12 h. ago Can Arne Slot revive this Frankenstein’s monster of a Liverpool side? | Barney Ronay

New players have come in, too many of them, and has meant a dilution of the collective will instilled by KloppBefore this game Arne Slot had announced that he was “almost confused”. Which does at least raise some tantalising questions. Mainly, what is this Liverpool team going to look like when he gets there, when a state of full confusion is finally attained, when even Slot’s confusion stops being confusing and reveals its diamond-cut final form.A 4-1 home defeat, Liverpool’s ninth in the past 12 games, felt like a step towards that promised end. Or at least confirmation their season has now reached the gallows humour phase – one of those periods where events haven’t just run away from you, but appear to be openly mocking your best efforts to catch up. Continue reading...

Politics

3 d. ago Arsenal’s Eberechi Eze finds own plane just above ground level to sink Spurs | Barney Ronay

The England forward has made a decent start to his Emirates career but this performance was stick-it-on-a-mural stuffHas there ever been a softer, more delicate act of derby day brutality than this, a hat-trick in a 4-1 win where every goal must have felt like being bludgeoned to death with a feather‑light Parisian macaron?Eberechi Eze’s third goal, the killer, the legend-maker, was the funniest, and also the most telling. It was made by a thrust down the left, and by Leandro Trossard’s smart pass. But it was made as an aesthetic by Destiny Udogie falling over, not because of any real act of trickery, but because Eze stopped suddenly, out there in the middle of all that heat and light, taking the ball on the edge of the Spurs box and simply ceasing to move, like a squirrel on a branch. Continue reading...

Politics

6 d. ago Alastair Cook and Becky Ives make best of TNT Sports’ shonky Ashes production | Barney Ronay

Presenter Ives was breezy, while Cook fronted everything like the last ceremonial horse of some dying cavalry unitYou know what they say. Never judge a pitch until both teams have batted really badly on it. You know what they say. Over here you bat long, bat hard, bat short, bat soft. You know what they say, the Ashes in Australia is all about a hybrid maverick production with a fan-first identity.Given the brilliance of the basic entertainment on day one in Perth, it was easy to forget that England’s Baz-facing tourists aren’t the only setup with a brave new philosophy in play, out there disrupting the norms, and in need, above all, of a decent start. Continue reading...

Society

1 week ago Witnesses of Neymar’s sad decline hope for one final twist in his career’s brutal narrative arc | Barney Ronay

World Cup could still be in reach for the last genius of Brazilian football who has faded to a shadow of his former selfWhat’s your favourite Neymar advert? This is a tough question to answer. The body of work is huge and varied. The foot deodorant ad perhaps, which depicts Neymar’s feet literally on fire, ablaze with some kind of divine eau de toenail.Or the new one for a brand of açaí berry death-gloop sorbet product, which shows Neymar holding up twin cones, like phials of luminous unicorn-sperm, and looking as though he’s just been hit over the head with a rock and it’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened to him. Continue reading...

Politics

1 week ago Ronaldo could miss two World Cup games after red; qualifying latest: football news – live

⚽ All the latest news from around the football world⚽ Fixtures | Tables | Get in touch! You can email DavidHere’s Barney Ronay’s take on last night’s game at Wembley and the big talking point: England’s No 10.“Tuchel has been very clear. He wants a structure not a group of the coolest guys, a selection by aura. And in many ways it worked here as on 65 minutes, with England already 1-0 up, we finally got it, the shootout of the No 10s. We got energy, mood-shift, a four-man blazing squad entering the field of play: Jude, Phil, Eberechi Eze and, er, Jordan Henderson.” Continue reading...

