Category: Football (Soccer)

For the third time in four games, Benjamin Sesko scored after coming off the bench, finishing a brilliant counter to take United fourth

I’m minded of Martin Buchan’s legendary response – later pilfered by Gordon Strachan – to a reporter he didn’t know putting a hand on his chest to stop him going to get a drink.

“A quick word, Martin?

And because he’d been so rude I added ‘fuck off’.”

The ever-increasing number of games, combined with financial regulation, has produced flat play on the field but a tighter table overall

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A constant feature of this season has been the background grumble of dissatisfaction. You don’t have to spend long on social media to see moans about the quality of play, the sense that everything has somehow gone backwards since the tactical focus began to shift away from the pure possession and positional football of the peak Pep Guardiola years to something more direct and focused on set plays.

And yet, as we enter the run-in, there appears to be a proper Premier League title race. There is an extremely competitive battle to finish in the top five and qualify for next season’s Champions League and, although Wolves and Burnley are probably doomed, there are four teams scrapping to avoid that last relegation slot with another three glancing a little nervously over their shoulders.

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When James Milner made his Premier League debut for Leeds he was 16 years old. He came on as an 84th-minute substitute for Jason Wilcox, the current Manchester United director of football, to help close out a win over West Ham in which Harry Kewell, Nick Barmby and Mark Viduka scored. Pathé news reports from the time reveal that Westlife were top of the charts and a few days later Michael Jackson would dangle his baby from a Berlin balcony. Fabian Hürzeler, Milner’s current gaffer at Brighton, was a nine-year-old urchin, learning his times tables and being tucked into his race-car bed. More than 20 years later, Milner is 40, still playing in the top flight, and is the living personification of a hard-working, clean-living, low maintenance model professional who has finally eclipsed Gareth Barry to make the all-time Premier League appearance record his own. Frankly, after 23 seasons at six different clubs doing the bare minimum just to stay relevant, the most obvious conclusion to draw is that the universally admired and well-liked “Millie” is apparently not all he’s cracked up to be.

In the film The Thursday Murder Club, Pierce Brosnan’s character is an ardent West Ham fan, which got me thinking. Relegation would be A Long Way Down. Is there No Escape for the Hammers? They may not be The Greatest, but they’ve got the mentality of a Survivor. The Final Score on the weekend didn’t do them any favours but I don’t see it as The World’s End because there are plenty of matches left to play” – Peter Oh (and no other Pierce Brosnan superfans).

I’m sure that Barry Glendenning would be able to look after himself and have a quiet word with your correspondent who took him to task about using the term ‘centred around’ (Friday’s letters). But if he’s otherwise engaged, I’ll weigh in and point out that it’s a perfectly legitimate phrase, and, if Professor Google Ngrams is to be believed, has been on the rise since around 2010. It still only manages to account currently for 0.000037% of all two-word combinations in English, but since the figure for the rival ‘centred on’ is the only slightly more impressive 0.00013, I think honour is satisfied” – Charles Antaki.

Maybe this is just the myopic view of an unmarried bachelor, but on the topic of how to make VAR better (Friday’s letters), officials must be tying themselves in knots working out whether something is both ‘clear’ and ‘obvious’ – maybe if they just concentrated on meeting one of these criteria, they would feel less pressure and take less time” – Nick Livesey.

Lads, it’s Spurs” – Marc Meldrum.

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Rio Ngumoha lifts Liverpool, the tussle to be Harry Kane’s England deputy and Chelsea self-destruct

Tottenham weren’t quite as dreadful as they were in losing 4-1 to Arsenal in November, but they were still extremely so, devoid of wit, energy, solidity, creativity, quality, and everything else one would hope to see in a football team. Make no mistake, they are in serious danger of going down and, assessing their fixtures, it is not easy to see where they might win enough points to stay up – all the more so given the form of West Ham and Nottingham Forest who are both playing well. Spurs, on the other hand, haven’t won a league game in 2026 and look like they’ve forgotten how –­ partly, it must be said, because of an awful injury list. So, where does Igor Tudor go from here? It may well be that his only option is to pick both Dominic Solanke and Randal Kolo Muani, get balls into the box, and hope they can make enough of them to save him – which might not be The Tottenham Way^TM, but is a lot better than relegation. Daniel Harris

Two goals from Eberechi Eze and two from Victor Gyökeres sent Arsenal five points clear at the top, while Spurs are in serious danger of relegation

It was quite the finish at the City Ground:

“Vitor Pereira’s just been sacked...” chortles Dave Estherby.

“Opportunities missed. Board inept. Fans disrespected. Glasner finished,” read the banner unfurled by the Crystal Palace supporters behind Dean Henderson’s goal after barely 30 seconds of their meeting with bottom side Wolves. If it was meant to inspire a first league victory here since 1 November then it somehow had the desired effect.

Having huffed and puffed against a side playing with 10 men for half an hour after Ladislav Krejci was shown a second yellow card for stupidly kicking the ball away, it looked like being another miserable afternoon for Oliver Glasner. But when Evann Guessand’s winner went in during the final minute of normal time, there was an explosion of joy as some of the frustrations of the previous few weeks suddenly melted away.

Alexis Mac Allister scored in injury time, after having a previous goal ruled out, to snatch a Liverpool win

Eric Peterson gets in touch: “I wouldn’t mind Wayne Rooney pulling on an old Everton kit and getting on some podcast to remind Arne Slot, “Easy there, sport. You say that the only thing you and Jurgen Klopp have in common is that you both won the league. That’s not true. You both won the league with Jurgen’s team. Whether you can build a champion of your own is a different question.”

Arne Slot just spoke to Sky, starting with Dominik Szoboszlai at full-back: “He needs to be because that’s what we need. We have our issues, especially in defence. Missing our 2 fullbacks, but Dominic has done that job really well. Last week, Curtis Jones, did his job really well. So that’s the good thing about midfielders, they are usually able to play in more positions than only in the midfields.

Manchester City are timing their title run-in perfectly, to give Pep Guardiola a fine chance of a seventh title in a decade and to break Arsenal’s hearts yet again.

For fans of each team squeaky posterior time is officially entered. For the neutral the final 11 matches for City and the Gunners promise to be a cannot-miss spectacle.