Category: Football (Soccer)

Ruben Amorim has been sacked by Manchester United after 14 months as their head coach. He leaves Old Trafford after a power struggle with the hierarchy over transfer policy, with Amorim demanding his colleagues in the recruitment department 'do their job' after Sunday’s draw at Leeds. We take a look back at his turbulent reign, which featured a few fleeting highs but some miserable lows.

• Amorim sacked by Manchester United and Fletcher takes interim role – live

The head coach (or manager?) fired cryptic shots at his bosses, then was fired himself.

• Amorim sacked after power struggle over transfers

• Latest updates and reaction

Discontent at Manchester United these days is only ever deferred. Ruben Amorim’s departure from the club on Monday was long anticipated and came, in the end, with a weary sigh. He had made a half-hearted protest about the recruitment structure after Sunday’s draw at Leeds, but it felt even at the time like barely more than a gesture. And so another manager, the seventh since Sir Alex Ferguson left in 2013, falls victim to the United meat-grinder.

Everybody at United, fundamentally, is unhappy. And not unhappy in the sense that Alex Ferguson used to be unhappy, when the club was essentially fuelled by his volcanic rages, but enervated, frustrated by the realisation that this is not how things used to be, that this was once the biggest football club in the country and now they keep failing to get the win they need to lift them to fifth.

Nuno lets a golden opportunity slip, Viktor Gyökeres does everything but score and Benjamin Sesko struggles again

Calum McFarlane’s unexpected battle with Pep Guardiola brought back memories of the 2021 League Cup final, when Ryan Mason, Tottenham’s 29-year-old interim coach, faced the significant task of trying to outsmart one of the greatest managers in the game’s history. For Mason there was the added baggage of Spurs’ 13-year trophy drought; for McFarlane, making his senior management debut, it was Chelsea’s astonishingly bad recent record against Manchester City. Four and a half years have passed since Chelsea last beat Guardiola’s side, when Thomas Tuchel’s team triumphed in the Champions League final, and a draw on Sunday took that winless run to 12 matches. But Enzo Fernández’s injury-time equaliser, combining with the midweek upheaval at Stamford Bridge, made it a triumphant point, something Enzo Maresca didn’t achieve against City during his tenure. Taha Hashim

Match report: Manchester City 1-1 Chelsea

Match report: Fulham 2-2 Liverpool

Match report: Bournemouth 2-3 Arsenal

Match report: Leeds 1-1 Manchester United

Match report: Tottenham 1-1 Sunderland

City’s title chances suffered another blow when Enzo Fernandez scored a deserved injury-time equaliser for Chelsea

11 min Cherki is fouled 25 yards from goal by James. He and Foden are over the ball…

7 min It’s been a comfortable start for Chelsea, with City playing at a relatively slow pace. Their shape is interesting: it’s ostensibly 4-1-4-1 but Reijnders is playing very narrow, so they almost have three central midfielders, Cherki to the right and Nico O’Reilly, the left-back, taking care of business on the other side.

Eddie Howe describes January as “season defining” for his side and Newcastle’s manager looked suitably delighted to kick it off by collecting three points as Crystal Palace’s winless run continued.

Yet snapshots of a beaming Howe allied with the bald statistics do not quite tell the story of an often chaotic meeting of the Carabao Cup and FA Cup holders. By the 78th minute, when a corner was dropped for Malick Thiaw to poke the ball past Dean Henderson, the disappointment writ large across Oliver Glasner’s face suggested the Crystal Palace manager knew the game was up.

Price tag for winger’s move to Manchester City would make headlines in any other country but not in England

Antoine Semenyo, it seems likely, will soon join Manchester City from Bournemouth for a fee of £65m. Given how well Rayan Cherki and Phil Foden have played from the right this season, it is not immediately obvious why City need him, but the modern game is the modern game, the rammed calendar makes large and flexible squads essential and Pep Guardiola may have some esoteric plan for the Ghanaian anyway. But perhaps what is most striking about the deal is the fee – or, more precisely, how little attention it has drawn.

English football has become inured to big transfers. The fee feels about right. Semenyo is 25. He has four and a half years left on his contract. He is quick, skilful, intelligent and works hard. He is disciplined, but has the capacity to do the unexpected. Of course a player of his ability costs that much. Yet £65m would make him the third-most expensive player in Bundesliga history. He would be the seventh-most expensive in Serie A history, the 14th-most expensive in La Liga history. Only nine non-English clubs have paid a fee higher than that. Even in Premier League terms, Semenyo sneaks into the top 25.

Brighton ended a six-match winless run with a comfortable home victory over second-bottom Burnley.

Georginio Rutter gave Brighton a first-half lead before Yasin Ayari doubled the advantage early in the second period. Loum Tchaouna came close to halving the deficit, but Scott Parker’s struggling side remain six points adrift of Nottingham Forest in 17th after their wait for a league victory stretched to 11 games.