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The focus will be on Juventus, and rightly so. But brilliant Jude Bellingham and Liverpool natural Nat Phillips deserve plenty of spotlight. Winners Pepe Joao Gomes Cravinho should probably watch his back. He might be Portugal’s Minister of National Defence in title but that honour will always belong to Pepe in spirit after Tuesday […]
Read More… from The Bolton Baresi heads Champions League winners and losers
Last season, Harry Kane set a new Champions League record when he headed home his 20th goal in the competition on just his 24th Big Cup appearance. It’s a largely arbitrary number of goals, but it’s not entirely meaningless. Twenty goals represents a decent season’s work for a striker in all competitions. It’s enough goals […]
Read More… from Early winner: the inevitable, absurd Erling Braut Haaland
We will get to Liverpool and Manchester United in good time… Winners Fulham, embracing the pressure A team haunted by the threat of relegation has two options. Either they can look to grind out draws and pick up the odd home win, playing safety-first football that has become the cause celebre of the English […]
Selling Emiliano Martinez in the summer was hardly Arsenal’s daftest transfer decision in recent years. At the time, making £20million on their back-up goalkeeper appeared to make perfect sense. But the Aston Villa no.1 continues to reframe that move as a costly mistake on the Gunners’ part. Martinez has established himself as the Premier League’s […]
Read More… from Early winner: Emi Martinez, making Arsenal regret the safe bet…
“We have to do it game by game [now]. Not for three games, not for four, we have to constantly be like this, with this energy, this team spirit and after I am looking forward to us doing something.” That was Granit Xhaka urging Arsenal to start hitting some consistency after producing an impressive display […]
Read More… from Early losers: Arsenal, Leno and mistake-ridden Xhaka
Winners Thomas Tuchel So this is what tactics look like. No matter your thoughts on Frank Lampard and his time at Chelsea, it’s now nigh on impossible to believe they would have been better off sticking with him over Thomas Tuchel. The German has won seven of ten games, conceding just twice with a defence […]
Read More… from Tuchel tops Premier League winners and losers
Premier League winners and losers on another weekend when the big game let us down do badly… Winners Arsenal A hugely significant week for Mikel Arteta, a man who has been afforded plenty of patience during his 14 months in charge. There are very good reasons for that patience, not least the myriad squad […]
Read More… from Arsenal top Premier League winners and losers
Winners Thomas Tuchel The new-ish Chelsea manager passed the toughest test of his reign so far. The Blues’ only win against top-eight opposition in the Premier League this season came against West Ham but Tuchel’s side did a number on the La Liga leaders. Frank Lampard would not have won that game 1-0. A victory […]
Cesar “Dave” Azpilicueta wasn’t denounced and forgotten like some of his Chelsea teammates under Frank Lampard, but he was certainly on a trajectory that was seeing him become more and more of a peripheral figure. The club captain has played every minute under Thomas Tuchel, leading the Lampard rejects on an eight-game unbeaten run to […]
Read More… from Early winner: Dave leading the Chelsea Lampard rejects
We will come to Liverpool later, but first… Winners Fulham and the relegation battle Fulham’s season can be split into two unequal halves, the first of which ended in late November. On October 5 and 6, Fulham signed Tosin Adarabioyo, Terence Kongolo, Joachim Andersen and Ruben Loftus-Cheek. They joined Ademola Lookman, Alphonse Areola, Ola […]