The English Football Thread

[DDA 10,285]

Gyokeres hasn’t registered a shot on target in 7 games.

‘World Class’

[Thor 2,832]

3 hours ago, Pizy said:

Going a bit under the radar since they’re going to easily win the league even without him doing much of anything, but Gyokeres has been a near complete flop after all that hype and excitement. 

And tbf, quite a few posters even here predicted that. I remember several people here saying his game wouldn’t translate from the Portuguese league and that he’d be found out.

Arse are fortunate that the rest of their team is so good and that they didn’t spend that much money on him due to that release clause. If they had spent Isak type money on him they’d be fucked.

Incredible considering I'm told our number 9s suck and that is why we aren't competing. 

Our attackers and midfield are every bit as good as Arsenal, yet we simply don't have the CBs, and people are acting like BlueCo are the reason we have crashed and burned. Maresca was a boring manager who played uninspired football given the talent we have. 

Our front 6 of Palmer, Estevao, Neto, JP, Moi and Enzo are as good as theirs. 

James and Cucu are as good as their FB's. CB's are the issue - but it still isn't any excuse to be as far back as we are. 

Manager deserved to get sacked. Blaming it all on Clearlake/BlueCo is asinine. 

[Vesper 31,181]

3 2 now, Wrexham over Forest atm

CHO just scored for Forest

crazy game so far

[Fulham Broadway 17,810]

Brilliant equaliser by Hudson Odoi

[Vesper 31,181]

3 3

CHO on a hat trick

[Vesper 31,181]

wow

3rd sitter missed by Wrexham

they should really be up by 2 or morely likely 3

[Vesper 31,181]

I love the FA Cup

do not care what the haters say

it's sometimes glorious

[Vesper 31,181]

30 minutes extra time now

woot

[Fulham Broadway 17,810]

Ryan Reynolds had 4 wardrobe changes during the match - these Hollywooders

Penalties

[Vesper 31,181]

pens

[Vesper 31,181]

Wrexham win

Omari was saved

their GKer saved 2

[Vesper 31,181]

• Manchester United have submitted an offer for Yan Diomande, and they have been given permission to hold transfer talks with the player’s camp. (CaughtOffside)

• Manchester United are plotting a move for the PSG manager, Luis Enrique. (Defensa Central)

• Manchester United and Tottenham are keen on Roberto De Zerbi, and the Italian manager would prefer to move to Old Trafford. (TEAMtalk)

• Xavi Hernandez is interested in managing Manchester United. (Fabrizio Romano)

• Manchester City remain interested in signing the Brentford defender, Michael Kayode. (CaughtOffside)

• Manchester City will now face competition from Arsenal for Marc Guehi. (David Ornstein)

[Vesper 31,181]

Why Brentford are currently the Premier League’s most tactically influential team

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6952161/2026/01/08/brentford-tactics-premier-league/

The Brentford squad and staff walked the perimeter of the Gtech at full-time with That’s the Way (I Like It) booming over the speakers, soaking in the applause.

No 9 Igor Thiago, who had scored a brace in the 3-0 win over Sunderland, bobbed his head to the beat.

Former Tottenham Hotspur head coach Ange Postecoglou once said Spurs wanted their home ground to be a “nightclub” instead of a fortress. Keith Andrews and Brentford are doing both.

Regis Le Bris’ Sunderland are the 13th different team to visit the Gtech from the start of last season and take nothing home. Bournemouth, Newcastle United and Manchester United have all lost twice there since August 2024.

“Nobody comes here and gets an easy game,” Andrews told reporters.

Brentford are six games unbeaten after consecutive 2-0 defeats to Arsenal and Spurs. At the pinch point of the season they have won four (including 4-2, 4-1 and 3-0 scorelines) and had two low-scoring draws.

After 21 games they are fifth, above Newcastle, Manchester United and Chelsea (in sixth, seventh and eighth), with a points total of 33 well on track to match the club record of 59 from 2022-23 under Thomas Frank — who, now as Spurs head coach, finds himself six points and nine places beneath his former club.

