Vesper

only positives are no Barkley and no Mings

unreal Lampard is ramming Kante back over to RMF and plugging in slow go go slow Jo and playing Pulisic on the fucking RW and not the left

2020-21 English Premier League Chelsea Aston Villa http://www.sportnews.to/sports/2020/premier-league-chelsea-vs-aston-villa-s1/ https://www.totalsportek.com/arsenal-streams/

I so hope I am wrong but I am getting a bad feeling about this game

cannot believe shit Jorginho being trotted out again Sarri flashback

2020-21 English Premier League Crystal Palace Leicester City http://www.sportnews.to/sports/2020/premier-league-crystal-palace-vs-leicester-city-s1/ https://www.totalsportek.com/leicester-citys/

EFL transfer targets: Michael Olise, the Reading winger destined for the top https://theathletic.com/2276088/2020/12/26/reading-michael-olise/ In the first in a new series profiling the EFL players attracting interest from Premier League clubs, Nick Miller analyses Michael Olise, the 19-year-old Reading midfielder with a tempting release clause… Michael Olise picked up the ball deep on the right touchline, deftly controlling a slightly errant pass. He had two defenders on him instantly, the sort of special treatment that a glowing talent like him has come to expect, even though this was on his 19th birthday and he only really established himself as a first-team regular midway through the previous season. It was the 89th minute of an away game against Queens Park Rangers in November. The score was 0-0 and the west Londoners were digging in, seemingly settling for a point; not unreasonably so against a Reading team who were 12 points and 13 places higher in the table. Just shut down this nascent attack. Hold on and take the draw. Olise headed down the line, seemingly running straight into the narrow channel that his two markers, Macauley Bonne and Niko Hamalainen, wanted him to run into. Then came a sudden snap of his hips, a near-180-degree turn and a flick back with his left foot. Olise had rope-a-doped the two QPR players into opening up a pocket of space inside, into which he moved before playing a sharp one-two with Tom McIntyre as Bonne scrambled to recover the situation. From there, things were straightforward: all Olise had to do was lope infield, pull back his left foot and pass the ball into the corner of the net from nearly 30 yards out. This was just the latest bit of brilliance from Olise, probably the most promising attacking talent in the Championship right now, and there’s plenty more where that came from. “He was maybe the most wonderful and fantastic talent I’ve worked with,” Jose Gomes, the former Reading manager who gave Olise his senior debut, tells The Athletic. “And look — I’ve worked with very strong academies, at Porto, Benfica, Panathinaikos, Malaga, with a lot of important and big talents.” The son of Nigerian parents, Olise was born in France and represented them at the Toulon Tournament last summer, but is eligible for England, where he grew up. Nominally, he’s a No 10 but you could stick him anywhere across the attacking line and he’d probably still be the best player on the pitch. “Michael is really special,” continues Gomes. “He can see, even before receiving the ball, more options than regular players. His technical ability and speed, decision capacity is really, really good.” He’s a player made for a YouTube compilation, who constantly looks like he’s showing off for someone in the crowd. These sound like insults but they’re a crucial part of his game. He’s productive alongside the flamboyance. He has seven assists to his name this season, the most of any player in the Championship, placing him ahead of proven Premier League creators such as Emiliano Buendia (six assists), David Brooks (five) and Harry Wilson (four). In the opening weeks of the season, Reading were a tricky team to get a handle on. They were a side who had taken the fewest shots in the division but only dropped two points in their first eight games, but when you’ve got a creator pinging in pinpoint set pieces or drawing three men to leave a colleague in acres of space, or playing absurd reverse passes through gaps water might think twice about penetrating, then you might not actually need many shots to score. In terms of gait and running style, he resembles a left-footed Jesse Lingard. However, there are more tricks — lots more tricks. The way he teases defenders by showing them just enough of the ball before flicking it away is cruel, almost like dangling a treat for a dog but jerking it out of reach just as the gullible pet/defender jumps for it. Simply put, he often looks like he’s taking the piss. He’s the sort of player that you’d watch and think, “I bet he gets kicked a lot in training”. And, as it turns out, you’d be right. “At times, he had this little bit of arrogance about him in training,” says Mark Bowen, the man who was Reading’s director of football and then replaced Gomes last year. “If he overstepped the mark with it, which he did once or twice, you’d have players like a Liam Moore, who would fly in and leave something on him.” Being hoofed in the air by a hoary old veteran might discourage some youngsters, but Olise isn’t among them. “The one thing that really stood out for me was even during those training sessions, if he got clobbered or clumped by any player, he would bounce straight back up. That was unusual because young players coming in, they’re often a little bit of a shrinking violet. He wasn’t like that. He would basically get back up, wipe himself down and get on with things. I thought, ‘That shows he’s got a good level of maturity’.” On top of everything else, Olise is potentially a bargain. The Athletic understands he has an £8 million release clause in his contract, meaning that even in these times of COVID-straitened budgets, he wouldn’t even be that much of a risk for any Premier League club who’d like a rough but still sparkling diamond to polish some more. Spurs have been watching him for some time and half the Premier League have been credited with an interest. The obvious question to ask is, in this world of sophisticated scouting operations, where big clubs seem to know who the best young talents at EFL clubs are before the clubs themselves do, if he’s this good, why hasn’t Olise been snapped up before? And, indeed, why was he not signed up by the academies of Chelsea and Manchester City, where he spent some time earlier in his career? Bowen explains, about watching Olise playing for Reading’s reserves: “He’d be playing in a wide area and do a little bit of brilliance, but then lose the ball. And then he’d walk back. You could see in his mind it would almost be, ‘Yeah, OK, it didn’t happen today but I didn’t really want to be here. It’s reserve-team football’.” It took a while to actually get into him that every game he plays. There are people watching him. “I said, ‘Those are the times when you’ve got to be running harder than everybody else, working harder than everybody else. If things aren’t going right for you on the ball, then those people who think you’re a good player will still come back and forgive you that’.” Elements of those concerns still linger. Current Reading manager Veljko Paunovic left him out of a few games recently and offered a hint as to why when he said: “You can expect, from the young players, a certain lack of understanding of the big picture.” But it’s perhaps telling that in two of the games Olise has come off the bench, he’s provided a goal and an assist. “We cannot forget he’s a kid,” says Gomes. “He’s very young, he’s growing and he needs a lot of support. Because without this support, maybe he cannot show all of this talent.” Olise will be playing in the Premier League sooner or later. It could be January, it might be after that. At the moment, it just feels like a question of which club will make the decisive move, rather than whether any of them will. “He deserves everything,” says Gomes. “If my words can give him strength and confidence, it’s my obligation to do it.”

EFL transfer targets: Rico Henry, the Brentford full-back wise beyond his years https://theathletic.com/2271332/2020/12/27/rico-henry-brentford/ In the second in a new series profiling the EFL players attracting interest from Premier League clubs, Nick Miller analyses Rico Henry, the 23-year-old Brentford left-back wanted by West Ham and Aston Villa. Thomas Frank’s face lights up when the name Rico Henry is mentioned. “You always love your own children,” the Brentford manager says. “He’s one of my 25 sons in my squad. Of course, I absolutely love him.” And so he should. The last 18 months has felt like a gaping chasm of unimaginably long time in the real world but in a football career, it really isn’t a particularly long time to make a lasting impression. In that time, though, Henry has gone from a promising youngster whose career was looking in danger of being badly hampered by injury to the best left-back in the Championship. Along with being among the best teams in the second tier, Brentford have become a sort of gourmet talent buffet, finding players in places nobody else thought to look then cooking them just so, before teams with more money but less patience help themselves. The list of players they have sold at great profit over the last few years includes — but is not limited to — Andre Gray, James Tarkowski, Ollie Watkins, Said Benrahma (initially on loan), Neal Maupay, Chris Mepham and Scott Hogan. The year they sold half a team to Birmingham at a very tidy profit before finishing a breezy 23 points above them in the table was particularly poetic. Henry is probably the next on the list of graduates. He may well have gone last summer if Brentford hadn’t already got £28 million for Watkins and had another £25 million coming down the pipe for Benrahma. A move then may have been a little early for him but even in the few months of this season, he has kicked on even further. If anyone needs an attacking left-back, able to play as wing-back and probably a winger if you asked him to, with energy, pace and a keen defensive awareness, Henry is your man — and there aren’t too many clubs, in the bottom half of the Premier League particularly, who don’t fall into that category. West Ham were reportedly keen in the summer, Aston Villa too, and come January, the queue will undoubtedly grow. People talk about Henry’s wisdom exceeding his 23 years, which is partly because this is his eighth season as a senior professional. He was brought into the first-team set-up at Walsall aged 16, when Dean Smith was their manager, and made his debut in 2014, impressing everyone thoroughly until a dislocated shoulder checked his progress. “He more or less forced our hand to play him really,” Jon Whitney, who was Smith’s assistant at Walsall and would go on to manage the club, tells The Athletic. “You get some young players who you just know are going to break through. Even at a young age, he played with an old head on his shoulders. “He just gave that energy to the team. He lifted the crowd. That was a big thing we wanted to do: we had a few older players and I think we were looking at that transition of getting a much younger team and more energy into it.” Smith left for Brentford midway through the 2015-16 season and the following summer, Henry followed. Injuries again stalled his progress: that dislocated shoulder still proved troublesome and delayed his debut until the February of his first season. Then an unbroken run in the team was ended by a knee injury. He returned at the start of the 2017-18 season but the knee went again in his eighth game back, surgery ensued, and he didn’t return for 14 months. By the time he was fit again, Smith had left for Aston Villa, so Henry had to establish himself all over again with a new manager but it’s fair to say that, in the intervening two years, he has managed that. “Is he the best in division?” Frank says. “Others must judge that but he’s he’s definitely up there among the best.” The determination and maturity Henry has shown over these past couple of years has been there since the start. “His pace got him out of a lot of trouble,” says Whitney of those early days at Walsall, “but he started to really get better tactically, especially with Dean, who he had a really good connection with. “He just went from strength to strength, really. The more responsibility you gave Rico, the better he got, and I think you also see that now. I think he’s become a lot more robust and resilient. “He’s always somebody who will go the extra mile for his fitness. I remember him doing some extra work with a performance coach even when he was at Walsall: you had to keep the reins on him a little bit so he didn’t do too much, which is always easier than trying to kick somebody up the backside.” Brentford have reached the stage where any player they have is almost pre-approved — such is their record at polishing talent for the Premier League that you basically assume anyone they deem good enough is probably good enough for anyone — but Henry would stand out in any team, mainly because he’s essentially the complete modern full-back. You notice Henry because of his pace, zooming up and down the flank in an era where full-backs are now basically expected to be wing-backs or even de facto wingers. But attacking full-backs are ten-a-penny: you know you’ve got the real thing when they can defend properly, too. “He’s extremely good defensively,” Frank says. “Almost no one is going past him — very, very few times. He’s so aggressive and maybe you think you’re going past him but then, oops! He’s there again.” “He catches the eye because he is a forward-thinking, modern-day full-back,” adds Whitney. “His strength is defending from the front.” There are things to improve, of course. Frank says they’ve been working on his crossing, and decision-making in the final third. “His composure is something we’re talking about, to consistently try to force him to to to get good positions and maybe have that extra half a second.” But you can be pretty sure that Henry will improve those things. “Rico only has either zero or 100 per cent,” says Frank. “He can’t go in between.”

