Instagram will have noticed how proud he is of the flowing football they’re playing at the moment. It feels like Inter’s year. But this is Inter and it’s never that simple. Not a day goes by without more gossip and speculation about the financial stress that owner Suning finds itself under in China. “They aren’t destabilising,” said Inter’s chief executive Beppe Marotta. “This is a very tight-knit group. There’s been painstaking work in this respect from Conte and when the team stick together, even the biggest problems become small.” So what’s going on with Suning? Well, the share price has halved in three years, COVID-19 hit its retail business hard, its property investments tanked, a rescue plan involving another of China’s biggest companies backfired, it has been forced to sell nearly a quarter of its publicly listed operation to the Chinese state and it has been told by the government to forget football and focus on footfall. It has had better months. Founded in 1990, Suning grew from flogging air-conditioning units in Nanjing to selling pretty much everything all over China. Under co-founder Zhang Jindong, the company became a conglomerate, diversifying into media, real estate, sport and technology, making him one of China’s richest men. The core business changed its name to Suning.com in 2018 to signal a move towards online shopping. Signalling and doing are two different things, though. The company is still China’s largest bricks-and-mortar retailer with hundreds of stores, but it has slid out of the top four in terms of sales. Suning’s headquarters in Nanjing (Photo: Fang Dongxu/VCG via Getty Images) Zhang Jindong’s financial support for ailing Chinese property developer Evergrande has also been a millstone around Suning’s neck, as money it borrowed to prop up Evergrande has weighed heavily on the company. For a time, it looked like a share-swap with Alibaba, the online giant owned by China’s most famous entrepreneur Jack Ma, might get Suning back on track but, first, the companies fell out, and then Ma ran into difficulties with the Chinese government. China is a big country but there is still only room for one boss and his name is president Xi Jinping. This left Suning with nowhere to turn but towards two state-backed investment firms. They paid just over £1.6 billion for a 23 per cent stake in the business last month. While interesting to Suning’s staff, customers and investors, none of this would have troubled the back pages of western newspapers if Suning and Zhang Jindong had not got involved in football. In 2015, Suning bought Chinese Super League (CSL) team Jiangsu Guoxin-Sainty, renamed them Jiangsu Suning, handed them the company credit card so they could buy Brazilian stars Ramires and Alex Teixeira in one window, and then hired Fabio Capello as manager. Ramires was a high-profile signing for Jiangsu from Chelsea (Photo: Visual China Group via Getty Images) But that was just warming up for the 2016 purchase of a majority stake in Inter — £230 million-worth of luxury Italian goods. And then, to tie it all together, Suning went on a shopping spree for PPTV, the streaming service it had bought in 2013, hoovering up live rights to domestic football in China and Italy, and then sealing a £523 million deal for Premier League games between 2019 and 2022. It was a remarkable sum for a new outlet to pay but few questioned it because the Chinese market is massive and the numbers do not really need to make sense to us, right? Wrong, as Jiangsu Suning and the Premier League, now in court with Suning over the collapse of that contract, have learned and Inter may soon discover. What happened with Jiangsu? Good news first: in November, they finally won the CSL, beating Guangzhou Evergrande (of whom the aforementioned ailing property developer is the majority shareholder) in the final, with Teixeira among the goalscorers. Now the bad: three months later, on February 28, Suning’s parent company issued a terse statement to say, “from today, Jiangsu Football Club ceases the operation of its teams”. There was a “reluctant” and a “regretfully” in there, too, but that was that for the Chinese champions, their successful women’s team and youth sides. Jiangsu FC dropped Suning from their name earlier this year when the Chinese Football Association told clubs they needed to sound more like western clubs to attract other sponsors. Suning dropped Jiangsu when the Chinese government made it very clear Suning had to spend every cent it had on saving its shops and not a penny on football. Zhang Jindong admitted this in a video address to Suning’s huge workforce on February 19, when he said “we will close and cut down businesses irrelevant to the retail business without hesitation”. He was not kidding. That said, the writing had been on the wall for some time. After all, Jiangsu’s players often had to wait for their pay during last season’s title-winning campaign, even going on strike on one occasion. And although it is unusual for the champions to go bust, bankruptcies are nothing new for Chinese football. Jiangsu’s training ground lies deserted (Photo: Fang Dongxu/VCG via Getty Images) “It is not the first time clubs have encountered difficulties and it probably won’t be the last,” explains Dr Jonathan Sullivan, an expert on Chinese football and an associate professor in the University of Nottingham’s Asia Research Institute. “It seems to be a hazard of Chinese football in the professional era and I suspect it may portend a broader reconsideration of ambitions for CSL owners and closer regulation. “The league’s development required private capital to make it work but it was always subsidiary to the state’s main ambitions for football — improve public health and deliver national pride via performances and having a presence in the international game. “The CSL is now suffering because private capital is suffering. The extent to which COVID-19 has hurt the Chinese economy is masked by government investment, and it is likely that Suning is not the only retail business suffering. “Given that the CSL was always a subsidiary concern in the government’s football strategy, and that stability trumps everything, it is much more important a struggling company retrench than risk potentially destabilising failures. Professional football is generally expensive, unprofitable and easily sacrificed when the going gets tough.” Simon Chadwick, a professor of Eurasian sport at the Emlyon Business School, agrees. “The Suning episode embodies what it means to live and work in an authoritarian, centrally-planned country,” says Chadwick. “China’s promotion of football back in 2015 was state-led: big on vision but short on implementation. This promotion was also consistent with the country’s 13th five-year plan, which emphasised the need for outbound investment. So, we saw a frenzy of Chinese entrepreneurs investing in football, at home and abroad, to curry favour with the government. “However, midway through the plan, it had become apparent football was more of a financial burden than a revenue driver, and that signing players like Carlos Tevez was never going to be a basis upon which to build China’s football success.” Chadwick believes the “sea change that ultimately brought us to the Suning debacle” started at the end of 2016, the year Tevez joined Shanghai Shenhua and Oscar signed for Shanghai SIPG. The government forced China’s biggest property company, Wanda, to sell its shareholding in Atletico Madrid amid concerns about too much Chinese money leaving the country. It was also the beginning of a crackdown on celebrity entrepreneurs. Wanda’s Wang Jianlin was the man whose wrist was slapped that time and Ma is the most recent example, as the Alibaba boss is widely believed to have been detained by the authorities last year. The story was officially denied but he has re-emerged recently as a much less outspoken figure. “No person and no business can now be bigger than the state, which is omnipresent and all-powerful,” says Chadwick. “Suning’s retrenchment is the archetypal response to central government priorities and pressure: stick to what you know, don’t engage in overseas whimsy and always remember who’s in charge. “As for football, the vision has clarified. China still wants to become a football superpower but sees that this is best achieved by having close relations with FIFA and staging the World Cup, which many believe will be in 2030.” What’s the reaction been like in China? In a country where the government has the power to tell private companies to invest in football, and they do, until the government tells them to stop, and they do, would it surprise you to hear the reaction to Jiangsu’s demise has been muted by western standards? And fans of Jiangsu are not the only ones facing the prospect of having no team to cheer this season. Tianjin Quanjian, who once signed Alexandre Pato and Axel Witsel, went bust last year and their rivals Tianjin Tigers are in trouble now. A China-based journalist, who wished to remain anonymous, told The Athletic there has been “a lot of hand-wringing” about the situation in the Chinese press but actual criticism of the government’s football strategy is “obviously off-limits”. The Chinese FA issued the blandest of statements following Suning’s decision to shut down Jiangsu, saying it was “sorry” to hear the news and thanking the company for its previous support for the game. Jiangsu celebrate their Super League title — three months later, the team no longer exists (Photo: STR / AFP) “Jiangsu fans are angry at Suning and there’s a lot of sympathy for them from other fans because they know it could easily — and in the case of Tianjin, definitely will — happen to their clubs,” the journalist said. “The foundations of Chinese football are very weak, with clubs at the mercy of investors’ fluctuating fortunes. But it’s the fans who suffer most and they are utterly powerless to do anything about it. “There have been minor shows of public anger by a smattering of fans but demonstrations are not tolerated here and won’t happen. Fans need to get creative to make their point. Some Henan fans recently mounted a campaign against the change of the club’s name by taking out adverts on electronic billboards in prominent places.” Sullivan believes this disregard for supporters is one of the reasons the Chinese game remains so fragile. “The history of professional clubs in China is littered with failures, mainly due to the woes or caprices of private investors,” he says. “As always, fans will just have to suck it up. The way fans have been treated in China is one of the reasons the domestic game has failed to develop and the current difficulties just reinforce that. “Among ‘football people’ the appetite is there, the passion is there, but if you want to cultivate the broad support base you need for a league to prosper sustainably over time, you can’t continually send fans messages like this.” When did they get involved with Inter and what were their first big moves? Suning acquired a controlling stake in the Italian club during the summer of 2016 and was welcomed as an owner with the right intentions and ambition to make Inter a force again. When anyone buys Inter, they are expected to go on a spree and make a statement of intent. For instance, Ernesto Pellegrini went out and got his new team the Ballon d’Or-winning Karl-Heinz Rummenigge. Massimo Moratti splurged on Paul Ince, Roberto Carlos and Javier Zanetti and it wasn’t long before he broke the world transfer record for Ronaldo. Despite inheriting a limiting financial fair play (FFP) settlement agreement, which withheld €20 million in prize money, imposed squad restrictions and limited the number of new signings eligible to play in European competition, Suning was very much in step with this tradition and its strategy contrasted starkly with its predecessor, the ever-smiling Indonesian media mogul Erick Thohir. He had mistakenly thought giving away fan favourite Fredy Guarin to Juventus for Mirko Vucinic might make Inter fans dream again. However, it invoked uproar and a protest caused the move to collapse. He ended up buying Hernanes instead for an €18 million fee that did little to suggest the club’s new benefactor was as loaded as some of the other foreign investors who had entered European football. Suning, however, did not disappoint. In the last five years, Inter have had the highest net spend in Italy at €352 million, according to research by Swiss Ramble. Super agents were conspicuous by their presence on the fringes of the new owner’s first shareholders’ assembly at the luxury Palazzo Parigi hotel in Milan. Six months after buying Teixeira and Ramires for Jiangsu in deals worth €78 million, Suning splashed out €40 million on Joao Mario then another €29.5 million on the next big thing from Brazil, Gabriel Barbosa. The pair of them aren’t bad players but flopped at Inter and their first experiences abroad were at a club in a state of flux. Before they’d even kicked a ball for Inter, coach Roberto Mancini was dismissed in pre-season after suggesting the team had other needs (like Yaya Toure) and Suning ended up going through four managers in their first year, perhaps unsurprisingly missing out on the Champions League. It was not a mistake they’d make twice. Even within the constraints of FFP, Suning showed ambition. The owner was not considered to be the problem. The drama around star striker Mauro Icardi stemmed from his biography, which turned the ultras against him, and then his wife’s forthright opinions as a TV pundit, which made his position as captain untenable. In the middle of it all, Inter qualified for the