So much for Keith Andrews only being a humble set-piece coach, promoted to fill the Frank void. The reality is that Brentford are one of the league’s most inspiring and influential teams.

Keith Andrews has guided Brentford into the reckoning for Champions League qualificationShaun Botterill/Getty Images

Often, such acclaim is considered only for ‘big’ clubs — Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City and their possession game, or how Jurgen Klopp kick-started the modern pressing movement at Liverpool.

But as my colleague Michael Cox wrote of Marcelo Bielsa at Leeds United in 2020, with his extreme man-marking tactics, hardly anyone plays like Guardiola’s City, Klopp’s Liverpool, or Bielsa’s Leeds.

Brentford dispatching Sunderland showed how and why they have helped change the tactical direction, equalling the biggest defeat handed out to this season’s surprise package (Sunderland also lost 3-0 away to City).

Their third goal came on 73 minutes after Mathias Jensen’s inswinging corner — the kind which has become the league’s stock ball — dropped and midfielder Yehor Yarmoliuk fired in.

For just over an hour before that, Brentford had been, in Le Bris’ words as opposition coach: “strong, direct, relentless.”

The speed at which they counter-attacked and sent long balls, from midfield third regains especially, was like lightning.

Thiago netted the opener from one such move when Vitaly Janelt landed on a loose pass. The forward thrives in big open spaces and now on 16 goals — the most in a Premier League season by a Brazilian — he is just four adrift of the league’s top scorer Erling Haaland.

Brentford are the best team in the division for fast-break goals (nine), and Thiago’s strength helps. He grappled tirelessly versus Sunderland centre-back Omar Alderete, and stretched the centre-backs — his yellow card on 43 minutes came from hauling a defender over following an overhit long ball.

Strikers like him are coming back into fashion. “I wouldn’t be swapping him for anybody,” Andrews said of Thiago.

Igor Thiago has scored 16 goals in the Premier League this seasonShaun Botterill/Getty Images

“He’s been sensational, the way he’s affected the league, the types of goals that he’s scoring now compared to earlier in the season. He’s obviously really good in the air, (has) calmness in front of the goal,” Andrews added.

“It’s not just the goals, it’s his overall performance, the selfless way he plays, he doesn’t just stay between two centre-backs and look to poach goals. He leads the line, runs channels, presses back, he’s amazing from (defensive) set pieces. A complete centre-forward.”

What You Should Read Next

Brentford’s striker succession planning is a lesson for all Premier League clubs

Igor Thiago is just the latest forward to score plenty of goals for the west London side. It is not a coincidence

Increasingly, the Premier League is a counter-attacking and direct division. Shots from fast breaks have risen every year since 2020-21, and goals from those attacks last season (112) were more than double the number in 2021-22 (54).

Brentford set up to hit Sunderland on counter-attacks, knowing how Le Bris’ side can defend for long periods and are watertight, conceding just three in their past five before coming to south-west London.

Andrews picked Jensen, Janelt and Yehor Yarmoliuk as his midfield trio, providing a balance of physicality and energy. There’s a reason the Premier League is getting taller.

Andrews left the more creative, diminutive Mikkel Damsgaard on the bench. He picked raw pace on the wings in Keane Lewis-Potter and Kevin Schade, who played off Thiago excellently.

Brentford switch between a 4-4-2 zonal defensive block and man-to-man pressing, an approach which was honed under Frank, and can be seen across the league. Guardiola always hated playing Frank’s Brentford because they could defend deep and stubbornly for long periods and be aggressive upfield, too.

To an extent, the genesis of Arsenal’s set-piece strength can be traced to Brentford’s first Premier League game (and win) over Mikel Arteta’s side at the Gtech in August 2021, when they scored from a long throw.

Now almost one in every three attacking throw-ins go into the box. Brentford right-back Michael Kayode, an outstanding all-rounder and creator, noted his frustration in the matchday programme about only being known for his long throws.

