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HOW MARCELO BIELSA REINVENTED LEEDS UNITED, PART ONE: THE BEAUTIFUL FAILURE

https://thesefootballtimes.co/2020/09/07/how-marcelo-bielsa-reinvented-leeds-united-part-one-the-beautiful-failure/

And with that, the dream had died. An entire season of idealistic, attacking brilliance in which anything had felt possible for Marcelo Bielsa’s Leeds United erased in one kamikaze half of football at Elland Road. The story had looked so different 45 minutes earlier, with the hosts cruising to a 2-0 aggregate lead in the second leg of their Championship playoff semi-final with that season’s nemesis, Derby.

With fans tempted to book their train tickets to Wembley, one disastrous defensive mix-up between defender Liam Cooper and goalkeeper Kiko Casilla allowed Jack Marriott to pull a goal back on the stroke of half time. From there, all hell broke loose.

With everything from goals to red cards exchanged during a wild second stanza, the game would ultimately be decided in the 85th minute, when a Derby counter-attack was once again finished by Marriott, handing the visitors a 4-2 lead on the night and a 4-3 aggregate victory.

A year of exhilarating, often exhausting drama both on and off the pitch would end not in glory for Leeds, but with the sight of their opponent’s manager Frank Lampard and his players celebrating exuberantly on the pitch as the familiar Joy Division taunt echoed around the stadium: “Leeds, Leeds are falling apart, again.”

With failure having become an all too familiar destination for Whites fans over the last 15 years, it was the heady romance of the journey under Bielsa that made this defeat so heartbreaking. After a generation characterised by mismanagement, stagnation and endless disappointment, the bespectacled maverick from Rosario had transformed the club seemingly overnight and dared fans to dream once more. 

Bielsa’s arrival alone in the summer of 2018 had sent shockwaves through the game. What business did one of the most revered, influential coaches in world football have at a meandering club in the English second tier? And how were the club able to pull off this most unprecedented of coups? Closer inspection into the history of both the club and the former Argentina boss, however, showed that the marriage was not quite as crazy as many in the press believed it to be.

Perhaps the ultimate sleeping giant of the English game, a strong argument could be made that Leeds were yet to truly recover from their financial collapse in 2004. Having scaled the heights of the Champions League semi-finals three years previously, the club were relegated from the Premier League after hugely overspending in their pursuit of glory.

Three years later, devastation turned to humiliation as the three-time league champions were relegated to the third tier of English football for the first time in their history, with ongoing financial difficulties placing the club on the brink of extinction. 

 

While they would return to the Championship in 2010, the optimism of this mini-resurgence quickly gave way to anger and apathy as fans were forced to endure a slew of thankless owners and a revolving door of managers doomed from day one thanks to the club’s shaky foundations. Nevertheless, when Bielsa was approached about taking the job at Elland Road, he saw something quite different from the tired institution who had been treading water for the last decade and a half.

The quintessential football romantic, Bielsa looked at Leeds and saw history and potential. After all, this was the club of Revie, Bremner, Wilkinson and Strachan, a club that had dominated in the 1970s, tasted glory in the 1990s, and still possessed one of the largest, most fervent supporter bases in English football.

This mentality was typical of a man who had been previously seduced by such noble prospects as returning glory to the Vélodrome with Marseille, restoring regional pride with Athletic, or revolutionising the playing style of the Chile national team. Having previously gone on record stating that his main duty as a coach is to provide strong emotions for fans, the euphoric potential of ending Leeds’ 14-year top-flight exodus was not lost on the man they call “El Loco”.

The men behind the masterplan to bring Bielsa to Leeds were chairman Andrea Radrizzani and director of football Victor Orta. Having acquired full ownership of the club in the summer of 2017, Radrizzani had brought a semblance of direction and ambition back the club – his repurchasing of Elland Road following its debt-motivated sale 13 years earlier served as a statement of intent to drag the club out of the doldrums.

While affairs off the pitch were undoubtedly healthier than they’d been in some time, the Italian would experience teething problems on the field in his first year at the club. After a promising start under Cypriot manager Thomas Christianson, the club would ultimately limp to a 13th-place finish, with Orta drawing the brunt of the criticism for his perceived failure in the transfer market. Having sacked Christianson mid-season, the chairman would also relieve replacement coach Paul Heckingbottom of his duties at the end of the campaign.

Believing a dramatic change was required to move the club forward, Radrizzani would ask Orta to suspend realism and suggest to him his perfect coach, with the latter later recalling: “I was in a car with Andrea Radrizzani and he said, ‘If you have all the money, if you can choose any coach, who would you choose?’ I told him Marcelo Bielsa and he said, ‘Call him’.”

To the surprise of both Orta and the rest of the world, Bielsa was receptive. A meeting in Buenos Aires was arranged with managing director Angus Kinnear joining Orta and Radrizzani on the trip for what was essentially a job interview. Keen to ascertain how much Bielsa knew about the Championship, the trio would be left stunned as the coach delved into his arsenal of notes and began dissecting a fixture from the previous season between Bolton and Burton.

By the end of the response, the 63-year-old had detailed every formation the two sides had used throughout the season before preceding to offer the same analysis about every other club in the division.

With Radrizzani, Orta and Kinnear firmly sold on the Bielsa as their number one candidate, it would be their turn to sell the job further to this most particular of managers. Having somehow acquired land registry documents for the club’s Thorp Arch training ground, Bielsa outlined a series of required upgrades that were essential if he were to take the reigns at the West Yorkshire club. These included everything from the building of a running track around the pitch to the creation of a games room and sleeping pods for players who were going to be worked to the bone under the coach’s notoriously gruelling training regime.

Enticed by the Leeds dream and satisfied that the club would accommodate most of his demands, Bielsa signed the contract to become the club’s manager on 14 June 2018. While nobody could question the club’s ambition, the appointment proved polarising both amongst fans and those within the game. 

For every glowing reference from Pep Guardiola and Mauricio Pochettino, there was a slew of dissenting punditry voices lamenting Bielsa’s lack of silverware and questioning how his romantic philosophy would hold up in the harsh, unforgiving setting of the Championship. Where some praised the club’s bold decision in hiring a man who had taken Newell’s and Chile to unimaginable heights, others gasped at the appointment of a manager who’d most recently departed Lille in the most volatile of fashions. 

But who was the real Marcelo Bielsa? The dreamer and visionary who won titles in Rosario and hearts in Marseille? Or El Loco, the crazed coach who sued the owners of Lille, brawled with builders in Bilbao, and signed and resigned from Lazio in the space of 24 hours? 

As with most caricatures, the reality was somewhere in between. Uncompromising and unorthodox though Bielsa’s methods were, he could never be faulted for demonstrating a lack of transparency in his demands, with problems arising in instances when the coach had felt let down by his employers. At Elland Road, however, the Argentine would find a regime prepared to back him to the hilt and the results proved spectacular.

By the time of his first press conference, the Bielsa myth was already in full swing. With rumours rife that he’d ordered his new squad to pick up litter around Thorp Arch for three hours in order to appreciate the sacrifice fans make to follow the club, the coach took centre stage.

In a speech that served as the antithesis to José Mourinho’s infamous “special one” introduction, Bielsa, with the aid of translator Salim Lamirani, declared: “Leeds is a bigger club than I deserve. My goal is to show I deserve this opportunity but also that I’m not a demagogue.” Bielsa then concluded with the most prescient of sentences: “I hope my work with Leeds will be full of emotions.”

After a gruelling pre-season of endless running alongside Bielsa’s signature ‘Murderball’ training sessions, Leeds’ refreshed squad would open their campaign against promotion favourites Stoke. To the disillusionment of many fans, Bielsa had made few additions to a squad who’d finished miles off promotion in the previous campaign.

While the purchases of striker Patrick Bamford (£7m) and left-back Barry Douglas (£3m) from Middlesbrough and Wolves were cause for optimism, these proved to be the only permanent summer signings, with Bielsa implicit in his desire to work with the players he already had at his disposal.

On a sun-drenched Sunday afternoon on 5 August 2018, 37,000 buoyant fans packed Elland Road and marvelled at their side’s best performance for a generation. In just one game under their new boss, this largely unheralded squad demonstrated all of the hallmark traits of Bielsa’s greatest sides – from the indefatigable work rate to the relentless pressing and free-flowing possession play – as they stormed to a 3-1 victory. With a squad made up of largely Premier League-level players, Stoke were overwhelmed by a Leeds side who attacked with ferocious intensity.

Determined to prove the performance was no flash in the plan, the galvanised players would go one better in their next game as they outclassed Lampard’s hotly-tipped Derby in a 4-1 win at Pride Park. Fans could scarcely believe the overnight improvements many of the players had made under their new boss.

Academy graduate Kalvin Phillips had been transformed from a box midfielder into a formidable holding player in Bielsa’s 4-1-4-1 system, his combative presence and cultured passing making him a vital cog in the team’s front-foot style. Elsewhere, previously maligned centre-back Liam Cooper looked reborn under the new regime, the captain’s consistency and comfort on the ball marking him out as a completely different player to the one fans had grown accustomed too.

Most surprising of all was Mathius Klich; the Polish midfielder who’d flopped the previous season was now at the heart of Bielsa’s system, his industrious passing, clever late runs and eye for goal making him the perfect foil for Spanish playmakers Pablo Hernández and Samu Sáiz.

Propelled by the goals of striker Kemar Roofe and the creative brilliance of the ageless Pablo, Leeds would continue their impressive form for the rest of the year. A grounding 4-1 away defeat to West Brom in November was followed by a seven game-winning run that placed the club atop of the Championship at Christmas. If the style wasn’t impressive enough, Leeds demonstrated substance in two exhilarating comeback victories against Aston Villa and Blackburn. 

While the football remained thrilling, the second half of the campaign would be remembered as much for the off-field dramas as for the on-pitch entertainment. Firstly, Sáiz was allowed to move on loan to Getafe in January, with the attacking midfielder seeking a return to Spain for personal reasons. With Chelsea loanee Izzy Brown – signed as direct competition for Sáiz – injured long-term, and Pablo predominantly playing out wide, this left the club with no direct replacement for their departed playmaker.

Brown was rarely without company on the treatment table, with marquee signings Douglas and Bamford, as well as Roofe, midfielder Adam Foreshaw and defenders Luke Ayling and Gaetano Berardi all enduring extended periods on the sidelines. While the impressive deputising offered by academy prospects Jack Clarke, Jamie Shackleton and Leif Davis drew plaudits, there was no denying that Leeds were beginning to bear the brunt of their manager’s small squad policy.

The January transfer window would provide more chaos, with the exciting signing of Real Madrid goalkeeper Kiko Casilla being overshadowed by the club’s dramatic failure to sign Dan James from Swansea – the Welsh club relented on the deal at the last minute with James sat at Elland Road having already been pictured wearing the Leeds shirt.

Having lost back to back games at the turn of the year, Leeds entered their home fixture at Derby needing a statement of intent; what they got instead was a media frenzy. In the build-up to the fixture, it emerged that a Leeds employee had been caught “acting suspiciously” on the premises of Derby’s training ground before being removed by police. Later that evening, it was confirmed by the authorities that the man had been sent by Leeds to secretly observe the Rams’ pre-match preparations.

When the story became public, Bielsa was remorseless. Not only did the former Athletic manager admit to personally sending the employee to observe Derby’s training, he then confirmed that he’d implemented the exact same approach for every opponent so far that season. The press had a field day.

Dubbed “Spygate”, the scandal would shine a light on the most sanctimonious and hypocritical elements of the British football media. With everything from sackings to points deductions being touted as worthy punishment for the club by exasperated pundits, Leeds battered their opponents under the bright lights at Elland Road.

If any manager had been rattled by the scandal, then it was Lampard, not Bielsa, who seemed to have his focus taken away from the task at hand. After lamenting his opposite numbers behaviour as “bad on a sportsmanship level”, the Chelsea legend could only sit back and watch as his side were outclassed in a comprehensive 2-0 defeat, with goals coming from Roofe and winger Jack Harrison. 

While Leeds would ultimately be punished with a £200,000 fine – a fine which Bielsa insisted on paying himself – the club had much more important issues ahead in the form of the Championship promotion race. With the Whites in a three-way battle with Norwich and Sheffield United, their consistency began to falter.

After beating both sides in away victories earlier in the season, Leeds would fall short in the vital return fixtures, their 3-1 defeat to Norwich and narrow 1-0 loss to Sheffield United placing their automatic promotion credentials in serious jeopardy. At their best, like in the 4-0 demolition of West Brom in March, Leeds looked a cut above anyone else in the division. Frustratingly, these performances were being followed too often by tired, insipid displays against the likes of QPR and Birmingham.

Worse still was the side’s growing inability to convert chances. While Bielsaball was undoubtedly easy on the eye, fans were becoming increasingly accustomed to the sight of their team failing to take advantage of their endless dominance in possession. With both Roofe and Bamford plagued by injuries, albeit at different times, the team was becoming too reliant on the individual quality of Hernández to get them out of trouble. Thankfully for Leeds, the Spanish magician was in the form of his life.