Champions League, leapfrogging Lazio on the final day of the season with a memorable come-from-behind victory over the Rome side at the Stadio Olimpico. It persuaded Suning to reward coach Luciano Spalletti with a new three-year contract. At the club’s Christmas party, Steven Zhang, European football’s youngest president, proudly told his audience: “Finally we have an ability to talk about reaching and touching the silverware that we’ve been thinking about, that Inter have been missing so much. Every single game… every single event… we’re going to win it.” The US-educated Zhang, who turned 29 last year, was regularly on the ground in Milan before the pandemic hit. A modernising force, he recognised Inter’s potential as a lifestyle brand (the club is about to announce a new logo) and entertainment studio. Zhang set up Inter Media House, seeing value in football clubs as unique content providers. Suning’s project was about to go to another level. Inter were moving into new offices in the stylish, regenerated Porta Nuova district of Milan. The training ground at Appiano Gentile was in the process of being upgraded and a partnership was struck with Milan to work on a new stadium. Giuseppe Marotta, the chief executive credited with re-establishing Juventus at the top of the Italian game, joined the executive team. Inter were beginning to look like the complete package, every inch a “super club”. Marotta’s arrival gave them a chance of appointing Conte, as close as you get to a sure thing when it comes to turning a contender into a champion. Spalletti delivered Champions League football again, but he was sacked nine months into his new deal. Unless the Tuscan took another job or came to a settlement in the meantime, he’d remain under contract at Inter. That decision is listed as an exceptional charge on their accounts at the eye-watering figure of €25.8 million. And Conte doesn’t come cheap either. He is not on Diego Simeone money. No one is on Diego Simeone money. But Conte is the highest-paid coach in Serie A, with his reported €11 million salary apparently being as much as what Juventus’ Andrea Pirlo, Atalanta’s Gian Piero Gasperini, Roma’s Paulo Fonseca and Milan’s Stefano Pioli all earn put together. But Conte was not Inter’s only star signing. Unshackled from their FFP settlement, the transfer strategy that summer was aggressive. Some deals had already been arranged, such as the one for free agent Diego Godin, who arrived on big wages from Atletico, and Valentino Lazaro, bought for €22 million from Hertha Berlin. If that purchase has largely been forgotten about, it’s because it paled in comparison with the others that were completed over that window. Inter made Cagliari midfielder Nicolo Barella their club-record signing, an honour he didn’t hold onto for very long, as Romelu Lukaku then signed from Manchester United for €74 million. Lukaku has been a huge success at Inter (Photo: Marco Luzzani – Inter/FC Internazionale via Getty Images) A system change, but above all, a culture change, led to Icardi, Radja Nainggolan and Ivan Perisic being put up for sale. Raising funds for them was a challenge. After originally fretting that the €110 million clause in Icardi’s contract was too low, he ended up being loaned to Paris Saint-Germain, who then negotiated his permanent transfer down to half that figure. Perisic moved to Bayern Munich and won the treble — but has since returned — and Nainggolan, after being bought for €38 million plus Nicolo Zaniolo, was loaned to Cagliari in consecutive seasons for personal reasons (his wife is Sardinian and was undergoing treatment for breast cancer). Conte left the impression Inter had done a lot in the market but still weren’t ready to contend. After Inter went to Borussia Dortmund, played superb football for an hour then faded and lost just as they had done in Barcelona, he memorably said it was hard to expect more of the team when the club was buying him players from Cagliari (Barella) and Sassuolo (Stefano Sensi). So the club went Christmas shopping in the Premier League. Along with Ashley Young from Manchester United, Inter organised the rental of Victor Moses, who was reunited with his old Chelsea boss. Neither of them, however, got a photoshoot at Milan’s world-famous opera house, La Scala. That was reserved for Christian Eriksen, who was welcomed as the playmaker Inter had lacked since the days of Wesley Sneijder. Eriksen was brought in on huge wages as Inter’s marquee signing (Photo: Vincenzo Lombardo – Inter/Inter via Getty Images) The €27 million that Inter committed in fees doesn’t seem all that high — except the Dane could have been signed for free when his contract with Tottenham Hotspur expired at the end of the season. The fee on top of the wage package Inter agreed, making Eriksen one of the highest earners at the club and, by the same token, in Serie A, was considerable for a player nearing his thirties who had no obvious role in Conte’s scheme. In the meantime, the pandemic engulfed Lombardy before any other major European region. What’s been the impact of the pandemic? Stadiums closed, which was a problem for Inter, whose average gate of 65,800 at San Siro was the biggest in Serie A. For this season, the club estimates a negative impact on match-day revenue and cash in the region of €60 million. Sky Italia withheld the final €130 million installment of last season’s TV money from the league. Other stresses included the non-renewal by some sponsors of existing contracts or renegotiations and renewals at less advantageous figures. Inter’s longstanding and iconic shirt sponsor Pirelli will not feature on next season’s jerseys for the first time since 1995, with the club seeking a more lucrative deal than the one that paid €11 million last season. The failure to increase revenues from sponsorships and advertising as envisaged in the club’s prospective plans, and the increase in the collection times for payments due to the adverse economic context in which Inter’s customers operate, has also compounded matters. A €102 million loss was posted in their latest financial results, one of the biggest in European football, and there aren’t many levers left for Inter to pull to ease the strain on their accounts, which include a lot of debt that is due to mature in 18 months. “The project stopped in August,” Conte recently said as the €40 million deal struck with Real Madrid for Achraf Hakimi was done at the end of June. Almost all the other incoming business Inter conducted afterwards was free or for nominal fees. Other clubs were able to dump some of their high earners, but Inter’s wage bill, which has increased by €74 million in the last four years, went up slightly again. Alexis Sanchez’s move from Manchester United was made permanent and other well-paid veterans like Arturo Vidal and Aleksandar Kolarov rocked up at San Siro. Raising funds through sales was trickier than it’s ever been before, with the market undergoing a severe contraction. As Greg Carey of Goldman Sachs told the Financial Times’ Business of Football summit last month: “A lot of the clubs use the transfer window to basically replenish their cash flow. Well, nobody has any money right now.” Take the case of Eriksen. The Dane has suddenly and unexpectedly become an integral part of Conte’s team but was on the transfer market barely a year after touching down in Milan and was pretty much unmoveable. Finding buyers willing to match big wages and pay the kinds of fees that prevent you from absorbing a loss on a player is nearly impossible at the moment. A firesale would not work and besides, a significant part of Inter’s value lies in having a competitive team that can compete at the highest level. That helps explain why Martinez revealed this week he has an agreement in principle to sign a new contract. Rather than selling stars, the best bet is to find a way of keeping them while moving on high-earning non-contributors instead. But that can take time as those guys often can’t find as good a deal elsewhere. What else has happened? Well, in January, a notice appeared on the website of CONI, the Italian Olympic Committee and governing body of Italian sport, to say Eriksen’s agent is taking Inter to arbitration. And then there was a report in Corriere dello Sport alleging tension between Real Madrid and Inter over the first instalment of Hakimi’s transfer, which in turn led the Spanish giants to release a statement describing the story as “completely false”. Inter’s reaction to that and another story this week about an alleged missed bonus payment on Lukaku’s transfer from Manchester United is to insist they will respect all agreements. What might happen next for Inter? After Zhang initially called reports of Suning selling the club “entirely baseless”, the stance has softened. At the end of a conference call to announce Inter’s latest financial results on February 26, the last item on the agenda was an update on the search for a new partner. “As part of ongoing capital structure and liquidity management, the business and our ownership are in talks to provide solutions in this respect.” One of them, as reported by the Financial Times, is the rush to raise $200 million in emergency cash. Another would be to give up a controlling or minority stake in the club just a couple of months before Inter could be crowned champions. “Suning has confirmed its commitment to the ongoing financial support of the club with or without additional external support, but it is also sensible and prudent to look outside,” the call concluded. “With that in mind, Suning appointed key advisers in Asia to find suitable partners, be that with an injection of equity capital or otherwise. Talks with key potential partners in this respect remain ongoing.” Is there interest in buying Inter? The London-based private equity group BC Partners was in talks with Inter but the exclusivity period to agree a deal has expired. After carrying out due diligence on the club’s accounts, BC is at an advantage in that any other prospective investor would need time to conduct its own examination of Inter’s affairs and that would take precious time. But private equity’s interest in the club divides opinion. One industry expert tells The Athletic: “I don’t really see how they can make it work from a returns perspective. The numbers just don’t work. How can you pay €700 million or a billion, whatever the price they want is, for something that is loss-making in the hundreds of millions? How can you make a return and assume that you can get this sold at two or three times the money? This is what private equity requires for an investment to be approved. You have to show a case to your investment committee that shows you can double or triple the money in four or five years.” Others are more bullish and see huge potential in Inter, which is another reason Suning would perhaps be reluctant to let go of the club. An experienced M&A adviser The Athletic spoke to even counters that the club could be worth €3 billion over the same timeframe. There is a view Serie A clubs are undervalued compared with the Premier League and a pathway to profitability exists at Inter under more disciplined management. But how? This ultimately comes down to where you think the industry is headed. Serie A’s president Paolo Dal Pino aims to double the league’s revenues and its clubs will vote on whether or not to sell a 10 per cent stake in a new entertainment company, valued at €1.7bn, to a private equity consortium fronted by CVC, Advent and FSI, who argue they have the expertise to help Italy’s top flight achieve that goal. The likelihood of that proposal winning approval has recently been thrown into doubt amid concerns that 1) the partner would have too much influence compared to its equity stake and 2) a clause in the term sheet could damage Serie A revenues since it relates to “unexpected changes in format”. This has been presented in some quarters of the Italian media as a “European Super League clause” even though it does not specifically refer to it. The clause could just as easily relate to another entirely hypothetical scenario like, let’s say, the north of Italy breaking away from the south or the return to some pre-unification land of independent city-states. Whether it’s a Super League or not a Super League, you’re going to have a suped-up, even more lucrative Champions League, whatever format it will be. As a three-time winner and one of the world’s biggest clubs, Inter would be well-placed to be a founding member of any new competition. Another way to look at it is geographic. Milan is a very modern and dynamic city — the third wealthiest city in Europe and the Italian capital of fashion, media and finance. The place has transformed since the Expo in 2015 and if you’re one of the world’s leading architects and you don’t have a project in the city, something is wrong. In AC Milan, Inter have a stable, well-run partner with whom to build a new stadium and the city’s corporate community has the resources to pay for naming rights, season tickets and hospitality boxes for the events it would showcase. That’s all in the future, though, and a Super League has been talked about for decades without happening. For now, it’s hard for Inter’s players and fans to focus on anything other than the present, particularly when the scudetto is within grasp. “When you’re at a club like Inter, aside from anything else, you’ve got to keep your mind on the pitch,” Conte said after the weekend’s win over Genoa. “I can only influence what I’m able to influence. It’s useless wasting energy on what we can’t. We must stay focused on what we can determine.”

