Category: Football (Soccer)

Football (Soccer) News

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The Chris Whyte experiment: when Arsenal played a centre-back up front

Mikel Merino excelled as a striker for Arsenal on Saturday. Chris Whyte did not have as much joy 40 years ago

By Steven Pye for That 1980s Sports Blog

You didn’t need to be a genius to work out what was coming. Going two transfer windows without signing a centre-forward was always going to be a gamble for Arsenal, especially considering that their one remaining option was clearly out on his feet in recent weeks. The injury to Kai Havertz was depressingly inevitable.

Mikel Arteta had a dilemma before the Leicester match at the weekend. With no strikers available, he opted to play Leandro Trossard through the middle. When that didn’t work, Mikel Merino came on and scored both goals in the 2-0 win. Merino’s timely goals have temporarily halted the debate but, if all else fails, Arteta could throw Riccardo Calafiori up front and get the ball into the mixer.

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Jude Bellingham sent off amid misunderstanding & Cincinnati duo Matt Miazga & Pat Noonan preview MLS season

Christian Polanco and Alexis Guerreros react to Jude Bellingham’s red card in La Liga after a misunderstanding of words with the referee. Also, the boys break down Manchester United’s problems as their torrid season continues. Christian and Alexis hen chat with FC Cincinnati defender Matt Miazga as well as Head Coach Pat Noonan ahead of the team’s upcoming MLS season. Later, Christian and Alexis react to the latest MLS news including Lucho Acosta’s move to FC Dallas and Toronto FC’s Lorenzo Insigne dilemma.

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Leeds return to the top after super-sub Struijk strikes twice to sink Sunderland

The news that a national poetry centre is to be established in Leeds proved the source of considerable pride in West Yorkshire on Monday. By 10pm on a bitterly cold night at Elland Road, any notions that Leeds would capture the mood courtesy of a suitably cadenced performance had been thoroughly disabused as Daniel Farke’s side fought their way to a dramatic last-gasp win after Wilson Isidor had given Sunderland the lead.

Yet if it was hardly poetic, substitute Pascal Struijk’s gamechanging double returned Leeds to the top of the Championship, leaving them two points ahead of Sheffield United, seven clear of third-placed Burnley and 10 in front of Régis Le Bris’s team.

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Swansea City sack head coach Luke Williams after dismal run of form

  • Swans 17th in Championship after seven losses in nine
  • Chairman says change needed to lift team on the pitch

Swansea City have sacked their head coach Luke Williams after seven defeats in his last nine league matches, prompting the Championship club to cancel an eagerly awaited fans’ forum scheduled for Tuesday.

Williams departs after a bruising run of results and a difficult January transfer window, with the club missing out on several targets having sanctioned the sale of their long-serving captain Matt Grimes to playoff-chasing Coventry. Among supporters there is growing dismay at the running of the club.

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Ruben Amorim’s Manchester United are a mess, with issues starting at the top | Jonathan Wilson

The optimism that greeted Jim Ratcliffe’s arrival as owner has given way to even more disappointment, with Sunday’s defeat at Tottenham the latest example

Covering Manchester United these days feels a little like being a character in Silent Witness: every week you end up writing a postmortem. Their Sunday defeat at Tottenham was an engaging if bitty affair that finished 1-0 largely because the low quality of defending on show was compensated for by the low level of attacking. It was fun in its way, but it didn’t feel a lot like Premier League football.

It also meant United dropped to 15th in the table, having won just four of 14 league games under Ruben Amorim. Under Erik ten Hag this season, United were taking 1.22 points per game; under Amorim that’s down to 1.00. Nobody was under any illusions about the scale of the task he was taking on, but four months after Amorim took the job it would be very difficult to identify any concrete signs of progress. There has been the resilience of the performance in the league at Anfield, in the FA Cup at the Emirates, and not a lot else.

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Randal Kolo Muani serves up treat for Juve to leave Serie A race wide open | Nicky Bandini

Might we eventually look back on Francisco Conceição’s winning goal as one of the pivotal moments of this season?

Francisco Conceição was dead, as he recalls it, but the chance wasn’t, the cross from his teammate Andrea Cambiaso only cleared to the edge of the box. Randal Kolo Muani tamed the ball and retained it as he was assailed by five Inter defenders who arrived one at a time like henchmen in a Hollywood movie: allowing him to overcome each of them in turn.