Having scaled the heights of LaLiga, the Premier League and the Champions League earlier in his career, Hernández, at 33, was enjoying his most impressive season yet. By March, he was one of only four players to have registered double figures for both goals and assists across the Championship and Europe’s top-five leagues, the others being Lionel Messi, Eden Hazard and Birmingham’s Lukas Jutkiewicz. Never was this more apparent than in the barnstorming 3-2 win against Millwall, where Hernández single-handedly dragged his team back from the brink of defeat with two goals and a majestic second-half performance.

A 1-0 win against Sheffield Wednesday meant that Leeds would enter the final four games of the season in second place with a three-point lead on Sheffield United. With supporters finally daring to dream, disaster would strike on the Easter weekend.

With a routine victory expected against struggling Wigan on Good Friday, Bielsa’s side would implode in the most spectacular of fashion. Leading 1-0 and with their opponents down to ten men, Leeds buckled under the weight of the nervy Elland Road crowd and fell to a 2-1 defeat thanks to a Gavin Massey brace. Failure to secure automatic promotion was all but confirmed the following Monday with a 2-0 away defeat to Brentford but, in reality, the hammer blow had been dealt by the Latics.

With the squad now sure to be contesting the playoffs, fans would have been forgiven for expecting a subdued end to the season proper. Instead, the penultimate game against fellow playoff contenders Aston Villa served up an industrial-strength dose of El Loco drama.

After 77 goalless minutes, chaos would descend on the game thanks to a controversial Klich opener. With Villa striker Jonathan Kodjia down injured, the Pole incensed opposition players by continuing an attack and scoring with the static Villa team expecting the ball to be put out of play. With both players and coaches at each other’s throats and match officials flailing like leaves in the wind, Bielsa took definitive action.  

To the shock of the stadium, the coach ordered his team to allow Villa to walk the ball into the net and equalise from the kick-off. Having had his sporting morals questioned just months earlier, this incident would see Bielsa and Leeds win that season’s FIFA Fair Play award.

And so came the playoffs. In a season of unparalleled theatre, it was fitting that the club would be pitted against Derby once more after their sixth-place finish. With the season’s events amping up animosity between the two clubs to levels unseen since the days of Don Revie and Brian Clough, Leeds took the pitch at a frantic Pride Park for the first leg.

If Bielsa’s side were demoralised by their failure to make the top two, they didn’t show it. For the third time that season, the visitors outplayed a Derby side who had no answers for their opponent’s movement and creativity in a 1-0 win. The goal that day was scored by Roofe, the striker resuming his role as tormentor-in-chief to Derby captain Richard Keogh as he took his season tally against the Derbyshire club to four. In a decisive twist, Roofe would be ruled out of the second leg with a knee injury.

As players took the pitch for the second leg on the evening of 15 May 2019, they were greeted by an Elland Road crowd on scintillating form. Like in the League One playoff semi-final against Millwall a decade earlier, however, the passion in the stands would provide the backdrop to an evening of heartache.

The game seemed to be going to script when Stuart Dallas’s rebounded 24th-minute finish strike sent the stadium into overdrive – but the drama was just beginning. Even at the time, Derby’s equaliser at the end of the first half felt like a sliding doors moment. Coming out of nowhere, the combination of Cooper and Casilla’s joint mistake and Marriot’s open goal finish at once energised the away side whilst robbing Leeds of all composure.

Within seconds of the second half, Derby were level in the tie as Mason Mount finished off an attack straight from the kick-off. Smelling blood, Derby continued to take the game to the hosts and would take an aggregate lead in the 58th minute thanks to a Harry Wilson penalty. Although a defiant Dallas would level the tie four minutes later, Leeds were dealt a fatal blow in the 78th-minute when Berardi was sent off, before Marriott put the nail in the coffin with his second.

And so a season of unparalleled hope for Leeds fans would end in the familiar confines of disappointment. With his enigmatic combination of idealism, principle and humility, Bielsa had embedded himself into the fabric of the city in the shortest of times and brought pride and entertainment to a success-starved fanbase. 

As has been so often the case both in the history of Leeds and in Bielsa’s own storied career, however, the team had run out of gas in the final stretch. In a cruel twist of irony, it was the joy generated by Bielsa and his side throughout the campaign that caused this failure to be felt more acutely than ever before.

So what next? Leeds fans could scarcely comprehend starting again without their eccentric leader, and one only needed to look at the endless selfies of the Argentine with fans around the city to see that El Loco had found his second home. But would Marcelo Bielsa and his squad, after the most emotionally draining of seasons, have the stomach for one more shot at glory? 

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Features

HOW MARCELO BIELSA REINVENTED LEEDS UNITED, PART TWO: THE ART OF PERSEVERANCE

https://thesefootballtimes.co/2020/09/07/how-marcelo-bielsa-reinvented-leeds-united-part-two-the-art-of-perseverance

After days of negotiations and weeks of speculation, round two was on. On 28 May 2019, it was announced that Marcelo Bielsa had extended his contract at Leeds for the coming season, with jubilant owner Andrea Radrizzani declaring the coach had “unfinished business” at Elland Road.

Bielsa’s decision would be met with unanimous delight from all involved with the club. With fans and players still reeling from the agony of last season’s playoffs, this news went some way to softening the blow. Whereas previous near misses – like the club’s playoff final defeat in 2006 – had felt like fleeting, do or die opportunities, the foundations built from last season were there for all to see, and with their enigmatic leader back for another campaign, fans felt they were better placed than ever to end their 15 years of hurt in what would be the clubs centenary season.

Captain Liam Cooper would echo the supporter’s sentiment when he said: “Along with Andrea, Victor [Orta, the director of football] and Angus [Kinnear, the managing director] he is helping to create a new culture at Leeds. This news allows us to focus on the next year – we have continuity for the first time in my career at Leeds and we will all now be focused on returning to pre-season and working hard to achieve our ultimate goal together.”

If Bielsa and his players had felt under pressure in the previous campaign, they’d seen nothing yet. For much of the Argentine’s first year, fans were left swooning as Leeds unleashed their coach’s inimitable brand of attacking ferocity on the Championship, but the crushing conclusion to the season had brought a decade and a half of pain flooding back to the surface. 

In the aftermath of the playoff defeat, it was suggested by Leeds writer and podcaster Daniel ‘Moscowhite’ Chapman that Bielsa had been the perfect manager for the club to fail with. After years of heartache, however, fans had no more time for beautiful failures but were instead desperate for promotion in the coming season, no matter how ugly.

The sentiment amongst supporters was clearly shared by the club, with Kinnear bluntly stating”‘we’re not dicking around with the playoffs anymore”. How would the game’s greatest idealist fare in an environment where success was being measured entirely by cold, hard results?

If anyone expected the coach to abandon his philosophy in the wake of such relentless scrutiny, they were sorely mistaken. Bielsa’s eternal commitment to a front foot, possession-based style – a notion steeped equally in romance and dogma – would remain as unwavering as ever. 

Prior to the signing of his contract extension, Bielsa had delivered a presentation to Radrizzani, Orta and Kinnear loaded with statistics from the previous campaign. Given the dominance Leeds had wielded on the division in stats such as expected goals, chance creation and possession, the presentation emphasised the scale of the opportunity missed last season and identified three key areas for improvement: better finishing, higher-quality loan signings, and fewer injuries. Finally, after such extensive analysis, this most meticulous of coaches would add: “We need more luck. We cannot be this unlucky again.”

Like last season, the club would have to operate under budget restraints, as well the Football League’s Financial Fair Play rules, when attempting to enhance their squad for the coming season and this would result in some bold decisions, both with signings and departures.

After initially protesting, Bielsa would accept the club’s intention to cash in on academy graduate Jack Clarke, with the winger joining Tottenham in a £9m deal that saw him remain at Elland Road on a season-long loan. Clarke would barely feature for Leeds during the first half of the season and the loan would be terminated in January. 

More surprising was the sale of defender and crowd favourite Pontus Jansson to Brentford for £5.5m. Despite having been a key player for the club over the last three seasons, Bielsa considered the passionate Swede’s argumentative demeanour to be simultaneously undermining his own authority while disrupting the harmony of the dressing room. With limited offers on the table, the club were reluctant to sell their star centre-back to a potential promotion rival, but the sale eventually went ahead amid insistence from Bielsa. 

With many fans upset by the sale of Jansson, eyebrows were raised further when his replacement was revealed to be a barely known prospect by the name of Ben White, the 21-year-old arriving on loan from Brighton after spending the previous campaign with third-tier Peterborough. While the £7m sale of last season’s top scorer Kemar Roofe to Anderlecht was naturally unpopular, fans were heartened by the fact that the club had loaned the highly touted Eddie Nketiah from Arsenal as a direct replacement.

Although they would extend the loan of Manchester City winger Jack Harrison for a further season, as well as loaning French goalkeeping prospect Illian Meslier from Lorient, the marquee summer signing undoubtedly came in the form of Hélder Costa. Having previously taken the division by storm with Wolves, the Portuguese winger was viewed by many fans as the perfect player to add a direct, clinical edge to the Whites’ attacking style. With the club committed to paying a £15m fee after an initial loan period, the deal sent an emphatic message to both fans and the rest of the division that Leeds were serious about automatic promotion.

With Leeds active in the transfer market on both fronts, Bielsa would again stick to his guns by maintaining a small squad. Beginning the season with a core group of eighteen senior players, the Argentine would again opt to supplement any injuries with the use of an under-23 squad that had developed exponentially under the stewardship of Carlos Corberan. 

With most players now accustomed to their coach’s gruelling demands, the squad entered pre-season better prepared for the unforgiving training schedule they were inevitably faced with. After a pre-season tour of Australia, they prepared for the campaign opener away to Bristol City on 4 August, determined to erase the memory of last season’s heartbreaking finale.

With so many questions unanswered from the previous campaign, the fixture would monopolise the coverage of the opening weekend of Championship fixtures: how would Leeds rebound from the crushing disappointment of last season? Would the squad be able to cope physically with Bielsa’s unparalleled demands for a second year? And what effect would the high-profile playoff mistake from Kiko Casilla have on the goalkeeper’s mentality? The opening day at Ashton Gate would provide an emphatic answer to all of these questions.

Within seconds of kickoff, Casilla had settled the latter debate with a display of frightening self-assurance. Receiving a back pass from Cooper just outside his six-yard box, the goalkeeper induced heart palpations around West Yorkshire by performing an outrageous turn past Bristol striker Famara Diédhiou before nonchalantly spraying a diagonal ball to Luke Ayling. The move served as a microcosm of last season: thrilling, dangerous, skilful and nerve-shredding all at once, and sent a clear message to Leeds fans that they were in for yet another year of white-knuckle drama.

From that moment on, away fans were treated to an exhibition of pure Bielsaball. With their bespectacled boss observing on his trademark blue bucket, Leeds overwhelmed the hosts from first minute to last with their relentless pressing and inexhaustible attacking intensity as they strolled to a 3-1 win. 

Like 2018/19, the team would come racing out of the blocks with 13 points from their opening five games placing them atop of the Championship.  With fans riding high heading into a home fixture against second-place Swansea, the return of a familiar Achilles heel would dampen the early season optimism. 

Having been in control for much of the match, Leeds were frustrated by Swansea’s disciplined backline and were made to pay for a slew of missed opportunities. With one-minute remaining of stoppage time, Swansea substitute Wayne Routledge prospered from some slack set-piece defending to snatch all three points for the Welsh club.

Although Leeds would remain in and around the top of the division, their chance conversion remained problematic with the team failing to record back-to-back victories in September and October. Despite dominating most matches, the team were struggling to kill off their opponents with poor finishing, allowing the likes of Derby and Preston to claim points from games that should’ve been out of sight. The lack of profligacy in front of goal would inspire a distracting debate between fans over who was best equipped to lead the line for the Whites. 

While first-choice striker Patrick Bamford had impressed with his performances, he’d drawn criticism from both fans and the media for his lack of consistency in front of goal. Contrastingly, Nketiah had yet to start a league game for the club but had contributed vital goals from the bench against Brentford, Barnsley and Preston, showing a ruthlessness that was sorely lacking from the rest of the side. With Bielsa reluctant to switch from his favoured 4-1-4-1 set up, the debate would dominate much of the first half of the season.

With the striker question still burning, Leeds would find a new gear as the winter approached. A 2-0 win over QPR would spark the beginning of a seven-game winning streak allowing Bielsa’s side – alongside Slaven Bilić’s in-form West Brom – to establish some daylight between themselves and the rest of the chasing pack. 