‘It was done in cold blood’ – Keane’s assault on Haaland’s dad, 20 years on https://theathletic.com/2413728/2021/03/05/it-was-done-in-cold-blood-keanes-assault-on-haalands-dad-20-years-on/ Whenever Roy Keane appears on television in his role as a football pundit, David Bernstein, the former chairman of Manchester City, reaches for his remote control and switches to another channel. Bernstein’s reputation throughout the football industry, including a two-year stint as chairman of the Football Association, is as one of the gentlemen of the sport. But he has always found it hard to accept Keane’s presence on television when he thinks back to one of the more infamous episodes in the history of the Manchester derby. Next month is the 20th anniversary. It was the day Alf-Inge Haaland — better known now, perhaps, as the father of Erling — encountered Keane at Old Trafford. And, no matter how many times you watch the footage, it is never any less shocking to see the moment when Keane brings down his studs on Haaland’s knee and his opponent flips into the air. “I’ve never forgotten it,” Bernstein says. “From a personal point of view, that was the worst individual thing I’ve been directly involved in, and the worst I’ve ever seen on the pitch. As a human being, it was an awful thing to see.” These days, a new generation of football fans might not even be aware of the history that exists between, in the red corner, the angriest television pundit in the business and, in the blue corner, a former player with a surname that we are going to hear a lot more of in the coming years. Haaland Sr might not have the star quality of Erling — “His mother must have been a good player because his dad was a plodder,” Graeme Souness, Keane’s colleague on Sky Sports, once said of Borussia Dortmund’s wunderkind — but he was a versatile player who ended up with 34 caps for Norway and played almost 200 times in the Premier League. He had helped Leeds United to a UEFA Cup semi-final and reached the quarter-final with Nottingham Forest in the same competition before that 2001 derby, as City’s captain, when the ball bounced up between himself and Keane. “Alfie was a very good guy,” Bernstein says. “He was a good bloke, a very good player and a very important part of our squad. It was a tragedy of a sort. To happen in a local derby, in front of a huge crowd, it really was appalling.” Erling was in the corner, three years old, playing with his toys. His brother, Astor, and sister, Gabrielle, completed the sea of blond hair. A Christmas tree was up and, briefly trying to lighten the mood, his father smiled as he reflected how “everything right now is shepherds, angels and Santas.” It was December 2003, two and a half years since Keane bore down on Haaland and, in the words of Joe Royle, City’s manager at the time, “hit him with the force of a sledgehammer.” Haaland had agreed to a one-off interview to talk about his new life as a former footballer, in the past tense, and the incident for which his career will always be remembered. He had been forced to retire, aged 30, because of injury and it did not need long to realise he was nursing a bad knee and an even worse grudge. He said he was not bitter, yet his words were laced with hostility. He did not refer to Keane by name. It was always “he” or “him” or, on one occasion, “that man”. He confirmed he was taking legal advice about suing Keane, and maybe even Manchester United, because “he set out to hurt me” and “they don’t give a damn about anyone but themselves”. He was trying to put on a brave face. But there were glimpses of hurt, too. What nobody could have known at the time was that Erling, then just a toddler, would grow up to become one of the superstars of his generation and that, all these years later, the club he had grown to resent would love to see “Haaland” on the back of that famous red shirt. “I see his son doing so well now,” Eamon Dunphy, who plays a pivotal role in this story, tells The Athletic. “He’s going to be a superstar. I watched him playing for Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League … wow! If we can persuade his agent, Mino Raiola, to deal with Manchester United, it would be great because the young Haaland is an absolutely marvellous player.” Dunphy is the formidable Irish writer, broadcaster and television pundit whose own playing career started as an apprentice at Old Trafford in the 1960s. He is also highly relevant to this story because he was Keane’s ghostwriter for the 2002 autobiography that depicted the assault on Haaland as premeditated and opened United’s captain to the possibility of legal action. Haaland had been told he had grounds to claim significant damages and the abiding memory of that interview, sitting opposite him in the village where he lived just outside Leeds, is that he would punctuate what he was saying by making a stabbing motion with his hand. He didn’t sound like a man, it has to be said, who wanted to be persuaded to see United in a better light. “I know I have a strong case,” he said. “I’ve had about 20 lawyers wanting to take the case, which says it all. I probably would have finished with it all by now if it hadn’t been for his book and their (United’s) attitude. He felt he had to put it in a book (stabbing motion) and I don’t have a good thing to say about Man U. He has not acted like a normal human being and they are just as bad. “They have been twisting the knife all along. You would expect something better, and probably get it, from any other club but that’s obviously Man U’s attitude towards other clubs and players. They don’t give a damn about anyone, you know? It’s probably why so many people dislike them.” One thing about Roy Maurice Keane: he never forgets. “He was a warrior,” Dunphy says. “I think Alf Inge was a warrior as well. But maybe he picked the wrong fight.” It all went back to a game against Leeds at Elland Road, in September 1997, when Haaland was playing for the Yorkshire club. Haaland was in midfield and, though he was never a classic destroyer, he knew how to put himself about. He could play in defence, too, and he liked to put in a tackle. But there were not many of his team-mates who knew him particularly well. “He was a bit awkward,” says one former colleague. “I couldn’t say anything too bad about the guy, he just didn’t mix very well. He wasn’t always the most popular member of the dressing room.” On one occasion at Forest, Haaland decided to wind up Stan Collymore about the fact his team-mate attended so many funerals (as an excuse for missing training) that the manager, Frank Clark, used to say it was amazing he had any family members left. That was a mistake. Collymore administered a right-hander and Haaland had to pick himself up from the floor. Then it came to that game for Leeds when, in Keane’s mind, it felt suspiciously like Haaland had been assigned to do a particular job on him. “He’d done my head in,” Keane would later write in his autobiography. “He was winding me up from the beginning. The late tackles I could live with, they were a normal part of football. But the other stuff — pulling my shirt, getting digs in off the ball — really bugged me. At times Haaland wasn’t even following the play, just concentrating on me.” Keane kicks out at Haaland during Manchester United’s fixture with Leeds in 1997, injuring himself in the process (Photo: Peter Wilcock/EMPICS via Getty Images) The vein on Keane’s temple was throbbing. Leeds were winning 1-0 and, with 85 minutes gone, he went after Haaland. He wanted to trip him up, nothing too serious. But Keane’s studs caught in the turf as he went to make the challenge. He felt his knee give way. He heard something snap and, as he lay on the floor, Haaland appeared above him, telling him to quit faking it and get to his feet. Keane’s cruciate ligament had ruptured. It was the injury that footballers always feared the most and United’s physiotherapist, Dave Fevre, knew it was bad news. “I remember assessing his knee and thinking, ‘Wow, this is a big shout’. Roy, being Roy, was telling me he could carry on. We had a huge match against Juventus coming up on the Wednesday night but I was looking at his knee and thinking, ‘This ain’t right’. I spoke to the doctor at Leeds and asked if he would give me a second opinion. He came into our dressing room to have a look. He looked at me and said, ‘Yeah, what you’re feeling is right’.” Keane was out of action for nearly a year and, knowing what we do about him, it is not easy to imagine the silent fury that built up in his mind. Keane could never let it go that, while he was at his most vulnerable, Haaland had been leaning over him and accusing him of putting it on. The grudge festered. David Wetherall, another Leeds player, had also told Keane to get up. Keane didn’t forget that, either. But Haaland was the priority. Haaland stands over a stricken Keane, who would never forget his words (Photo: Peter Wilcock/EMPICS via Getty Images) It is the most infamous passage ever written in any book by a United player. I’d waited almost 180 minutes for Alfie, three years if you look at it another way. Now he had the ball on the far touchline. Alfie was taking the piss. I’d waited long enough. I fucking hit him hard. The ball was there (I think). Take that, you cunt. And don’t stand over me again sneering about fake injuries. And tell your pal Wetherall there’s some for him as well. Jeff Whitley was the nearest City player as the referee, David Elleray, showed Keane a red card. “It was a shocking tackle,” Whitley says. “I wasn’t really aware at the time about the tackle (at Leeds) before. It was only afterwards you start to get the information. But if I remember it correctly, Keane had actually gone to ‘do’ Alfie Haaland at Leeds and ended up doing himself. For young people, you want them to look up to the top players and yes, Keane was a leader and a winner. But it was shocking.” Bernstein was watching from the Old Trafford directors’ box. There were, he says, some “very decent people at United” who would have felt embarrassed by their player’s actions. “Roy Keane stood over him and basically said, ‘Take that, you bastard’. It was done in cold blood,” he says. “It was a cold-blooded incident. I have never forgiven Keane for that. I think, frankly, it’s dreadful he’s accepted in football the way he is. After doing something like that, I think it’s absolutely