He evaded Hakan Calhanoglu with a half-step backwards, leaving the Turkey captain to fall under his own momentum, held off Nicolò Barella, dragged the ball back under his boot to spin away from Henrikh Mkhitaryan, flicked it across Francesco Acerbi with the outside of his boot and then poked it with a toe beyond Carlos Augusto and into the path of Conceição.

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‘100% quality’: Enzo Le Fée brings poise to Sunderland’s promotion push

Versatile French playmaker adds class and experience to a young side hopeful of returning to the Premier League

Enzo Le Fée is the subject of considerable introspection at Roma. The concern at the Stadio Olimpico is that last month’s decision to offload the multitalented French midfielder with more than a hint of Luka Modric about his game, might prove a big mistake. Sunderland certainly exhibit zero sign of buyer’s remorse over an expensive loan deal obligated to turn into a formal £20m transfer should Régis Le Bris’s team return to the Premier League this spring.

“Le Fée is 100% quality,” says Gary Bennett, the former Sunderland defender turned BBC Radio Newcastle match analyst. “From what we’ve seen so far, wow. Twenty million will be money very well spent.”

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Premier League: 10 talking points from the weekend’s action

Manchester United’s slump deepens, Ryan Christie inspires Bournemouth and David Moyes lets the good times roll

Can winning a game that resembled two lurching drunks swinging at each other at closing time be regarded as vindication for Ange Postecoglou? Perhaps if Manchester United had a more mobile midfield and someone other than Rasmus Højlund at centre-forward – last goal at Plzen on 12 December – flanked by a winger in Alejandro Garnacho who last scored against Bodø/Glimt two weeks before that. It turns out Joshua Zirkzee – who has three goals in the league all season – is United’s most potent forward. The numbers point to this being United’s worst team in decades, and the only good news Ruben Amorim received on Sunday was 17th-placed Wolves’ defeat at Liverpool. Tottenham saw out a second successive Premier League clean sheet for the first time in 16 months but did so nervously. It will take much more than sketchily defeating a crashing clown car to prove Postecoglou’s pronouncement that the true Tottenham would reveal themselves once his injured players started returning. John Brewin

Match report: Tottenham 1-0 Manchester United

Match report: Leicester 0-2 Arsenal

Match report: Manchester City 4-0 Newcastle

Match report: Liverpool 2-1 Wolves

Match report: Aston Villa 1-1 Ipswich

Match report: Fulham 2-1 Nottingham Forest

Match report: Southampton 1-3 Bournemouth

Match report: Crystal Palace 1-2 Everton

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Macarthur captain Valere Germain quits A-League over poor refereeing standards

  • Striker expected to swap Australia for Japan after terminating contract
  • Frenchman was facing FA hearing over alleged lewd gesture to official

Macarthur’s bid for an A-League Men finals berth has been dealt a hammer blow, with captain Valere Germain citing Australian refereeing standards as reason to terminate his contract.

Bulls officials confirmed to AAP that Germain’s request has been granted, with the 34-year-old forward expected to take up a contract offer in Japan.

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European football: Inter miss chance while racist chants halt La Liga game

  • Inter lose 1-0 at Juventus to a Francisco Conceição goal
  • Referee stops match at Espanyol after player complaints

Inter missed the chance to go top of Serie A as they lost 1-0 at Juventus on Sunday with Francisco Conceição scoring the decisive late goal in an action packed match.

The Portuguese winger sparked jubilation in the stadium after 74 minutes following some clever footwork in the box by Randal Kolo Muani before he found Conceição, who fired home.

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Liverpool 2-1 Wolves: Premier League – as it happened

First-half goals from Luis Díaz and Mohamed Salah restored Liverpool’s seven-point lead at the top of the table, though Matheus Cunha’s lovely strike had nerves jangling

So where is the game? I’m certain that Wolves, like every team facing Liverpool, will target the space in and around around and behind Alexander-Arnold who, for all his glorious passing and crossing, lack defensive nous and recovery pace. There could scarcely be a duo better-placed to exploit that than Ait-Nouri and Cunha while, on the other side, Semedo and Sarabia will also feel they can do something against the flagging Andy Robertson, especially on the counter.

Liverpool, meanwhile, will expect to outnumber Wolves in midfield, therefore dominating the ball, targeting the space behind the wing-backs with Jota scavenging in the box. And if all else fails, they can just give it Salah.

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