Sport

1 week ago Bellingham and Foden return to give Tuchel’s England a headache at No 10 | Barney Ronay

Morgan Rogers has the shirt but the England head coach has lit a fire under star names by leaving them on the benchIt didn’t exactly feel like a thrilling three-way shootout for the role of England’s top gun No 10. At least, not for the opening hour anyway. Wembley was a sodden place at kick-off, the rain falling in huge slow flakes, the kind of rain that puts a lid on the world. And for long periods this was a strange, bloodless experience, a World Cup qualifier with very little qualification at stake beyond the dwindling hopes of Serbia.By the end, however, there was at least a sense that something had happened here. You have to hand it to Thomas Tuchel, currently cresting a wave as England’s first master of negging, founding member of the don’t really give a toss school of international management. Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago Arne Slot’s big mistake at Liverpool this season? Failing to drop struggling Salah | Barney Ronay

Mohamed Salah has drifted from crucial to peripheral in big games, and Arne Slot’s decision to keep picking him is strangeThere must be blame. We need heads on the battlements. We need entrails, horses, chains, a public quartering. Basically we just need to feel something. We need, above all, to feel that this is all someone’s fault.This is how elite football must function now. The Dalai Lama once said that instead of looking to blame others we should look for answers within ourselves, which just goes to show how wrong you can be and is, frankly, very disappointing from the Dalai Lama. Continue reading...

Events

2 w. ago Fraught, tense and visceral: there’s never been a football match quite like Maccabi’s visit to Aston Villa | Barney Ronay

Undeniably strange and redolent of wider horrors at one remove, this was a groaning platter of geopolitics with a tiny little sprig of sport dusted across the topYou could almost, almost have played it for laughs. If it wasn’t so bleak, or so profoundly unsettling. But then, this is Birmingham, so there does have to be some gallows humour buried in there.Either way an hour before kick-off on the streets outside Villa Park it became clear that the 700 police officers present were being asked to keep apart three distinct, and equally energetic factions: pro-Palestine, pro-Israeli and pro YouTubers. Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago Meet the new, fun Erling Haaland: he’s laughing but he’ll still destroy you | Barney Ronay

The Norwegian’s goalscoring feats have become so vast they hardly need chronicling, but at least he’s now doing it with a smileWith 27 minutes gone, and Manchester City 1-0 up, Erling Haaland did an extraordinary and also very funny thing. Strolling with feigned disinterest away from a free‑kick in the centre circle, Haaland turned, took the ball, and decided to run straight at the Borussia Dortmund defence, dragging with him a pair of desperate yellow shirts, grabbing and stumbling and firing their useless harpoons into the great white beast ahead of them.There was nothing uncontrolled about this. It was an act of targeted violence by Haaland, the application of a superior force (basically, me) to a point of weakness (that would be: all of you). Eventually the ball ran free to Nico O’Reilly, all alone, as the entire Dortmund defence was dragged along in Haaland’s wake, by now, frankly, in need of a bigger boat. Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago Chelsea’s crash tackle king exposes Tottenham’s confused mess of a team | Barney Ronay

Spurs resemble a pile of sticks leaning against a wall with the rampaging Moisés Caicedo happy to dismantle themSitting through this tightly stitched but still oddly shapeless game of football, you kept thinking: what does this remind me of? The trapped energy, the collisions. The sense of something always but never really happening.Oh yes. Watching the full 90 minutes of Chelsea’s narrow but still comfortable 1-0 defeat of Tottenham was like staring at one of those hypnotic drunken city centre brawls that appear on social media from time to time, where nothing ever really seems to start or stop, where the whole things is just a kind of tortured flailing, but one that must also be pored over endlessly in the comments. Continue reading...

Events

3 w. ago Tottenham’s confused mess of a team exposed by Chelsea’s crash tackle king | Barney Ronay

Spurs resemble a pile of sticks leaning against a wall with the rampaging Moisés Caicedo happy to dismantle themSitting through this tightly stitched but still oddly shapeless game of football, you kept thinking: what does this remind me of? The trapped energy, the collisions. The sense of something always but never really happening.Oh yes. Watching the full 90 minutes of Chelsea’s narrow but still comfortable 1-0 defeat of Tottenham was like staring at one of those hypnotic drunken city centre brawls that appear on social media from time to time, where nothing ever really seems to start or stop, where the whole things is just a kind of tortured flailing, but one that must also be pored over endlessly in the comments. Continue reading...

Events

3 w. ago Liverpool v Aston Villa live: Team news as Arne Slot bids to revive Reds’ troubled season

Arne Slot recalls his star players after they were rested for the midweek defeat by Crystal Palace as Liverpool aim to end their dismal run of form

Events