The English Football Thread

[Vesper 27,413]

2020-21 English Carabao Cup, Quarterfinals

Everton                             
Manchester United          

http://www.sportnews.to/sports/2020/league-cup-everton-vs-manchester-united-s1/

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

 

[Fulham Broadway 16,434]

Looks like this is going to pens

Cavani is a sneaky dirty cheat  -then we knew that already

[guddy69 171]

And Pogba diving.. 

[Jase 43,479]

13 minutes ago, Fulham Broadway said:

Looks like this is going to pens

You jinxed it, FB...

[Jase 43,479]

Has anyone noticed that United have won 7 of their last 8 domestic games, including 6 of the last 7 in the Premier League...? 

[Laylabelle 9,305]

Oh ended 2-0...less annoying..  though still annoying 

[Laylabelle 9,305]

1 minute ago, Mana said:

Everybody took their eyes off United because of their poor start and it's Ole.

Is United title contenders? Maybe? Do I think they are going to win it? Heck no. Ole will get found out again.

Like what Luke Shaw said, this title could be anyone's. It could be even ours considering we are only 6 points off top. I highly doubt we will win it, but it's anyone's.

Yeah they had a iffy start and yet right up there.. and know its a meh point atm depending where they are when it's played but they still have a game in hand...if they played that now and won they'd be 2 off the top.

I dont think their title contenders nahhhh. But definitely at least top 4. ..for now anyway their defending is intresting 

 

[Special Juan 27,111]

United are shite, just very fortunate.

[Jase 43,479]

League Cup semi finals:

Man United v Man City

Spurs v Brentford

[NikkiCFC 7,619]

Manchester derby in semi final. So Spurs likely in the final. Mourinho always wins trophies. This is great chance. 

[Jase 43,479]

4 minutes ago, NikkiCFC said:

Manchester derby in semi final. So Spurs likely in the final. Mourinho always wins trophies. This is great chance. 

Plastic fans should really be banned on here.

[NikkiCFC 7,619]

1 minute ago, Jason said:

Plastic fans should really be banned on here.

You have the power 

And I mean great chance for him. 

[Jase 43,479]

Just now, NikkiCFC said:

You have the power 

And I mean great chance for him. 

Keep tempting fate and I might just do it. 

[NikkiCFC 7,619]

10 minutes ago, Jason said:

Keep tempting fate and I might just do it. 

Lol

[Blue Armour 4,176]

1 hour ago, Jason said:

League Cup semi finals:

Man United v Man City

Spurs v Brentford

Good for those teams, but sounds 'meh' if any one other than Brentford win it.

For Spurs it would be just a repeat of their 2008 carling cup win. A simple reason for them to say that they finally broke their trophy drought. For City, it will be another routine Carling cup win, just like Arsenal and the FA cup.

A United victory would mean more for Ole, than United. A chance for Ole to claim his first trophy as manager, and a chance for United fans to bleat when comparing him to Frank.

[Vesper 27,413]

10 hours ago, Blue Armour said:

For Spurs it would be just a repeat of their 2008 carling cup win.

against US!!!

[Vesper 27,413]

Manchester United are ‘good’? (Excuse the question marks)

https://theathletic.com/2275798/2020/12/24/manchester-united-league-cup-derby-city/

“Manchester United are not a good football team at the moment (although they can be capable of good moments) and it’s getting harder to predict at what point they will start being one. The view that the 2020-21 vintage of United are a “roll the dice and see what happens” side grows stronger, not weaker by the month.”

One month and one day after we wrote that, Manchester United seem to have entered that area marked “good”. Wednesday’s 2-0 League Cup victory over Everton saw United win three games in a row under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer for only the third occasion and they achieved it with a performance that was “good”.

We kept those quote marks for a reason. Try to imagine The Athletic talking to you from a COVID-responsible, safe social distance. We would say the word with an upward inflexion at the end. Manchester United are… good?

Solskjaer made nine changes from the team that beat Leeds United 6-2 at the weekend and came sprinting out of the blocks against an Everton side that had defeated Chelsea, Leicester and Arsenal in their last three matches? Only seven weeks ago, before their last trip to Goodison Park, before the international break, some commenters believed Solskjaer’s job was in danger if he suffered a defeat. But since then, the team has grown from strength to strength?