appalling. Whenever Keane turns up on television, I switch off. I just won’t watch it. I’m appalled that he’s still involved with football. It’s just not right. Things happen, injuries do happen, but to do it deliberately and admit it the way he did, to sell his book, I think is completely beyond the pale.” In fairness to Keane, Dunphy has always been willing to accept that he used his own artistic licence on the relevant book passage. Keane did read it back, ticked it off and approved it to be published that way. But it is important to remember that it was Dunphy’s use of language that made it sound like a scene from a Martin Scorsese film. “I took responsibility for interpreting Roy’s words as I did,” Dunphy says. “It was a ghosted autobiography, so I put in the quotes and attributed them to Roy and that cost him dearly. I was sorry I got Roy into trouble and that he faced a charge from the FA and got punished quite severely.” Dunphy also made that clear at the FA inquiry in which Keane tried to argue that, in reality, there was no premeditation. “I’d played against Haaland three or four times between the game against Leeds, in 1997, when I injured my cruciate, and the game when I tackled him, in 2001, when he was playing for Manchester City,” Keane later wrote. “If I’d been this madman out for revenge, why would I have waited years for the opportunity to injure him?” But then Dunphy was asked whether Keane had deliberately set out to injure Haaland. “Without a doubt,” he said. And that, plainly, was key evidence in the case against the book’s author. For that, Dunphy is unapologetic. “They had form previously,” he says. “Haaland had accused Roy of faking injury, which was not something Roy did. He said something very provocative, because the idea that Keane would fake an injury is hard to justify or sustain. He got under Roy’s skin and Roy took his revenge. Keane leans over Haaland and offers his thoughts after exacting revenge in 2001 (Credit: Gary M Prior/Allsport) “That was Roy. He was a great player because he had that sort of intensity. At times, it was a rage. There was another occasion with Alan Shearer, for example, when it got out of hand. Roy was what he was. He’s one of the greatest players we have ever seen and this was part of his DNA.” The FA had brought in a QC, Jim Sturman, to cross-examine Keane. Sturman was more accustomed to dealing with murder cases and, in Keane’s words, “had me on toast. He ripped me to pieces — the fucker. It was his job, to rip me to pieces.” It ended with Keane being given a five-match ban, to add to the four he had already served for being sent off, and a fine of £150,000. Keane’s legal bills were £50,000. He had also been fined two weeks’ wages by United. And, for a while, there was the possibility that it could escalate even further. As Haaland faced up to the possibility that he might be finished as a professional footballer, City had brought in lawyers to see whether they had their own grounds to sue. “Absolutely we had,” Bernstein says. “We felt very strongly about it.” There was one major issue with Haaland’s legal case against Keane: the Norwegian’s own website. City’s lawyers were investigating whether there was a case against United for the loss of an employee, his medical bills and the collapse in Haaland’s transfer valuation. Haaland was seeking damages for the loss of income and status. There was talk of a £6 million lawsuit. It was major news and led to a serious deterioration in relations between the Manchester clubs. But a few weeks after the incident — still a year before Keane brought out his book — an article was published on Haaland’s website that was largely unreported at the time but would later be held against him. The headline was “Knee Injury Wasn’t Caused By Keane” and he went on to write: “I want to make it clear that it was not the knee that took a knock in the Manchester derby, despite what some newspapers have reported. It’s my left knee that’s been bothering me and it was clearly shown on Sky that it was my right knee that took the knock. It’s been bothering me for three months.” Was there a medical argument that his standing leg sustained damage from the force of the impact to the other knee? Was Haaland’s existing injury aggravated because of the collision? That was the case Haaland appeared to be putting forward when we spoke in December 2003. “People always say that (it was the other knee), but it just makes me laugh,” he said. “If you ask any doctor or physiotherapist, or anyone who plays the game, they know differently. Where you get the blow might be bruised and sore for a few days, but it’s where your standing leg is on the ground and gets twisted that causes cartilage and ligament injuries.” Over time, however, it became clear that other people at City did not necessarily share that prognosis. “Alfie’s leg might well have still been in orbit had it been planted on the ground when Keane struck,” Royle wrote in his autobiography. “The point is that Alfie had seen him coming and taken evasive action, or as near as damn it, a split second before impact. Our physio told me afterwards, ‘He will be fine. He saw the tackle coming and rode it’. In the mass of publicity following the incident, the fact that Haaland started our next match, at home to West Ham, was often overlooked.” It was true. Haaland also played for Norway four days after the incident (though he did limp out of both games). And if you pay close attention to the video of the Keane incident, you will also notice Haaland is already wearing a white bandage around his left knee. “The fact is, though badly shaken by the tackle, Alfie did not suffer an injury that day which put his career in jeopardy,” is Royle’s verdict. The lawyers, Bernstein says, decided in the end that there was not enough hard evidence. “The legal action revolved around medical advice and that was not as absolutely clear-cut as you might have wanted.” Roy Bailey, then City’s physio, also appears to have doubts. Indeed, Bailey was widely reported to have told the FA hearing that Haaland’s injury was neither caused nor compounded by Keane. That, plainly, is a sensitive subject given the cross-Manchester rivalries. Bailey has told The Athletic he does not want to talk about it. Twenty years on, Haaland has no appetite to discuss it either. He is 48 now, with a category-A footballer in the family, and it would make no sense for him to reopen an old feud, especially when both Manchester clubs are among his son’s potential buyers. Might what happened back then have any impact on whether United could, in theory, persuade the 20-year-old Haaland to choose them ahead of City? At Old Trafford, they don’t think it should matter, especially as Ole Gunnar Solskjaer managed the player at Molde and has kept in touch with him ever since. Yes, it is all a bit awkward, but United’s view is that it was a long time ago and hopefully not a factor. Alf-Inge and Erling at Dortmund, where he chose over a move to United (Photo: Alexandre Simoes/Borussia Dortmund via Getty Images) “My impression is that Alfie and the team around Erling Haaland have one main interest and that is Erling Haaland,” says Dag Langerod, the Norway-based chief editor for United’s Scandinavian supporters’ club. “Everyone I have talked to, who knows or has talked to people who know Alfie, accept that Roy and Alfie will never be best friends, but not one of these people believe the Keane-Alfie incident will affect Erling’s club choice.” All that can really be said for certain is that Erling’s father never made another 90-minute appearance. He underwent a number of operations and travelled to the United States to see the specialist, Dr Richard Steadman, who was credited with saving the careers of Alan Shearer, Jamie Redknapp and various others. “Haaland finished the game and played four days later for Norway,” Keane wrote in his follow-up autobiography, The Second Half, released in 2014. “A couple of years later he tried to claim that he’d had to retire because of the tackle. He was going to sue me. It was a bad tackle but he was still able to play four days later.” As for that moment when his studs connected with Haaland’s knee, Keane’s verdict was almost as brutal as the challenge itself. “Looking back at it now, I’m disappointed in the other Manchester City players,” he wrote. “They didn’t jump in to defend their team-mate. I know that if someone had done that to a United player, I’d have been right in there. They probably thought that he was a prick, too.” Nor was Haaland going to receive much sympathy from United’s supporters. One front cover of Red Issue, United’s most acerbic fanzine of the time, showed him wearing a City shirt and a badge for “Captain Gobshite.” Keane’s relationship with Dunphy also suffered but not, as commonly thought, just because of this episode. “He asked me to write his book,” Dunphy explains. “Not because we were close particularly, but I’d always been supportive of him. There was a lot of stuff in the Irish press early in his career when he was a young man and he’d come back for his summer holidays, have a few drinks and get into scrapes. But I always defended him and reminded people what a great player he was. “After that (writing the book), I went back to being a journalist and when Roy was managing at Sunderland I was critical of something he had done. The next day, I got a phone from his solicitor friend, Michael Kennedy, saying, ‘I thought we were friends’. I had to tell him, ‘I’m a journalist, not a PR man’ and at that stage the relationship froze.” Perhaps it is no surprise that when Keane brought out his second autobiography he hired a different ghostwriter, Roddy Doyle, and is critical of Dunphy’s work. Dunphy takes the view, meanwhile, that Keane “is not cut out for management because he has no tolerance for people”. It is fair to say they don’t sound like friends any more. “He was assistant manager for Martin O’Neill over here (Ireland) and he got into all kinds of scrapes, fights with Jon Walters, Harry Arter and stuff like that,” Dunphy says. “He’s a great pundit, great on Sky, but when he was in management with Sunderland and Ipswich he was very hard on players. I’ve spoken to people who played for him and it was a bad experience for them. “I’ve no problem with Roy. In many ways I admire him as a player, and as a person, but there’s a Jekyll and Hyde aspect to him.”