Fabinho’s heroics are being undermined by Liverpool’s lack of centre-halves https://theathletic.com/2283508/2020/12/28/fabinho-liverpool-transfers/ Fabinho won’t look back with much fondness on the day he brought up a century of appearances for Liverpool. The Brazil international cut an agitated figure as he headed down the tunnel after the final whistle. Semi Ajayi had climbed all over him to nod home West Bromwich Albion’s late equaliser at Anfield. There was a collective sense of anger in the home dressing room after standards slipped alarmingly in the second half following a one-sided opening 45 minutes when Sadio Mane fired them in front. The wounds were self-inflicted. Liverpool only had themselves to blame for carelessly squandering two points but Fabinho had nothing to apologise for. Once again he excelled as a makeshift centre-back. He completed 88 per cent of his passes and won 78 per cent of his aerial duels. He regained possession on 10 occasions, more than any of his team-mates. There were also three clearances and two interceptions. Fabinho has grown in stature since Liverpool lost Virgil van Dijk to a torn ACL at Goodison Park in October. Jurgen Klopp asked him to become a more vocal presence and a leader in the absence of the commanding Dutchman and he has delivered for his manager. The 27-year-old’s outstanding form is one of the key reasons why Liverpool have been able to collect 21 points out of a possible 27 since that ill-fated Merseyside derby. He has stepped up and helped to fill the void. Calm and composed, he’s adept at sensing danger and dealing with it. His distribution is also a major strength. Affectionately known as “El Flaco” (the skinny one) by his team-mates, Fabinho shares a close bond with fellow countryman Alisson and Roberto Firmino. His grasp of the language has improved to such a degree that in recent months he’s started doing club media interviews in English. Rather than bemoan being shifted from the holding midfield role he was carrying out with such aplomb, he has embraced the challenge of learning a new position. He has put the team first, no questions asked, which given the humility and professionalism he’s shown since arriving from Monaco in the summer of 2018 has surprised no-one at the AXA Training Centre. Fabinho is a strong contender for Liverpool’s player of the season so far. His early struggles at Anfield when he was adapting to the pace and physicality of English are an increasingly distant memory. He’s worth at least double the £43 million the club paid for him. He has proved beyond doubt that he can be relied upon to operate to a high level in the backline until Van Dijk and Joe Gomez return either in the closing stages of this season or early next season. But the glaring issue for Klopp is the other centre-back spot. Joel Matip started there against West Brom but limped off after an hour with the latest in a long line of muscle injuries. “Joel told me he felt something in his adductor and that’s obviously not too good. I am not sure how serious it is but it was serious enough that he had to leave the pitch,” Klopp said. Matip’s quality has never been in question. It was there again with the pinged pass which Sadio Mane expertly controlled and clinically dispatched to open the scoring against Sam Allardyce’s side. However, the reality is that he simply can’t be relied upon to stay fit over an extended period. Earlier this month he didn’t emerge for the second half against Fulham at Craven Cottage due to a back spasm and missed the subsequent clash with Tottenham. Liverpool have played 15 Premier League games so far this season and the former Cameroon international hasn’t been available for seven of them. He has played just 556 minutes of football in the league in 2020-21, completing 90 minutes just five times. It’s not a one-off. Last season he wasn’t available for 22 of Liverpool’s 38 league matches. He completed 90 minutes on seven occasions. Matip’s injury record is why not replacing Dejan Lovren when he was sold to Zenit St Petersburg was such a gamble last summer. The club’s rationale made sense at the time. Money was tight due to the global pandemic and Liverpool had to prioritise certain areas of the squad. They had to sign Kostas Tsimikas as back-up for Andy Robertson and they needed more firepower in the form of Diogo Jota. The chance to buy Thiago Alcantara was just too good to turn down. Klopp had already touted the idea of using Fabinho at the back in an emergency and he was impressed by the youngsters coming through. However, it meant they took a risk as they went into the new campaign with just three senior recognised centre-backs. Now as 2020 draws to a close all three are sidelined. The cupboard is bare. Jamie Carragher, the former centre-half working on Sky Sports as a pundit, reacted to Matip’s injury by saying that “it’s paramount that Liverpool sign someone in January.” Senior sources at Liverpool have been adamant that the club won’t dip into the transfer market next month. Klopp has been delighted by how rookies Rhys Williams and Nathaniel Phillips have performed when handed their chance to shine this season. Liverpool have high hopes for Williams especially and don’t want to block his pathway. However, the final half-hour against West Brom provided a reminder that the academy graduate is only 19 and still learning his trade. There are bound to be bumps along the way. It would be wrong to expect too much too soon. It remains to be seen whether the outcome of Matip’s scan leads to a change of heart from the Anfield hierarchy going into the January window. What about the business end of the campaign when the pressure is cranked up and the stakes keep getting higher? There’s a spell in February when Liverpool face Manchester City, Leicester City, RB Leipzig and Everton all in the space of a fortnight. The imminent return of Thiago will help provide the kind of creative spark which was sadly lacking against West Brom but defensive concerns remain. Fabinho is a rock. Liverpool are lucky to have him. However, it’s that vulnerability alongside him which is a chink in the champions’ armour.

Carlo Ancelotti is finding ways to win – even without Richarlison https://theathletic.com/2285565/2020/12/27/everton-carlo-ancelotti-tom-davies-richarlison/ It took them nine games, but Everton found a way to win without Richarlison. Given the manner in which they have overcome obstacles in their path so far this season, maybe it should not have come as much of a surprise that they finally did. This team have spent much of the campaign needing to find ways to cope without key players. First without Richarlison. Then Lucas Digne, Seamus Coleman, James Rodriguez and Richarlison again. Save for the rut after the drawn Merseyside derby — the three defeats on the spin that were the guts of a one win in seven run — they have adapted at every turn. Boxing Day’s hard-fought 1-0 victory over Sheffield United made it four consecutive league wins and took them up to the heady heights of second in the table. This is a different Everton to the one who thrilled with free-flowing football earlier in the season. They know they cannot blow teams aside so have to be more reserved and compact. As assistant manager Davide Ancelotti told The Athletic recently: “If you have James (Rodriguez), Andre Gomes and Lucas Digne, they are players that need the ball. Without them, you can change a little bit and use other weapons we have.” What will please Davide’s dad Carlo most about their side’s recent performances is how, in the absence of key figures, a new-found resilience has emerged and hitherto peripheral players such as Tom Davies have stood up to be counted. Few can replace the influential Allan at the base of the Everton midfield — and this was relegation-threatened, still-winless Sheffield United not Bruno Fernandes and Manchester United — but Davies made the most of his return to the team to deliver a more-than-passable impression of the absent Brazilian. Davies was Everton’s Allan at Bramall Lane, dropping in to receive the ball from his defence to start attacks. His 73 touches were the most of any midfielder on the pitch despite leaving the game on 74 minutes, his 29 passes into the opposition half the joint-highest. That Davies did so with an accuracy of just under 80 per cent hints at growing composure on the ball. Overall, his pass accuracy was 86 per cent, the best of any Everton player. Everton were at their best when Davies was in charge of possession, his sharp balls through the lines rare moments of quality in a poor match in part affected by the swirling winds and driving rain. For so long, there has been discussion about the 22-year-old’s best role, but he is finally starting to carve out his niche after similarly effective displays this sesason against Brighton & Hove Albion and Arsenal. While Davies has been seen as a liability defensively at times, there is evidence that his video work watching Allan is paying off. No player made more possession regains in the game than his 10, a sign of burgeoning positional intelligence. Davies was a standout before Gomes replaced him for the final quarter of an hour. But even then, it did not always look like Everton would find a way against a home side now on two points after 15 games. Against Chelsea, Leicester City and Arsenal, Ancelotti Sr’s side allowed the opposition to have the ball and countered effectively. It is a natural fit given the players at their disposal at present. Yet what happens when teams allow them the ball, as United did on occasion on Saturday, still appears up for discussion. There is such reliance on Rodriguez to provide passing quality and Digne to supply the crosses that without them, Everton look ill-equipped to provoke and dictate. Too quickly, they resorted to aerial punts forward as a means of attack, leaving lone striker Dominic Calvert-Lewin with an unenviable task against three central defenders. Too often, the final pass eluded them. It felt like the increasingly dominant Calvert-Lewin would have to do it all by himself against his boyhood club to secure an Everton win. One sublime piece of chest control followed by a first-time volley that sailed just past the post was symbolic of both the confidence coursing through the striker’s veins this season and the extent to which he had become a one-man band. Nobody else in a blue shirt got near him for long spells in South Yorkshire. Thankfully, Ancelotti realised his side needed more and three second-half substitutions helped tip the game in Everton’s favour. Bernard, his first introduction of the evening, added poise amid the chaos, probing from the left and helping create the moment his team-mates had craved all night. Few others on the pitch would have had the audacity and touch to direct an airborne ball towards Abdoulaye Doucoure in the box in the build-up to Gylfi Sigurdsson’s winner. But Bernard is, sporadically at least, capable of such moments. Gomes moved Everton up the pitch with some strong running, while captain Coleman was brought on to provide more thrust and drive from right-back. His extra width was important in the context of the swing in momentum, simultaneously creating more options for players in possession, more variety in their play and more of a headache for the United defence. Everton are usually at their best when they provide penetration from deep and will need to do so more regularly when using this set-up against defence-minded opposition. All three substitutes were singled out for praise by Ancelotti, a sign the Everton manager knows how important it will be to eke every ounce of quality from his squad. “I’m really pleased,” he said. “It’s a victory of spirit, not quality. Defensively we were solid and didn’t give Sheffield United opportunities. In the end, we scored a fantastic goal with fantastic combinations. “The fact is that the three players from the bench, Gomes, Coleman and Bernard, helped a lot the team to win this game. We knew we needed to be patient and wouldn’t have opportunities to score. “The fact we are second with all these players out means the squad is good, has ambition and motivation.” Add to that list a way to finally win without Richarlison, the growth of squad players and a place in the Champions League spots on Boxing Day. It may not always be pretty at present, but Ancelotti is finding ways to return winning football to Goodison Park.