This was United’s 14th consecutive away win in domestic competition? They had won five corners within the first 10 minutes against Everton and could have scored from any of them? In the 28th minute, broadcast commentary said Solskjaer’s side could have been three goals up already as Sky Sports threw up a graphic that showed they had 71 per cent possession and nine attempts on goal (three on target) after 28 minutes? But then between the half-hour mark and the end of the first half, they only managed one more attempt? But rather than that be a sign of United’s vulnerabilities of old coming in, they still controlled the game and shut Everton out?

Forgive the question marks in the above paragraphs, but we want to stress the difference of United going from a bewildering, contradictory, but consistent mess, to a good team in the space of just a few weeks. How has Solskjaer managed to get his side to regroup after the gut-punch of Champions League elimination so quickly? Especially when he’s making so many changes to his starting XI?

It’s The Athletic’s role to answer questions for the reader, rather than ask them, so we’ll drop the question marks and get into how Solskjaer has built a team that achieves victory through versatility.

There are some basic fundamentals to this. United are good more times than they are not and improve game by game as players get used to each others’ habits. Against Everton, Solskjaer went for his favoured 4-2-3-1 shape with Nemanja Matic and Paul Pogba holding, Donny van de Beek on the left, Mason Greenwood on the right, Bruno Fernandes as the 10 and Edinson Cavani leading the line.

It was United’s work in the pivot that left Everton dazed and confused in the game’s opening minutes. Pogba gave Gylfi Sigurdsson a headache by trying to stand in his blindspot to receive passes (the Icelander did not know whether to pressure Harry Maguire on the ball or to hold his position and cut out passes to the Frenchman). Elsewhere, Matic stationed himself just in front of the centre back pairing of Maguire and Eric Bailly to give added protection in case either defender, or indeed Alex Telles or Axel Tuanzebe in the full-back positions, tried driving into space.

It was a good 25 minutes that turned into a “good” first half when United failed to score and there is a growing sense of control and options to this side recently. Bailly, who returned to the side for the first time since United’s 6-1 loss to Tottenham Hotspur, was “good”. The scars of that defeat, which had led to United being so shaky and uncertain of themselves, look to be fading. Embodied by their captain Maguire and their lynchpin Fernandes, United are beginning to look durable (those two are in the top 10 for minutes played across the world, according to the CIES Football Observatory) and always trying something. Even though United lost a bit of puff in most of the second half, they kept Everton from registering a shot on target in the last 45 minutes (although some of that has to do with Richarlison going off injured after suffering a head injury).

Not only did this United team seem controlled in defence, but they possessed variety in attack. Solskjaer’s 67th-minute switch of Anthony Martial and Marcus Rashford for Van de Beek (who still needs time to gel with this team so they can pick out more of his off-the-ball runs) and Mason Greenwood (who plays better when part of the “MMA” trio) was United replacing quality with quality in a way only a handful of clubs in England can do.

A latter change of Luke Shaw for Telles in the 84th minute may have raised some eyebrows, but showed the method behind the mythology and sometimes madness Solskjaer invokes. Telles is a good penalty taker, but with six minutes to go, why not bring on the left-back more important to how your teams build moves? United might have won a shootout against Everton, but the Norwegian knew he had the cumulative talent to get the game finished early. He was proved correct moments later as Martial picked up the ball in Sigurdsson’s blindspot to thread through Cavani (who was hanging about on the right-hand side, sensing gaps Everton were leaving). Cavani turned a good chance into a goal and a “good” United performance with 30 minutes of frustrating control into a good win that keeps the team’s tails up. Martial’s goal with the last kick of the game capped off proceedings.

“We’re happy with the squad at the moment,” said Solskjaer in his press conference before being notified he had drawn Manchester City in the semi-final. He also mentioned on three occasions (to UK broadcasters, international broadcasters and written press) his annoyance that United play Leicester City in Saturday’s early kick-off. After Leicester, it’s Wolverhampton Wanders, before Aston Villa, and then the League Cup semi-final on either January 5 or 6 between now and United’s FA Cup game against Watford on January 9. This is one of the annoying things about United’s status of “good” — it’s going to get tested very quickly.

There are still questions as to when and how United will make the jump and become a great football team, capable of turning the semi-finals into silverware and dominant performances such as the one over Everton, into more dominant scorelines, but those can wait.

Because for a little bit we need to get used to United being… “good?”