wrong 2 clear frontrunners after Håland are DCL and Lautaro the board will never pay the insane money to buy back Lukaku

Brave, intelligent and confident, Andreas Christensen is back to his best https://theathletic.com/2428384/2021/03/05/brave-intelligent-and-confident-andreas-christensen-is-back-at-his-best/ In the first minute of stoppage time at Anfield, a near-perfect Chelsea defensive performance was momentarily in danger of being tainted as Liverpool pushed hard for an equaliser. Roberto Firmino received the ball on the turn 30 yards out, luring Antonio Rudiger into following him. The evergreen James Milner, on as a substitute, immediately raced towards the space vacated and Firmino slipped a pass beyond Rudiger into it, leaving Andreas Christensen with a crucial decision to make. Should he stick like glue to Liverpool’s most dangerous forward on the night, Sadio Mane, or step away to deal with Milner’s surge into the penalty area. He opted to leave Mane to deal with Milner. But he also knew that if he got his intervention wrong, or didn’t get there in time, the best-case scenario would be giving up a good shooting chance. The worst case would be conceding a penalty and risking a repeat of the red card he was shown for hauling down Mane during Chelsea’s 2-0 loss to the Premier League champions at Stamford Bridge in September. Ultimately, the speed of Christensen’s anticipation and the decisiveness of his movement eliminated the danger almost as soon as it materialised. He left Mane, beat Milner to the ball and swept it behind for a corner kick. Chelsea saw out the remaining two minutes on the clock in relative comfort, sealing a first Premier League victory at Anfield since 2014 and a result that cements Thomas Tuchel as the coach with the momentum in the top four race. His team were full of impressive individual performances on the night, but Christensen was an uncontroversial man of the match at the heart of a back three that limited Liverpool’s feared attack to just one shot on target. Much of his best defensive work was done against Mane, the opponent who tormented him earlier this season. Here, early in the second half, he finds himself facing the wrong way as Curtis Jones shapes to play in the Senegal international… But he recovers quickly to get in front of Mane and, in tandem with Rudiger, works to block any angle for a shot on Edouard Mendy’s goal. Mane instead plays the ball right to an unmarked Trent Alexander-Arnold… … who tries to pick out an unmarked Firmino with his low cross, but Christensen intercepts and clears the danger. Liverpool struggled to create good transition opportunities against Chelsea. One of their best openings arrived in the 52nd minute when Thiago’s sharp pass out of defence gave Firmino the chance to set Jones running, with as many as eight opposition players taken out of the game and both Mane and Salah racing ahead of him… Firmino tries to find Jones but Christensen steps into the picture at the perfect time, intercepting to kill the Liverpool counter and instead give Chelsea a chance to reset possession in the opposition half. Seconds later, Alexander-Arnold tries to find Mane with the kind of early, floated pass forward that led to Christensen’s red card during the Stamford Bridge meeting between these teams… But this time, Christensen beats Mane to the ball in the right channel and passes it safely back to Mendy. Chelsea’s defence only lost Mane once, in the 28th minute of the match. Salah plays a brilliant first-time diagonal pass in behind and Mane races into the space between Cesar Azpilicueta and Christensen, who has been drawn over to track the decoy movement of Firmino. The result of this collective breakdown is a gilt-edged chance, and a costly mis-kick that should probably have been a goal. Christensen’s defensive fundamentals were flawless against Liverpool, but they were only half of the value that he provided to Chelsea. Playing in the middle of Tuchel’s three-man defence gave him considerable responsibility with the ball at his feet. He touched the ball more times (88) and completed more passes (74) than anyone else on his team. Much of his distribution was relatively conservative in the face of Liverpool’s high press — 29 of his passes went to Rudiger or Azpilicueta, while Jorginho and N’Golo Kante accounted for another 22 — but often simply keeping the ball away from the chasing Mane, Firmino or Salah is a victory. Here, early in the game, Christensen is already under severe pressure from Mane as he receives a pass while off-balance from Jorginho. Kante, his easiest passing option, is marked… Christensen’s comfort level on the ball allows him to swivel as he controls the pass, putting his body between Mane and the ball and opening up a simple pass to the unmarked Azpilicueta, who has an escape back to Jorginho. Liverpool focused their pressure on limiting Chelsea’s passing options into midfield, rather than repeatedly rushing at Christensen directly. In the below image, you can see they have taken away every easy option… But rather than panic or attempt something overly ambitious, Christensen probes until an opening presents itself. When it does, he rattles a pass into the feet of Mason Mount, who has taken up a smart position between the Liverpool lines… Mount quickly shifts the ball wide to Ben Chilwell, and Fabinho is forced to concede a corner from the low cross. A few minutes, later Christensen again punishes Firmino for not fully closing him down, slipping a pass through the middle of the pitch to Mount, who can quickly re-direct it out to Reece James on the right flank: When asked about Christensen’s positive impact after the match, Tuchel cleverly side-stepped the suggestion that the Dane’s form in the middle of Chelsea’s back three could make it difficult for Thiago Silva to get his starting spot back. “Andreas stepped in in the middle of the first half against Tottenham (when Silva got injured), which was a really tough thing to do, and from the first minute, he’s been absolutely impressive. “He’s brave, strong in individual challenges, brave and intelligent in the build-up, and plays with a lot of confidence. I am absolutely happy with his performances and how he’s stepped up. He’s been a big part of our performances.” Earlier this season, it seemed inconceivable that Chelsea could maintain a competent defence without the experience, presence and individual talent of Silva, never mind an elite one. But the only goal that Tuchel’s side have conceded with Christensen on the pitch during this stretch was Rudiger’s freakish own goal against Sheffield United. The Dane has grown in confidence with every clean sheet, and now finally appears back to the performance level he produced in a very similar system and role for Antonio Conte in the 2017-18 season. It may not be enough to dissuade Tuchel from bringing back a great veteran he coached throughout his time at Paris Saint-Germain, but Christensen’s revival means it is no longer an entirely straightforward question to answer.