Sensible Transfers: Augustin’s a warning sign but Leeds will act if they need to https://theathletic.com/2270197/2020/12/24/sensible-transfers-augustins-a-warning-sign-but-leeds-will-act-if-they-need-to/ The abiding image of Jean-Kevin Augustin came from his first morning at Leeds United’s training ground. It was cold, it was windy and he was out on the running track with one of the club’s coaching staff, lapping the fields quietly. Day one for Augustin was also square one. Leeds were deep into their fixture list, well beyond halfway, but they put Augustin through the mid-season process which clubs like to call a mini pre-season. His fitness was below par so Marcelo Bielsa arranged to have him run hard. No cutting corners and no special treatment, however much his loan from RB Leipzig was costing. The rest of the squad trained separately, on a pitch nearby. That was where Augustin wanted to be. Leeds think of him when they think about how best to play the January transfer window. Even before that regrettable signing, a deal which FIFA is now being asked to arbitrate over, Victor Orta was averse to winter recruitment on the grounds that choice and value was often thin on the ground. But Bielsa as head coach brought an extra layer of complication. Beyond choice and value was the challenge of finding players with the conditioning to match the footballers at Leeds who had spent two-and-a-half years adapting to Bielsa’s regime. Augustin was what happened if a new recruit fell too far off the pace. In the summer window just gone, Leeds’ investment of £100 million in transfers was a long-term blueprint, as investment like that should be. They were not just preparing for an immediate taste of the Premier League. By scouting as they did, the club felt their resources were made for this season and next, built in a way (and with an average age) which would allow them to evolve and rise up the table. That big hit of £100 million was, ideally, supposed to reduce the call for further expenditure, at least for a handful of windows. It would suit Leeds to let this January go by peacefully and there are plenty of clubs in the Premier League who find themselves doing little in the market at this time of year. Bielsa is not giving anyone the impression that he wants Leeds to be active either. In the first fortnight of December, he lost both of his right-sided centre-backs, Robin Koch and Diego Llorente, to injury. Bielsa was asked if he would try to sign cover. We have Luke Ayling, Kalvin Phillips and Pascal Struijk, he replied. On top of that, Gaetano Berardi should be fit in February after an ACL injury. So no, not a chance. Bielsa, in his time at Elland Road, has never allowed his impact as a coach to be seen in the context of how big his transfer budget is. The club have spent, no question, but even now the spine of his team has been on the books since his very first summer. The only reason Leeds went anywhere near Augustin last January was because Eddie Nketiah’s loan from Arsenal was cut short. In two-and-a-half years, Augustin is the only outfield player (or the only outfield player with any senior experience) who Leeds have brought in mid-season. Bielsa and Orta are aligned in that sense, sharing the view that it is better to have a squad in place at the outset. That way January is there for emergencies, or for opportunities too good to pass up. That is likely to be Orta’s approach next month, if indeed Leeds spend anything in this window. As they showed when Raphinha was offered for £17 million (less than a week after Leeds had come close to ploughing £20 million into Michael Cuisance, a different player in a completely different position), the club are set up to react when tempting options present themselves. But Bielsa has refrained from banging the drum for impact signings and it would be hard to tell him that he needs them. Leeds’ form has been good and their football is highly competitive at its best. Realistically, in season one, this is what Leeds were hoping for, even allowing for Sunday’s thrashing at Old Trafford. Cuisance, until the collapse of his move from Bayern Munich, was seen as an ideal fit in the one area which Leeds failed to fill before the last deadline in October. Their interest in a central midfielder ebbs and flows depending on where Adam Forshaw is in his never-ending recovery process but it is there that Leeds are thin, in front of the defensive wall of Kalvin Phillips. Bielsa’s devotion to Mateusz Klich continues unabated and Klich’s mind and body continues to hold up to the strain of starting every match but there is a dearth of depth in that specialised role, somewhere in the gap between a No 8 and a No 10. Bielsa has only once felt compelled to replace Klich, on the Sunday after promotion when the dressing room at Leeds was a little tired and emotional. Like Phillips, when it comes to replacing Klich you hope Bielsa never has to. Leeds made enquiries about Udinese’s Rodrigo De Paul in the summer, a good match for that position in the team. They fell well short of Udinese’s £35 million valuation, though, and the transfer was never more than a conversation. The club are unlikely to rush into that sort of deal in the window ahead and sources close to De Paul do not anticipate a fresh approach. They are talking instead about destinations for him in Italy and Spain. There was credible interest from Leeds in Atalanta’s Ruslan Malinovskyi too but he is in the frame in Serie A, appearing regularly enough. Closer to home, Leeds have made no secret of the attention they have paid to Todd Cantwell at Norwich City and Louie Sibley at Derby County. Within the lower-league ranks, Bielsa is also an admirer of John Swift, the former England Under-21 international, at Reading. But Leeds found in the summer window that fees in the European market were more favourable: Robin Koch for half the price Leeds tried to pay for Ben White, Rodrigo for a million pounds less than Ollie Watkins and Raphinha for a sum which looks like a snip. Orta’s scouting network is spread wide across the continent, with eyes in most major leagues of note. Those are the sort of deals that appeal to him most. As for a left-back? It is the only position in Bielsa’s team where he seems happy to make do. High-quality full-backs have never been more prized in the Premier League and they are essential to Bielsa’s own tactics. That, to an extent, was shown by Barry Douglas materialising as his first permanent signing as head coach in 2018, a deal which brought in nominally the best left-back in the Championship. But Douglas was bit-part and in October he left for Blackburn Rovers. He was fourth in line at Leeds, behind Stuart Dallas, Gjanni Alioski and Leif Davis — a right winger, a left winger and an academy product. Leeds cast an eye over Fulham’s Joe Bryan at the beginning of the summer and looked at Tottenham’s Ryan Sessegnon towards the end of it but did not make significant strides towards landing a different option on that side of defence. Dallas was Bielsa’s first choice there and a tidy pair of hands. Alioski provided the competition (and Bielsa is so happy with Alioski that talks with the 28-year-old over a new contract are underway). There is an underlying feeling that one day Leeds will need a specialist there but, for now, their head coach seems satisfied with the balance. In this window, the club intend to operate without undue pressure; to avoid deals completely if none make sense and to make signings purely on their terms. Orta likes to plan for the future and dig up targets with residual value. It will not be a surprise if he has something of that nature up his sleeve. But season-changing deals? Expect limits to the drama, assuming there is any.

Walker-Peters exclusive: How I’ve learnt to defend differently under Hasenhuttl https://theathletic.com/2276393/2020/12/26/walker-peters-hasenhuttl-southampton/ Kyle Walker-Peters is surely a contender for bargain buy of the season. It seldom happens where both clubs involved in a transfer end up satisfied with the business conducted, but that has to be the case with Southampton and Tottenham Hotspur over their deal for the full-back. Jose Mourinho’s Spurs landed Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg, Southampton’s wantaway midfielder, for £15 million in the summer before Walker-Peters made last season’s loan move in the opposite direction permanent for £12 million. The right-back is flourishing under Ralph Hasenhuttl’s guidance after struggling for game time in Tottenham colours, playing every single minute of his new club’s 14 matches so far. Although it may look like a seamless transition from the outside, there has been a lot for Walker-Peters to get his head around. In other words, old habits die hard. “It’s always hard when you change teams and you have to change your way of thinking,” he tells The Athletic. “When you are growing up in football, some things become second nature and one of the big things I found tough at the start was the aspect of doubling up. “That was something, even still now sometimes, you find it hard to change.” After spending his entire career at Spurs up until last January, it’s no wonder it took Walker-Peters a while to adapt to Hasenhuttl’s methods. For Southampton’s manager doesn’t want his full-backs to do what most of them are taught from a young age. Gone are the days where you do everything you can to stop the opposition’s winger. Hasenhuttl wants Walker-Peters and left-back Ryan Bertrand to forget about the threat down their flank and instead protect the centre-backs. You may be wondering how this all works. The Athletic certainly was, which is why we’ll let Walker-Peters do the hard yards in explaining it. “If strikers are pinning my centre-back and I am the full-back, instead of going with the runner, I need to go to the guy pinning the centre-back and tackle from the front,” the 23-year-old continues. So, who is responsible for the winger on your side when you go to cover Jan Bednarek in the middle? “It’s the next centre-back,” he adds. “We all slide across. He (Jannik Vestergaard) should be coming across anyway. And then Ryan covers for Jannik.” But then who slots in for Ryan? “The No 10 (whoever is playing on the left of the 4-2-2-2 formation),” Walker-Peters says, while erupting with laughter, almost knowing it sounds bonkers. “It’s a lot of running, but it’s working. We are proving we can do it. We are an intense, high-energy team. “You’ll sometimes see in games that we won’t always do it if it doesn’t feel right. Sometimes you have to sense it on the pitch. You have got to think where the players are on the pitch. Ultimately, it’s our job to stop goals. If we don’t feel it is 100 per cent right, then Ralph says to us all the time that we have to pick the moments and make sure it feels right. “But if you go, then you have to trust the man behind you is coming. There is an element of doing it, but if it doesn’t feel right then take your time and, ultimately, stop goals and make sure we are secure at the back.” How do you take all of that on board? “The staff always explain what the philosophy is,” he adds. “It’s just something that happens in football a lot. The first two, three games… it takes someone a while to really adapt to a new style. “I was probably a bit lucky with the (three months of) lockdown and having a little pre-season where I could really focus my mind on adapting to the style. From there I really kicked on, so I have to give credit to the staff and everyone for helping me get there.” If the defensive element of Walker-Peters’ position sounds confusing, you’ll be thrilled to know the attacking side is a lot simpler. Hasenhuttl allows Walker-Peters and Bertrand to express themselves up the pitch. And it’s paying off. The former Tottenham man registered an assist against his old club in September and was responsible for winning Southampton’s penalty in their win over Brighton & Hove Albion earlier this month. Although Hasenhuttl and his coaching staff needed to do a lot of work on the training ground to help their summer buy fully understand the system, the attacking element of Walker-Peters’ game had already been fine-tuned by Mauricio Pochettino, the former Spurs (and previously Southampton) boss. Pochettino, also known for his expansive style of play and aggressive pressing, handed the locally-born defender his Tottenham debut as a 20-year-old in August 2017 and allowed him to roam forward. And Walker-Peters admits that although there are subtle differences between the two managers, they place the same demands on their full-backs. “They are very similar actually,” he says. “High intensity, high energy. Offensively with Pochettino, I was quite free to do as I please. But as a defender, you have to do the typical things. “It’s actually pretty similar. He (Hasenhuttl) is happy to trust us offensively. Defensively, it’s about winning your one-v-one battles, stopping the crosses, putting your body on the line and, yeah, a lot of running and high-intensity work.” It’s the same story in England’s age-group ranks, where Walker-Peters has featured at every level from the under-18s to the under-21s. There has been no first senior call-up yet but, given how he’s playing at the moment, that will surely come. “They (England) want you up and down (the pitch),” he reveals. “The full-back position has changed a lot. It is used a lot more as an offensive position as well as a defensive one. You have got to be able to do both sides of the game. Through England youth set-ups, it was the same.” Behind the scenes, Walker-Peters is a popular member of the dressing room. His closest friends are Michael Obafemi, Che Adams and Nathan Redmond. The quartet often play FIFA against each other, and the defender is said to be one of the better players in the squad at the video game. When Redmond isn’t around, Walker-Peters seizes the initiative and takes control of the dressing-room music, both at the training ground and St Mary’s. The Athletic is led to believe rap is his go-to genre. His best friend in football is former Spurs team-mate Dele Alli. The pair are often seen spending time together and they travelled to Mykonos, Greece on holiday last summer. Tottenham’s Eric Dier is also a close companion. If moving away from hometown London was initially rough, life in Hampshire was made easier for Walker-Peters after his loan move turned permanent. He moved out of the hotel he was staying in and found a place in Winchester, where he has been joined by his girlfriend and Dior, his toy poodle. Walker-Peters is a vocal member of the Southampton side during training, often taking a lot of pleasure from seeing someone getting nutmegged during a rondo. It isn’t all fun and games, though. “We do a lot of sessions where you are out of position and you have to sprint back,” he tells The Athletic. “Really you shouldn’t get there, but it’s disguised running. That builds you up, gets you ready and makes you feel confident that you can do those long runs during matches.” Walker-Peters, who has contributed to seven Southampton clean sheets in his 24 Premier League appearances, is already feeling the benefits. Despite playing in the Champions League for Tottenham, this current run of form, he says, is his best football to date. Southampton are looking to add another full-back in January to provide squad depth behind Walker-Peters and Bertrand. However, it would take a lot for the 23-year-old to lose his place in the starting XI. He has simply been that good. But he knows there is still so much more room for improvement. “Definitely,” he responds, when asked if this is the best he’s played since turning professional. “Ultimately, it is because I’ve been able to get that run of games which gives you confidence and you become accustomed to situations that you are facing in every game. It can honestly only come with games. “It’s a hard one when you are not playing regularly. I would say now you are seeing — and I’ve still got more — a good level of Kyle Walker-Peters.”

