Vesper

too short!!

2 different positions

Nagelsmann is the answer been saying it for years now

Ndombele is a perfect example of why it is FAR too early to start to call Werner and Havertz busts he struggled like hell his first year and now is one of the best MFers in the league

3 4 1 2 an old Mou favourite

lol, I post in the SFL thread FUCKING spuds nil 1

delete

Neto too, I so rate him

Traore's warmup is mental AF

come on Wolves!!!!! pound those sp*rs cunts

that late Grant chance was one of the best chances in ages for the scouse vermin's home streak to be broken I am starting to get really nervous that they break our record

he was whingeing about having to play against a back 10, lol he thinks every team should just go all out and try to outscore them smdh

Bootlespeak roflmaooo

Sam Johnstone is deffo one of the best keepers in the EPL pretty big lad too, 1.93m West Brom stole him off Manure for only £6.6m

and Grant had a chance to win it

2020-21 English Premier League Wolverhampton Wanderers Tottenham Hotspur http://www.sportnews.to/sports/2020/premier-league-wolverhampton-wanderers-vs-tottenham-hotspur-s1/ https://www.totalsportek.com/arsenal-streams/

Rice and Soucek give West Ham an elite midfield – no wonder they’re in demand https://theathletic.com/2264857/2020/12/17/rice-soucek-west-ham-chelsea-bayern/ Based on current form, there is an argument to be made that Declan Rice and Tomas Soucek are the best midfield partnership in the Premier League. In the 1-1 draw at home to Crystal Palace last night, Sebastien Haller got the plaudits for his remarkable acrobatic goal but the level of consistency his team-mates Rice and Soucek are showing has been a big part of West Ham United exceeding the pre-season expectations. Rice is 21 and Soucek is 25 and in his first full Premier League season, suggesting both will only get better. They have been linked with moves to Chelsea and Bayern Munich respectively. Chelsea’s interest in Rice is strong but he has spoken of himself as a future captain at West Ham. Those close to Soucek say he is committed to the east London club and have dismissed speculation linking him with reigning Bundesliga and European champions Bayern. They say the Czech international thoroughly enjoys playing under David Moyes, his family is settled in the capital following his arrival on an initial loan last January and that if an offer were to come in, West Ham would not entertain anything less than £50 million — rouhgly double what he cost them. It is worth noting there is no buyout clause in Soucek’s contract. Using data from smarterscout, we can see the impact both players are having on the team. Smarterscout is a site that offers detailed analytics on footballers all over the world, producing a score between zero and 99 in a variety of categories — a bit like the player ratings in the FIFA video games but powered by real data and advanced analytics. The pizza chart above shows Soucek’s strengths, with his aerial ability standing out. Against Palace last night, he won the most aerial duels of any outfield player with 10. Indeed, of all the midfielders in the Premier League, 6ft 4in Soucek is first by some distance when it comes to aerial duels won — he is on 71, Palace’s ex-West Ham midfielder Cheikhou Kouyate is second with 44. Soucek has also scored three league goals this season and his impact in the attacking third emphasises why there have been comparisons to Marouane Fellaini, the tall Belgian midfielder who filled a similar role for Moyes at Everton and then Manchester United from 2008-13. Soucek also has full marks