Rhythmically peppering suggestions with words like 'eff' and 'jeff' A lost rag, earlier. Photograph: Andrew Milligan/PA Scott Murray BATTLE FIVER The manager of Pope’s Newc O’Rangers has, historically speaking, been prone to the odd emotional outburst. Take the way Jock Wallace used to rhapsodise about the Battle Fever. Or the manner in which Walter Smith would give journalists beneficial advice, rhythmically peppering his kind suggestions with words like “eff” and “jeff”. Or the elegant grace with which Graeme Souness would plant his studs in an opponent’s fruit bowl, or upend urns of hot water before being offered out by the tea lady for a square go. Volatility seemed to be part of the job spec. Rangers' Steven Gerrard rages at referee as Morelos earns late win at Livingston Read more But times change, and current incumbent $tevie Mbe is cut from a markedly calmer cloth. As long-time followers of Liverpool will attest, when things go wrong, his go-to response is to stand around frowning quite a lot. That’s been his stock reaction to adversity as a manager, too, and on the whole it’s stood him in good stead. However, everyone has their tipping point, and his tinderbox was finally located on Wednesday night when Alfredo Morelos was brought down by Livingston keeper Max Stryjek, only for Alfredo Morelos’s Reputation to get booked. It was a clear penalty, and those words may have been among the colourful assortment that fell out of Mbe’s face when he ran on the pitch at half-time to question the actions of referee John Beaton in Smithsonian style. Beaton has clearly been watching how the officials in the Premier League comport themselves, for he waved away Mbe with the kind of high-handed disdain that would make Mike Dean look like a half-cut rag-week student offering charity cuddles for 50p. Two yellow cards in quick succession meant Mbe had to watch from the stand as Morelos gained 87th-minute vindication to put O’Rangers within four points of One In A Row. Should the SFA decide to process the referee’s forms quickly, Mbe may also be forced to watch from the stand when his team rock up at Queen’s Celtic Park on 21 March hoping to throw an ever-so-slightly-combustible title party. Not ideal, but at least he’ll get a panoramic view of the 22-man-plus-benches brawl when it inevitably breaks out. LIVE ON BIG WEBSITE! Join Michael Butler from 6pm GMT for MBM coverage of Fulham 1-3 Tottenham in the Premier League, before Scott Murray takes in Liverpool 0-0 Chelsea. QUOTE OF THE DAY “Well done … c’mon Crooksy, can you open the legs son? Go on. Go on … ooh, go on then. Now then, Freddie. Make a name for yourself, make a name for yourself. No. Keep going … ohhhhhhhh” – now we’ve transcribed this, it reads like something from Weird Uncle Fiver’s newest subscription service. But it’s actually former Miller John Breckin’s co-commentary as 10-man Rotherham break away and score a 97th-minute winner at fellow Championship strugglers Sheffield Wednesday. It’s the real good stuff. Unless you’re an Owl, mind. RECOMMENDED LISTENING Football Weekly, on a Thursday, but not ‘Extra’. Blame a Friday pod. Here you go. FIVER LETTERS “I will admit I am a simple man. After all, I read The Fiver every day. So might I suggest a simple solution for offside. Seeing as we play football, why can’t the offside rule be feet? At the moment, if your eyebrows are too long or your sleeve is fluttering in the breeze, you’re offside. As I said, it’s a simple solution but I don’t think the rule makers like it simple any more” – Larry Jones. “Never mind the pitchside effing and jeffing on the TV (yesterday’s Fiver). There was plenty in front of my TV last Sunday during Palace v Fulham” – John Thompson. “Chris Wilder on the sidelines shouting ‘Bashy!’ (yesterday’s Fiver). That’s as good an excuse as any to re-watch the brilliant Kids in the Hall sketch with a guy yelling ‘Lopez!’ at an empty house. Enjoy” – Mike Wilner. Send your letters to [email protected]. And you can always tweet The Fiver via @guardian_sport. Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’the day prize is … John Thompson. NEWS, BITS AND BOBS Phil Chisnall, who in 1964 became the last player to be transferred directly between Manchester United and Liverpool, has died aged 78. RIP Phil. Photograph: PA This season’s Women’s FA Cup will resume later this month after a pandemic-enforced shutdown, while Liverpool’s Big Cup last-16 second leg against Leipzig will again be in Budapest. Chelsea and Manchester City have one foot in the quarter-finals of Women’s Big Cup after 2-0 and 3-0 first-leg wins over Atlético Madrid and Fiorentina, respectively. Newcastle’s players and staff have been reminded of the need for discretion after details of some heated training-ground shenanigans between Matt Ritchie and Steve Bruce were leaked. Neil Warnock, who once planned to retire aged 55 and is now 72, will be extending his stay in charge of Middlesbrough for another season. “When you read the news nowadays, there’s always somebody popping their clogs younger than me,” he declared. “I don’t want to die on the job, if I’m honest, so I’d like to finish on a high and I would like to see a little bit of what me and [wife] Sharon love.” And that coffee waste kit didn’t help calm things between Forest Green and Colchester last weekend; the pair have been charged by FA suits with failing to control their players during some scenes that everyone no one likes to see. Always risky with caffeine after 3pm, in our experience. STILL WANT MORE? Boca, Brighton and barbecues: it’s Alexis Mac Allister getting his chat on with Jacob Steinberg. Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s music festival guest turn, plus Gennaro Gattuso and Lorenzo Insigne losing the run of themselves. Another quiet midweek in Serie A, as Nicky Bandini explains. Sport being stuck to, apparently. Photograph: Ettore Ferrari/EPA Andy Hunter sets the scene for Liverpool 0-0 Chelsea. Remembering West Ham’s unlikely title tilt of 1985-86. By Steven Pye. Oh, and if it’s your thing … you can follow Big Website on Big Social FaceSpace. And INSTACHAT, TOO! GET READING THIS

