THIS could finally be the season when the stranglehold starts to loosen across European football and some of the top leagues finally celebrate a new champion. According to CIES Football Observatory, trophies in Portugal, Spain, Italy and France will be changing hands, while Manchester City will regain the Premier League they last won in 2019. Bayern […]
SOME fans are talking about a Liverpool decline, claiming Jürgen Klopp’s side are not making a very good job of defending the title they won so impressively in 2019-20. That’s a little of an over-reaction, Liverpool may have lost some of their momentum, but the long-awaited triumph – accompanied by premature and over-zealous claims the […]
IT’S a strange and often confusing football world we live in, one in which Manchester United, the dominant force in English football from 1992 through to 2013, are now considered comparative underdogs. United have surprised everyone with their recovery after some early-season dramas, such as their home defeats against Palace and Spurs. The calls for […]
IT’S BACK again, the threat of a European Super League involving 15 fixed clubs and five lucky qualifiers. We can easily name the likely 15: there’s six from the Premier League; three from La Liga; three from Serie A; two from the Bundesliga and one from Ligue 1. It’s almost certainly the usual suspects, the […]
THE PANDEMIC may be having an unexpected impact on the football management sector in that fewer managers have been sacked so far in 2020-21. With the Premier League at the halfway stage, only one manager, West Bromwich Albion’s Slaven Bilic, has departed in a mid-season taxi. There will surely be more to come, but the […]
THE City Football Group (CFG), Manchester City’s holding company, continues to expand its influence, forming a partnership with Bolivia’s leading football institution, Club Bolivar. This latest move by CFG, coming just a few months after Belgian club SK Lommel and France’s Troyes became the 9th and 10th clubs to come under the influence of the group, is different […]
BETWEEN 1968 and 1971, the late Dave Sexton, Chelsea’s softly-spoken and erudite manager, received a string of letters – written with a duck-egg green Osmiroid pen – that highlighted the skills and attributes of a midfielder plying his trade with Manchester City. The young lad who wrote these testimonials was giving Sexton the benefit of […]
ARSENAL are having a tortuous 2020-21, a season that could end with inexperienced coach Mikel Arteta being sacked after little over a year in charge at the Emirates. Arsenal’s decline started long before Arteta was given the job, the club’s fall from Champions League regulars to Thursday night European football has been gradual, but their […]
SOMETHING strange is happening this season, a curious set of events very much in keeping with the peculiar world we are watching behind our surgical masks. The Champions League last 16 has a familiar look, as it always does, but among the usual suspects there is not a single league leader. Early season tables are […]