[Vesper 27,413]

Wijnaldum’s contract is a test case for Liverpool which many will watch keenly

https://theathletic.com/2278735/2020/12/23/liverpool-wijnaldum-contract-ozil/

When Jurgen Klopp gave Liverpool’s fans an early Christmas present 12 months ago, extending his contract until June 2024, he said something about how the nature of his job would begin to change.

“We will see what we can achieve together in that time, but there will probably be a moment where we have to change things,” he said. “We are ready to win whatever we can, but (also) to make sure — because there is always a time after me, after another manager — that the club is in the best possible position to carry on in the best possible way.”

Better that, he said, than “another manager coming and having to do this kind of not-really-thankful job and, like, rebuild or whatever”. It might look like the most enviable of jobs right now, in charge of a group of players he has described as “mentality monsters”. But rebuilding that squad over the coming years, deciding when and how to replace players who have been so integral to Liverpool’s resurgence, is indeed a tall order — particularly when you consider how hard Klopp and his players found it to say goodbye to Dejan Lovren and Adam Lallana, who were peripheral, albeit highly popular, squad members over their final two seasons at Anfield.

The difficulty of the rebuilding question has crystallised with the case of Georginio Wijnaldum. The midfielder is about to enter the final six months of his contract, which means that, unless a new deal is agreed before January 1, he is only nine days from being able to sign a pre-contract agreement to join Barcelona, Inter Milan or another overseas club on a free transfer at the end of the season.

Wijnaldum, not unreasonably, is looking for a salary in keeping with his status as one of the Premier League’s most influential midfielders, a considerable improvement on the deal he signed upon joining Liverpool from relegated Newcastle United in the summer of 2016. He wants a contract that brings long-term security — again, not unreasonably, given that this will probably be the last deal he signs before his earning power starts to recede.

Klopp and Liverpool want to keep him, but there is unease — again, understandable — at the idea of offering a long-term contract, on increased terms, to a player who has just turned 30 and is unlikely to be quite such an integral part of their team in three or four years’ time. And for the first time in a long, long time, a Liverpool manager can tell his star players that, if they want to compete for the game’s biggest prizes, they are better off staying on Merseyside than moving to Barcelona or Milan (and if they really want to know whether the grass is greener elsewhere, they could ask Philippe Coutinho or Emre Can).

So many decisions like this lie ahead for Liverpool. It is far from an old team, but one consequence of getting their recruitment so right, investing in a core of players who have improved together under Klopp, coming to a collective peak together without the need for significant reinforcement over the past two seasons, is that this same core of key players are now in their late twenties or moving just beyond. While James Milner (34) is very much the old man of the squad, Wijnaldum and Jordan Henderson are 30, Virgil van Dijk, Joel Matip, Roberto Firmino and Xherdan Shaqiri are 29, and Alisson, Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mane are 28.

Handing out big, long-term contracts left, right and centre isn’t going to be an option, particularly given the severe impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the club’s revenues. Neither, generally, is it advisable. And so Wijnaldum is, in some ways, a test case for Liverpool, one that will be watched with interest by several of his team-mates and their agents.

So many times we see big clubs misjudge these situations. In February 2018, Arsenal, amid great fanfare, handed a 29-year-old Mesut Ozil a £350,000-a-week, three-and-a-half-year deal to stop him leaving on a free transfer a few months later. They have been counting the cost almost ever since.

Ozil rarely played better for Arsenal than in the winter of 2017-18, scoring four goals and registering eight assists in 13 Premier League appearances before signing his contract. In just under three years since then, he has made just 48 Premier League appearances, scoring six goals and registering five assists. They tried and failed to offload him in each of the past four transfer windows. This season Mikel Arteta did not even register him in Arsenal’s Premier League or Europa League squad.

In September, again from a position of weakness, Arsenal re-signed a 31-year-old Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang on a three-year contract worth an initial £250,000 a week. Again what seemed like a huge statement of intent from the club has been followed by a loss of form from a player who is no longer negotiating the most significant contract of his career.

Arsenal signed Willian, 32, this summer after offering him the kind of three-year deal that Chelsea had sensibly ruled out. That one isn’t going well either. (Remember when Arsenal, in the late 2000s, used to be criticised for offering only one-year extensions to players once they reached a certain age? In the post-Wenger era, they have gone to the other extreme.)

There are always other factors, of course — in Aubameyang’s case, Arsenal just aren’t creating chances like they were towards the end of last season — but the post-contract comfort zone is a well-known phenomenon in football. With older players, it is a risk that needs to be weighed up with extreme care, albeit not as dogmatically as Arsenal did in the late 2000s. There is a balance to be found, each case on its own merits and all that.

