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 […]
IN ALL probability, Manchester City and Liverpool will be “there or thereabouts” come the end of the 2020-21 season, but in these early weeks of another strange campaign, it is clear both sides currently lack some dynamism. In short, Liverpool’s defence and City’s attack seem to be the main problems, but there was something a […]
HOW do you sack managers like Pep Guardiola, or replace parts of the furniture like Frank Lampard? There’s an assumption that clubs will not fire people who are football luminaries or club “legends”. But it would be wrong to believe Lampard and Guardiola are untouchable, at best they will be left in a room and […]
INCREASINGLY, it looks as though Lionel Messi won’t be moving to Manchester City, Paris Saint-Germain or any other interested club for the time being. Messi is just too expensive to be signed by anyone. If La Liga’s support of Barcelona around the release terms of Messi’s contract remains, then a cool € 700 million will […]
DAVID SILVA and Vincent Kompany are both excellent footballers and performed outstandingly well for Manchester City (they didn’t serve them, they were paid enormous sums of money). Doubtless, they are already being referred to as “legends”. Both have now left the club and Silva is heading for Real Sociedad in his home country. When any […]