Set-piece goals have risen, now accounting for 28 per cent of goals. Yarmoliuk, in adding the gloss on the win, scored just Brentford’s second goal from a corner this season — Spurs, Arsenal, Chelsea and United are the top teams in that metric.

The promoted sides (Burnley, Leeds United and Sunderland) have followed the Brentford blueprint, prioritising physicality, duel-winners, set pieces, while also being tactically flexible between back threes and back fours.

“They’re always important, we say it all the time,” Andrews said of Le Bris’ claim that duels were a deciding factor in the result.

The biggest compliment is that teams are raiding Brentford. United bought Bryan Mbeumo and Newcastle United signed Yoane Wissa, a duo with 39 goals last term, in the summer. Former goalkeeper David Raya and club captain Christian Norgaard are at Arsenal.

Their data-driven recruitment, once a unique quirk, is now, on some level, commonplace across the league.

Andrews is calm about it all.

“Enjoy it, don’t enjoy it too much. This league is difficult, we’ll keep pushing,” he said.

By Liam Tharme

[Vesper 31,181]

Manchester United and other clubs should not be surprised when managers stick to philosophies

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6954812/2026/01/09/manager-sacked-philosophy-amorim-nancy-maresca/

The statement announcing Wilfried Nancy’s appointment as Celtic manager on December 3 ran for 802 mostly effusive words. 

The statement announcing Nancy’s departure, 33 days into a two-and-a-half-year contract, ran to 102 words — and more than half of those related to other housekeeping matters, explaining that his coaching staff and the head of football operations, Paul Tisdale, had also left the Scottish club.

In the turbulent intervening period, Celtic lost six out of eight games. Nancy was ridiculed for everything from his green-and-white trainers and use of a Ruben Amorim-style tactics board to his perceived naivety regarding both the size of the job and the intense pressure to hit the ground running rather than focus on an idealistic vision he would not get the time to implement.

This season has been quite the jolt for those coaches who, to borrow a line from Jose Mourinho, are willing to “die for an idea”. The Athletic explored this theme in September with reference to Russell Martin’s devout commitment to playing out from the back at Rangers (he was sacked two weeks later) and Amorim’s slavish devotion to a 3-4-3 formation at Manchester United (he was sacked on Monday). Ange Postecoglou lasted 39 days at Nottingham Forest, where his stylistic compatibility was frequently questioned by fans and media alike. It was highly predictable that Nancy’s fate at Celtic would follow a similar pattern.

Ange Postecoglou struggled to get Nottingham Forest playing in his preferred styleJustin Tallis/Getty Images

Similarly predictable are some of the difficulties Xabi Alonso has faced at Real Madrid, where his efforts to introduce a more collective, system-based playing style have met with resistance from a dressing room that has historically preferred a lighter touch from coaches. On his appointment last May, after a highly successful spell in charge of Bayer Leverkusen, Alonso spoke of a “new era” in Madrid, but it remains to be seen whether the Spanish club’s president, Florentino Perez, is as committed to the project as he claimed last summer.

What You Should Read Next

Xabi Alonso knows what’s wrong at Real Madrid. But he’s powerless to fix it

Former Madrid midfielder Alonso knew what he was getting into at the Bernabeu, but that does not seem to have helped

But where is the real naivety here? Is the problem with coaches who operate largely as they are expected to do? The way they set their teams up, deal with players and, in some cases, deal with club executives? Or does the fault lie with powerbrokers and decision-makers who like to tell the world they are bold enough to appoint a certain type of coach but then lack the courage to see it through once illusions are shattered and reality takes hold?

On one hand, there has never been a greater emphasis on long-term outlooks. Coaches and those who select them talk of looking beyond the immediate pressure for results, preferring to discuss visions, strategies and philosophies.

On the other hand, there has rarely been a greater rush to pull the rug from under a coach’s feet.