for “defending intensity”, which effectively reaffirms that he is a quality sitting midfielder who provides good protection for the defence. He and Rice are good at winning the ball back for West Ham. N’Golo Kante of Chelsea is the only Premier League midfielder to have made more interceptions (30) than Rice (28), while Soucek (19) is also among the top 10. The 30-cap Czech is not just a defensive player, though. Aside from Kevin De Bruyne, Bruno Fernandes, Jack Grealish and Mason Mount — some of the league’s best attacking players — no midfielder has taken more shots than Soucek in the Premier League this season. His 23 attempts rank him higher than James Rodriguez, James Maddison, Phil Foden and plenty of other attacking luminaries. In the chart above, we can see his high ratings for “shot volume” and “receptions in opposition box”. Those scores demonstrate that, for a defensive midfielder, he offers plenty in attack thanks to his shooting ability and movement into dangerous positions. He does not carry the ball much and has a low score for “link-up play volume”, which is based on passes of less than 10 yards. Fortunately for West Ham, that is where Rice comes in. The England international is a very able carrier of the ball, links the play for Soucek and is far better at retaining possession than his midfield partner. Rice can also offer a goal threat and came close to scoring a late winner against Palace with a long-range shot that flashed wide of the target. Whenever Rice receives the ball, he looks to make a forward pass. The stats will highlight he is yet to score in the Premier League since the 3-1 win over Watford in July, 18 appearances ago, and has only one assist this season but that belies the changes he has made to his game in the past year. Soucek’s defensive strengths have freed up Rice to be more attack-minded than he was in 2019-20, when his midfield partners were Carlos Sanchez, Jack Wilshere and Mark Noble. He is now orchestrating much of West Ham’s attacking play, as the examples below show. In the 2-1 win at Leeds United last Friday, Rice navigates his way out of a difficult position on the left flank, above, and spots Pablo Fornals making an attacking run. He threads an inviting pass in to the attacking midfielder, who squanders the chance. One of Rice’s best performances was the 1-0 victory at Sheffield United last month. In the first graphic, above, he receives a pass from Fornals deep in his own half. Rice then makes a driving run, carrying the ball over halfway and into the attacking third, before trying to find Fornals with the return pass. It is overhit, but the move is an illustration of the role Rice has as one of West Ham’s chief carriers of the ball. Another example, from the same fixture, sees him collect the ball around the halfway line with Sheffield United’s defence in retreat but still goalside of the West Ham attackers. Rice drives towards the box, drawing one defender to effectively take him out the game, and playing the ball through for Arthur Masuaku, who squares to Haller, only for the striker to miss the chance from close range. These are only a few examples but it is clear that the arrival of Soucek has allowed Rice to show that attacking side to his game, which is an interesting development given that Chelsea, who could make an approach in January when the transfer window reopens, supposedly want to use him at centre-half. For now, the partnership between Rice and Soucek is the foundation upon which Moyes is trying to build West Ham into a top-half side, so keeping them both at the club will be crucial.