Although chance conversion remained a concern, the level of dominance Leeds were wielding meant they were still scoring enough to secure three points in most matches, with the excellent understanding generated by centre-halves Cooper and White resulting in the team conceding fewer than anyone else in the division. While the team drew plaudits for their attacking panache in a 4-0 home demolition of Middlesbrough, the surge in form was equally indebted to their coach’s militaristic training sessions, with last-ditch victories at Reading and Luton bearing testament to their unrivalled fitness.

Leeds prepared for the 19 December fixture at home to Cardiff knowing that victory could see them open-up a monumental 13-point gap on third-placed Fulham. Instead, the barnstorming match would be the catalyst for an alarming shift in momentum against Bielsa’s previously flourishing side.

For 60 minutes, the team were at their free-flowing, dominant best. In a contest which perfectly encapsulated the league’s contrasting philosophies, Leeds embarrassed their opponents with their intricate passing and breakneck counter-attacks en route to a 3-0 lead. On the hour mark, the game would turn on its head.

Firstly, Cardiff midfielder Lee Tomalin punished a Casilla error with a brilliant half-volley to give the visitors a glimmer of hope. From here, the entire dynamic of the match changed as Neil Harris’ team began to impose their route one style on a nervy Leeds who seemed incapable of dealing with their opponent’s speculative long balls into the box. Despite going down to ten men, Cardiff would complete the most improbable of comebacks with two goals in the last ten minutes from Sean Morrison and Robert Glatzel.

Despite remaining 11 points clear of third, the collapse against Cardiff changed much. Having grown accustomed to watching their team fall at the final hurdle, fans were engulfed by a sense of panic and this hysteria seemed to transfer to the players whose form capitulated over the next two months. 

Having lost just three league games in their first 22, Leeds would fall in five of their following nine fixtures after Cardiff, winning only twice. If defeats to Sheffield Wednesday, QPR and Wigan weren’t alarming enough, the individual performances of many players had altered beyond recognition. 

With midfield control having been a hallmark of Bielsa’s team for 18 months, the usually formidable central trio of Phillips, Klich and Hernández were suddenly finding themselves overran as their once pinpoint passing became wayward and inconsistent. This, in turn, left the defence more exposed who, after conceding only ten goals before Cardiff, shipped 20 in the next 11 games.

With Nkeitah having been recalled by Arsenal in January and his replacement Jean-Kévin Augustin struggling for fitness, fans were left cursing the lack of attacking options in a squad who would fail to score in four out of five fixtures between January and February.

Most concerning of all was the form of Casilla who, with a racism charge pending – the goalkeeper would eventually be suspended for nine games after being found guilty of abusing Charlton striker Jonathan Leko – made costly errors in a string of matches. Even rare victories, like the pulsating wins against Birmingham (5-4) and Millwall (3-2), were crazy slugfests that suggested El Loco had been replaced in the dugout by a prime Kevin Keegan.

The nadir of the campaign would occur at the City Ground on 8 February. In a toothless performance, Leeds were bested 2-0 by a clinical Nottingham Forest side who punished wastefulness in possession. By the end of the evening, the once 11-point lead over third was down to mere goal difference. Leeds were falling apart again and the decline was even steeper than the previous season. If the atmosphere around the club had become toxic, then Luke Ayling’s forlorn post-match interview suggested that the negativity had seeped into the dressing room.

With confidence faltering, Bielsa took a change in tack. Following the defeat at Forest, the coach eschewed his usual data-driven post-match analysis in favour of an emotive speech he hoped would instil belief into his battle-scarred squad. The impact would be phenomenal.

Three days later, Leeds took to Griffin Park to face Brentford knowing that defeat would see their opponents overtake them in the table. With the rest of the Championship smelling blood, Leeds outplayed their in-form opponents in a 1-1 draw that flattered the home side. From there, they reeled off five consecutive wins without shipping a goal. 

After looking crestfallen following the Forest defeat, it was fitting that Ayling’s inspired performances were at the heart of the turnaround, with the defender scoring three vital goals as Leeds re-established their lead over the chasing pack. Having previously looked bereft of attacking options, they were now benefitting not only from Bamford’s surge in form, but the return of Tyler Roberts from injury, with the versatile attacker scoring two in the 4-0 rout of Hull. At the back, the presence of Meslier in place of Casilla between the sticks provided Leeds with greater resolve from set-pieces.

With a seven-point lead on third place and the team brimming with confidence, it was tempting to ask the question: what could possibly stop Leeds now? Ultimately, it would take something far more important than the beautiful game, as the ramifications of COVID-19 left the footballing world at a standstill.

As a club, Leeds felt the effects from this period more than most with three legends in the form of Norman Hunter, Trevor Cherry and Jack Charlton passing away in quick succession. Hunter’s death was down to the virus itself, with Elland Road’s South Stand promptly renamed in his honour. 

With everything from points-per-game average to voiding the season altogether discussed as a means of ending the campaign, the club firmly maintained their desire to finish their promotion charge on the pitch. Ultimately, it was decided that the season would be played out behind closed doors with the team’s final nine fixtures taking place over an intense six-week period.

On 21 June, Leeds resumed their quest for glory nearly four months after their last game at an empty Cardiff City Stadium. In a stifled performance, they looked void of creative spark without the injured Hernández as they fell to a turgid 2-0 defeat. Having already endured one post-Cardiff slump this season, the fans were desperate for their team to make a statement in the crunch match against third-placed Fulham the following Saturday.

With tens of thousands of crowdies occupying the vacant seats at Elland Road, Leeds got off to the perfect start when Costa’s cutback found Bamford who finished coolly in the tenth minute. For the rest of the half, however, Leeds were run ragged by a Fulham side desperate to bridge the seven-point gap between themselves and the hosts. 

Sensing an equaliser was imminent, Bielsa took decisive action at half time, replacing the architects of the goal in Bamford and Costa with Roberts and a returning Hernández. The substitutions proved to be a masterstroke as the latter changed the complexion of the match with a vintage display of control and creativity en route to a 3-0 win.

With Hernández struggling for fitness, Bielsa would continue to use the Spaniard as a substitute to devastating effect for the rest of the season, with the playmaker producing vital goals and match-winning performances in a string of decisive games.

Any notions that Leeds were home and dry following their emphatic win over the Cottagers were tossed aside three days later, however, when they limped to a 1-1 draw against bottom-placed Luton. With third-placed Brentford in the form of their lives, Leeds could scarcely afford to drop any more points with the gap down to six points and the Bees holding a superior goal difference.

While a win away at Blackburn offered some temporary respite, Brentford continued to pile on the pressure as they extended their winning streak to six in a row with victory over Charlton. With the pressure at boiling point, Leeds produced their finest display under their coach to date in a 5-0 demolition against Stoke. Leading by one at half time thanks to a Klich penalty, the second half was a pure crystallisation of the Bielsa ethos as Leeds relentlessly carved through their opponents at will, Hernández finishing the forth after an outrageous 30-pass move.

If victory at Stoke had provided a resounding answer on the team’s ability to handle pressure, it did little to stop Brentford asking questions as they recorded further wins against Derby and Preston. With Leeds needing a maximum of seven points from their final four games to secure promotion, the next two fixtures would bring 16 years of frustration and anxiety to the surface in a torturous finale.

Firstly, Leeds travelled to Swansea in what would quickly become a game of unbearable tension. With both teams having engaged in a dour stalemate for 89 minutes, Leeds fans watched from home cringing at memories of the Swans’ stoppage-time winner at Elland Road earlier in the season. Instead, the league leaders returned the favour. 

With less than a minute remaining, Hernández made the most of Ayling’s low cross with a deft side-footed finish to put his former club to the sword. The absence of fans allowed for the full volume of Orta’s manic reaction to be heard from the directors’ box, while the cathartic celebrations of both substitutes and staff echoed the magnitude of the goal. With a game at home to bottom-placed Barnsley up next, surely fans would get the straightforward promotion conclusion their fragile hearts craved?

They wouldn’t. A back and forth opening phase saw Leeds take the lead thanks to an own goal from defender Michael Soulbauer, but what followed was pure torture. For over an hour Leeds were peppered with attack after attack by a Barnsley side fighting for their lives. All of the hallmark Bielsa traits – from the dominance in possession to the control in midfield – were nowhere to be seen as the visitors attacked with a verve and swagger scarcely believable for a team at the foot of the table.

It was far from a vintage display, but they got over the line. A combination of resolute defending and poor finishing saw the team cling on to this most hard-fought of victories.

Leeds were now both five points ahead of second-place West Brom and six ahead of Brentford, meaning a single point from their final two games was all that was required for promotion. The mood in West Yorkshire was one of relief, not joy, however, and after last year’s heartache, neither fans nor were players prepared to start the party until promotion was 100 percent certain.

They needn’t have worried. On 17 July, two days before Leeds’ next match and 194 months since the club were relegated from the Premier League, promotion was confirmed. Emile Smith Rowe’s 86th-minute strike at the John Smith Stadium secured a 2-1 win for Huddersfield over West Brom that sent their West Yorkshire neighbours to the Premier League.

Having fantasised about this moment for over a decade, fans would experience promotion not on the Elland Road pitch but in the confines of their own living room, yet the joy around the city was palpable.

Any notions that the empty stadiums might dampen the celebrations were debunked by three days of hedonism that began outside Elland Road with players, staff and even the traditionally stoic Bielsa basking in the glory alongside the tens of thousands of ecstatic fans. Even the title would be confirmed without Leeds kicking a ball with Brentford’s winning run finally coming to a halt at Stoke the following afternoon. 

In a poetic conclusion, Leeds’ first game as champions would see them face Derby, 14 months after last season’s playoff agony. This time, the team would be met not with despair, but the sight of a guard of honour from the Derby players as they took to the pitch.

After a 3-1 win at Pride Park, Leeds would end the campaign with sublime 4-0 home victory over Charlton before being presented with Championship trophy on the Elland Road turf. After what had been the craziest year, Bielsa and his players could finally celebrate, their legacies secure as the men who returned Leeds to the Premier League.

The story of Bielsa at Leeds is a lesson in principle and perseverance. After years of being the bridesmaid, the manager had at once silenced the critics and validated his unique coaching methods with the sweetest of victories. Having endured a generation in the wilderness, Leeds were no longer falling apart but were back in the big time. Back with Marcelo Bielsa, the perfect manager to succeed with.

[Jase 43,479]

Tim Sherwood.  

 

 

[Vesper 30,232]

Arsenal FC: The decline

https://theathletic.com/2265368/2020/12/17/arsenal-fc-the-decline/

How did we get here? Arsenal are 15th in the 20-team Premier League, substantially closer to its relegation zone than the Champions League places. There is a surreal quality to their plight and a cautionary tale about the careful management of a football club. Spirits may have been raised by a dogged 1-1 draw with 10 men at home to Southampton, but the table still makes for bleak reading. As we approach the crucial Christmas period, Arsenal — one of the supposed “big six” — find themselves in the bottom six.

That Arsenal will be relieved to have taken a point for the first time in five home games tells you how far they have fallen. The speed at which the optimism of the summer has evaporated is shocking, but for those familiar with the club, not altogether surprising.

Newer staff talk of the need for a fundamental change in the culture and mentality at London Colney — that if Arsenal continue to exist in a comfort zone, they will continue to slide. They feel that standards have slipped over such a long period that bad habits have become ingrained and not addressed. Sometimes it requires a fresh pair of eyes to tell you who you really are. These insiders feel that without a winning culture, without a different level of standards and expectations, Arsenal’s potential will remain unfulfilled. They feel that the training ground at Colney is a haven where outside noise and criticism doesn’t breach the walls when it should be an elite competitive environment.

There is a distinction to be drawn between the current crisis at Arsenal and their broader decline. While one seems to have swept in overnight, the other has been years in the making. If the responsibility for results must sit largely with the incumbent manager, blame for the wider malaise is more widely shared. This failure has many fathers. 

Manager Mikel Arteta and his staff certainly have their share of culpability, something which the Arsenal manager readily admits. He is not inclined to shirk responsibility, telling the media on the eve of the Southampton game: “We have to take the bullets. We are not winning football matches and you have to put your chest there.”

Arsenal will desperately hope this point against Southampton represents a turning point — this is their worst start to a season since 1974-75 after all. After the defeat to Burnley in the previous game, Arteta was so disappointed and frustrated that he did not speak to the players after the game, preferring to address them at the training ground the next day. Behind the scenes, the club’s leadership have stressed the importance of simply not losing. Arsenal and Arteta will take the spirited second half against Southampton as a sign of the players’ continuing faith.

Even if there are justifiable questions over this squad of players, they are surely better than they have shown of late. Arteta arrived just under a year ago and adopted a system and style of play that saw Arsenal achieve some impressive results during Project Restart this past summer, but his tactical grip on the team seems to have slipped. Arsenal have now won just one of their last nine Premier League games.