Consider this. Of the 96 managers/head coaches in charge of teams in Europe’s top five leagues, only 12 (five in England, four Spain, two in France, one in Germany, none in Italy) have been in situ for more than three years. Only a further 10 (four in France, another two apiece in England, Spain and Germany and again none in Italy) have been in situ for between two and three years. Of those 96 clubs, just under half (47) have changed their coach in the past 12 months. Some of those, including Rangers, Forest and West Ham United, have done so at least twice.

West Ham have hired and fired Graham Potter in the last 12 monthsRichard Pelham/Getty Images

So often we are told, in gushing terms, that coaching appointments are made in line with some grand, overarching plan, vision or — that word again — philosophy. But adherence to that ideology — usually the same one he has spelt out during the interview process — is so often what ends up being held against a coach when the inevitable happens just a little further down the line.

Nancy’s traumatic spell in Glasgow will go down as a classic of the genre. Tisdale drove the appointment, but the Celtic hierarchy were right behind it. That statement on December 3 saw majority owner Dermot Desmond, chairman Peter Lawwell and chief executive Michael Nicholson queuing up to gush over Nancy’s coaching abilities and state their commitment to back him (“unswerving support”, “all our support”, “every support”) through the challenges ahead.

Nancy’s belief was similarly unswerving: in the football philosophy that worked so well for him at Columbus Crew in Major League Soccer, in his own ability to adapt to the specific challenges of managing Celtic, in the sincerity of his new employers’ pledges to back him to the hilt. Before a gruesome Old Firm defeat by Rangers on Sunday, he urged his doubters to “judge me in a few weeks, months”. He was gone by Monday afternoon.

Every coaching appointment carries an element of risk. That risk is amplified in mid-season hires, particularly when, as has been encouraged in recent times, the coach in question is so dogmatic in his commitment to a certain playing style. 

When Manchester United approached Amorim in October 2024, after the dismissal of Erik ten Hag, he told them he would prefer to see out the campaign with Portuguese champions Sporting CP a) out of loyalty and b) because it would be so hard to introduce his system in the midst of a congested fixture schedule rather than starting work the following summer with a full pre-season programme ahead of him.

But the Manchester United hierarchy would not hear of that. The way Amorim explained it to reporters after taking the job, he was “told it was now or never” — and looking at the way it transpired, with the 40-year-old sacked after winning just 15 Premier League games across his 14-month tenure, it is hard not to conclude “never” would have been the better response.

That ultimatum, in the face of Amorim’s concerns, would have been easier to understand if there was any evidence of their approach being based on an overarching football vision of the type that Sir Jim Ratcliffe claimed would be established after he bought an initial 27.7 per cent stake in Manchester United earlier that year.

Ruben Amorim struggled to implement his preferred system at Manchester UnitedAsh Donelon/Getty Images

But no, as so often in football, it was an appointment driven by a club’s almost cultish — yet ultimately superficial — commitment to a new idea, dazzled by a candidate’s charm, personality and record.

Dan Ashworth, who had recently joined Manchester United as sporting director to lead that new vision, raised concerns about the compatibility of Amorim’s ideas with the squad he would be taking over, particularly if he arrived mid-season. Those concerns were largely ignored. Ashworth found himself marginalised from the appointment process and left the club just over a month later, officially by mutual consent.

The curiosity about Amorim’s tenure at Manchester United was that poor results were tolerated for 12 months — the club even making the point that they had been “unwavering” in their support of a struggling coach — until his preferred system suddenly became a sticking point just before Christmas. As outlined by The Athletic, Amorim and director of football Jason Wilcox spoke regularly throughout his tenure, discussing players, systems and chewing over the way forward. However, it was only in the final weeks that Wilcox found himself passing on observations from petrochemicals billionaire Ratcliffe that Amorim might want to try something other than 3-4-3. Almost from that point, Amorim felt his position untenable.