Chelsea didn’t track or press. Now Lampard faces his toughest period yet https://theathletic.com/2285228/2020/12/27/chelsea-lampard-sacking-arsenal/ If this latest shambles of a Chelsea performance could be summed up in a single sequence, it was the passage of play that led to Arsenal’s third goal. Bernd Leno rolled the ball out to Mohamed Elneny, who got the ball back under half-hearted pressure and moved it on to Rob Holding, who could have been forgiven for not believing his eyes when he looked up to survey his options: None of the four Chelsea players in his immediate vicinity were in a position to get close to him, but nor were they blocking any of his likeliest passes into midfield. Bukayo Saka showed for the easy ball, while N’Golo Kante’s push upfield had left Granit Xhaka in a sea of space. Jorginho was so far behind the pair of them that he barely makes it into the shot above. Holding opted to play it to Xhaka and, in the process, took half of Chelsea’s outfielders out of the game. Xhaka navigated Jorginho with a simple one-two and played it to Hector Bellerin, who advanced on the visiting defence with Christian Pulisic in his wake, Emile Smith Rowe to his right and Saka to his left. The ball ended up at the feet of Saka via Smith Rowe, and then in the back of the net via Saka’s mishit cross. Within the space of 13 seconds, Arsenal went from one penalty area to another at a fairly leisurely pace without even as much as an attempted Chelsea tackle. The finish was obviously fortunate, but look again at the screenshot above: if Saka’s connection goes to plan and he delivers a dangerous cross, the alternative result is still a dangerous two-on-two aerial battle created with no defensive resistance. “When you attack games like we did — attack is the wrong word — things like the Saka goal happen, because you don’t deserve luck,” Frank Lampard said. Lampard is adamant that Chelsea’s problems were not rooted in his tactics, but in the application of his players. “Not good enough on the basics — sprints, pressing, running, speed of pass and trying to play,” he added. “All the basics were wrong.” It is a bold argument for any manager to make publicly, one that leaves room for accusations of dodging responsibility from supporters and also risks alienating the dressing room. There were, however, signs from the earliest moments of the game that Chelsea simply were not going to offer the level of effort and intensity required to match a more youthful Arsenal side playing with desperation. Here, in the first minute, Bellerin plays the ball inside to Saka on the Arsenal right. Timo Werner’s job as the left winger — leaving aside for a moment the question of whether he should be a left winger — is to track the Spaniard’s forward run, particularly because he can see that Ben Chilwell is occupied with Saka: He does not, and the result is that Saka plays an easy pass to the overlapping Bellerin and Chilwell has to recover to try to block the cross: Bellerin’s cross gets past him and reaches Martinelli at the back post. Chelsea are hugely fortunate that he shoots rather than laying the ball off to Smith Rowe, and that he misses the target. Barely a minute later Chelsea’s passivity became glaringly obvious again. Xhaka receives the ball on the halfway line with space to advance into and virtually the freedom of the Emirates Stadium to decide what he will do once he gets there: Chelsea allow him to carry the ball all the way to the left side unchallenged. Pulisic and Mateo Kovacic are neither pressuring the ball nor blocking any passing angles, and there is an obvious opportunity for Xhaka to set up an overload of Reece James with the help of Martinelli and Kieran Tierney, who is already on the move: He takes it and while James is able to recover, he is forced to concede a corner that Arsenal did not have to work particularly hard to earn: Werner and Pulisic offered very little by way of protection for Chilwell or James — a particularly big problem, considering that Arsenal’s two most threatening players were Tierney and Bellerin. Here, in the sequence that led directly to the penalty, Werner does not even seem aware of where Tierney is: Xhaka slips in Tierney, Werner does not react and James is forced to rush out to deal with the danger. This time he overcommits, gets beaten and ends up bringing the Arsenal man down in the box: On the rare occasions they did decide to pressure the ball, Chelsea’s efforts were uncoordinated and ineffective. Just look at the space Holding has to play beyond the two-man press of Mason Mount and Tammy Abraham into the feet of Saka here, initiating the sequence of play that leads to Kante fouling Saka and conceding the free-kick that Xhaka curls into the top corner: It is possible that fatigue is a factor. Four of Chelsea’s outfield starters — Werner, Kurt Zouma, Mount and Kante — had played more than 1,500 minutes across all competitions before kick-off; in contrast, no outfield player in the Arsenal squad had reached that mark. Much was made of Lampard’s men outrunning Leeds United this month but all of the four performances since have been lethargic, including an unconvincing win over West Ham that did not merit the 3-0 scoreline. Lampard’s job is to manage his squad through this testing run of fixtures. Werner looks badly in need of a break, mentally as much as physically, and Callum Hudson-Odoi was the only bright spark against Arsenal. Why he has not been given more of a chance becomes a more salient question with every new underwhelming display from the starters. But this alarming dip in form raises bigger questions. Liverpool can put Chelsea nine points adrift of the title conversation by beating West Bromwich Albion, and the next two visitors to Stamford Bridge are a buoyant Aston Villa — with only 48 hours recovery time — and a Manchester City team who appear to be finally hitting their stride. Two more performances like the last four will only embolden those who are voicing their doubts about this team’s broader prospects with Lampard in charge. Lampard encountered adversity during the winter last season, punctuated by a demoralising 2-2 draw with 10-man Arsenal at Stamford Bridge in January. But that was adversity minus expectation; the stakes this season are much higher and regardless of where the public blame lies, the manager always has more to lose than his players do.