To his credit, Arteta has tried to tackle the culture head-on, albeit with mixed results. Consistently applying his behavioural “non-negotiables” has proved increasingly difficult, with some accusations of double standards. There was also some anger within the club when Willian was permitted to start the match against Leeds United after his unauthorised trip to Dubai. The feeling from some quarters was that other players have been more harshly punished for less serious transgressions. Indiscipline has crept in both on and off the pitch. Since Arteta took charge, no team has received more than Arsenal’s seven red cards. Some people speak of punctuality being an issue at training.

While Arteta retains strong support from the majority of the squad, some divisions have emerged — perhaps inevitable when the group is so large and many players are short of game time. An unsuccessful team is a frustrated team. The desire to turn things around has led to the atmosphere at London Colney becoming more fractious of late. The Athletic understands David Luiz was unhappy to be left out of the trip to Manchester United last month as an injury precaution. The player felt fully fit and consequently cut a frustrated figure when left behind.

Many close to Arsenal have labelled Arteta’s job title change from head coach “a mistake” — a premature commitment to a manager whose stock has suddenly fallen.

Sources believe the team is suffering primarily due to poor finishing and red cards, and that their fortunes will soon change. Technical director Edu also admitted in the Arsenal fans’ forum this week that it’s clear “a player with creativity in the middle” is needed.

The Athletic understands that Arteta’s position remains secure. The sense those familiar with the club’s executive team have is the young coach is regarded as a long-term appointment they remain utterly committed to. Despite being on a learning curve himself, Arteta is viewed internally as more of the solution than the problem.

Nevertheless, the speed with which crisis has enveloped Arteta feels astounding. Nobody, including the club’s executives and owners, anticipated this. Just four months ago, he was lifting the FA Cup at Wembley — a triumph that seemed to signal the start of a bold new era. Since then the pedestal on which Arteta was raised has crumbled beneath him. 

This has not, however, happened overnight.

Football emergencies, like economic emergencies, seem to arrive slowly, and then all at once. As dramatic as this reversal of fortunes feels, the fault lines have been there for some time. Some at Arsenal speak of deeper cultural problems which are yet to be overcome. Plot a course of the club’s Premier League standing since their title win in 2004, and the five FA Cups won across that period begin to look like anomalous spikes along that broader trend of decline.

If Arsenal finish outside the Champions League places this year, it will mean a fifth consecutive season of failing to be among the Premier League’s end of season top four. This is, to coin a phrase appropriate for 2020, their very own new normal.

For Arsenal fans, that one question looms large: how did we get here? 

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Arsenal’s owners knew that the period following Arsene Wenger’s departure would be difficult. They had the good fortune to observe Manchester United wrestling with the loss of Sir Alex Ferguson and sought to learn from their mistakes.

United had been hit with a one-two punch in losing not just Ferguson but also chief executive David Gill in the same summer of 2013. Gill, who had been a senior figure at Old Trafford since 1997, left his post to take up a role on UEFA’s executive committee. Instead of working alongside an experienced CEO, Ferguson’s successor David Moyes found himself teamed with Ed Woodward, a man new to the job.

Arsenal sought to do all they could to assemble an executive team robust enough to support Wenger’s successor. In the months before Unai Emery’s appointment, then-chief executive Ivan Gazidis recruited Raul Sanllehi to be head of football relations and Sven Mislintat as head of recruitment. Contracts expert Huss Fahmy was hired to replace Dick Law. The idea was to assemble a team of specialists who, under Gazidis’ direction, could steer the club forward.

Then, a bolt from the blue. Offered a post at AC Milan, Gazidis quit. Despite their best-laid plans, the club suddenly found themselves in precisely the same situation as United: losing a legendary manager and long-term CEO in the space of just a few months.

Gazidis’ departure set in motion a game of executive musical chairs that has continued at considerable pace for more than two years.

The list of executive departures since that summer of 2018 is quite something: Gazidis, Mislintat, director of high performance Darren Burgess, analytics expert Jaeson Rosenfeld, head of international scouting Francis Cagigao, Sanllehi and finally Fahmy have all moved on.

At each turn, Arsenal have sought to promote internally: Sanllehi and Vinai Venkatesham succeeded Gazidis on the outgoing CEO’s recommendation. When Sanllehi left earlier this summer, incumbent managing director Venkatesham and Edu effectively assumed his responsibilities.

While the club take pride in promoting “Arsenal” people, it’s fair to query whether the net was cast sufficiently wide in the search for football expertise. Were these the best appointments, or simply the most convenient? 

The latest iteration of Arsenal’s executive hierarchy has seen Arteta’s role change from the original title of head coach to “manager”. While some see this promotion as a natural consequence of the Spaniard’s hands-on, holistic leadership style, others close to the club have characterised it as a hasty and ultimately unnecessary move. They argue it has burdened a young coach with responsibilities he does not need.

As head coach, Arteta’s specific focus was on player management, training sessions, team preparation and opposition analysis. His sole objective was to maximise the performance potential of the first team. The club’s previous model was designed to shield Arteta from distractions and complications — Edu and Fahmy would lead any additional technical and organisation matters, Per Mertesacker would handle the academy and Sanllehi would co-ordinate the team and shield them from additional pressure. Arteta’s repositioning means he officially plays a more active role in wider club matters, such as transfers and operational matters, something he was happy to take on.

While each of their individual records is open to debate, the departure of highly experienced football people in Cagigao, Mislintat, Rosenfeld and Sanllehi has left Arsenal looking a little green. Arteta, Edu and Venkatesham are all highly regarded but are 38, 42 and 39 respectively. Arteta is a first-time manager, Venkatesham a first-time chief executive. While Edu has fulfilled similar roles with Brazilian club Corinthians and that country’s FA, his experience in European football is limited.

Last season, Arsenal’s board proposed the addition of club legend David O’Leary to provide some football-oriented oversight. The suggestion was dismissed, but would perhaps gain more traction now.

Arsenal argue their new structure makes them more efficient; their detractors believe they may simply be too light on expertise. Much of the recent reshuffle has been attributed to new board appointment Tim Lewis. Although an avid Arsenal fan, his background is in law rather than football. Arsenal have confirmed they intend to replace Fahmy as contract negotiator, but with the January transfer window two weeks away, there has as yet been no addition.

It is difficult to decipher whether Arsenal landed on this current structure by accident or design. The owners could do nothing about Gazidis’ departure, but did his blueprint for the future have to be torn up? Some within the hierarchy feel they now have a more clear, dynamic way of working but until results follow, those assertions will be challenged.

US owners Kroenke Sports & Entertainment (KSE) acted decisively to remove Sanllehi, but should he have been more directly replaced? Certainly, some sources close to the club feel there is a lack of direction from on high now and that that instability is seeping through to the squad. Others, who have worked for KSE at Arsenal, speak gratefully of the autonomy they have been granted, but have the owners been guilty of showing too much trust?

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One of the consequences of the executive churn at Arsenal has been a disjointed transfer strategy.

Their management team has a youthful look, which would seemingly suggest a club adopting a long-term approach. That has been undercut by several short-term decisions: as recently as this summer, Arsenal handed lucrative contracts to Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Willian and David Luiz — three players already over 30. They also spent £45 million on Thomas Partey, who at 27 offers no guarantee of retaining resale value.

This is not new.

Since January 2018, Arsenal have signed several players already in or beyond their late 20s: Henrikh Mkhitaryan (29 on arrival), Aubameyang (28), Stephan Lichtsteiner (34), Sokratis (30), Luiz (32), Cedric Soares (28), Willian (32) and Partey. As well as that, they gave a club-record £350,000 per week contract to a 29-year-old Mesut Ozil. So far, Arsenal have not recouped a penny on any of those deals. In most cases, it’s unlikely they ever will.

It’s possible to mount a credible case for each of those decisions in isolation: Willian (below) brings huge Premier League experience, for example; Cedric offers depth and versatility; Luiz is a leader.

Placed alongside each other, however, they begin to tell a story of a club making costly and arguably rash outlays in the hope of securing an immediate return to the Champions League. It is difficult to argue for the success of that strategy: consider the money sunk into these contracts with little hope of return.

If Chelsea, who knew Willian’s qualities intimately from his seven seasons with them, only considered him worthy of a two-year deal, how did Arsenal justify offering him three years?

Arsenal have adopted a “win now” policy with a manager and executive team who are still developing. It does not appear to add up.

The tension between the short term and long term defines Arsenal’s predicament. There are those among the club’s leadership who believe they won’t be truly competitive until after 2022, when their young players have sufficiently developed and many of the current squad will have moved on, taking some of the club’s old culture with them. While some are content with that timeline, others worry that’s too long to wait, and that the club must find a faster route back to the top.

In the case of Aubameyang, Arsenal granted him a three-year contract this summer at the age of 31. While the decision was largely welcomed by the fans, some close to the club wondered if it was necessary. As The Athletic exclusively revealed in July, the attacker’s original contract from January 2018 granted the club a purchase option on an additional year. Triggering that would have forcibly extended Aubameyang’s contract until 2022. Ultimately both Arsenal and the player’s camp chose to disregard the clause.

Arsenal do spend money. Since the summer of 2016 — an ultimately disappointing window in which the club acquired Shkodran Mustafi, Granit Xhaka and Lucas Perez for the best part of £100 million — The Athletic estimates the club have spent almost £500 million in the transfer market, as well as the significant compensation outlay for dismissing Wenger, Emery and their staffs. The constant change in coaching and executive positions, however, has meant the strategy behind this transfer expenditure has never appeared particularly coherent.

After signing Xhaka, Wenger described him that September as a “box-to-box midfielder”. By the November, he had changed his tune entirely, telling reporters this Swiss “is more a deep playmaker than a box-to-box player”.

Arsenal then broke their transfer record twice in the space of six months to sign Alexandre Lacazette and then Aubameyang, seemingly without a clear plan of how the two centre-forwards might play together. Promising centre-half William Saliba was acquired fully 17 months ago, but is yet to play a competitive game for the club — and now the recruitment department is considering adding another right-sided centre-half. Arsenal smashed their transfer record again to sign Nicolas Pepe for £72 million in summer 2019, but have yet to successfully integrate him.

While clubs such as Liverpool buy players to fit within a defined system, Arsenal have sometimes seemed to be simply making the best of what they’ve got. 

There are indications that may be changing and the hierarchy do recognise that the squad has major issues in terms of technical quality, tactical understanding and mentality. The signing of Partey was predicated on a tactical vision for this team, presented by Edu to the club’s ownership. However, that vision is yet to be realised. Arteta recently told DAZN in Spain that the club are “five or six positions” short of what he requires. Is it realistic to fill those gaps before the likes of Willian and Aubameyang enter steep decline?

There have been bright spots in Arsenal’s recruitment. When they have bought young, it has tended to work for them. Kieran Tierney and Gabriel Martinelli appear excellent additions, and 22-year-old centre-half Gabriel has started strongly. With an exciting generation of academy players, Arsenal should arguably be leaning into this young talent.

The last summer transfer window, capped by the addition of Partey, was largely greeted as a success. Arsenal failed, however, to make the sales needed to balance the books. In what was admittedly a difficult market, only Emiliano Martinez left for a transfer fee. Arsenal’s approximate spend of £500 million since the summer of 2016 is set against estimated sales of just £198 million.

It is safe to assume that, come the end of the season, Ozil will join the likes of Aaron Ramsey, Alexis Sanchez, Mkhitaryan and Danny Welbeck in leaving the club for no transfer fee. There have been tens and tens of millions left on the table.

While much of the blame for that can be laid at the feet of people who have now left the club themselves, the current management should also consider whether assets have been appropriately managed. Did the complete exclusion of Matteo Guendouzi, for example, help his value in the transfer market?

Arsenal will need to sell better to fund the next phase of their evolution. The substantial outlay on older players is indicative of a club attempting to postpone a rebuild; gambling on experienced names in the hope they’ll secure immediate passage back to the promised lands of the Champions League.

As technical director, Edu is the man charged with laying out a squad-building strategy for the next three to five years. Supporters will feel entitled to ask, “What is the plan?”

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This has been a period of tumultuous change for Arsenal.

A club which under Wenger and Gazidis set the standard for stability has been plunged into perpetual transition. Since 2018 began, they have had three managers (four, if you count interim head coach Freddie Ljungberg’s brief spell before Arteta succeeded Emery), and as many senior executives at the helm. It is difficult to adopt a clear strategy when the decision-makers at the top of the club are constantly changing.

The owners, of course, remain the same. Stan Kroenke’s KSE only took sole control in late 2018 but have been the majority shareholders since 2011. While the club’s split ownership enforced a period of paralysis, this competitive drift has happened on their watch. They believe the club now have the right structure and set-up to bring success, although there is an acceptance that current results are far from satisfactory.

There are two problems at Arsenal: the short-term and the long-term; the crisis and the decline. One can be fixed quickly with results, the other will require much more work behind the scenes.

As head coach, Arteta would only have been responsible for the former. As manager, he must tackle both. It is a huge task for someone in the top job for the first time. Stopping the rot would be challenging enough; turning the club around is another matter entirely. 