Diallo impresses but faces the impossible job of dislodging Romeu https://theathletic.com/2285046/2020/12/27/diallo-ibrahima-southampton-romeu/ Ibrahima Diallo lined up for Southampton against a player many of the club’s fans had hoped would be able to carve out a career at St Mary’s. Harrison Reed, Fulham’s central midfielder, joined them permanently from his boyhood club in the summer after spending last season on loan in west London, helping his new club win promotion back to the Premier League. But yesterday, without doing anything spectacular, Diallo showed why Ralph Hasenhuttl was right to allow Reed to leave in search of regular football. Having waited for over three months to register his first Premier League start following an October move from French club Brest, Diallo eased his way into the goalless draw with Fulham. He managed 16 passes in the opening 45 minutes, with 13 of them proving successful. James Ward-Prowse, his midfield partner, completed 22 passes out of 25 attempts — a success rate of 88 per cent. The Frenchman had 23 touches in the first half, only Che Adams (17), Shane Long (14) and Theo Walcott (11) in Southampton colours registered fewer. Of his six duels, half as many as Kyle Walker-Peters’ team-best 12, he won two. He also won possession back three times. The second half, though, saw Diallo grow in confidence and assert himself more around the pitch. He ended up with 55 touches, 12 duels, 40 passes — with 85 per cent of those being accurate, which was the highest number of any Southampton player — and a remarkable air shot to boot. The below graphic is Diallo’s first-half touch map: As you can see from the next graphic, displaying his second-half touches, the 21-year-old was a lot more active after the interval. Although this may not seem like a lot, Reed, who has played in 11 of Fulham’s Premier League games this season, was beaten by Diallo in almost every category. Reed hit five fewer passes with 35, had a worse passing accuracy (77.1 per cent) and made two recoveries to Diallo’s nine. He did manage to win one more duel: six to five. But how did Diallo perform with his team-mates? Well, there was clever link-up play with Stuart Armstrong just after the half-hour mark, which offered a glimpse of what he can offer in an attacking sense. After the break, you could see him wanting the ball more frequently, looking for ways to impact the game. That unfortunate swing and miss came in the 66th minute, when the ball fell to him just outside Fulham’s penalty area. “Against the ball, he was good and aggressive,” said Hasenhuttl. “With the ball, maybe not always the best decisions in front, but today it was not necessary. To be safe and not make too many risks was absolutely the right decision. “In the first half, I saw him having a few good fights and he was strong. I’m happy he is here and he will make a lot of games for us.” Were it not for Hasenhuttl’s powers of persuasion, there’s a good chance Diallo would still be plying his trade in Ligue 1. The Monaco academy graduate was happy to remain in Brest, a port city on the southern side of the English Channel, rather than cross over to one on its northern shore. His departure did not come until October. A meeting with Southampton’s manager, though, made up his mind over the £11 million move. “To convince him to come here was not so easy, because he really asked questions,” says Hasenhuttl. “I must say, I haven’t it had so often as a manager trying to sign a player. “He really wanted to know what we are about. I think everything we told him is exactly how he found it. The issue for him was that the team were doing so well, so it was difficult for him to step into the side. Although he understands this, he was not happy about it.” To get his chance, Diallo has had to stay patient and wait for Oriol Romeu, the master of yellow cards but avoider of reds, to be either suspended or injured. Before his maiden Premier League start on Saturday, he had been limited to six appearances off the bench, totalling just 24 minutes of football. Ward-Prowse and Romeu had become undroppable. Despite these early frustrations, The Athletic understands Diallo has made a positive impression in the dressing room. He has formed a bond with Moussa Djenepo and Dan N’Lundulu as the trio can speak French together. Although English isn’t his first language, the midfielder makes a conscious effort to converse in it with club staff. Diallo, whose older brother, Abdou, plays in defence for serial French champions Paris Saint-Germain, has received plaudits for his attitude behind the scenes. Other players in the camp have been impressed with him in training. With Romeu available again for Tuesday’s home game against West Ham United, it’s hard to imagine a world where Diallo keeps his place in the team. But that shouldn’t be viewed as a negative. Hasenhuttl now has a wonderful problem on his hands — two players actively competing to feature alongside Ward-Prowse. Romeu, with his vast experience and added physical edge, looks to be more of a natural fit for the next match. But now Diallo has had a first proper taste of Premier League football, you sense he will be chomping at the bit to be in the starting XI more often.

Goals that got away: West Brom missed out on Aubameyang and Lewandowski up front https://theathletic.com/2278563/2020/12/27/west-brom-january-transfers/ Hold this thought for a moment. The year is 2018, and West Bromwich Albion have just sold star striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang for more than £50 million. They have been a fixture in the top half of the Premier League for several years now, a talented side funded by the sale of Belgium midfielder Mousa Dembele for around £15 million six years earlier. His purchase a couple of years earlier was paid for by selling a striker called Robert Lewandowski. Fair to say, the Pole’s done all right since departing The Hawthorns. Tough-tackling Scott Brown is now captaining Albion in the Premier League, fellow Scot Andy Robertson is marauding from left-back while indefatigable forward Shinji Okazaki is leading the line. Jeremy Peace sold the club for around £400 million and left them pushing for Europe. This fantastical picture of an alternative West Brom timeline is, granted, a little far-fetched and would have required multiple ‘Sliding Doors’ moments to work out well for Peace and his staff. Yet, in theory at least, it could all have happened. This is not a piece designed to lampoon Dan Ashworth, who vetoed the possible signing of Aubameyang in 2011. It is not meant as a dig at Peace and Mark Jenkins, who blocked moves for Dembele and Lewandowski the year before, Brown and fellow Scotland midfielder Kevin Thomson in 2007 and Ugo Ehiogu in 2006. These things happen. Clubs have their budgets, different scouts see different things and managers miss out on deals they really want to happen. Certain players need different environments to thrive, too, so some of the men named here might not have developed in the same way had they actually moved to Albion. No, this is a piece designed simply to take a whimsical look at what might have been at The Hawthorns. It is April 9, 2011, and Stuart White, whose main job is to lead West Brom’s UK scouting, is given a relatively rare overseas assignment. His main game has been a Friday night fixture in Dijon but, before flying back from France, he also checks out Auxerre versus Saint-Etienne. Dimitri Payet and Blaise Matuidi are in the Saint-Etienne line-up but it is another player who most impresses White. “Saint-Etienne drew the game 2-2, but Aubameyang and Emmanuel Riviere were tremendous as a pair,” White told Planet Football. “I came back raving about Aubameyang, and as luck would have it, his agent called me the following week, probably because he’d got to know that I had been at the game. “He was obviously calling many clubs, but the lad was then an AC Milan player on loan at Saint-Etienne and he was interested in coming to England. The outline deal was explained to me and it was clear that he was going to be affordable, so I recommended that we pursued it. “On the back of my shout, a few more of our scouts went out to watch him a week or two later and he scored an early goal against Sochaux in a 2-1 defeat but didn’t impress sufficiently on the night, which can happen. “He then went back to Saint-Etienne (on a permanent transfer in January 2012), scored 21 in 45 and was subsequently sold to Borussia Dortmund for €13 million. He would have been a free loan to us, with a €2 million fee tied into the deal had we taken him.” In fact, it was Ashworth, Albion’s sporting and technical director, who made a final trip to France to watch Aubameyang and decided the Gabon international forward was not for him. Seven years later, Arsenal paid around £56 million to bring him belatedly to the Premier League. “I have to stress, every scout in the land will have a similar story and some may even have the same one,” says White, who is the most unlikely person to criticise the highly-rated Ashworth. “It happens. Numerous other players have been recommended but not come in. Many have gone elsewhere and been successful. “At West Brom, we tended to identify them in the earlier stages of their careers, before they took off. That’s key at clubs who can’t afford to pay top dollar, but even then, doing deals isn’t as easy as many people would assume. “For example, we were very keen on Okazaki, but Mainz refused to sell him that summer. A year later he went to Leicester for a relatively modest fee and became a Premier League champion.” Aubameyang is not the only world-class striker to have been offered to Albion. In 2010, Lewandowski was a promising target man at Lech Poznan in his home country of Poland. He wanted a move to one of Europe’s top leagues and West Brom, back in the Premier League under Roberto Di Matteo, were in the market for some unpolished gems. Lewandowski was keen on the move. In fact, April, he was close to joining Blackburn Rovers, managed by a certain Sam Allardyce, before the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajokull erupted, covering Europe in an ash cloud and grounding all flights — including his to England. The move was scuppered. Instead, Lewandowski ended up signing for Dortmund that summer as a player for the future and made 15 starts, scoring eight goals, on the way to becoming a Bundesliga champion in his debut season. Albion had decided Lech Poznan’s asking price of around £4 million and Lewandowski’s wages were too much and instead paid around £2 million to sign a player from Lokomotiv Moscow whose contract was running down. That deal for Peter Odemwingie did not work out too badly. In the same summer, they also signed Paul Scharner on a free transfer and Marc-Antoine Fortune for a second time. Yet it could so easily have been Dembele coming in. The Belgian was a rising star as an attacking midfielder at AZ Alkmaar in the Netherlands and keen to move to England. Albion missed out on the chance to sign Mousa Dembele (Photo: VI Images via Getty Images) His representatives spoke to Albion and to neighbours and fellow Premier League side Birmingham City and a deal to take him to the West Midlands seemed likely. Albion, however, were balancing risk against possible reward and decided the fee, of around £5 million, was too rich for their blood. “We like him and we think he will get better but that’s too much,” said a director at the time. “If Blues (Birmingham) want to pay that, they can have him.” West Brom withdrew and left Birmingham with a seemingly clear run until Fulham appeared at the 11th hour, matched the Birmingham offer and Dembele opted to play his top-flight football in London, where he would remain, developing gradually into one of the best holding midfield players in the league. Tottenham Hotspur activated a £15 million release clause in 2012, two years after Fulham signed him. There were others, too. Bryan Robson’s departure as manager in 2006 was hastened by the collapse of Ehiogu’s move back to the club whose centre of excellence had first developed him. The deal was agreed by Robson, the defender, who died tragically young at age 44 in 2017, was happy to move from Middlesbrough back to the Midlands and he was even in the players’ canteen at Albion’s Walsall training ground getting to know his prospective new team-mates when Peace decided the terms were beyond Albion’s reach. Robson was furious. He and Peace never patched up their differences. That same canteen witnessed explosive scenes in February 2015, when Carlton Cole received the “Ehiogu treatment” at the hands of Allardyce. The West Ham striker was enjoying a drink in the final few hours of the winter transfer window, having agreed a loan move to Albion that would have potentially resurrected a career on the slide in east London. His medical was complete and paperwork signed. All that stood between Cole and his move was a sign-off from the West Ham end. When Allardyce called to tell the striker things had changed at Upton Park and the switch wasn’t going to happen, Cole launched a rant that is still talked about by those present. “You’re fucking wrecking my career,” is one of the phrases stunned witnesses recall hearing. Tony Mowbray, Albion’s manager from 2006 to 2009, suffered countless setbacks. In his first transfer window at The Hawthorns in 2007, he set his sights on reuniting with Brown and Thomson, who had powered the midfield of his Hibernian side in his previous job. However, Peace could not get the deals done. Thomson moved to Rangers with moderate success while Brown went to the other side of the Old Firm divide and has become a Celtic legend. After winning the 2008 Championship title, Mowbray wanted James Collins from West Ham to boost his defence. How much of a difference the Wales international would have made will never be known, but Mowbray’s side was badly lacking a centre-back adept at the fundamentals of defending. He wanted Madjid Bougherra, too. The Charlton Athletic centre-back spent time at the Albion training ground for talks but personal terms were never agreed. And in 2014, after watching Romelu Lukaku thrill West Brom fans in a 17-goal season on loan, the club had a shirt printed and an unveiling planned after agreeing to take him for a second season from Chelsea. Manager Steve Clarke’s hopes were dashed when, halfway up the motorway from London, Lukaku had a change of heart and decided a year at Everton would be a better move for his career. Of course, Albion enjoyed numerous successes in the transfer market too. Graham Dorrans, Youssouf Mulumbu and Gareth McAuley were low-cost recruits who did wonders for the club. Darren Fletcher and Jonny Evans as well. But managers, coaches and scouts will always lament the ones that got away.