harsh

Not everyone watched the game. I am going to keep posting TA articles until enough people say stop. Better their in-depth professionalism than some dross Media Referee or Transfer Tavern bollocks (like MR saying we were crazy to sell Jorginho as he is a world class pkayer vital to the squad)

It hardly is a friendly tone: If this latest shambles of a Chelsea performance could be summed up in a single sequence, it was the passage of play that led to Arsenal’s third goal.

Håland, Mbappe, Dolberg, Lukaku? Using data to find Aguero’s replacement https://theathletic.com/2265544/2020/12/26/aguero-city-replacement-transfer-haaland-mbappe-lukaku-dolberg/ Next week, Sergio Aguero can agree a free transfer away from Manchester City if he wants to. His contract expires in the summer and so far it is not clear whether he will be at the Etihad Stadium for the 2021-22 season. Even if he is, though, it’s clear City need to sign a striker capable of putting the ball in the net on a regular basis. Having waited a year to replace Vincent Kompany and at least a year to replace David Silva, they surely cannot afford to wait so long to find Aguero’s successor. But who will it be? There are two obvious answers: Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappe. The problem is that they are the obvious answers for every elite club looking for a new striker, so it might be a good idea to compile a slightly longer list. We can do so in the same way that we identified possible left-backs for City a few days ago — by using smarterscout and their FIFA-style ratings powered by real data and advanced analytics. Some clubs do use smarterscout as part of their recruitment process, and earlier this year The Athletic’s data and analytics expert Tom Worville used it to identify Kostas Tsimikas as a potential option at left-back for Liverpool, a few weeks before they signed him from Olympiakos. As well as being used to give players ratings on various aspects of their game, it can run searches to identify players of similar styles, or even come up with a list of players based on certain criteria. So, let’s try to find options to replace Aguero at City. First of all, let’s see if there are any players similar to the man himself. We can search for ‘model seasons’, which allows us to find players who perform similarly to how Aguero did in 2016-17, 2017-18 and so on. There are four full seasons we can use for Aguero, and they provide different results, reflecting changes in the Argentinian’s game over time. Given City usually sign players from the top leagues in England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain or Portugal, only players from those leagues are included in the results. We’ll also apply an age cap of 27. There are a few strikers who match against Aguero’s different seasons. Kasper Dolberg of French club Nice comes up every single time. Lyon’s Moussa Dembele and Lautaro Martinez of Inter Milan come up in three out of four searches (the three most recent) and Paris Saint-Germain’s Mauro Icardi comes up in two (the last two). Other players include Schalke’s Benito Raman, Portugal-based duo Brayan Riascos (Nacional) and Bruno Duarte (Vitoria Guimaraes) and Udinese’s Kevin Lasagna. Carlos Vinicius, who signed for Spurs in the summer on loan from Benfica, is rated as similar to the 2019-20 Aguero, as is Eintracht Frankfurt’s AC Milan loanee Andre Silva. Somewhat unsurprisingly, his City colleague Gabriel Jesus makes an appearance too. The passing towards goal metric is defined as a pass that brings the ball at least 10 metres closer to the centre of the opponent’s goal, whereas link-up passing is any other pass. The ratings for link-up passing, passing towards goal, dribbling, receiving in the box and shooting do not tell us how good a player is at them, but how often they do it in a match. Likewise, disrupting opposition moves and recovering a moving ball show how often a player does those things per minute out of possession. What about Haaland and Mbappe? After City drew 0-0 in the Manchester derby earlier this month, Match Of The Day pundits Ian Wright and Alan Shearer were asked which striker they would sign for Guardiola’s team, and both said Haaland or Mbappe. Broadly, these two are good at the same things and bad at others (Haaland’s attacking output for Borussia Dortmund is alarmingly low, but his smarterscout rating this season in 75 out of 99). A look at each player’s in-possession activity map gives us an idea of where they use the ball and how they use it. For example, the larger blue/green towers on Aguero’s show the amount of short passes. Aguero’s in-possession activity map, 2019-20 Haaland’s shows more long balls played from deeper positions (the yellow blocks), and more dribbles toward the right side of the pitch (purple blocks). Haaland’s in-possession activity map, 2019-20 Mbappe’s is pretty different to both, clearly, with much of his work for PSG done towards the left side, despite his position being tracked as a central striker. Mbappe’s in-possession activity map, 2019-20 We can also do a ‘smartersearch’ by toggling various characteristics to find players who would suit a certain style of football. So when looking for players suitable for City, it’s a good idea to mark things like ball retention and link-up passing ‘very important’ in the search criteria, as Aguero and Jesus both rate higher than other similar players in this regard. It’s obviously a good idea to look for high attacking output, shooting and receiving in the box, too. After applying the same filters as above (top leagues, age and recent performances) there are 58 different results, and the top five look like this. It’s reassuring to see Jesus on the list, and to a lesser extent Leicester City’s Kelechi Iheanacho, considering he used to play for Manchester City. It’s fair to say that either of Haaland and Mbappe would be a dream signing for most City fans — but the same goes for