The title of “manager” is arguably a poisoned chalice at the Emirates.

There were times during Wenger’s reign when the whole club seemed to hide behind the iconic Frenchman.

To place the inexperienced Arteta in that role would be reckless and unfair. He may be willing to “take the bullets”, but is that right? Clearly, he should be held accountable for the team’s poor performance. Step back, however, and it is clear that the mess at Arsenal is not entirely of this coach’s making.

[Vesper 30,232]

Marcelo Bielsa’s men burnt out? No chance

https://theathletic.com/2265435/2020/12/17/marcelo-bielsa-burnout-leeds/

In Argentina, the people who class Marcelo Bielsa as flawed like to bite him with two different sets of teeth. If they are not picking at the shortage of trophies on his record, they are leaning on the other strand of criticism that has followed him around for most of his coaching life.

The burnout theory they call it, for want of a better name. It indulges the idea that however high Bielsa hoists a team, he cannot keep it up for long. Over the years there was a trend of promising results falling away on his watch, until last season when Leeds United left the Championship for dust. Even then some Argentine pundits dismissed England’s second division as a second-rate title.

In England, they cannot pull up Bielsa on trophies because he came to Leeds to win a specific prize and banked it at the second attempt. But the burnout theory? It is always there in the background, a card waiting to be played when other explanations for dips in form are too complicated to muster or too bland to be of interest.

It was Tim Sherwood’s turn last night, the guest pundit on Amazon Prime’s coverage of Leeds’ game against Newcastle United at Elland Road. The fixture was Leeds’ third in 11 days, on the back of two defeats. “These look like they’ve blown a gasket already,” Sherwood said. “They looked tired against West Ham. They’re supposed to be the fittest team in the league.”

Leeds were several things against West Ham United last Friday: flat, blunt, devoid of the usual Bielsa verve. But the risk involved in analysis these days is that everything is painted by numbers. Everything can be compared to statistics. “The game against West Ham was our second best of the season in a physical aspect,” Bielsa said, and on these matters, he is not known to lie. “We only ran more against Aston Villa.” No doubt at all that Leeds played poorly last week but tired? Bielsa is never more than a bad scoreline or two away from that old conversation. Then comes a riposte like yesterday’s filleting of Newcastle.

There are certain things that constrain Bielsa’s players, some of their own making and some of the opposition’s. Low blocks and congested defences tend to cause a log jam in attack, and imprecision out wide is the enemy of so many of their good territorial positions. As for set pieces, they are the poison Bielsa cannot draw. But the legs were there last night and so was the killer instinct, yielding a 5-2 to win over a Newcastle side who saw no sign of Leeds’ steam running out. The last place complaints about burnout ever come from are Bielsa’s dressing room itself.

Bielsa puts huge importance on physical output because everything about his football depends on it. Good fitness means dominance and good fitness means that technique and tactics are likely to hold firm, like Leeds scoring three times in the last 12 minutes against Newcastle. Bielsa noted that away at Chelsea this month, when Leeds by his own admission were soundly beaten, Chelsea’s running stats increased by 20 per cent in comparison to previous matches and West Ham also ran 2km further than in any of their games this season. That effort negated one of Leeds’ advantages and allowed Chelsea’s talent to tell. “For us to be better than a great rival, we need to make them worse,” Bielsa admitted.

Newcastle were made to look worse than Leeds at Elland Road, and then some. Leeds had no difficulty in controlling the ball, manipulating it and — as the night went on — sticking it away. Their possession ran to almost 70 per cent, their 521 passes were more than double the number attempted by Newcastle and their 25 shots on goal went far beyond Newcastle’s 10. The passing accuracy of Steve Bruce’s players dropped to a miserly 69 per cent, puncturing their performance.

It was not as if Leeds avoided giving their guests a helping hand. Newcastle opened the scoring with their second chance of the match, a volley from Jeff Hendrick in the first half which followed several waves of attacks from Bielsa’s players. They drew level at 2-2 on 65 minutes with a Ciaran Clark header directly from a corner, because corners are where you get at Leeds.

But the blows in return were too heavy and numerous, the clinical impact of Leeds clicking where it mattered. Patrick Bamford headed in their first goal after Rodrigo’s effort came back off the crossbar. Rodrigo nodded home a second on the end of a Harrison cross. Dallas arrived at the back post to convert a third 12 minutes from the end and Newcastle were twice caught on the counter-attack as Gjanni Alioski and Jack Harrison struck close to full-time. Harrison’s finish was a gem, driven in with a thudding smash from 30 yards. Trailing behind him, Clark looked knackered.

Harrison was one of two players sacrificed at half-time during Leeds’ 2-1 defeat to West Ham. It was ruthless but Bielsa so often is with his substitutions and decisions like that are rarely meant to be taken personally (although Helder Costa, after a poor second half on Friday, was nowhere to be seen in yesterday’s squad. “There was no injury,” Bielsa said). Sherwood thought tiredness was creeping in against West Ham but Bielsa saw only a night going wrong, failing to follow the plot he envisaged. He stuck with Harrison and stuck with everyone, keeping his line-up unchanged against Newcastle.

Fatigue can show itself in decision-making and poise. Leeds kept both intact after Clark’s soft equaliser, picking the right passes and finding the right touches to turn a tense 2-2 scoreline into a win at a canter. The last time Bielsa faced questions about burnout, after a 1-0 defeat at Queens Park Rangers in 2019, his team went back to Elland Road, threw fresh logs on the fire and stuck four unanswered goals past West Bromwich Albion. He would not have been aware of Sherwood’s comments pre-match last night but grumbling over the weekend must have been audible to him. The reaction was no less emphatic, a display which swept Newcastle aside.

Bruce derided Newcastle’s defending of the late goals as “something you’d see in a park on a Sunday”. He had a point when he said Leeds had enjoyed the benefit of the doubt when a penalty check by VAR let Liam Cooper away with a challenge on Callum Wilson at 1-1. But he accepted that his team had been picked off late on. “Up until the last 12 minutes, I thought we gave as good as we got,” Bruce said; precisely the period of the game where a Leeds side with a blown gasket would have been blowing out the wrong end.

Wednesday is usually murderball day at Thorp Arch in the weeks when Leeds have no midweek game. Murderball is where Bielsa monitors the physical state of his squad: who is fit, who is firing and whose tank is full of fuel. The visit of Newcastle served the same purpose, putting ticks in all the right boxes. The subject of burnout is bound to come around again because where Bielsa is concerned, it inevitably does. But the truth will out.

[Vesper 30,232]

A harsh sacking isn’t always a wrong sacking

https://theathletic.com/2265342/2020/12/17/premier-league-manager-sackings/

How bad does it need to get? This is the question that stalks the mind of executives at every football club when it comes to hiring and firing their head coaches. In the coming months, it may be the concern for Chris Wilder at Sheffield United, Mikel Arteta at Arsenal or Ole Gunnar Solskjaer at Manchester United. What is the tipping point? How far is too far?

In recent weeks at West Bromwich Albion, the hierarchy arrived at a conclusion that has not been overly popular in the immediate aftermath. On Wednesday morning, after a creditable 1-1 draw at Manchester City, West Brom sacked Slaven Bilic. This came within five months of the Croatian coach guiding the club to promotion. To heighten the hysteria, it has subsequently emerged that the club interviewed candidates before the match took place. On social media and radio phone-ins, supporters and journalists were swift to condemn the latest evidence of boardroom brutality. The local newspaper reported on an “85-word statement” on the club website. One newspaper website made a list of the harshest sackings in Premier League history.

A sacking always feels a little more outrageous at this time of year, yet festive compassion and goodwill are not high on the agenda for a Premier League owner whose status in the top-flight is insecure and whose income has been severely reduced by a global pandemic. As for Bilic, the decision might appear callous to those supporters who credit him with returning their team to the top flight and any neutrals impressed by a backs-to-the-wall point against City on Tuesday evening. His team are not disastrous. But does it need to be disastrous to justify or provoke a change?

It is not overly difficult to assess both a pattern of behaviour and results that suggests West Brom’s trajectory to be worrying. This season alone, West Brom have won one of 13 Premier League games. Ahead of Wednesday night’s fixtures, they had conceded four more goals than any other side and only two sides had scored fewer goals.

Clubs assess both short and long-term patterns these days and perhaps the more compelling case against Bilic can be identified by West Brom’s record between December 11, 2019, and the end of last season, when the club failed to win 17 of their final 26 Championship matches of the campaign. Taken together, therefore, West Brom did not win in 29 of Bilic’s last 39 games in the Championship and Premier League. In the matches West Brom may realistically expect to take points from in the Premier League — against Newcastle, Crystal Palace, Burnley, Brighton, Sheffield United and Fulham — Bilic secured one win, against Sheffield United, and his team scored only four goals. This record, combined with longstanding friction over recruitment, suggests it to be improbable that Bilic would be able to retain the club’s Premier League status.

West Brom could have afforded Bilic more time, yet many within the club will recall how the decision to wait and see whether Alan Pardew could alter the curve of results led the club to dramatically “bottom out” by the start of April in the 2017-18 season. This may have informed this particular decision. How long, exactly, could West Brom afford to wait for this manager to improve results?

There are no guarantees with a managerial change. West Brom supporters, whose club appear to be permanently spinning on the managerial merry-go-round after recent spells with Tony Pulis and Pardew, could be forgiven for letting out a sigh when they saw Sam Allardyce as the successor. Yet Allardyce, for all the derision he receives, has never been relegated from the Premier League, is highly capable of organising a defence and has a proven record of maximising limited potential. The decision has logic.

If the common pattern of a managerial bounce suggests results can pick up quickly, there is some sense, too, in hiring Allardyce before a flurry of Christmas fixtures while it always enables a new manager to contribute towards the January window, rather than an outgoing coach suggesting transfers that may not be wanted by a new man.

The tension between reason and sentiment will always be highly-charged in football. A consensus has developed that sacking managers is, in some way, morally wrong and evidence of an industry that does not afford time, patience or empathy to its participants. It often falls under the umbrella of foreign ownership, too, yet this development predates English football’s globalisation. In the 2001-02 season, before overseas investors were common, 21 of the 92 clubs in the top four English leagues had changed their manager before the end of October, which is more than is currently the case this season by mid-December, albeit this campaign had a later start date.

More accurately, the culture can probably be attributed to a rise in money in the game. The more is at stake, the more likely we are to be impatient. Football supporters often shudder at any description of their local club as a business but Premier League clubs are globally-owned, corporate bodies with offices dotted around the world and owners who are highly demanding and often highly vain investors.

The battle for decision-makers is whether to be proactive to influence events or reactive to events that befall them. Bournemouth, for example, stood by Eddie Howe through thick and thin last season, most probably due to a debt of gratitude they felt they owed a manager who had given so much to the club, yet the result was relegation. If you speak to those at boardroom level at Watford, the decision they privately regret most is not the three times they sacked a full-time manager last season but rather their call to retain Javi Gracia into a third season when the club had ended the previous campaign by losing seven of their final eleven Premier League matches and then capitulating in a 6-0 FA Cup final defeat to Manchester City. The one time the Pozzo family decided to be a little sentimental, they saw their survival model collapse.

This is not to suggest every manager ought to be fired following a dip in form and there are, clearly, various examples of exceptional swings such as Ralph Hasenhuttl retaining the trust of the Southampton board even despite taking only nine points from his first 13 Premier League matches last season. Yet it is increasingly true that the overwhelming story for those owners craving survival is that they have too much riding on it to even contemplate the thought of accepting relegation without exploring every avenue. As Sheffield United toil desperately, it would take a naive mind to believe that the club’s Saudi ownership will not consider their own course of remedial action although, in truth, that decision may already have come too late.

If Wilder is dismissed, it will be greeted with another round of indignation but a personal view is that a manager of a football team should not keep his job solely as a reward for having performed the role successfully in the past. To put it simply, an employer in any walk of life must have the expectation that the employee can maintain or improve performances and results in the future. If the employer loses confidence in their ability to do this, it is quite normal to make a change. In the case of Wilder, it may be that he is deemed the best man to lead a promotion push in the event the club is relegated, much like Daniel Farke at Norwich, but it would not be unreasonable of the club’s owner to wonder whether he is the best-suited individual to keep the club in the top flight this season.

For those with the courage to make unpopular decisions, there have been remarkable success stories. Leicester are now a side regularly pushing the top six of the Premier League. Yet where might they be if the club’s hierarchy had remained nostalgic for Claudio Ranieri’s title-winning campaign and allowed the Italian to continue in his role as the club sank down the Premier League table in 2017? Ranieri’s champions were a point above the relegation zone, and it was all very sad to see him leave, but the courage to be proactive has served the club well in the long-term. Southampton, equally, pulled the plug on Nigel Adkins and recruited Mauricio Pochettino in 2013. The club were not in grave peril when they took the decision but recognised that it might be possible to not only maintain standards but improve under different leadership.