What You Should Read Next

How Ruben Amorim’s Manchester United reign ended in turmoil and toxicity

The Portuguese coach arrived to huge fanfare but his tenure ended after bust-ups with executives over tactics, transfers and results

The whole thing makes so little sense because Amorim’s entire philosophy is built around playing three at the back — and because, while progress was painfully slow, that period from early October to late December 2025, before Bruno Fernandes joined a growing injury list and three senior players departed on Africa Cup of Nations duty, was the first time in his tenure when there was at least vague evidence of something potentially viable. If there was a time to question and challenge Amorim on 3-4-3, it was at the end of last season — or, far better, as Ashworth suggested, before rushing to appoint him in defiance of the glaringly apparent.

Never before have football clubs had so much information to work with, had so many layers of technocrats to ensure that a vision and identity are followed, and been so long-term in their stated aims… and yet, in many cases, been so impulsive. Even if Manchester United could claim to have been patient with Amorim, the way things unravelled — faith belatedly questioned, authority challenged, relationships crumbling, trust evaporating — was predictably sudden.

So too was the way Enzo Maresca’s relationship with the Chelsea hierarchy disintegrated. It is interesting to look back at this article written by The Athletic’s Leicester City correspondent Rob Tanner at the time of Maresca’s appointment at Chelsea 18 months ago, detailing not just the pros and cons of his coaching style but also his abrasive relationship with Leicester’s hierarchy. After writing that Maresca was “no shrinking violet” and “won’t be afraid to say what he thinks”, Rob concluded by telling Chelsea’s co-sporting directors Lawrence Stewart and Paul Winstanley, “You have been warned”. 

Enzo Maresca left Chelsea when his relationship with the club hierarchy disintegratedDarren Walsh/Getty Images

Chelsea awarded Maresca a five-year contract and trumpeted it as a long-term appointment. As it was, he lasted 92 games at a club where 100 games is a benchmark that only Jose Mourinho in his second spell (136 games), Carlo Ancelotti (109), Antonio Conte (106) and Thomas Tuchel (100) have reached in the past 18 years. Maresca’s total is more than the other two coaches hired under these owners combined — Graham Potter (31 games) and Mauricio Pochettino (51).

It is why a sense of scepticism is hard to avoid after Chelsea responded to Maresca’s departure by hiring another young coach, Liam Rosenior, on a five-and-a-half-year contract with the option of a further year. It is an appointment that promises long-term commitment. But so did those of Potter and Maresca, both of them on five-year contracts, and support fell away remarkably quickly once problems arose.

As for Celtic, they followed up Nancy’s dismissal by turning back to Martin O’Neill, who had steadied the ship on an interim basis before the Frenchman’s appointment. It seems to encapsulate these dysfunctional times in football that O’Neill’s previous interim spell lasted longer (37 days) than the “permanent” appointment that followed.

No coaching hire is permanent. With very few exceptions, they are all interims, really. Some coaches attract accusations of naivety when, walking into a pressure-cooker environment, they preach dogma and philosophy rather than the basics of survival, but in many of these cases — Nancy at Celtic, Martin at Rangers, Amorim at Manchester United, Postecoglou at Forest, even Alonso at Real Madrid — it is hard to imagine they are doing anything other than following through the ideas they laid out at the interview stage.

And if it doesn’t work, surely that points to naivety in the executive suite as much as on the touchline.

By Oliver Kay

Football Writer

[Fulham Broadway 17,810]

Macclesfield 1 Crystal Palace 0

114 team gap between the clubs

[Fulham Broadway 17,810]

If they hold on biggest giant slaying ever

Managed by Rooneys bro

[Special Juan 28,871]

2-0 Macclesfield

[Fulham Broadway 17,810]

2 -0 amazing

 v FA holders

[Fulham Broadway 17,810]

Macclesfield showing how its done

Foreign TV dont like it, but cant beat the FA Cup

[Fulham Broadway 17,810]

Macclesfield too honest too...most teams now would be going down with fake injuries