Brighton injury blow as Tariq Lamptey sees specialist after injury setback https://theathletic.com/news/tariq-lamptey-brighton-injury-latest/0CwjDNuWPnZg Brighton's fight against relegation has been hit by another setback to Tariq Lamptey's recovery from a hamstring injury. The rapid right wing-back has already missed the last 13 Premier League matches since sustaining the injury against Fulham in mid-December. Had Lamptey been close to a return? Lamptey has been back in full training. He was mentioned by head coach Graham Potter as a possible contender for the bench for last Saturday's 1-0 defeat at West Brom. But the 20-year-old was not involved in the matchday squad. What has Graham Potter said? Potter, speaking at Thursday's press conference ahead of the home game against Leicester on Saturday evening, said: "Tariq won't be fit. He's had a little setback this week, so it's disappointing for him. "We're trying to get to the bottom of it. "The problem is with his hamstring. He is seeing a specialist." Who will play in Lamptey's place? Joel Veltman has been outstanding in Lamptey's position and Potter will continue to rely on the experienced Dutch international. Polish prospect Michal Karbownik, signed in October, provides extra back-up. Have Brighton got any other serious injury issues? Brighton, currently three points above the relegation zone, are already without left wing-back Solly March (knee) for the rest of the season. Is there anything else I need to know? Yes. Andy Naylor looked into Lamptey's likely problems with injury in January. Click here to Go Deeper.