Curiously, this proactive approach is less familiar higher up the table. The travails of Arteta have left many to wonder whether Arsene Wenger was treated too severely in his latter years but there may be an equally compelling case that Arsenal in fact waited too long, allowing his reign to “bottom out”, with star players walking out and supporters screaming into cameras before the curtain finally came down.

When Manchester United and Jose Mourinho parted ways, it came to feel more like an exorcism than a managerial sacking, such was the intensity of the dressing room feuds, the surly interviews and the choreographed discord between the manager and the boardroom. Two years into Solskjaer’s reign, conversation lingers over whether he is the right man to elevate United to their former glories yet it would appear to require a “bottoming out” for United to make a change.

A more measured and mature view may be to say that Solskjaer has stabilised the club commendably, recruited reasonably well and, at times, produced superb bursts of results or concocted individual game plans that have outwitted coaches as talented as Pep Guardiola, Thomas Tuchel and Julian Nagelsmann. Yet an honest analysis can also say that United’s performances belie their results and the team do not have a defined way of playing that is almost always necessary to win a Premier League title.

As such, would it be so outrageous to make a proactive decision, recognise a greater talent on the market and provide the new man with a stable base? For some at United, firing Solskjaer may be akin to shooting Bambi but in the cold environment of a billion-dollar business seeking to maximise its potential, it would be hard to dispute the logic. A similar case may soon be made on Frank Lampard, who can be commended on restoring Champions League football after a transfer ban but questioned as to whether he possesses the tools to guide a team to the very summit of the domestic and European game. Either call would be harsh but harsh does not necessarily equate to wrong.

For those seeking success, that tension between emotion and reason will rarely reconcile easily.

[Vesper 30,232]

How Slaven Bilic’s reign at West Brom unravelled

https://theathletic.com/2257769/2020/12/16/bilic-sacked-west-brom-allardyce/

Slaven Bilic’s 18-month reign at West Bromwich Albion is over and, barring any late hitches in negotiations, Sam Allardyce will be in charge for Sunday’s derby against Aston Villa.

Bilic and his coaching staff — Danilo Butorovic, Rean Racunica and Julian Dicks — were informed of Albion’s decision at a meeting this morning at Albion’s training ground.

Characteristically, Bilic took the news on the chin. There was a handshake with sporting and technical director Luke Dowling and CEO Xu Ke, who broke the news that had leaked last night.

The Croatian then asked for the chance to tell his players about his departure himself. There was shock and sadness in the squad which, by and large, had remained loyal to Bilic. But in the brutal world of football, Bilic then left the building and his team began the process of moving on. Albion’s players completed a recovery session with fitness coaches after last night’s excellent 1-1 draw at Manchester City. They will take tomorrow off, as per their schedule, and by the time they return on Friday to prepare to face Villa, Allardyce should be in place.

For Bilic and Albion’s fans, his sacking in the wake of their best defensive display of the season marks the end of a brief but enjoyable journey that helped reconnect supporters with their club.

But for Bilic and the club, this felt like a long time coming.

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On October 25, just three months after leading West Brom back to the Premier League at his first attempt, Bilic sat in his office at the club’s training ground. He was ready to resign.

As Bilic discussed his thoughts with his advisers, Albion were considering whether they should sack the man who had returned them to the top flight a year ahead of schedule.

The relationship between head coach and club had broken down to such an extent neither side could envisage it continuing beyond next summer, when the Croatian’s initial two-year contract would have expired. West Brom’s decision that week to sell defender Ahmed Hegazi and Bilic’s angry reaction to the deal had turned a small papercut into a gaping wound which seemed impossible to heal.

A short-term sticking plaster was the only hope.

Both sides pulled back from the brink over the next few days — Bilic persuaded by his closest confidants that it was not the time to walk away, Albion concluding conditions were not right to make a change.

In reality, Albion could not land any of the men they believed could do better than Bilic so decided to stand by their man.

But another eight weeks on, and with just one victory from the season’s first 13 Premier League games, Allardyce became available having previously been sounded out.

The club finally did the deed and ended a reign which, despite its relatively short life, was among the more eventful in Albion’s recent history.

The timing of the announcement brought shock among fans and pundits. Bilic had, after all, just overseen an excellent performance at Manchester City last night, claiming a point from a performance that was organised, resolute and full of spirit from a squad that rarely if ever wavered in support for Bilic.

But the decision to make a change had already been taken after too many previous displays in which such qualities had been lacking.

Albion’s decision-makers held Bilic ultimately responsible. The Croatian could quite fairly argue that Albion’s recruitment and budget in the summer had left him with little or no chance to keep them afloat, with a second-tier squad for a top-flight season.

But just 18 months after his appointment and only three after the joy of automatic promotion, Bilic has gone.

A relationship that began unravelling almost from day one has fallen apart.

In fact, even in the moment of triumph, the cracks were evident. As Bilic celebrated leading West Brom back to the Premier League in an empty Hawthorns on July 22, the sores that have led in part to his departure were quietly festering.

Disagreements between Bilic and the club — led in football terms by sporting and technical director Luke Dowling — date back to shortly after his appointment as head coach in the summer of 2019.

Having impressed Dowling and the club’s top brass with his aura and easy demeanour, former Croatia and West Ham United manager Bilic started work and… ran headlong into a recruitment dispute.

Albion had seen Dwight Gayle, their 23-league-goal loan star from the previous season, return to Newcastle United, while Jay Rodriguez, his 22-goal partner, was heading for the exit by virtue of a £10 million release clause in his contract. Replacing those 45 goals from their near-miss 2018-19 promotion campaign under Darren Moore and James Shan was Bilic’s No 1 priority.

Bilic’s well-publicised top target was the aptly-named Albian Ajeti of Swiss club Basel, while he also favoured a move for Vedat Muriqi, a Kosovan striker at Fenerbahce recommended by colleagues at his former club Besiktas. Ajeti signed eventually for top-flight West Ham instead while Muriqi headed for Serie A with Lazio, with Bilic feeling West Brom could have landed one or both had they moved sooner.

Albion however, with owner Guochuan Lai an increasingly distant figure, did not believe deals for Ajeti and Muriqi could be done within their means. Instead, they signed Kenneth Zohore from Championship rivals Cardiff City and Charlie Austin from top-flight Southampton, the latter with Bilic’s belated sign-off after a chat with that club’s former manager Ronald Koeman.

Austin was a qualified success in the promotion campaign with 10 league goals. Zohore, who was announced somewhat surprisingly as a £9 million signing, played almost no part with only five starts across the 46 games. Bilic was unimpressed with both signings to differing degrees.

Bilic landed countryman Filip Krovinovic, a player he had coveted for a while, on loan a few days into his reign and also got his way on the loan signings of Matheus Pereira and Grady Diangana, albeit after expressing private frustration at the length of time those deals took to complete.

And he signed off on bringing in Romaine Sawyers, Darnell Furlong and Semi Ajayi while calling off the search for a second right-back, choosing instead to promote an 18-year-old Nathan Ferguson from the academy after the home-grown youngster impressed in training.

But the disagreements over strikers and perceived delays on a couple of key deals sowed the seeds of the discord to come.

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Sometimes, your greatest strengths can also be your weaknesses.

In the eyes of Albion’s decision-makers, so it proved with Bilic.

At the training ground, the new boss made an immediate impression. His easy manner and big personality injected a shot of positivity and purpose into a club that, despite going close to promotion via the Championship play-offs in 2019, had not fully shaken off the debilitating effects of the slow Premier League decline and eventual relegation after the chaotic Alan Pardew reign either side of Christmas 2017.

Players and staff lauded Bilic’s man-management, his people skills and his ability to galvanise a first-team group still suffering the effects of a play-off semi-final defeat to local rivals Aston Villa on penalties a month earlier and the losses of Gayle, Rodriguez and key defender Craig Dawson.

His obvious passion and enthusiasm for the challenge gave Albion’s reshaped players a natural leader and offered the fans a rallying point around which to rediscover an affection for the club that had become worn down by the previous years’ struggles.

Bilic’s aura, status and personality were precisely the qualities West Brom needed, and he developed a happy knack of getting things right from the sidelines in his early weeks, too, building up reputational capital with supporters and players alike.

In last season’s opening games, with his new side still struggling for the fluency they would later find, Bilic’s substitutions changed several matches as Albion became adept at rescuing late points from the fire. A series of systemic and positional changes, most notably shifting Pereira to the No 10 role, also gave him and his coaches real credibility in the dressing room. Bilic and his staff found ways to make Albion potent despite their group of strikers often being anything but.

His 18-month reign contained many high points but it reached its zenith last December 8, when a swashbuckling team display, led by an inspirational Pereira, saw Swansea City battered 5-1 at The Hawthorns and confirmed West Brom’s status as the Championship’s most stylish outfit.

There were difficult times ahead, however, with a sequence of just one win in the next nine league games.

Questions were posed but Bilic appeared to have provided the answers. A change of system and a new role for Pereira brought about a second peak in Albion’s march to the Premier League.

It came together as his side defeated hosts Millwall and Storm Ciara for a landmark victory in early February and continued with memorable wins at Reading and Bristol City and a solid victory over Preston North End at The Hawthorns.

The team were flying again and Bilic’s stock was high.

Then came the first lockdown.

When football returned after a hiatus of more than three months, Albion were in the second automatic promotion place with a six-point lead over third-placed Fulham and a 10-point advantage over everyone else. Almost immediately, though, the club’s powers-that-be began to question Bilic.

Privately, they began to ask whether the passion that had served the club so well earlier in the season had begun to manifest itself in knee-jerk selections, inconsistent messages and an air of panic.

There was frustration among those around Bilic, with a perceived mental fragility in a team that failed to perform in pivotal post-lockdown fixtures, most notably in away losses to Brentford and Huddersfield Town and at home to Queens Park Rangers in a drawn season finale.

But within the boardroom there were concerns felt most acutely after defeat in Huddersfield in the penultimate game, when Bilic said, both publicly and within the dressing room, that Albion must prepare for the play-offs. The club’s decision-makers felt that message was premature and risked transmitting further nervousness to the players.

Eventually, Brentford felt the pressure too and lost their final match at home to Barnsley when victory would have sent them up with Leeds United instead, meaning Albion were rewarded for their pre-lockdown excellence with a deserved promotion.

But while the moment of triumph might ordinarily have been the cue for contract-renewal talks with your triumphant head coach, there was no such development.

Bilic’s doubts about West Brom, and their doubts about him, meant planning for the 2020-21 Premier League began with his future already uncertain.

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“It sometimes feels like we’ve been relegated to the Premier League, not promoted,” Bilic was heard to say privately in the aftermath of Hegazi’s mid-October sale.

The loss of the Egyptian defender was the incendiary move that projected Albion’s behind-the-scenes tensions into the public domain but the temperature had been rising throughout the summer as Bilic’s persistent doubts about recruitment returned to the surface.

Before heading back to Croatia for a post-season break, Bilic was shocked to learn the limits of their summer budget as they prepared to rejoin the elite.

He expressed that surprise in an interview in his homeland and, on his return to England, presented some ambitious transfer targets in the hope of persuading Albion owner Lai, via Dowling, to cough up more cash.

He was unsuccessful. Albion committed around £46 million in potential transfer fees for their return to the Premier League when add-ons and installments are taken into account. But the budget for up-front fees was only around £20 million.

Bilic believed the sum was not enough. Albion argued that, with a £25 million reduction in their allocation from the Premier League broadcast deal due to COVID-19, they spent every penny they could.

The remainder of the summer window became a battle of wills as both Bilic and the club steeled themselves for what they suspected would be a hugely difficult season.

There were disagreements over Diangana, a successful loan signing in the promotion-winning side who Bilic wanted back. While keen to re-sign the West Ham United winger, Bilic expressed concerns that the fee of up to £18 million would eat up too much of the club’s limited summer funds and even believed another loan deal for Diangana would be possible later in the window. But Dowling and Albion pressed ahead with the early-September deal, believing that signing a young English player with obvious re-sale value on a long-term contract was an exciting football move and a shrewd financial investment.

There were doubts within the boardroom of the merits of re-signing Krovinovic but Bilic pushed hard and Dowling finally struck another season-long loan deal for the midfielder — again only after protracted negotiations had saved Albion some vital money but left Bilic frustrated at these delays in building his squad.

Dowling believed full-backs and a holding midfielder should have been higher up the list of transfer priorities. Bilic wanted to strengthen in the same areas but not at the expense of Krovinovic and Karlan Grant, the striker who emerged as his top summer target.

Having investigated a move for Brentford’s Ollie Watkins, who ended up at Villa, Bilic instead set his sights on Grant and grew increasingly frustrated at a lack of progress on a deal for him. Dowling eventually agreed to pay for Huddersfield’s Grant in six instalments and Bilic got his man, but not before more ill-feeling had been created at having to start the Premier League campaign without him.

