54 h. ago After hundreds of millions spent on players, what was Liverpool’s plan?

The defending Premier League champions spent big over the summer, but it’s hard to see how the new players fitSign up for Soccer with Jonathan Wilson hereWhat was it supposed to look like? Amid all the talk around Liverpool and their disappointing form at the start of this season, that is perhaps the hardest question of all to answer. What were they trying to do? If it had worked, how would this team have played?The champions spent £424m (about $550m) on new signings in the summer, but if all had gone well, they would have spent an additional £40m ($53m) to land Crystal Palace centre-back Marc Guéhi. The England international would, at the very least, have given an extra option at the back (the injury to Giovanni Leoni has diminished their defensive options further), allowing Arne Slot to rest Ibrahima Konaté, whose poor form continued in the 3-0 defeat to Manchester City on Sunday. An early City penalty was a direct result of Konaté getting in Conor Bradley’s way as Jérémy Doku cut...

Economics

54 h. ago After hundreds of millions spent on players, what was Liverpool’s plan? | Jonathan Wilson

The defending Premier League champions spent big over the summer, but it’s hard to see how the new players fitSign up for Soccer with Jonathan Wilson hereWhat was it supposed to look like? Amid all the talk around Liverpool and their disappointing form at the start of this season, that is perhaps the hardest question of all to answer. What were they trying to do? If it had worked, how would this team have played?The champions spent £424m (about $550m) on new signings in the summer, but if all had gone well, they would have spent an additional £40m ($53m) to land the Crystal Palace centre-back Marc Guéhi. The England international would, at the very least, have given an extra option at the back (the injury to Giovanni Leoni has diminished their defensive options further), allowing Arne Slot to rest Ibrahima Konaté, whose poor form continued in the 3-0 defeat to Manchester City on Sunday. An early City penalty was a direct result of Konaté getting in Conor Bradley’s way as Jérémy Doku...

Economics

4 d. ago Overhauls on hold as fixture squeeze sees has Liverpool and City playing it safe | Jonathan Wilson

With time limited by a packed calendar, only incremental change is possible, pausing transitions for Slot and GuardiolaTime is the enemy of all modern managers. There simply isn’t enough of it. The calendar is too packed, the demands on players too great and, just because there is something almost hypocritical about managers moaning about the number of games they have to play when the fixture list is a direct result of the greed of the clubs they work for, that doesn’t mean their fundamental point is not a valid one.Transition is always difficult, particularly when it involves not only a change of players but of style. Arsenal may have brought in more players than Liverpool this summer, but it would require a particular obtuseness to think that bolstering and finessing a system that already fundamentally works is a source of greater disruption than implementing an almost entirely new style. Continue reading...

Politics

4 d. ago Overhauls on hold as fixture squeeze has Liverpool and City playing it safe | Jonathan Wilson

With time limited by a packed calendar, only incremental change is possible, pausing transitions for Slot and GuardiolaTime is the enemy of all modern managers. There simply isn’t enough of it. The calendar is too packed, the demands on players too great and, just because there is something almost hypocritical about managers moaning about the number of games they have to play when the fixture list is a direct result of the greed of the clubs they work for, that doesn’t mean their fundamental point is not a valid one.Transition is always difficult, particularly when it involves not only a change of players but of style. Arsenal may have brought in more players than Liverpool this summer, but it would require a particular obtuseness to think that bolstering and finessing a system that already fundamentally works is a source of greater disruption than implementing an almost entirely new style. Continue reading...

Politics

4 d. ago Explosive ending cannot mask flaws of Tottenham and Manchester United | Jonathan Wilson

This match was as dismal as last season’s Europa League final and in a routine league game nerves are no excuseNever underestimate the haplessness of this Manchester United. Never underestimate the haplessness of this Tottenham Hotspur. Never underestimate the capacity of the Premier League to uncover drama in the least plausible situation. The embers of a game of little quality seemed cold and dead but somehow burst into glorious flame in the final six minutes plus stoppage time.What it means is anybody’s guess, other than that these are two sides who remain deeply flawed. The shadow of Bilbao and last May’s Europa League final was unavoidable; in purely technical terms, that game was just as bad as the first 84 minutes of this one, but it at least had a sense of edge. Nervousness is permissible if there is something to be nervous about. Such scrappiness in a routine league meeting is far less explicable. Continue reading...