any top club in Europe. Haaland’s buy-out clause doesn’t kick in until 2022, while it is believed Real Madrid are in pole position for Mbappe should he leave Paris. The alternatives Like with Aguero, we can look for players who compare to Haaland’s and Mbappe’s different seasons for their clubs. Interestingly, Milan’s Silva features again, matching with both of Haaland’s seasons at Dortmund. His activity map is fairly similar to Aguero’s and Jesus’s, although he is less involved in the play outside the box than either of them, which will have a lot to do with how City play. Silva’s in-possession activity map, 2019-20 Jesus’ in-possession activity map, 2019-20 Icardi appears again as a match for the Norwegian’s performances so far this season, and while Aguero’s countryman seems to be a good fit for City on paper, a knee injury would probably scupper any chance of a move in the near future. Manchester United’s Anthony Martial also features, as he does when looking for players similar to Mbappe, although for obvious reasons he can be ruled out as a potential signing for bitter local rivals City. There are several players who are rated as similar to Mbappe, but apart from Haaland himself, most of them highlight the key trait that is overlooked by this model: they simply do not score enough goals and couldn’t be considered as an Aguero replacement. These include Real Sociedad’s Alexander Isak and Karl Ekambi of Lyon. Who’s suitable for City? Comparing players to Jesus could be instructive here, because he has had enough seasons at City now and compares well enough to Aguero to help build something of a club-specific profile. Players who are similar to both Jesus and Aguero should, in theory, be a good fit for City. Interestingly, Lys Mousset, the Sheffield United striker, shows up among the results, and the 24-year-old Frenchman actually ranked as the sixth-best fit based on our earlier ‘smartersearch’. Like some of those similar to Mbappe, though, he is unlikely to be considered. A better match for City might be Inter’s Martinez, who not only matches three Aguero seasons, but Jesus’ two most recent full campaigns as well. He hit 14 goals in 35 Serie A appearances last season, has five in 13 so far this time and has long been linked with a move to the Etihad due to his physical similarities to countryman Aguero. Maybe the city of Milan could provide Pep Guardiola’s next striker, even if it’s not Martinez. Romelu Lukaku was recommended on the smartersearch and while that might raise a few eyebrows among the City fanbase, the former Manchester United striker has scored 11 in 12 in Serie A this season, after 23 in 36 in Italy’s top flight in his debut season for Inter a year ago. The memes about the Belgium international’s first touch will do him no favours but smarterscout shows his ball retention, link-up passing and receiving in the box ratings have improved markedly this season. It would obviously be a surprise if City were to bring him back to Manchester, but it’s an interesting thought. The same goes for Silva, who made a big move to AC Milan from Porto in summer 2017 and is now on loan at Eintracht Frankfurt, where he has scored nine goals in 12 Bundesliga games this season. It’s a similar story for Dolberg, who matched all Aguero searches and one of three Jesus searches. The 23-year-old was very highly-rated as he came through at Ajax, and he hit 11 goals in 23 Ligue 1 appearances in his 2019-20 Nice debut season following a €20.5 million move in the August. He has three in nine so far this season and his trajectory is worth keeping an eye on. It may be a surprise to some of you to have read this far and not seen the words ‘Harry’ and ‘Kane’. That is probably because although the Tottenham Hotspur striker has a 99 rating for his passing towards goal this season, Kane’s link-up passing gets a zero. That shows he is more involved in getting Spurs up the pitch, and not linking the play with short, sideways or backwards passes, and is something reflected in his smarterscout ratings throughout his career. His receiving in the box rating is two this season, which gives an idea of where he has been doing a lot of his work. A comparison of his and Aguero’s use of the ball should highlight a couple of differences. Kane’s involvements outside the box are more varied and more scattered than Aguero’s (and we can also see how he has been asked to drop deeper and play more long balls for Spurs this season). Kane’s in-possession activity map, 2019-20 The playmakers There’s nothing wrong with doing a bit more work outside the box, though. In the summer, City were looking for reinforcements up front and considering two profiles: a traditional No 9 and more of a false nine — an attacking midfielder with an eye for goal. They enquired about Joao Felix at Atletico Madrid, but were told they would need to meet his buy-out clause, reported to be an eye-watering €350 million. City were big admirers of his when he was at previous club Benfica, so it would make sense to look at his smarterscout ratings. Felix’s in-possession activity map, 2019-20 There aren’t any similar players likely to be under consideration for City, though — for example, Milan’s Ante Rebic and Raul de Tomas of Espanyol. Interestingly, though, City have been linked with Benfica’s Darwin Nunez, who is similar to Isak and Ekambi, two of the players who came up in Mbappe searches. Nunez only signed for the Lisbon giants in the summer but that didn’t stop City when they bought Rodri just a year after he moved to Atletico Madrid from Villarreal. Uruguayan Nunez, 21, has scored just once in the Portuguese league so far in nine appearances after hitting 16 goals in 32 in the Spanish second tier for Almeria last season. He may be of interest but fans may want a more established track record, or simply a bigger name, when it comes to replacing Aguero at the Etihad. And as we have shown, there are a fair few who fit the bill.