Dowling pushed for Brighton & Hove Albion’s Shane Duffy at centre-back but Bilic was not keen and eventually hung his hat on the experience of 36-year-old former Chelsea favourite Branislav Ivanovic. Dowling also did a deal for Wigan Athletic’s Cedric Kipre, as a raw young defender at the right price who could be an investment for the future. Bilic was unconvinced of its merits.

Bilic felt sold short. Dowling argued he had stretched a meagre budget as far as he could.

When the season finally began, the Albion board felt Bilic needed to provide more pragmatic answers to the difficult problems he faced. Those around Bilic felt the playing group was simply not strong enough, irrespective of how it was used.

Then came Hegazi’s move to Al-Ittihad of Saudi Arabia, after the domestic window had shut. For Albion, the deal for a player who had figured only sporadically under Bilic in the Championship was a no-brainer — and a transfer the head coach had effectively sanctioned earlier in the transfer window when plans were discussed to raise funds.

For Bilic, though, the landscape had changed since those conversations, with Hegazi’s successful return to the side in a goalless draw with Burnley one week before his sale, and the deal represented the loss of a first-team player.

He was doubly aggrieved that chief executive Xu Ke asked for his thoughts on the prospective transfer a few days before it happened, only to overlook his wish to keep the player.

Bilic was angry and spoke about resigning before being dissuaded.

Albion were ready to sack Bilic in the wake of the 2-0 loss at Fulham on November 2 but looked at the available replacements and, with Allardyce at that stage not in the running, decided none of them appealed.

The relationship with Bilic continued for a while but in the long term, it was irreparable and eventually results and performances gave Dowling, Xu and Lai justification for pulling the trigger.

They resolved to make a change after the 2-1 defeat at Newcastle on Saturday, having been pushed towards it by the 5-1 loss to Crystal Palace in the previous game.

Unable to get Allardyce, another candidate or a caretaker boss through COVID-19 testing in time for Tuesday’s trip to Manchester City, they left Bilic in charge. In the harsh world of football, it was a cold, calculated decision.

Yet still, it left a sour taste to see a man as likable as Bilic left exposed to such embarrassment.

Thankfully, Bilic’s team produced a stout, defensive display that at least gave him a palatable send-off.

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Had a stand-out candidate been readily available, Albion would have moved earlier to replace Bilic.

It had been clear for a while that his reign was living on borrowed time with no realistic prospect of a contract extension.

Now they have taken the leap, however, but the same issue persists — Allardyce may be the favourite to take over but the news has already split the fanbase as much as the decision to remove Bilic.

Allardyce, Black Country-born and briefly an Albion coach under Brian Talbot, specialises in survival missions but his boyhood affinity for Wolves will be an issue for a small number of Albion fans and his style of play will concern a few more who have revelled in the return to expansive football under Bilic.

Dowling and Xu have concluded, however, that the 66-year-old’s experienced and battle-hardened qualities mean a below-par squad will have a better chance of over-achieving with him at the helm.

They will risk the potential backlash for what they believe is an improved hope of survival. With owner Guochuan Lai keen to find a buyer for his controlling stake, top-flight survival this season is paramount.

Whatever change they made would have been a calculated gamble. And whatever decision they reached, they will be hard-pressed to replace a man like Bilic, who seemed a perfect fit but saw his reign quickly unravel in sadness and a sense of unfulfilled potential.

Quite simply, Bilic helped Albion fans to fall in love with their club again. His reign was relatively short and ended sourly.

But the memories will endure.

[Vesper 30,232]

David de Gea at United: the past, the present and the future

https://theathletic.com/2263343/2020/12/17/de-gea-united-goalkeeper-henderson/

The rise, fall and subsequent rebalancing of David de Gea has been one of the most interesting stories of Manchester United’s post-Ferguson era. The club’s four-time Player of the Year, for a long period the Spaniard was the only United player consistently performing at a world-class level.

“Dave Saves” used to be a popular adage among United fans but that unfortunately became a joke for other football fans as the Spaniard encountered a sharp decline. Now battling Dean Henderson for the No 1 spot as well as opposition attackers, the 2020-21 season has been one of the biggest tests in the goalkeeper’s career.

This is The Athletic’s guide to David de Gea: past, present and potential future. 

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De Gea the goalkeeping demi-god

 

To properly explain De Gea’s fall, we have to chart his rise. Jose Mourinho claims United’s second-place finish in 2017-18 is one of his greatest-ever coaching accomplishments, and that was largely thanks to the efforts of his goalkeeper, as De Gea produced one of the greatest seasons by a goalkeeper in Premier League history. 

That season he was United’s very own version of Hans Brinker, the fictional Dutch speed skater who plugged a dike using just his finger. For De Gea, it was United’s defence that was leaking.

Look at the chart below and you can see just how good De Gea can be. The key thing you’re looking for is the “goals conceded” and “xGOT conceded” columns. The latter is a metric that measures the expected goals on target an individual goalkeeper faces and then equates how many goals an “average” goalkeeper would concede. If you swapped De Gea for an average goalkeeper in 2017-18 then United would have conceded closer to 39 goals, rather than the 25 they actually did. As the goals prevented column will show you, De Gea was the difference between almost 14 goals conceded for United that season. On 14 occasions fans exclaimed “How has that not gone in?” and the answer was: “Because Dave Saves”.

(All the data in this piece is provided by Opta and excludes penalties and own goals)

There is a more than reasonable case to be put that without De Gea that season, United would have finished fifth in the league rather than second. There’s a reasonable argument in saying that De Gea’s 2017-18 is one of the greatest seasons a goalkeeper has ever produced in the Premier League. It is one of the greatest seasons a player, either outfield or goalkeeper has had without either winning the league title or being the nucleus of a side that narrowly avoids relegation. A team as monied as United should have a defence that protects its goalkeeper rather than the other way around, but in 2017-18, De Gea’s Herculean performances helped a team that often played to less than the sum of its part.

Then came 2018-19, where De Gea went from demi-god to something very human.

So, what happened?

Teams find out De Gea’s weakness

To remix an old boxing quote, De Gea “grew old in the ring”, the cumulative wear and tear of all of these battles diminishing his otherworldly glow. Another unfortunate byproduct of De Gea’s form is, like with many a superstar player, increased scrutiny led to his greatest strength being used against him.

Teams figured out the Spaniard is one of the best goalkeepers in the world at making saves with his feet, and began shooting earlier and from a greater distance, in order to test him before he could get into proper position to make saves in the way that he prefers. A goal conceded to Marcos Alonso in United’s 1-1 draw with Chelsea in April 2019 epitomised the career nadir for the goalkeeper.

Antonio Rudiger attempted a long-range effort from a central area to test De Gea, but rather than try to collect the ball the goalkeeper parried it right into the path of an onrushing Alonso, who converted for a tap-in.

It was his third error in four games (all competitions) that led to a goal that season. That was as many as De Gea had made in his previous 123. After that result The Athletic wrote that De Gea had a “glitch” in his goalkeeping, referring to the eight goals he had conceded to efforts from outside the penalty area.

By the season’s end the decline was clear – in 2018-19 De Gea was an average Premier League goalkeeper. That doesn’t sound bad until you realise the difference between the 10th-best goalkeeper in the land and the fourth-best is what possibly cost United a finish in the Champions League spaces that season. De Gea was the difference between 14 goals being conceded in 2017-18, able to bail his team out when the defence switched off, but in 2018-19, with his defence still asleep (contrast the ball watching from his back four to Alonso’s movement in the first screenshot above), De Gea’s difference was negligible at best. His -0.1 goals prevented indicates that while De Gea probably still had some of his tricks about him (his performance in United’s 1-0 victory over Spurs at Wembley in January 2019 saw him make 11 saves in one game — a Premier League record for a goalkeeper while keeping a clean sheet), there was a flaw to his game that sides were exploiting. 

This is one of the crueller aspects of top-tier goalkeeping; teams are constantly trying to find flaws in your game, forcing you to either adapt and develop, or stumble in stature. (One only has to look at Joe Hart’s struggles once his very particular weakness became known.) In the space of a season, De Gea had gone from someone who papered over United’s cracks, to needing someone to hide his. 

Which brings us to Dean Henderson…

De Gea vs Henderson

The 2019-20 season introduced a new threat to De Gea, that of Henderson’s performances at Sheffield United. 

When comparing De Gea to the on-loan Henderson at Sheffield United, it is important to remember their position in relation to the rest of the team.

Henderson spent last season as the final line of defence in a bold unit that, at times, had two of their three centre-halves upfield along with both wing-backs. The sight of Henderson and one other defender ahead of him, as the rest of the Sheffield United team got forward, was not that uncommon, and as such Henderson made for an aggressive goalkeeper, marshalling his penalty area and the space beyond it. Take a look at this screenshot below of Henderson distributing the ball late on in a game against Chelsea last season. His Sheffield United team are 3-0 up and he is all by himself…

At Manchester United, De Gea is supposed to be the final line of defence in a team that largely defends in a middle block — the team’s backline is between De Gea’s penalty area and the halfway line — while the attacking unit applies good pressure higher up the pitch. De Gea was not the aggressor shooting off his goal-line to make saves and stop counters in the same way Henderson was, as he typically had one of Aaron Wan-Bissaka or Harry Maguire to make those challenges for him, and then either the United captain or Victor Lindelof either side of him to pass to when he was taking goal kicks.

That said, De Gea and Henderson displayed markedly different stopping values last season. The following graphics look to illustrate the manner in which either goalkeeper makes saves on shots faced last season.

Yellow dots indicate saves made, while red dots indicate a shot that went in, The larger the dot, the greater the goalscoring opportunity (the higher the xG value).

As you can see above, De Gea was a decent-to-good shot-stopping goalkeeper last season, brave in his one-v-ones and able to cover his corners. There are some centralised shots that you’d like him to be stopping (look for the smaller red dots on the image above, think back to Steven Bergwin’s shot against United in their first Project Restart game), but in the Premier League at least, De Gea was an adequate goalkeeper. (See those yellow dots in the top corners? De Gea can still be incredibly agile when making saves.)

Over at Sheffield United, Henderson was more than adequate. While he conceded the same amount of goals as Dea Gea (32 without penalties and own goals), Henderson’s “xGOT conceded” value (or goals an average goalkeeper would concede) is 39.4, meaning there were around seven shots when Henderson made a save that would make you get out of your seat and applaud. 

Last season Henderson’s performances stopped Sheffield United from conceding seven extra goals that probably “should” have gone in. He was an aggressive shot-stopper, blessed with strong wrists and a never-say-die attitude. (The cluster of red dots on the left of the chart may raise eyebrows among opposition scouts as to a potential weakness. This is not bad, but perhaps watch if Henderson can make saves quickly to his right in the future.)

Both De Gea and Henderson conceded the same number of goals (excluding own goals and penalties) last season — De Gea faced and conceded three penalties in 2019-20, while Henderson faced three, saved one and conceded one while the third was missed.

The difference was that Henderson, although facing fewer shots on target, had to deal with chances of greater quality. As mentioned earlier, the xGOT conceded value of the shots he faced was 39.4; De Gea’s was 33.

It’s also important to look at how each goalkeeper was making saves last season. De Gea’s strength may be in jutting out his legs to make saves, but, as you can see below, Henderson ability with his feet last season was still among some of the league’s best.

To sum up, last season De Gea was once again performing slightly below average in the league, but had enough about him to suggest that if properly protected by his defence he could still be the No 1 in a decent United side. 

However, Henderson had performed in such a manner for Sheffield United to suggest that if United’s defence were unable to properly protect De Gea, then Henderson could be fast-tracked to the No 1 position once he returned at the end of his loan deal. 

Readers may remember The Athletic suggested Henderson be given the starting goalkeeper position in the Premier League and De Gea be given the chance to show there was still fight in the (older) dog during Champions League and League Cup outings. That did not come to pass, with De Gea continuing to start in both domestic and European competitions, while Henderson has had to make do with League Cup outings and one start in the Premier League and Champions League respectively.

So, how has De Gea coped with the responsibility this season?

The now and what happens next

Here’s a sentence that feels weird to write: David de Gea is an average Premier League goalkeeper. 

Before the Manchester derby the Spaniard had a save percentage of exactly 50 per cent, the man who used to be a goalkeeping demi-god now the equivalent of a coin toss when shots are fired. 

In fact, when you look at De Gea’s save percentage totals in the Premier League across the years, you get an illuminating look at Manchester United’s post-Ferguson cycles. The Spaniard’s lowest-ever save percentage in a full season came under David Moyes in 2013-14, a season that United earned their lowest league position. United’s highest ever league finish after Ferguson’s retirement came in 2017-18, when De Gea earned a save percentage above 80 per cent. So, in a season when Solskjaer’s United often look a coin toss away from winning or losing games, it’s little surprise that De Gea’s save percentage at the moment is around 50 per cent in the Premier League.

