The English Football Thread

[Vesper 27,271]

 

Friday February 12 2021 Football Nerd

Dead balls and how to stay alive in the Premier League By Daniel Zeqiri A few months back, my colleague Sam Dean wrote this special report about set-pieces, and why Arsenal had become the latest club to appoint a specialist dead-ball coach. Fast forward to the present, and it is clear that free kicks might legitimately become the difference between relegation and safety — or between a place in Europe or not. In such a closely fought Premier League, where 11 points separate Liverpool in fourth and Crystal Palace in 13th, technical improvements around free kicks can help make up for some of the advantages lost without crowds. With the benefit of hindsight, for example, it now seems obvious that James Ward-Prowse's dead-ball prowess was a key factor in Southampton's brief rise to the top of the table. For this week's Football Nerd, I've looked at which teams have scored most and conceded least from free kicks.

Edited February 12, 2021 by Vesper

[Vesper 27,271]

Bayern Munich making history that won't get past your email filter Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now!  The lads in Doha. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images Scott Murray TIGRES RAGGED The tens of tens of viewers who regularly tune into the BBC’s flagship channel, Red Button, witnessed a little bit of history on Thursday night: Palmeiras striker Rony taking the worst penalty of all time. A syncopated fusion of styles that incorporated the angled approach, the stutter, the hop, bebop, modal, slap bass, the shuffle, the hustle, the mashed potato, existential pondering, avant-garde performance art, and a pause to size up the situation as though lining up a long red from baulk, it was nothing less than a jazz odyssey. It was also not very successful, and made Simone Zaza look like Trevor Francis. Congratulations to Al Ahly on winning the shootout that decided third place at the Club World Cup. Bayern beat Tigres in Club World Cup final to earn sixth trophy in nine months Read more Afterwards, Bayern Munich made some history themselves. By beating Tigres in the final of the aforementioned tournament, they completed the full house of all six trophies available to them in 2020, which for the purposes of football it still is, sort of. There’s a name for what they’ve done, a -tuple, but it won’t get past your prissy email filter. League, both domestic cups, Big Cup, Super Cup and now this. It’s some feat, achieved before only by peak-Pep Barcelona, and should really be getting more attention in the UK media, the disdain for the Club World Cup in some quarters being very strange. It’s almost as though we’re a miserable little island full of self-defeating insular blowhards. This being 2020, which it still is, sort of, VAR obviously had to stick its neb in and ruin the spectacle. Joshua Kimmich scored a beauty midway through the first half, a creamy drive fit to win any world championship. However, the goal was ruled out because Robert Lewandowski was in an offside position nowhere near the goalie’s line of sight, or something. Then on 59 minutes, Lewandowski headed a deep cross into the path of Benjamin Pavard, who scored what proved to be the winner, though VAR launched an interminable inquiry, finally deciding he’d scored it in the 61st minute, or whatever. Not that Lewandowski cared too much, explaining afterwards that he’d masterminded the whole thing by telling his teammates at half-time to stop messing about and get the ball in the effing mixer. Ah the pinnacle of world sport. Well done, Bayern! LIVE ON BIG WEBSITE! Join Scott Murray from 7pm GMT for MBM coverage of Manchester City 0-0 Manchester United in the WSL. QUOTE OF THE DAY “I have to admit his post created a need to be addressed. It was a contradiction between the post and the reality. Probably the post was not even his responsibility, I don’t know? But the post was showing ‘training session great and I am ready’ and was totally wrong” – José Mourinho was not a fan of Gareth Bale’s midweek Instachat optimism. And here’s David Hytner with some further reading.  Uh-oh. Photograph: Javier García/BPI/REX/Shutterstock FIVER LETTERS “Harry Pearson’s piece on foreign language sports newspapers (yesterday’s Still Want More?) took me straight back to a Barcelona bar in October 1997. All that day, unlike the Likely Lads, I wanted to know the score of the previous evening’s game Scotland had played, in which a win would guarantee us a place at the following year’s World Cup! These were the days before smartphones and I didn’t want to waste the money calling Scotland, only for my mum to be home alone and tell me: ‘I didn’t know they were playing and your dad’s out.’ So it dawned on me – spend that money on a sports paper written in a language you don’t understand, take it to a bar, spend more money on a beer and trawl through its pages until you find, at least, a results page. So I did. We beat Latvia 2-0 with Kevin Gallacher and Gordon Durie scoring. Simpler times … and much more fun” – Mark Cherrie. “Congratulations, Fiver. In the rich vein of metaphor pedantry, you’ve essentially turned José’s tactics and man-management into Schrödinger’s Bus (yesterday’s Fiver). It’s simultaneously parked, yet running over Young Gareth at the same time. Bravo” – Mike Wilner. “David Beckham producing a documentary on the acrimonious split between the brothers that founded Adidas and Puma called ‘World War Shoe’ sounds like an idea that Alan Partridge would have been proud of” – Noble Francis. 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 … Mark Cherrie. NEWS, BITS AND BOBS Mikel Arteta has revealed he had to inform Arsenal about receiving online threats against his family this season. “When they go personal against me … I can take it,” he said. “When family is involved, then it’s a different story.” Leicester will be without James Justin for the rest of the season after a scan showed the defender suffered ACL-gah against Brighton. Meanwhile, Jürgen Klopp is considering tossing poor lamb Ozan Kabak into the path of a hungry Jamie Vardy on Saturday. “Jamie is a proper challenge in this league, the way he plays … so that’s a proper job to do,” tooted the Liverpool boss. Ole Gunnar Solskjær has attempted to STOP (SOME) FOOTBALL by asking for Big Vase knockout games to be reduced to one leg. “When one game is at a neutral venue it’s a disadvantage, of course, for the team that doesn’t have the home game,” he blabbed. The Liverpool v Manchester United rivalry is being used to power up protests against the military coup in Myanmar.  Yangon, earlier. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images Bayern are leading the race to sign Dayot Upamecano at a cut-price £37.3m but Chelsea and Liverpool are hot on their heels. And Sam Allardyce has urged his doomed West Brom to put an unbeaten run together, starting against Manchester United on Sunday. “Can the club go four, five or six games without getting beaten?” he asked, to muffled guffaws behind the Zoom mute button. “That’s the goal to start with. Stop losing, start winning and drawing and go on an undefeated run.” STILL WANT MORE? Part of the joy in watching Fran Kirby return to peak form at Chelsea is knowing what she has overcome, writes Jonathan Liew. Just the 10 things to look out for in the Premier League this weekend. Sid Lowe invites us to get comfortable while he tells the story behind Barcelona’s disastrous rejection of Luis Suárez. It’s a cracker.  Fancy. Illustration: Guardian Design Manchester City’s USA! USA!! USA!!! World Cup winner Abby Dahlkemper gets her chat on with Suzanne Wrack about her basketball prowess, staying positive in the pandemic and getting stuck into the derby. Oh, and if it’s your thing … you can follow Big Website on Big Social FaceSpace. And INSTACHAT, TOO! COME ON THEN, FRIDAY