Sensible Transfers: West Ham need a striker like Antonio and midfield cover https://theathletic.com/2285846/2020/12/27/west-ham-transfers-antonio/ As manager of Everton, David Moyes was often asked to operate on a limited budget and it is likely he will once again be instructed to work within his means during the January transfer window. This time last year, West Ham United were embroiled in a relegation fight and, following Moyes’ reappointment as manager, the club acted quickly to strengthen their survival chances with the additions of Tomas Soucek from Slavia Prague and Jarrod Bowen from Hull City. Given the impact that duo had, many anticipated West Ham would operate similarly in January, but due to the hugely uncertain economic climate, it appears Moyes will only spend money if the right player becomes available at a bargain price. In the 2-2 draw against Brighton, Moyes tried to make greater use of his squad but after a dreadful first half he brought on Andriy Yarmolenko and Manuel Lanzini to fight back twice for a draw. Although it was a decent point, it still highlighted the need for West Ham to add more depth to their squad, noticeably in the forward position and midfield. “It’s more to do with the financial situation,” said before the game. “Like every other club, no crowds are coming in and no money from gates coming in, so it would be silly to ignore the situation clubs are in. There are so many clubs around Europe now where there are players who are available if you have the money to do it. “But most haven’t got the money and (the economic effect of) COVID-19 hasn’t completely cleared. Anything can happen and I think a lot of the countries have lost money from television. So I don’t think there’ll be many with lots of money. Our club wouldn’t be in a position where we would necessarily spend big money on new players.” So where does this leave Moyes? The club have been linked with Spartak Moscow defensive midfielder Alex Kral, Bournemouth forward Josh King and, following the signings of Soucek and Vladimir Coufal, you cannot rule out a third raid on Slavia Prague as West Ham monitor the progress of promising striker Abdallah Sima. Kral would be a good signing considering he fits Moyes’ mantra of wanting to sign young, up-and-coming players. He is 22, has amassed 16 caps for the Czech Republic and would be an ideal understudy for Declan Rice and Soucek, who are the preferred options in central midfield. If the either of that duo was to suffer an injury, West Ham have options, but each has a drawback. Kral fits the profile of the sort of player Moyes wants to sign for West Ham (Photo: Mike Kireev/NurPhoto via Getty Images) Robert Snodgrass and Mark Noble, who was taken off at half-time against Brighton, are both 33 and have only played a combined total of 180 minutes in the league, while Lanzini hasn’t started in the Premier League since playing 57 minutes against Newcastle United in July. Academy prospects Conor Coventry and Alfie Lewis have an outside chance of breaking through into the first team but lack experience. Further forward, Sebastien Haller’s failure to fully seize his opportunity in Michail Antonio’s absence will also be a cause for concern. He scored in the 1-0 win at Sheffield United and netted a brilliant, acrobatic goal in the 1-1 draw against Crystal Palace. But it is the overall nature of his performance that frustrates supporters. Haller has shown he is unable to match the same level of intensity as Antonio and, more recently, has been prone to giving the ball away, with Mateusz Klich’s opener at Leeds United being a case in point. The Athletic understands that Moyes would like a striker with a skill set more similar to Antonio. This is where King comes in: the former Manchester United trainee can play centrally or out wide and should be more comfortable leading the line in West Han’s formation than Haller. King has also shown he can score regularly in the top flight, with a record of 48 goals in 161 Premier League games, including 16 in the 2016-17 season. However, he might lack match fitness considering he has only played 11 games for club and country this season, without finding the net in any of them. It is also worth mentioning King will turn 29 in January and considering West Ham have rewarded Antonio, 30, with a new deal that runs until 2023, a younger option could be considered more appropriate. Highly rated academy striker Mipo Odubeko has struggled with injury this season but is well thought of behind the scenes. Moyes and first-team coach Paul Nevin were in attendance at the Roots Hall Stadium when the 18-year-old scored two goals during the under-23s’ 3-1 win over Southend United. Although Sima, 19, has attracted attention following several impressive performances for Slavia Prague, there is no reason why Odubeko can’t have a similar impact at West Ham if he is given the opportunity. In an era when the tendency is to buy and pray for the best, Moyes has shown he can work with what he has. This brings us to the defence. On the eve of deadline day in October, there was a strong clamour for Moyes to augment his defence with another ball-playing centre-back. Fikayo Tomori turned down a loan move and on reflection, it is hard to think how he would have dislodged Fabian Balbuena, Angelo Ogbonna and Aaron Cresswell, all of whom have been excellent in a back three. Central defence is well-stocked following the recent addition of Frederik Alves, who will join the club at the start of January, but one area where West Ham remain light is the left wing-back position. There is not an obvious replacement for the injured Arthur Masuaku, which prompted Moyes to switch to a back four against Leeds, Crystal Palace and Chelsea. Ben Johnson, who made his debut for the club at left-back and scored his first Premier League goal for the club against Brighton on Sunday, is versatile and could play in the wing-back role, and Emmanuel Longelo is a left-footed full-back in the academy. But in terms of new personnel, The Athletic would recommend Rico Henry. During the pre-season encounter with Bournemouth in September, the full-back caught the eye and was a threat on the left flank. If that were an audition for a place in West Ham’s starting XI, Henry would have passed in flying colours. The futures of Lukasz Fabianski, Balbuena, Noble and Snodgrass will be in the spotlight heading into the window. The quartet are out of contract in the summer and have yet to open discussions over a new deal. Due to the nature of Noble’s performance against Chelsea, talks could be delayed until the end of the season. It is likely Snodgrass will look to leave due to a lack of first-team appearances but getting Fabianski and Balbuena to commit their futures will be the immediate priority for West Ham. Other noticeable outgoings may include Nathan Holland going out on loan to a Championship team, Winston Reid rejoining MLS side Sporting Kansas City and Craig Dawson’s loan spell from Watford being cut short given his lack of involvement. Moyes has said on numerous occasions he wants to build West Ham in his vision. There is a strong chance he won’t have the funds to reprise the success of the previous January transfer window, but the club has already started to bear the fruit of their most important investment.

