Category: Football (Soccer)

Liverpool may have got away with one in Sunday’s thrilling draw with Manchester United. But without a sustained challenge from those in chase, it may not matter

Title races are never just about the winners. In other circumstances, a run of three draws in six games for Liverpool might be cause for concern. Are they tightening up? Is there validity to that vague sense that the fixture list so far has been kind to them? But even if there is, it doesn’t really matter. Before the first of those draws, at Newcastle on 4 December, they were nine points clear of Arsenal in second; after Sunday’s draw at home to Manchester United, they are six points clear of Arsenal with a game in hand.

And that really has been the story of the past month, the great hectic splurge of the festive period. There has been a lot of heat and light, a lot of drama and excitement, and in the end not much has changed. Liverpool were far from their best on Sunday, could easily have suffered a surprise defeat, but in seven of the last nine match days the chasing pack of Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City have managed one or fewer wins between them. That does, admittedly, leave Nottingham Forest, who will close to six points with a game in hand if they beat Wolves on Monday, and who are Liverpool’s next league opponents, but it has been a remarkable achievement for Nuno Espírito Santo’s side to get to where they are; realistically there is going to be some drop-off in the second half of the season.

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Guardiola warns Grealish over Savinho, Southampton hit new low and is Arsenal’s negativity holding them back?

So much about Trent Alexander-Arnold’s display on Sunday was puzzling. Real Madrid’s now-public courtship may have had something to do with it, but at times it felt he was being hung out to dry. Poorly as he played, he was deliberately exposed by his own team, left to deal with whatever threats Manchester United could conjure down their left flank while the only players likely to drop back and help him out, Mohamed Salah and Ryan Gravenberch, rarely did so. When it became obvious that he was having an off day, nothing was done to cover for it and nurse him back into the game. When his own poor clearance was returned in the buildup to United’s opening goal it found him briefly with four opponents to deal with by himself, demonstrating that Liverpool’s problems down the right were not just an individual but a systemic issue. He is (usually) an astonishingly good player, but miracles will sometimes be beyond him. Simon Burnton

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Manchester United discovered their mojo to emerge from Anfield with a point and a desperately-needed dose of encouragement

Meanwhile Roy Keane, who is sitting alongside Daniel Sturridge in the Sky studio today, is growling already:

I don’t feel it today. I’m even surprised at myself. I look at the energy off them. Today, I feel probably more worried than I ever have for this United. It’s one of the worst United teams I’ve seen for a long, long time.

Of course, when you play a game of football anything is possible. We have to perform better than last week, that is our goal, and we have to focus on the little things to help us to be in the game. Let’s improve the basic things. We need to be a team, and for that we need to recover really fast, to go forward really fast. The players were nervous, anxious [last week], but we need to be brave. Remember this is the fun part of our week.

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Raul Jimenez’s injury-time penalty, his second and the third of the match, earned Fulham a point in a dramatic game

2 min Both teams have started with a back three as expected. Szmodics is playing as the right-sided No10 for Ipswich with Broadhead on the left.

1 min Fulham, in white, kick off from left to right. Ipswich are wearing their pink change strip due to a clash between football tradition and commercial imperatives. After approximately 1.5 seconds, Delap runs straight into Lukic off the ball and sends him flying. I suspect he knew what he was doing but it wasn’t bad enough for VAR to get involved.

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Ethan Nwaneri scored for Arsenal on only his second Premier League start, but a Joao Pedro penalty in the second half rescued a point for the hosts

• Read Ed Aarons’ match report from the Amex Stadium

Martin Odegaard: Mikel Arteta has confirmed that his captain is on the bench this evening because he has been feeling poorly. Kai Havertz is also absent from the second matchday squad in a row due to that illness which seems to be doing the rounds of various top flight dressing-rooms.

Mikel Arteta: “It’s about supporting our players,” said the Arsenal manager when he was asked how he and his staff had helped Gabriel Jesus find his scoring boots after a long barren spell. “The players know they have to go through some periods sometimes which is not how they planned.

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Manchester City, Bournemouth and Aston Villa edged closer to the Champions League spots while Brentford routed sorry Southampton

It’s 3pm. Whistles sound all across the land. Here we go!

There were three early kick-offs in the Championship. Here are your classified results.

Blackburn Rovers 0-1 Burnley

Stoke City 0-0 Plymouth Argyle

Swansea City 1-1 West Bromwich Albion

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Bryan Mbeumo scored twice as Brentford thumped sorry Southampton for their first Premier League away win of the season.

The Cameroon forward, linked with a potential January move to Arsenal, piled on the misery for rock-bottom Saints after Kevin Schade had fired the Bees ahead.

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After Pep Guardiola’s latest mea culpa – “I blame me, not the players,” he said on Friday – Manchester City returned a heady second consecutive win for the first time since late October, and a third successive outing without defeat.

Under the manager’s own logic he takes credit for a victory decorated by Savinho’s performance including two assists, and crowned by Erling Haaland’s second of the afternoon. The Brazilian received the ball in midfield and fed the Norwegian, whose slaloming run was as elegant as the chip over an onrushing Alphonse Areola.

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First-half goals from Anthony Gordon and Alexander Isak earned victory as Newcastle held off Tottenham’s late fightback

• Read Jonathan Wilson’s match report from the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium

An email: “G’day Barry,” writes Chris Paraskevas, who I’m guessing might be in Australia. “The lads and I (three grown men with actual resoonsibilities in life) have tempted fate and assembled to watch the game together.

“In the past this has always resulted in disaster. To top things off, we are all wearing a variation of this season’s Newcastle strip. Given Tottenham have had to call up Ledley King at centre-back, surely even our me̶n̶’̶s̶ ̶c̶l̶u̶b̶ supporters club evil eye/curse won’t help Ange tonight.”

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Manchester United’s new manager is increasingly looking like an odd hire, especially compared to the successful succession at their arch rivals

Perhaps the most striking aspect of Ruben Amorim’s time at Manchester United is the physical effect of the job, the altered optics. Amorim turned up at Old Trafford looking like a handsome pirate: the jawline, the seigneurial smile, the elite Euro-cardigan styling, the sense that here is someone who smells at all times of high-spec automobile upholstery.

Seven weeks in he has the air of a doomed royal hostage, shuttled joylessly from corridor to touchline by unseen handlers. The smile has fractured, the shoulders have drooped. Most recently United’s head coach has developed a habit of dropping down on to his haunches mid-match and staring deep into the Old Trafford turf, as though searching for a) a contact lens; and b) the remaining fragments of his own shredded and tender soul.

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Arsenal visit Brighton on Saturday while Liverpool face struggling Manchester United at Anfield on Sunday

Saturday 12.30pm TNT Sports 1 Venue Tottenham Hotspur Stadium

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