Leicester’s big challenge: How to cope when Vardy and Tielemans are rested https://theathletic.com/2285274/2020/12/27/leicester-vardy-tielemans/ Jamie Vardy’s importance to Leicester City and Brendan Rodgers is undeniable. Vardy has scored 13 goals this season in all competitions — 11 of them in the Premier League — and has found the net 43 times in 59 league appearances since Rodgers took over in February last year. In that time, Vardy has only missed four Premier League games for a manager who has built his team around the 33-year-old and devised a game plan designed to bring the best out of him. Integral to that game plan is Youri Tielemans, the Belgium international Rodgers refers to as his coach on the pitch. He may be 10 years younger than Vardy but, with more than 300 senior club games under his belt, Tielemans plays a key role. Along with James Justin and goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel, Tielemans has played every minute of every league game this season. Vardy himself has only missed 161 minutes of 1,350 across the 15 matches, despite Rodgers looking to protect his prize asset to preserve his potency, but the manager says he is not afraid to leave out his talisman as Leicester face a second game in little more than two days at Crystal Palace on Monday afternoon. When asked if he could afford to rest Tielemans or Vardy, Rodgers’ reply was instant. Before the question mark could even be applied to the end of the query, he shot back: “Yes! I don’t want to risk an injury. With 48 and a half hours between the games, with the season we have had as well, I am not prepared to risk them missing six to eight weeks with an injury. “We will make changes, because the players’ health is the most important. Take away the result. I will always pick a team I think can get a result and if that means changing players, we will do that.” Rodgers’ conviction may be partly down to how well his side coped with a similar scenario last Christmas. After the 4-0 Boxing Day battering by Liverpool, Rodgers made nine changes for a trip to West Ham United. Only Schmeichel, who will start at Selhurst Park tomorrow, and Jonny Evans retained their places and Vardy was left out of the match-day 18 entirely as Kelechi Iheanacho stepped in, scoring the first goal in a 2-1 win. In fact, Leicester under Rodgers have won two and lost two of the four games they have played without Vardy, scoring five goals at an average of 1.3 from 15 shots per game. The win percentage with Vardy in the team (from 59 games) is slightly over 50 per cent, with a team average of 1.8 goals from 13.4 shots on goal per game. Leicester score more goals from fewer shots with the Yorkshireman in the side, but they have shown they can cope, in the short term anyway, without him. Iheanacho is again expected to replace Vardy as the focus of the attack against Palace, but Tielemans may be a different case. His deeper role alongside Wilfred Ndidi, who is expected to swap with Nampalys Mendy on Monday, has meant fewer muscle-straining sprints this season. Also, Tielemans’ excellent game management makes it harder to leave him out. Tielemans showed no signs of fatigue as he pulled the strings in the 2-2 draw against Manchester United on Boxing Day. “He is really authoritative,” Rodgers said after the game. “His aggression to press and make tackles, and then his movement to take the ball, play and pass the ball is exceptional.” Rodgers does have options if he wants to rest Tielemans. Denis Praet and Hamza Choudhury were on the bench yesterday, along with Mendy, but neither has the attributes Tielemans provides, such as his ability to turn under pressure and pick forward passes, a skill he showed impressively against a United midfield that adopted an athletic press to try to catch Leicester in possession. Tielemans, who was arguably the pick of the game’s midfielders, has become the launchpad for many of Leicester’s attacks by taking possession from the back four and spreading the play. Praet is a power player, box to box, and Choudhury is a more combative midfielder, but neither possesses the creative spark or vision of Tielemans, who possesses a defensive edge, too. The 23-year-old Belgian has only been left out of one match-day squad this season (for the 4,000-mile round trip to Zorya Luhansk in the Europa League) and he has been on the bench only twice – he was an unused substitute in the Carabao Cup loss to Arsenal and came on at half-time as Leicester chased their Europa League group game in Braga. Leicester moved into a new state-of-the-art £100 million training facility on Christmas Eve, a complex equipped with the latest in sports science and medical technology, and the new equipment will be put to good use in the next 24 hours to revive Rodgers’ men after their exertions against Manchester United. Cryotherapy chambers, swimming recovery sessions and massages will be the order of the day, and Tielemans may well find himself the focal point of the sports science staff’s attentions. He is rapidly becoming as crucial to Leicester as Vardy is.