we scored 72 league goals that season, hardly a shit total only Arse scored more, and no other teams were remotely close to us our GD was insane +57

within 5 points of Citeh that is a pretty educated guess going through all the 27 games

Klopp coming up next http://www.sportnews.to/mysports/2021/premier-league-liverpool-vs-Chelsea-s1/ http://liveonscore.futbol/streamepl.php

the only players whose actual play on the pitch I am not happy with are (and no Kepa on here, even he is better atm) Emerson (not important really though, he so needs to be sold) Christian Pulisic Hakim Ziyech Kai Havertz (I cut him massive slack, he needs time to overcome log hauler COVID, and to adapt, I have full confidence in Tuchel to sort him next season) Billy Gilmour <<< should have been loaned out!!! a lost year

yes, HUGE game, Everton massive and against King Carlo

see, he manned up and did not go all Ole whinge (about VAR)

Tuchel's favourite English word SUFFER 🤣

he only lost once at home with Dortmund? or was it PSG?

no one to cross to tonight, we were in counter mode and zero height at CF and the wings

also, in regards to this game, we got fucked HARD by VAR/that fucking rue change, so we scored 2 against an insane press (they pressed and tried so so hard), plus we created 5 or 6 other good chances, a couple of them great, the goals will come

Chilwell looked really lively as well

the system is producing a lot of chances and we have great talent, eventually the goals will come, I have faith

1 nils are a grinder mentally, but I love defence above all else that 2004/2005 15 goals conceded side under Mou is my all time favourite, and I was really young that season (1 and 12yo) so it imprinted on my mind