Events

9 d. ago Why Saudi money hasn’t transformed Newcastle into title contenders

Eddie Howe’s team have the richest owners in the world. But they are still to mount a title challenge since the Public Investment Fund came knockingSign up for Soccer with Jonathan Wilson hereEddie Howe is not a manager given to histrionics or grand public pronouncements. So by his standards, his press conference after Sunday’s 3-1 defeat to lowly West Ham counts as a furious tirade. His side took an early lead but West Ham were ahead by half-time, as well as hitting the post and having a penalty overturned by VAR, leading Howe to make a triple change at the break.“That was the frustrating thing about the first half,” Howe said. “I almost could have taken anyone off and I think that was a reflection of where we were in that moment in the game and it’s very, very rare for me to feel that way. In fact, I don’t think I have since I’ve been manager of Newcastle, so I felt the team needed some shaking up at half-time. That’s why I did what I did.”This is an extract from Soccer with Jonat...

Politics

2 w. ago Why Sunderland’s success matters for the Premier League at large

Recent history has seen all three sides promoted from the Championship be relegated the same season – Régis Le Bris’s side could break the spellSign up for Soccer with Jonathan Wilson hereLast season, all three promoted sides in the Premier League were relegated. The season before that, all three promoted sides were relegated. The fear was that the gulf between the Premier League and Championship had become too big, with the increasing stratification of the English game essentially making it impossible for the promoted sides to survive, much less to thrive. It’s a self-perpetuating issue; the longer the other 17 remain in the Premier League, fattened on television rights, the harder it will be for teams coming up to make an impression.There was a need for the promoted sides to put up a better fight than they managed last season when, between them, Leicester, Ipswich and Southampton collected just 59 points. Nine games into this season, not quite a quarter of the way through, Sunderl...

Politics

2 w. ago Grandees River Plate all at sea and banking on new president with a familiar name | Jonathan Wilson

With their election looming, the Argentinian club hope stable leadership can reverse worst form in four decadesStefano Di Carlo was two months old when, in 1989, his grandfather, Titi, became the president of River Plate, taking over after the resignation of Hugo Santilli. He was seven months old when, that December, his grandfather narrowly lost the presidential election. He was three years old when his grandfather took him to his first River Plate game.Titi Di Carlo remained a senior figure at the club and was on the board when he went to a Copa Libertadores quarter-final against Banfield with the 16-year-old Stefano. The first leg had finished 1-1. Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago Ange Postecoglou and Nottingham Forest never made sense. So why did it happen?

The former Tottenham manager made a rash Premier League return, and it will probably be his lastSign up for Soccer with Jonathan Wilson hereThe weirdest aspect of Ange Postecoglou’s 40-day reign at Nottingham Forest was how inevitable it all felt. The only shock was that he was sacked on Saturday, within minutes of a 3-0 home defeat to Chelsea, rather than a day or two later. But by then, it was obvious this ill-starred adventure had run its course; perhaps it was kinder to everybody to bring it to an end. Forest, certainly, had to act quickly if they are to make the most of their first European campaign in three decades.But why was such an obviously terrible appointment made in the first place? What was it that made the Nottingham Forest owner, Evangelos Marinakis, ever think that Postecoglou was the right man to succeed Nuno Espírito Santo? They met in July at an event staged by the Greek league to celebrate Postecoglou winning the Europa League with Tottenham, but was it really j...

Politics

3 w. ago Arne Slot’s Liverpool tactical shifting is gambling on more Wirtz and less Salah | Jonathan Wilson

Winning the Premier League means the Dutchman can ride out the setbacks after making radical changes to his gameplanReplacing a legend is difficult. Even if that legend has lingered too long, even if he has stayed beyond the scope of his powers, coming next is an almost impossible job. David Moyes could not follow Sir Alex Ferguson. Unai Emery could not follow Arsène Wenger. Brian Clough could not follow Don Revie.When there has been a successful transition it has tended to come from within. George Allison continued Herbert Chapman’s work at Arsenal. Dave Mackay took the Derby Clough had built to another league title. Continue reading...

Politics

last month Why there is no such thing as a perfect football tactic | Jonathan Wilson

In this mailbag edition of his newsletter, Jonathan answers questions about the evolution of tactics, heat and World Cup outsidersSign up for Soccer with Jonathan Wilson hereDo you believe playing styles are developing incrementally or cyclically? Will things naturally come back around, or is it more a matter of rock, paper, scissors where one style counters another for a short while, as the current style gets broadly adopted? – PaulI dislike the term “cyclical” for tactics because it implies inevitability. Winter, spring, summer, autumn is a cycle; what happens in football tactics is not. When older ideas are repurposed for the modern age, they come with knowledge of what went before. So, to take an extreme example, when Pep Guardiola started fielding teams in a sort of 3-2-2-3 shape, it wasn’t the W-M used by Herbert Chapman in the late 1920s, because in the 100 years since, football has changed enormously: players are fitter, pitches are better, kit is better, we understand press...

Politics