Fifteen goals conceded in nine games seems bad, but we must apply a little context and remember results such as the 6-1 defeat against Spurs that De Gea was part of.

De Gea went into the 2020-21 season with a very confident, very talented and very loud challenger in Henderson (literally, you can hear him shout “Up! Up! Up!” from the sideline of games) and he has defended his position as No 1 to a decent degree.

Now, to be very clear, these numbers register the retrospective actions (or inactions) of a goalkeeper in order to evaluate them primarily as shot-stoppers. A save is the culmination of a sequence of smaller decisions including things such as foot placement, hand position, communication with your back line and an appreciation of angles and timing. 

As De Gea has proven in his league games this season, his approach to goal kicks, often opting to play it short, makes him a better stylistic fit for a United side that has designs from building out the back. Compare that screengrab of Henderson taking a goal kick from above to this United situation in the derby against City.

United tend to play it short as it allows them to involve players like Maguire and Luke Shaw, who are vital to how the team builds up passing sequences. It also lulls the opposition deeper into their half, allowing for those dangerous United counter-attacks.  Henderson’s approach, preferring longer direct passes, may have helped United get a goal against West Ham (kind of), but some concessions in playing style will have to be made, both from him and his back line, if he is to replace De Gea as United’s starting goalkeeper in the immediate future.

That said, it looks like Henderson is more confident goal at the moment. While we have tried to keep this piece Premier League-focused, compare De Gea’s reaction to Justin Kluivert’s goal against RB Leipzig in the Champions League, where he fails to properly extend himself and attack the ball…

… to that of Henderson in United’s win over West Ham. First, he goes big…

… then he attacks Fornals…

If you are reading this and part of you is thinking “De Gea has done nothing to indicate he should be dropped”, while another part thinks “De Gea has also done nothing to indicate he should continue as starting goalkeeper”, then you’ve hit the chewy nougat of the situation that Ole Gunnar Solskjaer finds himself in. 

Whether United can progress with an average shot-stopper, one who is one of their highest-paid players in excess of £375,000 a week, is another story. There was once a point when David de Gea was asked to do everything for this United defence and he succeeded. Then there was a point where he could no longer operate at those superhuman levels and some believed he was finished. Now the Spaniard looks capable of doing some things for this United defence, so it becomes a point either for United’s back four to give him greater protection, or for Solskjaer to roll the dice and give Henderson a proper run as goalkeeper.

[Vesper 30,232]

FA charge Edinson Cavani for using racial term in Instagram post

https://theathletic.com/news/manchester-united-edinson-cavani-instagram/7ZmzeOf2RvVG

The Football Association has charged Manchester United striker Edinson Cavani with misconduct in relation to a social media post that used a racial term, reports Laurie Whitwell. Cavani “sincerely apologised” for using the word “negrito” in a social media post following Manchester United’s 3-2 win at Southampton in November. Cavani now faces the prospect of a minimum three-match ban. In a statement United said “the player and the club will now consider the charge and respond to the FA accordingly.”

What happened?

On November 29, Cavani came off the bench for United and scored a double as they came back from 2-0 down to beat Southampton 3-2.

After the game, he reposted an image from a fan to his story on Instagram, adding the caption “gracias negrito”. The phrase loosely translates to “thanks little black person”.

Cavani went on to delete the post. “The message I posted after the game on Sunday was intended as an affectionate greeting to a friend, thanking him for his congratulations after the game. The last thing I wanted to do was cause offence to anyone,” he said in a statement.

“I am completely opposed to racism and deleted the message as soon as it was explained that it can be interpreted differently. I would like to sincerely apologise for this.”

What has the FA charged him with?

The FA stated: “Edinson Cavani has been charged with misconduct for a breach of FA Rule E3, in relation to a social media post on Thursday 29 November 2020.

“It is alleged that, contrary to FA Rule E3.1, a comment posted on the Manchester United FC player's Instagram page was insulting and/or abusive and/or improper and/or brought the game into disrepute.

“It is further alleged that the comment constitutes an 'Aggravated Breach', which is defined in FA Rule E3.2, as it included a reference, whether express or implied, to colour and/or race and/or ethnic origin.

“The striker has until Monday 4 January 2021 to provide a response to the charge.”

What punishment does he face?

Cavani faces a minimum three-game ban.

FA sanctioning guidelines for aggravated breaches of this nature advise a ban between six and 12 games in almost all cases. But sanctions below that standard range can be imposed where an offence is ‘in writing only or via any communication device’ and another specific mitigating factor is present.

The rules also make it clear that the owners of social media accounts are responsible for any content posted from their account, whether by themselves or by a third party.

Deleting an inappropriate post does not necessarily prevent a punishment from being imposed. Last season, Manchester City midfielder Bernardo Silva was suspended for one match after posting and then deleting a tweet comparing his teammate Benjamin Mendy to the cartoon figure on a brand of Spanish chocolate.

How have United responded?

The Athletic understands that Manchester United are attempting to offset such punishment by providing “cultural context”, as revealed in David Ornstein's weekly column.

One aspect to be put forward is that the term has been used by Cavani and his close circle as a specific nickname for the friend in question, with written evidence available. In the offending message the Uruguayan striker was expressing thanks, giving an indication as to his meaning.

United issued the following statement on Thursday in response to the FA charge. “Manchester United and all of our players are fully committed to the fight against racism and we will continue to work with the FA - along with other governing bodies and organisations, and through our own campaigns - in that regard.

“We note the FA decision today to charge Edinson Cavani for his social media reply to a friend's message of congratulations, following the Southampton game.

“Edinson and the club were clear that there was absolutely no malicious intent behind the message, which he deleted and apologised for, as soon as he was informed that it could have been misconstrued.

“The player and the club will now consider the charge and respond to the FA accordingly.”

 

[killer1257 3,282]

At least the FA is consistent [emoji23].

Gesendet von meinem VOG-L29 mit Tapatalk

[NikkiCFC 8,337]

Klopp who cries over 5 subs did not use ONE sub last night.

[Vesper 30,232]

2020-21 English Premier League

Aston Villa          
Burnley               

http://www.sportnews.to/sports/2020/premier-league-aston-villa-vs-burnley-s1/

http://www.dubsstreamz.com/totalepl17a1.php

https://www.totalsportek.com/aston-villa/

[Atomiswave 6,118]

So Vesper my friend, what kind of bullshittery will we witness in the united game tonight

[Vesper 30,232]

30 minutes ago, Atomiswave said:

So Vesper my friend, what kind of bullshittery will we witness in the united game tonight

VAR given dodgy pen

maybe a red car to SUFC for a bonus

[Vesper 30,232]

Liverpool, Tottenham and the battle for superiority

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It was them, no? Photograph: Clive Brunskill/AFP/Getty Images

Barry Glendenning  @bglendenning

IT’S ABOUT MORE THAN JUST WINNING Time was when fans of different clubs would bicker at great length about whose was the best, only for the teams in question to play against each and provide them with an answer. They were halcyon days, before heat maps, expected goals and green rectangles festooned with numbers, arrows and circles, the non-existence of which meant people were more or less happy to use the evidence of both the scoreboard and their own eyes to assess which of the two teams they were watching was better. Of course that was then and this is now, and with debate still raging over which was the better team in Liverpool’s victory over Tottenham Hotspur long after the final whistle was blown, a daily football email could be forgiven for wondering why the two teams bothered playing each other at all. What, after all, is the point in two sets of players going toe to toe on the field of play, if doing so only serves to provoke, rather than settle debate over which of them is superior?

Mourinho's firing of darts shows he believes Spurs can win the title | Jonathan Wilson Read more

Like many disputes before it, this one was prompted by comments made by José Mourinho, specifically his post-match claim that “the better team lost”. It is an arguably spurious view Liverpool fans greeted with post-match apoplexy on their Social Media Disgrace Twitter accounts, despite the cold-eyed and completely unjaundiced manner with which they usually greet any opinions that might be considered even mildly critical of their team or its glorious leader. In stark contrast, Spurs fans were quick to endorse their manager’s view, pointing out that despite having 0.00000001% of possession, their team created more clear-cut chances and would have won comfortably if: a) they’d scored more than one of them; hadn’t fallen victim to a fluke deflection; and c) had bothered keeping tabs on Bobby Firmino for that late corner. Valid points on both sides of this sophisticated debate then, The Fiver is sure you’ll agree. It is an argument that looks set to rumble tediously on until the season ends. And if, as seems quite likely, one of these teams goes on to win the title, then and only then will we know which of them is the better. Except we won’t know, because if Wednesday night’s frothing internet frenzy showed us nothing else, it’s that we have now reached a point of absurdity where teams attempting to decide superiority on the football pitch is merely the prelude to a series of far more unseemly squabbles elsewhere. LIVE ON BIG WEBSITE! Join Nick Ames from 6pm GMT for hot coverage of Fifa’s The Best Awards, before Simon Burnton guides you through Sheffield United 2-3 Manchester United at 8pm. QUOTE OF THE DAY “Leo Messi loves Barça, and I think he’ll consider the proposal the new Barcelona president makes him … it’s not about money, never has been; if it had, he would have taken very different decisions throughout his career. We have work hard to continue that beautiful story: Messi and Barcelona” – Joan Laporta, standing again to become president of Barcelona, tells Sid Lowe about his vision for the club.

The man himself. Photograph: Juan Medina/Reuters

RECOMMENDED LISTENING Football Weekly Extra is right here for you. FIVER LETTERS “Big Sam gets the West Brom job after all (yesterday’s Fiver). A kick in the swingers might have been a better Christmas present” – JJ Zucal. “I suspect Paul Sheppard’s hero, Paul Moulden (yesterday’s Fiver letters) will now have every hungry Boltonian turning up with a home-made Bournemouth face mask expecting a free fish supper (or since it’s Bolton, a complimentary John Bull, chips and curry sauce). That great goal against Newcastle is going to cost him dearly” – John Myles. Send your letters to [email protected]. And you can always tweet The Fiver via @guardian_sport. Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’the day prize is … John Myles. RECOMMENDED SHOPPING Available at our print shop now, Tom Jenkins’s pictures of the past decade. There’s also a Gazza picture, one of Pelé, another of Kenny Dalglish and this Bobby Moore one too. NEWS, BITS AND BOBS Edinson Cavani has been charged with misconduct by the FA for using the word “negrito” on some social media disgrace and could be banned for three matches if found guilty. David Elleray reckons VAR’s benefits outweigh its problems. “It’s clear that football is fairer, but it’s also clear that [it] has had an impact on the flow of the game,” he whistled. Bad news for Jürgen Klopp and co: Premier League clubs have voted against the proposal to allow five substitutes, although the number allowed on the bench has increased to nine. Arsenal fans will doubtless be gratified to hear that Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang has solved all the club’s problems in the wake of their 10 men holding Southampton to a draw. “We have to stay cool in the head and try to be a little more intelligent,” he advised, “and try to stay with 11 on the pitch.” Barcelona came from behind to beat La Liga leaders Real Sociedad and Cristiano Ronaldo missed a penalty – it’s all going off in our Euro roundup. And $tevie Mbe is sifting through the remains of the Pope’s Newc O’Rangers’ 27-game unbeaten run, after they were knocked out of the CIS Insurance Cup by St Mirren. “You’ve got two choices. You either let it linger and feel sorry for yourself, or you react in the right way,’” he roared. “You stand up and be counted.”

A moody shot under the lights in Paisley. Photograph: Stuart Wallace/BPI/Rex/Shutterstock

STILL WANT MORE? It’s Jonathan Wilson – tiny violin in one hand and pen in the other – on poor, misunderstood, put-upon José. Meanwhile, Barney Ronay writes a love letter to Curtis Jones. Nicky Bandini contemplates the potential end of a love story between Atalanta and Papu Gómez. Jonathan Liew’s piece on West Brom features a particularly fetching picture of Big Sam. Specially-designed boots for women – featuring narrow heels and changed studs – are finally here. Suzanne Wrack tells all. YouTube of the classic variety. David Hytner on the three As: anxiety, Aubameyang and Arsenal.

Gabriel gets ready to see red. Photograph: Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC/Getty Images

Oh, and if it’s your thing … you can follow Big Website on Big Social FaceSpace. And INSTACHAT, TOO! ONE MORE SLEEP TILL THE FIVER CHRISTMAS AWARDS

[Atomiswave 6,118]

28 minutes ago, Vesper said:

VAR given dodgy pen

maybe a red car to SUFC for a bonus

Highly highly probable

[Vesper 30,232]

25 chances so far for Villa

still nil nil

[Vesper 30,232]

nil nil FT

insane they drew that

27 attempts

[Vesper 30,232]

2020-21 English Premier League

Sheffield United                 
Manchester United           

http://www.sportnews.to/sports/2020/premier-league-sheffield-united-vs-manchester-united-s1/

https://www.totalsportek.com/manchester-united-weekend/

[Vesper 30,232]

Ampadu starts

and must be wondering what fresh hell he has wondered into