Ozil is an extreme case, though, and Wijnaldum seems to be on the opposite end of the spectrum as a physically durable player who barely misses a game and often appears immune to the usual fluctuations of fitness, form and motivation.

In that understated way of his, Wijnaldum is performing so well right now. You will not see it in the goals or assists columns — or even in the more nuanced category of goal-creating actions per 90 minutes, where so far this season he ranks alongside goalkeepers Emiliano Martinez and Karl Darlow — but the recent wins over Wolverhampton Wanderers, Tottenham Hotspur and Crystal Palace featured superb performances from the midfielder. They showcased his consistency, his intelligence and his ability to receive and recycle the ball in the tight areas in which opponents try to force Liverpool to operate.

In a team that has lost Van Dijk to injury, causing Fabinho to drop back into defence, Wijnaldum has played a hugely important part in helping them retain that all-important drive and intensity in midfield and helping the wonderfully talented Curtis Jones, 19, make such impressive progress alongside him. Jones’s emergence could be said to have strengthened the case against a new contract for his team-mate, but the teenager does not underestimate how much Henderson, Milner and Wijnaldum have done to help him on and off the pitch.

Wijnaldum has without question been one of Liverpool’s key players this season. Not because he’s “playing out for a new contract” but simply because that’s the way he plays, a top-class player at the peak of his powers in a top-class team. The challenge for Klopp and for Michael Edwards, the sporting director, is to try to work out how long that peak will last and to establish whether common ground can be found with the player’s (and his agent’s) expectations.

That is a calculation they found themselves making in relation to Thiago Alcantara last summer. The Spain midfielder, 29, arrived from Bayern Munich in September on a four-year contract which made him one of Liverpool’s best-paid players. So far, with a positive COVID-19 test followed by a wild challenge from Richarlison in the Merseyside derby, he has played just 135 minutes for Klopp’s team. (The impression he made during those 135 minutes can be gleaned from the excitement with which Liverpool supporters have greeted his return to full training.)

Bayern were faced with a dilemma over Thiago last summer when he entered the final year of his contract. They made the tough decision to sell him while they still could. By contrast, Liverpool, amid interest from Barcelona in Wijnaldum, avoided the temptation to cash in, a calculation based on his continuing importance to the team even if it involved the risk of losing him on a free transfer next summer.

At this point in time, it seems pretty reasonable to suggest that keeping Wijnaldum was the right decision even if they end up losing him on a free transfer (in which case the mistake, arguably, was allowing that contract to run down so far in the first place). Whether they made the right decision to pay £27 million for Thiago, even with just £5 million up front, when he would have been available on a free transfer at the end of this season, can only be judged over the course of time.

What is certain, though, is that Liverpool will face a series of dilemmas like this over the next couple of years. Van Dijk, Fabinho, Henderson, Naby Keita, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Salah, Firmino and Mane are all under contract until June 2023. That is enough time to give the club some breathing space, but it will mean there are some tough decisions ahead. To have Salah, Firmino and Mane all roughly the same age, at the same stage of their contracts, is not ideal. Keeping hold of them all until they are in their early thirties, with fast-declining resale value, would seem unlikely given how proactively they have played the transfer market under Fenway Sports Group’s ownership.

Manchester City have had this with several of their key players over the past decade. Yaya Toure, such a giant of their team under Roberto Mancini and Manuel Pellegrini, ended up staying longer than he would have wished before departing on a free transfer at the age of 35. Vincent Kompany left for Anderlecht a year later at the age of 33, David Silva another year later at 34 and Sergio Aguero might do so next summer at 33. It is hard to appreciate the added value that Kompany and Silva in particular have brought to the dressing room even as their game time reduced, but keeping key players into their thirties has not necessarily helped the transition from one great team to another, as conventional thinking suggests it should.

Those situations remain a long way off for Liverpool, but in the meantime they certainly won’t want many players entering the final year of their contracts as Wijnaldum has. Whether that ultimately means losing him on a free transfer or offering a bigger, longer contract than they would otherwise have wished, it is the type of situation that clubs wish to avoid wherever possible.

The one certainty with Wijnaldum, as Klopp has said, is that his application and his consistency will not waver even if his contract runs down to the final weeks. It is one of the qualities which has made him such an integral part of their success story under Klopp — and which might just suggest he is worth making an exception for.