All hail Neto, more creative than Son, Sterling and Maddison https://theathletic.com/2286278/2020/12/28/pedro-neto-wolves-corners/ In the 59th minute of Wolves’ 1-1 draw with Tottenham Hotspur, Pedro Neto showcased exactly why he’ll be in the running for a nomination for the Premier League’s young player of the year 2020-21. Receiving a pass from Romain Saiss 10 yards inside his own half, Neto feinted and dashed by a sliding Matt Doherty. He dribbled upfield and, with Davinson Sanchez and Harry Winks following him, was heading down a cul-de-sac. Cue a stunning change of pace which saw him career past Winks, keeping his balance as he took an arm to the shoulder. He looked up and almost picked out Fabio Silva from the cut-back, only for Eric Dier to cut it out. Some better movement from Silva or more options in the box and Neto could have created one of the assists of the season. It’s been a year of immense progress for Neto. At the start of 2020 he was basically an unwitting poster boy for the annoyances of VAR, having had goals chalked off at Anfield (an extremely marginal toe-based decision) and Old Trafford. He scored his first Premier League goal at Watford on New Year’s Day and then sparked a remarkable comeback at Southampton a couple of weeks later, scoring after being introduced at half-time and transforming Wolves’ attacking fortunes in a 3-2 victory. During 2019-20, Neto’s form was inconsistent — no surprise for a 19-year-old — and he played second fiddle to Diogo Jota and Adama Traore. He made nine league starts. This season he’s already started 14 in the league and with that onus has come consistency, stepping out of Jota’s shadow and becoming Wolves’ creator-in-chief. His explosive pace and velcro dribbling ability catch the eye, but Neto has impressed in several facets this season; not least his versatility and intelligence when playing a deeper, withdrawn role in the early weeks of the season. His creativity has notably improved, particularly from wide on the left. Overall he’s created 27 chances, placing him joint-seventh in the Premier League, ahead of Mohamed Salah, Harry Kane, James Maddison and Sadio Mane. That figure of 27 is slightly embellished by the fact he’s taken a chunk of Wolves’ set pieces this season, but even from open play he’s joint-11th with Traore, with the pair both carving out 19 opportunities. That’s more than Maddison, Son Heung-Min and Raheem Sterling. Neto now creates an average of two chances per 90 minutes, up from 1.4 last season. Interestingly his dribbles-per-game are down, from 3.1 last season to 2 now, but his shots are way up. He’s had 28, more than any Wolves player, having only had 17 in the whole of last season. With 14 successful crosses from open play, he’s more accurate than Traore (with 10). Against Spurs he played three key passes, more than anyone on the pitch. What the stats don’t convey is confidence, which Neto now seems to have in abundance. He wasn’t exactly short of it last season, as anyone who watched him furiously shushing the Kop like a demented snooker referee for his ultimately disallowed Anfield goal will testify. Perhaps belief is the word. Belief and trust, given to him by Nuno in selling Jota and not replacing him in the squad. Wolves believed that in Neto and Daniel Podence they already had Jota’s replacements. It’s taking a bit of time, but that theory may be proved correct. Neto was one of seven Portuguese players in the Wolves XI (the joint-most non-English players from the same country in a Premier League starting XI, matching Fulham and Newcastle’s seven Frenchmen apiece in 2003 and 2013 respectively) but it’s not just via his nationality that Neto is the archetypal Wolves signing. A Gestifute/Jorge Mendes client, little was known of Neto when joined from Lazio/Braga in 2019 (technically Lazio as they’d bought him a few weeks earlier in an obligation deal at the end of a two-year loan from Braga). Neto hadn’t started a senior game in his career, with Lazio barely even using him from the bench, yet here he was being valued at £16 million in a £22 million double signing alongside Bruno Jordao. It seemed steep but Wolves were paying for potential. They believed he could soon be worth far more. Just 18 months on, £16 million looks like very good value and Neto is looking like the classic Wolves buy — young, bags of potential, gradually blooded in his first season and then given a starring role a year later before his value sky-rockets. It’s the template Fabio Silva, Rayan Ait-Nouri, Vitinha and Ki-Jana Hoever will look to replicate. Heck, he even set up a goal from a corner. Wolves hadn’t netted from a set-piece since the opening day of the season at Sheffield United, a bone of contention for Nuno who had pointedly referenced the need to improve from dead balls. “Repetition (on the training ground), innovation, trying not to be so predictable,” Nuno said pre-match on Wolves’ use of short corners, a source of much frustration for supporters. “Yes, we’ve been insisting on short combinations, trying to take advantage of situations that we want… but it’s not happening. We are aware of that. So we must find a new one. “Short combinations are not coming out (of the game plan), try to keep the ball and see what happens. It’s not always the same.” The short corners (designed to try to draw defenders out of position in a bid to counter Wolves’ lack of height in the box) continued in the first half and almost led to a goal when Conor Coady cleverly peeled off at the back stick to reach Neto’s purposely deep outswinger but headed at the keeper. In the second half, a change of approach saw an arrowed inswinger to the near post where Saiss (the man who scored at Bramall Lane) made a perfectly-timed run to the near post and glanced a superb header into the far corner. Seconds before the kick, Jose Mourinho had been yelling at Kane to clear anything at the near post. “There’s no scientific reason for it,” Nuno said post-match of Neto’s one-kick corner. “For example today we didn’t have big players that we usually have, Leander (Dendoncker), (Willy) Boly, we change, we go to straight corners. We always try to look for the best, sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t. Having solutions is good.” An assist for Neto made it three for this season, to add to his four goals. At this rate, he’ll push for 10 goals and five assists for the season, which would represent an excellent return (and beat Jota’s tally of seven league goals and one assists in 2019-20). Those four goals and three assists are from 1,201 minutes in the league this season. His tally of three goals and three assists in 2019-20 came from 928 minutes. Not a notable difference — and this backs up Nuno’s answer when asked why Neto has progressed so much in the past 12 months. “Because he’s playing every game,” Nuno says. “And he’s working very hard. He joined us last season, he started in the second half of the season to understand the dimensions and the competition of the Premier League, how hard it is, especially for offensive players who like to dribble and go one v one, it’s very physical. “He’s reading his actions better as time goes by and he’s doing good work. We expect him to sustain and improve some aspects that he clearly has to. “He has ability and is versatile to play on both sides of the attack, but the actions must be more accurate when he changes sides. It’s something we look at and we try.” Improvements to make and consistency to achieve over a much longer period of time, yes. But at this very moment, Neto is one of the most exciting and creative players in the Premier League.

West Brom’s second-half aggression will be key to Allardyce’s survival plan https://theathletic.com/2286828/2020/12/28/west-brom-allardyce-pressing/ “If you just sit back against Liverpool then you die a slow death,” said Jamie Redknapp on Sky Sports before West Bromwich Albion’s game at Anfield. For 45 minutes Albion did exactly that and, by half-time, were still alive against the champions. But you took Redknapp’s point. Albion had enjoyed just 18 per cent possession. In the second half, Sam Allardyce’s side showed precisely what will be needed to stay in the Premier League to claim a point which, as improbable as it might have seemed at the break, they deserved. For half of the game on Merseyside, Albion had all the parts and construction of an Allardyce defensive machine but almost none of the fuel that makes it work. For the second 45 minutes, the energy and intent was added to the obvious first-half structure and Albion found a method that will be a blueprint for the remainder of the season. One statistical difference screamed out between the first and second half. Before half-time Albion’s “passes per defensive action” (PPDA) average was 54.5 — Albion’s highest for any first half this season. This meant Allardyce’s men allowed the Premier League champions more than 50 passes on average between attempts to win the ball back through a tackle, interception, or similar sort of action. So while Albion’s shape (a 4-4-2 that, more often than not, became 4-6-0 when they lost possession) was solid, their play lacked aggression. Albion were passive and allowed Jurgen Klopp’s side too much time on the ball. Even 30 yards from the Albion goal, Liverpool’s midfielders had time and space to pick their passes and get their heads up and — had the champions been on more ruthless form — would surely have taken advantage and put the game to bed. The chart above shows West Brom’s average positions in the first half of the game. After the interval, the story was very different. Albion’s PPDA average also more than halved to 21.3 after the break — they allowed fewer than half as many passes before attempting to try and win the ball back. It is still above their season’s average of 17.8 but understandably so, given the need to be judicious when pressing against one of Europe’s most devastating attacking forces. Allardyce’s team put pressure on the ball while staying mindful of the need to maintain their defensive discipline. The balance between discipline and aggression which had been worryingly skewed towards the former before the break was spot on when the sides emerged for the second half with Karlan Grant, who had been dragged back as an auxiliary left winger in the first half, used as a central outlet in the second. Further statistics underlined the difference. Liverpool made just 318 passes in the second 45 minutes compared to 454 in the first. Albion’s figures of 111 in the second half compared to 103 in the first were similar, but their passing accuracy rose from 48 per cent to 65. Their willingness to be on the front foot allowed them to improve on the ball and create the golden opportunity when Grant was put through on goal and, eventually, to force the corner from which Semi Ajayi scored his first Premier League goal. “The players were so good at holding their discipline, at defending in a pack and as a team,” said Allardyce. “And in that second half they were better at finding a way to attack Liverpool when they got an opportunity. We talked at half-time about how we couldn’t just keep sitting deep as we did. “We got better and better as the second half went on — getting out of defence and into Liverpool’s half. And ultimately, we created two or three chances and one of those was taken by Semi which was a great header and gave us a very precious point. “I told them not to waste the possession they got, make the right decisions and try to get the ball forward quickly. “As soon as you pass the ball sideways, three Liverpool players will run at the man on the ball — if not three it will certainly be two. You can very quickly find yourself in trouble and giving away possession. “We had to get the ball forward quickly and with accuracy. But I also told them to carry on defending as well as they were doing.” And there, in a nutshell, was the plan that will surely serve Albion best for the remainder of the season as Allardyce tries to mastermind an escape from a tricky position with a squad that is far from suited to his tried and trusted methods. He does not have players of vast Premier League experience with the reserves of concentration and discipline to simply defend for 90 minutes, as the promising Ajayi’s lapse for Sadio Mane’s opening goal proved. He does not have a striker with the physical presence and link-up ability to hold the ball and allow his side to escape their own half. He has a squad designed to play the possession-based, easy-on-the-eye style that won promotion under Slaven Bilic but a squad who lack the quality to do the same in the Premier League. Still, though, for all the limitations of the tools at Allardyce’s disposal, his side do better when they blends defensive structure with some boldness, aggression and attacking intent. It is the best way to reap the benefits of the organisation that Allardyce will undoubtedly add.