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Flinging Gareth Bale beneath the Wild & Wacky Wagon o'Fun's wheels Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now!  Mourinho and his team before extra-time at Everton. Photograph: Clive Brunskill/Getty Images Scott Murray 5-4-FIVER What the people want, the people get. That’s the philosophy by which José Mourinho has lived his life for at least the past 21 hours. To this end, he pimped his ride, giving his famous Metaphor Bus a Magical Mystery Tour-influenced paint job, ripping out the brakes and the transmission with seven separate parking gears, and replacing the round tyres for oval ones that go up and down as well as round and round. And so on Wednesday night José arrived at Goodison behind the wheel of the Entertaining One’s Wild & Wacky Wagon o’Fun, steam parping out of the front, the suspension making every noise from the Looney Tunes effects library, and proceeded to perform donuts in the middle of the pitch for 120 minutes. It was quite the wild scene. But there were teething troubles, and the Wagon o’Fun crashed out of the FA Cup after conceding five goals to a team run by a man whose main concern was the ambient temperature of his tumbler of diluted meat extract. Some deflection was needed swiftly, so José decided to fling Gareth Bale beneath the Wagon’s wheels, announcing to the world that the winger was left out of the squad after asking for a scan. “I don’t think it is an obvious [knack],” José whispered conspiratorially, involuntarily leaping out of his seat as the Wagon hit a €100.8m speed-bump. Bernard strike sinks Spurs in extra time as Everton edge FA Cup thriller Read more “I was a bit surprised by him wanting to have a scan,” Mourinho added. “I would say he feels uncomfortable and couldn’t be 100%.” Having inferred his point as clearly as one can, he decided to gild the lily anyway. “Gareth was not here. I wanted to make it very clear the situation, which I am being completely open and honest about.” The Fiver senses trouble at mill, and we wouldn’t be surprised to see Mourinho replace Madrid in Gareth’s Hierarchy of Needs, a searing indictment given lockdown means Bale can’t travel to Wales and all the golf courses are shut. None of this is ideal, and Manchester City are up next. At least Wednesday’s results give Mourinho both the opportunity to say “I told you so” to fans desperate for a more expansive style, and to legitimately park his de-pimped Metaphor Bus again, before a nice, boring, garden-variety, easy-to-explain-away 2-0 defeat. There’s no time for another paint job to get rid of all those cheery psychedelic flourishes, though. Maybe throw a tarp over it. LIVE ON BIG WEBSITE! Join Nick Ames from 5.30pm GMT for hot MBM coverage of Wolves 1-0 Southampton in the FA Cup fifth round, while Ben Fisher will be on hand for Barnsley 1-3 Chelsea at 8pm. In the middle of all that, there’s Bayern 1-0 Tigres in the Club World Cup final at 6pm; Scott Murray will be your guide. QUOTE OF THE DAY “If all we get is journalism from the perspective of the football club, we’re moving towards a dictatorial state and that’s not what we are. If we don’t have [independent journalism] we may as well not bother, we may as well live in a Communist state where we’re taught not to think” – Nigel Pearson gets stuck into clubs’ in-house media teams [you know, the ones who brand “exclusives” for interviews with their own players and the like – Fiver Ed] during a Q&A session with students at De Montfort University.  He’s not wrong. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian FIVER LETTERS “The story about 5ft 8in Michael Doyle having to go in goal for Notts County (yesterday’s News, Bits and Bobs) made we wish similarly-sized Robbie Winters (5ft 9in) had a history of playing Gaelic football before he replaced Jim Leighton after two minutes (!) of the 2000 Scottish Cup final v O’Rangers. My only ever (and Winters’, actually) appearance at a Scottish Cup final, and Leighton’s last game. I’m nearly over it” – Andy Morrison. “Re: Neale Redington thanking The Fiver for clarifying its mention of Emperor Palpatine as being from Star Wars and not Bognor Regis (yesterday’s Fiver letters). The Force is clearly strong with Neale” – Johnny Mac. 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 … Andy Morrison. RECOMMENDED LISTENING You’ll be shocked to learn that it’s Football Weekly Extra. NEWS, BITS AND BOBS A long-awaited independent review into sexual abuse in Scottish football has called on clubs and organisations involved to “make a clear, unreserved, and public acknowledgment and apology” to all those directly affected. “The abuse I’ve had, death threats and all this sort of stuff … It’s really horrible stuff, which I couldn’t really get my breath with. Things like someone saying they hope I die of Covid” – Newcastle manager Steve Bruce reveals some of the vile abuse he has received, on the day English football’s leaders called on social media abominations to take responsibility for the spread of racist content on their platforms.  Steve Bruce on the grim state of things. Photograph: AP/SNTV Meanwhile, Barnsley have had their Social Media Disgrace Twitter account reinstated following the withdrawal of a copyright claim. Chelsea are three points clear at the top of the WSL after a 3-0 win over slumping Arsenal. “Their quality has undone us,” sighed manager Joe Montemurro. A tribunal has ordered Liverpool to pony up as much as £4.3m to Fulham for teenage midfielder Harvey Elliott. Six weeks of Raymond Domenech have proved more than enough for Nantes, who have replaced him as coach with Antoine Kombouaré. And Bristol Rovers are looking for another new manager after giving Paul Tisdale the heave after 19 games. Fellow League One strugglers Northampton are in the same boat after telling Keith Curle to do one. STILL WANT MORE? “Feyenoord forever, Cruyff never’’; Andy Bollen tells the story of when Ajax’s greatest-ever player joined their biggest rivals.  Those colours. Photograph: VI-Images via Getty Images Barnsley and Chelsea reprise their 2008 cup tie, won by the Tykes. Simon Burnton looks back at a modern classic of the giant-killing genre. We’ve all been on holiday and enjoyed the local sports paper, written in a language we don’t understand. Harry Pearson explains. Crystal Palace’s new loan signing Jean-Philippe Mateta is made of the right stuff, according to Ed Aarons. USA! USA!! USA!!!’s men’s team reckon they can challenge for the 2026 World Cup; so much so that they told Ryan Baldi why. Oh, and if it’s your thing … you can follow Big Website on Big Social FaceSpace. And INSTACHAT, TOO! PROBABLY AVOID IF HUNGOVER