That is why we have TC!

Can Mourinho bring back Spurs’ love of years that end in 1? https://theathletic.com/2256254/2020/12/26/spurs-mourinho-year-1/ The moment when Tottenham Hotspur’s modern reality started to diverge from the pattern they had set for themselves came in April 2001. The occasion was an FA Cup semi-final against Arsenal, held at Old Trafford. Daniel Levy had bought a stake in the club from Alan Sugar earlier that season and, like a man wanting to reconnect the club with its past, had sacked George Graham and replaced him with Glenn Hoddle. This derby semi-final was Hoddle’s first game and it was impossible not to think back 10 years to Wembley on 14 April, 1991, Paul Gascoigne’s thunderbolt free kick and beating an Arsenal team managed, as it happened, by George Graham. That 1991 win felt much more recent then. It was the latest iteration in a pattern that had sustained Spurs through the years: winning a trophy in the first year of every decade. Like the FA Cup in 1981, the League Cup in 1971, the double in 1961 (the first English team to win it), the First Division in 1951, the FA Cup in 1921 and, as the first non-League team to win it, in 1901. This might not sound totally serious now, in the age of VAR and xG, but it was something that people latched onto. Chas and Dave recorded Spurs’ FA Cup final single in 1991 about exactly this trend. (“It’s lucky for Spurs when the year ends in one / they first won the cup when the century begun / it’s lucky for Spurs when the year ends in one / so this is the year for Spurs”). The single reached No 44 in the charts and could claim to be a self-fulfilling prophecy after Spurs beat Nottingham Forest in the final. “It’s always been quite a thing for the club,” says Gary Mabbutt, Spurs captain when they won the FA Cup in 1991. “Sometimes these things just get tagged along, and people just pick up on it.” So this idea was very much in the ether during the 2001 campaign. It was not a vintage Spurs team at that point, compared to the stars of 1991. Even David Ginola, their only big name, had been sold to Aston Villa. And while George Graham had won the League Cup in his first season at Spurs, he had never won over the fans who could never forgive him his history with Arsenal. In March 2001, three weeks before the Arsenal semi-final, Graham was sacked. ENIC, who had only recently taken control of the club, were furious with Graham discussing the club’s financial situation in public, especially as they attempted to persuade Sol Campbell to stay at the club. This gave Levy and ENIC the chance to take the club in a new direction and they decided to go for Hoddle, one of the club’s greatest ever players. He was not there for the 1991 FA Cup triumph — he was sold to Monaco in 1987 — but he was there when Spurs beat Manchester City in a replay to win the FA Cup in 1981, the final made most famous by Ricky Villa’s goal. Hoddle had a chance to keep the famous old pattern going. But the problem was that Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal, even in a year when Manchester United won the title, were simply miles better than the Tottenham team Hoddle took over. And luck was not on Spurs’ side. Sol Campbell and Les Ferdinand had to go off injured, Arsenal dominated throughout and while Neil Sullivan did his best to keep them at bay, he could not do everything. Arsenal won 2-1. Interestingly enough, Ferdinand thinks that replacing Graham with Hoddle just before the game might have been the wrong call by ENIC. “They got rid of George just before the semi-final,” he says, “and I always felt — and I may have been wrong — that if we had still had George we would have got to the final of the FA Cup. I always felt that. Sometimes you think things are written in the stars and that year with George we kept churning out results in that FA Cup.” Spurs had won at Charlton Athletic in the fourth round — not an easy game then — and 3-2 at Upton Park in the quarter-final. They had a habit of grinding it out. “He’s up there with the best managers I’ve worked with,” Ferdinand says of Graham. “He was a hard man, hard every single day. He got his pound of flesh out of you definitely, but I thoroughly enjoyed that. That was how I wanted to work and wanted to be.” Stephen Carr looks back to that semi-final at Old Trafford with a sense of regret about the injuries that they suffered. If Campbell — who was to join Arsenal later that year — had been at full fitness, it might have been a different game. “We lost to Arsenal, but it was a depleted team,” Carr says. “It was weird, we were down players. Looking at key moments, at times when you’re in a situation, you just need that little bit of luck, but you have to earn your luck as well.” The Hoddle era started with frustration, and while he did get them to a League Cup final the following year, they lost that to Graeme Souness’ Blackburn Rovers. Rewind back 10 years and you will see why that coincidental pattern looked like it carried so much real-world weight. The 1991 FA Cup win is one of the defining achievements of Tottenham Hotspur in the modern era. It was an unlikely triumph, with Terry Venables’ star-studded side managing to win despite chaos off the field. And it remains, with all due respect to those two League Cup wins, Tottenham’s last major trophy. On the surface it might not look like too much of an achievement. This was a very strong Spurs side. Even after selling Chris Waddle to Marseille they still had Paul Gascoigne and Gary Lineker. They had finished the 1989-90 season strongly, winning eight of their last 10 games to seal third place in what was then the First Division. They were not the best team of the era, but they were one of the most glamorous. But behind the scenes, Tottenham were a mess. Irving Scholar and Venables were looking for fresh investment in the club. They were trying to sell Gascoigne to Lazio to bring in enough money to cover some of the debts. “It was a