Why Sean Dyche is so frustrated by referees https://theathletic.com/2286489/2020/12/27/sean-dyche-burnley-leeds-referee/ Sean Dyche’s march across a football pitch is something Burnley supporters are used to seeing. At home matches, he emerges from the dressing room and strides across the turf to the dugouts. Before away games, Dyche will go out onto the opposition’s pitch and stride across it to measure its length and width. Watching him approach referee Rob Jones at full-time of Sunday’s game against Leeds United, however, was something different. His left arm remained outstretched. There was no aggression, no malice, no confrontation, just a simple, polite question as he pointed to his watch. “What time can I come in?” He asked it one. Twice. And again… no response. Jones appeared unable to hear him. Eventually, Dyche gave up asking. Understandably, Dyche wanted answers. “I will be going to see him,” he told Sky Sports during one post-match interview. The idea of sitting in a room, waiting for Dyche to enter it, knowing he is frustrated, is a frightening one. There was no shouting match though, only a civil conversation. Dyche expressed his opinions on the incidents in question, Jones offered his. By the time Dyche arrived for his post-match press conference, it was nearly an hour after the final whistle of a 1-0 defeat for his side. As he sat down, he checked his phone. “Just the referee sending me a Happy Christmas text,” he joked. Did he get the explanation he was looking for? “Not really,” he said. “When you do speak to referees, it is a difficult one. I understand that. They have just finished — it is an emotional game for them as well. It’s only the strange thing when they use their ‘In your opinion’ thing and you remind them that you have just seen it (the incident concerned replayed) 15 times.” The main talking point was the awarding of a foul against Ben Mee on Leeds’ Illan Meslier, which resulted in the goalkeeper dropping the ball and Ashley Barnes sticking it in the net. “The referee said he felt it was a clear foul from Ben Mee on the goalkeeper,” he said, before adding later, “How that is a foul by Ben is bizarre.” The above image from one replay shows that as Meslier attempts to catch the ball, he has kneed Mee in the back. Anywhere else on the pitch, as Dyche eluded, even during his own playing days, that is a foul on the Burnley player. “Ben does nothing other than clearly attempt to win a header,” Dyche said. “He doesn’t even look at the man. The latest thing in the game is the centre-forward looks at the man so where they (the opponent) are going to jump, they jump in his eye-line. Ben purely looks at the ball, the keeper comes over the back, knees him in the back, drops the ball —and somehow that’s a foul (on Meslier).” Mee’s eyes remain on the ball throughout. He could not see Meslier closing in from directly behind him. When the ball does arrive, Meslier never gains control of it. After hitting his hands it bounces off as he falls to the ground on top of Mee, where the foul on him is adjudged to have taken place. “I have spoken endlessly about the game and where it is going physically,” said Dyche. “I have no clue how that is not… at a minimum, how the referee doesn’t give himself five or six seconds, Barnesy whacks it in the goal and it’s a goal because he thinks, actually the keeper is miles out of his goal, he spills the ball. Ben does nothing other than clearly attempt to win a header. He doesn’t even look at the man.” The image below shows when the moment the sound of Jones’ whistle can be heard. It is as Barnes lines up the shot, and is beginning his shooting motion. Jones does give himself a tiny window from Meslier spilling the ball to the moment the Burnley forward goes to strike it but the point Dyche is trying to make is, if you have allowed it to go on for that period, why not allow it to run just one second further? “I’m incredibly frustrated at lots of other decisions but they are two very important decisions that have gone against us,” Dyche said. That’s a reference to the fifth minute, when what turned out to be its only goal came from a penalty won and scored by Patrick Bamford. It was a simple ball over the top; poor play defensively from Burnley but Pope was alert and came out to challenge Bamford, appearing to make contact with the ball and altering the direction of it. The ball is off the ground, making the tackle look forceful, but how else is Pope supposed to challenge Bamford in that situation? “Popey has got the ball,” he said. “You can tell by the trajectory of the ball — where it goes — that he has got the ball. I’m amazed… well, I’m not amazed because I know that the very top of the game is saying that they want more penalties. So there is a directive for that, so I understand that.” Even still, it was not overturned by VAR. The press conference was not without humour though, as Dyche joked he was not an aficionado on the subject — as he rarely sees penalties given for his side. “We’ve only had one every 24 games on average, so that’s bizarre in itself.” By contrast, the penalty awarded to Leeds by Jones was the seventh Burnley have had awarded against them in the Premier League in 2020. only Tottenham Hotspur, with eight, have been penalised more. It was only Jones’ fourth Premier League game (the first was just over a year ago, Sheffield United’s 1-0 away win over Brighton & Hove Albion) and his third this season. Last December, Dyche and counterpart Steve Bruce commented on inexperienced referees after Burnley beat Newcastle 1-0 at Turf Moor. Back then, Dyche asked the question about the division’s lower sides getting a fair share of the top referees. It was something he referenced again at Elland Road, and is a topic Daniel Taylor explained in The Athletic yesterday. “If the referee, as he did to me, suggested he had a decent game today then that’s something that certainly needs to be fed back possibly. But that’s for the powers that be who run the referees, PGMOL (Professional Game Match Officials Limited) to feed back to these referees,” Dyche said. Managers are encouraged to offer feedback too but “not lot a lot is changing though”, according to Dyche. He rarely visits the referee after a match but he felt it necessary on this occasion. “As fans, forget about me being in the game, we’ve got to be really careful,” he said. Dyche has constantly highlighted issues, including players screaming when challenged as well as feigning injuries. He repeated these feelings on Sunday afternoon, but believes he has become a lone voice. He reiterated his point that the game is at a precarious moment with the physicality minimal and is pushing towards becoming a non-contact sport. This is not Dyche searching for excuses. He admitted that Leeds started brightly, and it was a poor shape by Burnley that led to Pope needing to make the challenge on Bamford for the penalty. Equally, he was delighted with his side’s second-half performance, pressing well and controlling the game but they could not create that one, golden opportunity to equalise. Leeds dug in, as his side have done on many occasions. The decisions were not the complete story of the game, but they had a significant impact.

In the battle for hearts and minds, Marcelo Bielsa is winning those that matter https://theathletic.com/2285902/2020/12/27/leeds-united-marcelo-bielsa-tactics/ One of the morning jobs at Leeds United is the translation of newspaper articles for Marcelo Bielsa. His secretary has the task of converting English to Spanish while retaining the nuance of everything that is written. Bielsa made a habit of tracking press reports earlier in his career and kept it going after arriving in England but the workload increased with Leeds’ promotion to the Premier League. More reports, more opinion; and Bielsa wants it all — the good, the bad and the ugly. Some of it helps him gauge the general mood, a finger in the wind. Some of it, like the dispatches from Old Trafford last Sunday, raises his hackles and tests his patience. He subjects himself to the worst of it anyway, proving human nature draws you to things that are bad for your health. If you doubt that Bielsa follows media coverage closely, listen to the press conference he staged on Christmas Eve. Listen to the tone of it and the language he used: destabilise, ridicule, embarrassing. “The lie that is sold to the public” about him preferring style over substance. His relationship with journalists is respectfully guarded, no doubt because he expects positivity and negativity to swerve sharply and lead to moments of conflict. He will tell you that the articles themselves do not matter to him. He sees them as an irrelevance in the context of managing his squad (even if he was irked by someone asking Patrick Bamford after Leeds’ 6-2 defeat to Manchester United if the players might think about asking Bielsa to rein in his tactics). “What worries me,” Bielsa said, “is that what’s written does influence the public. It can decrease their capacity to understand.” His concern, it seemed, was that a shedload of critical pieces questioning the way Leeds play and doubting his resolute devotion to his brand may make the public think that yes, Bielsa’s football is unhinged and yes, it would be better to invest in the pragmatism that is clearly doing wonders for the top-flight’s other promoted teams this season. But in the battle for hearts and minds, Bielsa is winning those that matter. Leeds’ supporters, with very few exceptions, are happy to ride at whichever speed he drives. The club are more than satisfied with him, too. “This style took the Championship by storm,” wrote chief executive Angus Kinnear in his programme notes before Sunday’s 1-0 win over Burnley. “We’ve refused to compromise our beliefs, even in the toughest league in the world.” In other words, we’ve got his back. Kinnear also noted that the contrast between Leeds routing Newcastle United 5-2 and then losing heavily at Old Trafford, all in the space of four days, was an example of how the club will “take time to adapt to the level we aspire to thrive at”. And therein lies the crux of this debate. Bielsa’s Leeds project is almost three years in the making but it is five short months since he laid his hands on the Championship title. How far could Leeds have expected to progress in that period, through one transfer window and 15 Premier League fixtures? Is Bielsa not nicely above par for a head coach who is exploring this division for the first time? If there is one thing that can be said about the Premier League this season, it is that nobody in it has been close to flawless. Bielsa talked about media members mocking him and misrepresenting him, but what he suffers from more is the assumption that he will take straw and spin it into endless amounts of gold thread. To be cast as a genius is to have genius expected of you, in a way that underestimates the difficulty of his job. For the average manager, promotion means baby steps and acclimatisation. Where Bielsa is concerned, he is nine points clear of the bottom three and being told he should change. There is a bit of tunnel vision here, and it is not his. The upsides to his reign at Elland Road are plentiful, such as Bamford taking himself to 10 goals for the term with a fifth-minute penalty against Burnley. Any plans Sean Dyche had to strangle the match for long enough for his visitors to nick it was blown apart by their goalkeeper, Nick Pope, sliding through Bamford in the fourth minute. Pope got some of the ball but too much of Bamford for referee Rob Jones to let the tackle go. Bamford’s confident penalty, driven high into the net, said everything about his epiphany under Bielsa, as opposed to the clash of personalities he once put up with under Dyche during a brief spell at Turf Moor. That finish delivered a 1-0 victory, albeit without any tinsel or gift-wrapping. Leeds persevered on a pitch as stodgy and slow to move as leftover Christmas turkey on New Year’s Eve and wasted chances to properly put away Burnley before half-time. Burnley were unhappy about a decision to rule out Ashley Barnes’ finish for a foul on Illan Meslier, and Chris Wood should have scored against his previous club with a header from underneath the crossbar. But for 45 minutes, it was steady and it was routine, just as the clamour after Old Trafford demanded. Dyche, though, flicked a switch and turned on the high press in the second half. It forced Leeds to dig in and dig in desperately, doing what could loosely be described as playing a different way (or winning ugly, as they say in Buenos Aires). It was more through necessity than choice — caused, Bielsa admitted, by Leeds struggling to take their attacks far beyond halfway and deny Burnley good territory — but at full-time, it was another win and 20 points on the board. They will call that halfway towards safety but it is 10 years since anyone actually needed to get to 40 points to stay in the Premier League. Bielsa and his players have half a foot in next season’s top flight already. As Leeds evolve and grow familiar with the division, high standards will be enforced. Which is to say that if, in a year’s time, Bielsa’s team are getting punched over the ropes at Old Trafford again, brutal results might start to grate but he is so well ensconced that Leeds would be delighted to have a guarantee he will be in the dug-out this time in 2021. Scepticism in the wider reaches of English football is being drowned out by support in his own back yard and when he fights his corner, here, in Leeds, he is preaching to the converted. Who else is he paid to please?