[Vesper 27,271]

2020-21 English Premier League

Leicester City       
Liverpool              

http://www.sportnews.to/mysports/2021/premier-league-leicester-city-vs-liverpool-s1/#!

https://www.totalsportek.com/page-3/

 

Edited February 13, 2021 by Vesper

[Milan 17,835]

So many dives already lol

Edited February 13, 2021 by Milan

[MoroccanBlue 5,187]

Hopefully Leicester’s second half of the season slump continues. Far easier to beat them to Top 4 than Liverpool. 

[James 5,138]

Hoping Man City give Spurs a right proper going over later. 🤭

[Milan 17,835]

Lmao 2-1 Leicester lead

wtf

[Blue Armour 4,158]

Allison...what a dumby

[James 5,138]

Liverpool are awful, massive fuck up at the back again. 😂 

[Milan 17,835]

When things go wrong, all you can see in Klopp is that ironic smile and a sarcastic post match interview. Keeping it classy. Bad champions.

[James 5,138]

Should be 3-1 to Leicester! 

[Blue Armour 4,158]

Allison redeeming himself somewhat..fantastic save from Vardy

[James 5,138]

Now it’s 3-1 😂 

[Blue Armour 4,158]

1 minute ago, James said:

Should be 3-1 to Leicester! 

Happy now? Lol

[NikkiCFC 7,560]

This is great! 😄 We are top4 on Monday 👍 

Alisson has major fuck ups every season. 

[Blue Armour 4,158]

Liverpool's defense gone bonkers.

Control of the game up till 1-0 and then collapse.

[Milan 17,835]

‘One of the best teams in the PL history’