very strange year,” Gary Mabbutt says. “We were not only fighting against all our opponents, but we were fighting bankruptcy as well. We were probably on the business pages more than we were on the sports pages throughout the season. Terry, and myself as captain, we tried to keep as much of that away from the players. Nobody knew behind the scenes what was actually going to be happening the following season.” With the club in crisis, and the league form nothing special, the cup became their escape. “We were actually lucky to get away with winning the third round away at Blackpool,” Mabbutt remembers. “We could easily have gone out there. In these ridiculous conditions, with the wind meaning the goalkeeper would take a goal kick and the ball would blow back into his arms.” Then Spurs beat Oxford United in the fourth round, before going to Portsmouth after that. The night before that game, Gascoigne had worried Spurs staff by playing an unauthorised, marathon squash match, but it did not tire him out: he was brilliant on the day and scored both goals in a 2-1 win. When Notts County came to White Hart Lane for the quarter-final, an injured, limping Gascoigne scored the winner with five minutes left. It started to feel as if Gascoigne alone was going to deliver that trophy, in keeping with the traditions of the club. A semi-final against George Graham’s dominant Arsenal was not intimidating. “You don’t need any help with adrenaline preparing for the Arsenal game,” Mabbutt remembers. “The fact that they had already won the title, they were going for the double, the fact they were our biggest rivals. We went into a semi-final being completely the underdogs, and we totally outplayed them. We thoroughly deserved the victory.” Again, Gascoigne was instrumental, scoring Spurs’ first with a 35-yard free kick before Lineker scored the next two. It is one of Spurs’ greatest wins of the modern era. Then, in the final, Venables’ Spurs faced Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest. Gascoigne had just been sold to Lazio but he was so hyped up for his last game that he injured himself fouling Gary Charles early on, delaying his move to Rome by more than a year. Spurs still won in extra time, thanks to Des Walker’s own goal. “Like in any walk of life or business, you had people who got on better with other people, certain cliques and things, and we had a few cliques in the squad,” Mabbutt says. “But the best thing about the squad in 1991 was that when it came to match days and preparing, we were all together. We had a very good squad of players, we got ourselves prepared well, and for the big occasions we rose to them.” This win was a continuation of a tradition, extending the run that took Spurs back through 1981, 1971, 1961, 1951 and beyond. But it also marked the end of something. Gascoigne’s last game for the club. Venables’ last as manager before he moved upstairs. Irving Scholar’s last before the Alan Sugar takeover, alongside Venables. And the last time Tottenham won anything more prestigious than a League Cup. The question ever since has been whether Spurs could repeat what they did in 1991, or go even better than that. Look at the Alan Sugar and Daniel Levy eras in terms of major trophies, and they have not succeeded. There have been two League Cup wins, in 1999 and 2008, but they were both under managers — George Graham and Juande Ramos — who did not leave much of a legacy at the club aside from that trophy. That last League Cup was almost 13 years ago now, and if you put League Cups to one side, then Spurs’ major trophy drought extends to almost 30 years. Far too long for a club that plays in the best stadium in the country, with the best training ground, which has Harry Kane up front and Jose Mourinho in the dugout. They have gone close a few times in the last 30 years, but never close enough. Spurs lost the League Cup final in 2009 and again in 2015. That was Mauricio Pochettino’s first season and he took Tottenham closer than anyone, launching serious title challenges in 2015-16 and 2016-17 that, with a bit more luck and a bit more nerve, could have won Spurs their first title since Bill Nicholson. Even though they finished third in 2015-16, that was probably their better chance, rather than when they were up against the juggernaut of Antonio Conte’s Chelsea. In the final months of his tenure, Pochettino steered Tottenham all the way to the Champions League final, but Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool were too good for them. Pochettino was gone less than six months later and the long wait for a major trophy went on. So, as Tottenham head into the new year in a better shape than they have been for years, the question is simple: will 2021 be more 1991 or 2001? Ever since Mourinho was appointed, the focus has been on winning a trophy, any trophy, a change from the Pochettino approach. “One thing that’s great about the manager is that you know that in every competition we’re in, we’re going to be trying to win it,” Eric Dier told The Athletic at the start of the season. “It’s really straightforward. There is nothing else to it. That is a very nice feeling to have now. To know that in every competition, we’re going to be trying to win it.” And with Tottenham flying in the league and still in all the cups, who would bet against them? This is the best chance they have had to reunite reality with that old 20th-century pattern. Nobody is better placed to judge that than Mabbutt, their 1991 captain. “It’s very, very different this year,” he says. “We were fighting bankruptcy the last time we won the FA Cup. This time we’ve got the best stadium in the world. We’ve got a group of players now, and a manager who is a winner. Everything is in place this season. There was talk in 1991 about whether or not the club would survive. It’s a long, long time since we were particularly successful on the field. This season, I just feel things are falling into place.”