Sensible Transfers: Nkunku, Buendia and Diop would help Arsenal in problem areas https://theathletic.com/2273580/2020/12/28/arsenal-transfers-buendia-nkunku/ Heading into the January transfer window, the problems Arsenal face aren’t identical to their summer ones, but they are very similar. Following their FA Cup final triumph in August, there were clear objectives to be met in the looming transfer window. A creative midfielder had to be signed, as did a supporting midfielder and a more all-encompassing box-to-box option. Alongside this, Mikel Arteta needed another left-sided centre-back to challenge Pablo Mari. Some of these needs were filled, but one has yet to be satisfactorily addressed. Arsenal have their much-needed left-sided centre-back in Gabriel Magalhaes, arguably Arsenal’s player of the season so far, their box-to-box midfielder in Thomas Partey — still waiting for a real run in the side — and a supporting midfielder in re-signed loanee Dani Ceballos. Willian arrived from Chelsea as a creative option but has failed to meet expectations. Too often, he has cut a stationary figure out wide, unwilling to drift into more dangerous areas behind opposition midfielders to create real problems. Arsenal are back at square one then, looking for a creative force to drive their season back to some form of normality. As reported by David Ornstein in early December, Arsenal were interested in Dominik Szoboszlai — who had a €25 million release clause, but the 20-year-old will instead join RB Leipzig in Germany next month from their Austrian sister club Red Bull Salzburg. While the player had physical and technical attributes that appealed, Arsenal had concerns over his capacity to make an immediate impact in the team, as well as the size of the agent’s fee. Ultimately, the relationship between Salzburg and Leipzig was what decided Szoboszlai’s next destination. In the summer, Arsenal bid for 22-year-old Lyon midfielder Houssem Aouar. It’s easy to see what attracted them to the Frenchman. Aouar can play both as a No 8 and a No 10. with the ability to both glide upfield with the ball and unpick defences. As yet, however, there has been no indication Arsenal are ready to resurrect their interest. during the winter window. After the player publicly claimed his contentment at staying in France earlier this season, prising him away in January appears unlikely. Given the difficulty of buying in January, it may be that Arsenal need to scour the market for opportunities. There is one such potential case in Barcelona. Before the dismantling of their international scouting network, Arsenal had watched Barcelona’s young attacking midfielder Riqui Puig on several occasions. Puig’s recent fallout with head coach Ronald Koeman means he is likely to be available for transfer next month, with talk of interest from Leeds United. Technically, the Spaniard fits the profile of midfielder Arsenal require. However, at just 21, they may have similar concerns over his capacity to make an instant impact in English football — and fans will doubtless still feel stung by memories of Denis Suarez’s disappointing loan spell from Barcelona in the same window two years ago. Arsenal have also maintained an interest in Christopher Nkunku, the RB Leipzig midfielder Sven Mislintat had pushed for them to sign in that January 2019 window. Looking at the qualities Arteta’s squad currently lacks, the 23-year-old would be a more than welcome addition, with the ability to play deeper as a No 8, higher as a No 10. as well as out wide. He has most commonly featured in central areas, where his industry and technical skill enable him to influence games even when he does not record a goal or assist. His versatility has been useful to RB Leipzig as they mount a charge for the German title — but their involvement in that race makes the chance of acquiring him at midseason a slim one. David Ornstein reported for The Athletic on Boxing Day that Arsenal have also considered Julian Brandt, of Borussia Dortmund. If Arsenal were to favour a player more familiar with the Premier League, however, Emi Buendia would appear to be an attractive option. More commonly used off the right wing, this season he has drifted into central areas much more often than in his previous two seasons by Championship leaders Norwich City — as analysed by Michael Bailey in November. In Arsenal’s current state, where the use of a 3-4-3 looks to be frequent once again, the 24-year-old’s inclusion in this area would be particularly fitting to combat both the creative and defensive voids at the top of the pitch. Despite Norwich’s relegation last season, Buendia’s 83 chances created were fourth overall behind just Kevin De Bruyne (136), Jack Grealish (90) and Trent Alexander-Arnold (87), while playing a fifth-best 83 key passes (the final one before the recipient of the ball has an attempt at goal without scoring) and making seven actual assists. Alongside this, he made a club-high 82 tackles (31 more than any other Norwich player and sixth-highest for Premier League midfielders) feeding into head coach Daniel Farke’s philosophy at Carrow Road. His influence has continued into this season, creating the most chances from open play in the Championship (42), scoring six goals, contributing six assists, winning 22 of his 40 tackles (55 per cent) and contributing to their press. The positions he adopts without the ball have been integral to taking his side to the top of the league so far, it’s understandable why Farke isn’t thinking of offloading mid-season, saying: “It’s not a topic for us,” when asked if either Buendia or attacking midfielder Todd Cantwell could leave in January after both played vital roles in their 2-0 win over Cardiff City last weekend. One issue that counts against the Argentinian is that, in Nicolas Pepe and Willian, Arsenal have already invested considerable resource in players who ostensibly start from the right-hand side. Arsenal have also discussed the possibility of recruiting a right-sided centre-back. Considering the club’s number of senior central defenders currently stands at eight, those ambitions may cause confusion initially — but context is key. The trio of Sokratis, Shkodran Mustafi and David Luiz are all set to be out of contract this summer and, as reported by David Ornstein in mid-December, there is scope for barely-used teenager William Saliba to leave on loan — preferably to a UK-based club. Of those four mentioned above, only Luiz has been a fairly regular fixture in the first team this season and there is still room for improvement in that area. Calum Chambers’ recent return from almost a year out with a knee injury will help with this but considering the situation the club find themselves in, their longer-term plans for the position may have to become more immediate. David Moyes using Aaron Cresswell as a third centre-back has been incredibly beneficial for West Ham. A natural left-back, he affects the game in more unorthodox areas, similar to how Kieran Tierney operates in a back three for Arteta. As a result of Cresswell’s new role, Issa Diop has played just four Premier League games this season. The Frenchman impressed in his first two seasons in England despite West Ham’s overall struggles. Playing 32 league games last season (second-highest among Arsenal and West Ham defenders), he won 47 interceptions (15 more than David Luiz, who played one game more than him), 79 aerial duels (second highest at the two clubs) and was dribbled past just nine times (11th-most among the two clubs; defenders). An imposing, right-footed centre-back who is currently out of favour at his club, Diop could be a good option for Arteta to solve short-term issues in defence. What must be taken into account, however, is that despite being out of the team currently, West Ham’s three at the back system could mean the 23-year-old will still be needed as back-up. Alongside this, ill-discipline has been an issue of late at Arsenal and Diop conceded more fouls than any other defender at Arsenal or West Ham last season (31), which could raise understandable reservations. If Arsenal deem a centre-half necessary, perhaps a loan deal would be more appropriate, so they can assess how Saliba fares over the next six months wherever he ends up. The other thing to note is that Arsenal consider moving players on in the forthcoming window to be almost as big a priority as securing new ones. The squad is too big and keeping all those players happy is proving increasingly difficult. This will be a significant test not just of Edu’s ability to recruit, but his knack as a salesman.

Tottenham fans can only stomach negativity if it brings wins – change is needed https://theathletic.com/2286978/2020/12/28/tottenham-mourinho-negative/ Throughout the second half at Molineux on Sunday night, that famous bit of Barry Davies commentary kept playing in my head. “And the Italians are out because they will not learn,” Davies said at the 2002 World Cup after Italy’s ultra-defensive approach saw them sit on a 1-0 lead against South Korea and ultimately lose 2-1. It was a similar scenario for Tottenham against Wolverhampton Wanderers. Ahead through Tanguy Ndombele’s first-minute goal, Spurs tried to protect their lead and, as felt increasingly inevitable in the second half, conceded a late equaliser. It was the identical pattern as against Crystal Palace earlier this month, and followed draws being snatched from the jaws of victory at home to Newcastle and West Ham in the early weeks of the campaign. Throw in Liverpool’s dramatic late winner two weeks ago and Spurs have dropped nine points with goals conceded in the final 10 minutes of games this season, more than any other Premier League team. It doesn’t appear to be a coincidence. If you sit on narrow leads where the margins between winning and drawing are very fine, this kind of thing will happen. It will also happen if, as was the case for Spurs at Molineux, you don’t produce a shot on target after the 21st minute, and come up with a total of one effort on goal (an Eric Dier free kick) in the subsequent 69 minutes. Broadening that out, Spurs have managed just 22 second-half shots in their last seven league games. As with so much of Tottenham’s season, many of their issues seem to stem from the trauma of the 3-3 home collapse against West Ham. After that, Mourinho switched to a more defensive approach — and it was one that led to Spurs conceding just once in their next six Premier League matches. It was an extraordinary turnaround but one that was helped by Tottenham often effectively setting up in a back six with Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg and Moussa Sissoko dropping alongside Dier and Toby Alderweireld. It was a very effective defensive tactic but Spurs have not been the same side going forward since. They scored 15 goals in the four Premier League games prior to and including West Ham, compared to 11 in the subsequent 10. That is a significant drop-off. In the immediate aftermath of West Ham, fans understood the need to dig in and grind out a few wins — as Tottenham did against Burnley, Brighton and West Brom. And there were no complaints from the vast majority of supporters when the approach led to seven points from the games against Manchester City, Chelsea and Arsenal. There was sympathy from many as well after the unfortunate defeat at Anfield when Spurs were more enterprising than expected. But was the safety-first approach really necessary at Crystal Palace? Or against a Wolves team that without Raul Jimenez looked desperately short of an attacking threat? Playing reactive, largely unexciting football is generally fine with fans if it brings results. The moment it doesn’t it becomes a problem, and that’s what we’re seeing now. Of those two matches, Palace was more acceptable given the way Roy Hodgson’s side roused themselves in the second half, roared on by a small but noisy crowd at Selhurst Park. But against Wolves, it felt like a team with Harry Kane, Son Heung-min, Tanguy Ndombele and later, Steven Bergwijn should have backed themselves to do more than sit deep and soak up pressure against the team that started the day 11th after three defeats in their previous four matches. A key question is the extent to which Spurs played like they did by design or because they were forced to by their opponents. Mourinho claimed the latter against Palace, saying it was not his instructions for the team to sit deep. Against Wolves he appeared to be making a similar point, saying that: “We had control of the game but we had 89 minutes to score more goals and we didn’t. It was not about scoring more goals, it was about not being dangerous or ambitious.” Frustratingly, when asked whether he had instructed the players to sit in and protect the lead, technical issues cut Mourinho off after he said: “Ask the players at half-time what I told (them). I think it was obvious for you when I..” He pointedly repeated the message in an interview for Spurs TV, adding: “I would like the players to tell you what I told (them) at half-time.” The implication seemed to be that the players had not carried out his instructions, and that sitting deep trying to protect the lead was not his intention. Mourinho might have pointed to replacing Sergio Reguilon with Bergwijn as evidence of this, while bringing in Davinson Sanchez and Harry Winks was at least an attempt to get Spurs to defend a bit higher and have a better range of passing in midfield. Whatever the intentions, the way Sunday played out is a big concern. Spurs are either unwilling or unable to push on and kill games at the moment. And they have picked up two points from their last four league games. But the nature of the season so far means they are only one point off the top four, and six off first-placed Liverpool. Home wins against Fulham and Leeds this week will likely lift them from fifth into the Champions League places. Looking beyond just the short term, however, it appears that Tottenham need a reverse of the tightening up we saw after West Ham. Doing so was necessary to stiffen up a leaky defence that had gone 10 matches without a clean sheet, and kept just seven in Mourinho’s first 44 matches in charge. Instigating that kind of turnaround was hugely impressive, but it feels like it’s gone too far the other way. Teams no longer fear Tottenham’s attacking threat, especially when, like on Sunday, their most impressive player Ndombele is taken off after 70 minutes. It meant that when Spurs were finally woken up into trying to score after conceding that 86th-minute equaliser they were doing so without Ndombele and Son, who had also been withdrawn. Like after West Ham, there’s no shame in accepting a bit of a reboot is needed and altering the team’s approach, even if on this occasion the fear is that doing so will leave Spurs exposed defensively. After sitting through the inevitability of more dropped points on Sunday night, it has to be a risk worth taking.

Professional football survey: reminder Dear football/soccer enthusiast, the CIES Football Observatory wishes you a happy end of the year 2020 and an excellent 2021, hopefully with the possibility of attending more matches in the stadiums. We also kindly invite you to take about 5 minutes of your time to answer this anonymous questionnaire about the fans’ opinion on professional football. Warmest thanks to all those who already answered. Your answers will be analysed and made available in the January’s 2021 Monthly Report. Sincerely yours On behalf of the CIES Football Observatory, its head Dr. Raffaele Poli

4 1 3 2 or 4 3 1 2 or 4-1-2-1-2 diamond

Not sold on Tuchel at all.

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