Proper Big Weekend, this, with lots of beautiful game and narrative out the wazoo. However, the star between Manchester City and Liverpool is unmistakable.
Man City vs. Liverpool: the game to watch last week
On the basis that either team is simply awful and that whatever happens, it was probably worth watching to laugh at which team spits the bed harder on the day.
In the end it was actually quite sad and hard to watch. They allegedly have a negative attitude toward sport, much like Clive. Man United in particular, but particularly Spurs.
But hats off to the device system in its infinite will-one-day-rise-up-and-enslave-us-all knowledge in seeing that it had the nature of a good idea that but had just gone too far with it, and giving us this change on the same concept.
Here we have two clubs who aren’t quite in the best of places and don’t feel as comfortable as they might otherwise be in this game. If Ipswich or Leicester may move their hand up, it really means something more than the fabled presence of a relegation threat.
This is a big one in the name race. Liverpool are currently in the midst of an epic bottle job, with a draw at Aston Villa and[checksnotesagain*notlostanyoftheirlast22PremierLeaguegames
It seems like the clouds may not be completely falling in, but Liverpool’s feeling has significantly decreased since they have been playing for the majority of the season, which they have found to be largely absurdly simple.
Its not actually a crisis, obviously, despite what the Mailbox thinks but it hasnt been great since the FA Cup exit at Plymouth.
Even before the post-whistle head loss that destroyed the dominant sense of calm Liverpool’s previous quiet time, the attract at Everton felt like a complete defeat.
The win over Wolves was incredibly difficult work, and while a 2-2 pull at Villa is undoubtedly a disaster, it does mean that a team could simply then have five points ahead of Arsenal when the wobble unwinds.
Liverpool was completely had done with a great easy house game this weekend to negotiate nerves and cool some scorching heads. Otherwise, they may travel to Man City, where everyone is aware of what will happen and where Man City will appear. How much does the City remain open.
Trying to reject a one-goal Champions League gap at the Bernabeu was usually a large purchase, but City could have at least given it a go. They displayed an embarrassing lack of combat, and their contrast to, say, Celtics ‘ attempt at something even less plausible in Munich is ugly.
Sometimes we see glimpses of the ancient City. Sometimes they are also able to hold or also extend the 3-0 leads it gives them. However, this team’s director and its overall structure do seem to have a fundamental flaw.
By City and Pep Guardiola’s standards, a season that is completely barren and wasteland like without the FA Cup before February break is a total waste. And the stark truth is that even with no Arsenal or Liverpool to worry about in that competition you still dont particularly fancy them to win it. However,
This another activity has the potential to appeal to City. The fact that City has fallen from the star turn of a title fight to merely the probable agent of chaos may have helped the club play a similar role, and the sight of their greatest rivals over the past seven years may only inspire the best out of what City has left behind.
And we can surely all believe that whatever happens here, the sight of Fleet fans merrily and joyfully and properly cheering on Man City given, properly, everything thats happened in the last two-and-a-half years, is one we can all appreciate. Chelsea
Team to see:
Right now, we are in a truly wonderful time. one in which no one in the Big Six, or at least not the ones who are currently known as the Traditional Big Six or the Old Big Six, are totally content with life.
Spurs and United are in full-blown crisis as we know, Liverpool have hit their second really difficult patch of the season and not yet dealt with it at all soothingly, the City Empire is falling apart in front of our quite eyes, and Arsenal have completely run out of forwards. There is Chelsea, too.
They undoubtedly managed to escape their absurdity somewhat. In part thats because of the sheer spectacular scale of the cover being provided elsewhere. Also a little because they have only really returned to what some people might assume they would be anyway. They have also been incredibly bad for a very long time.
Theyve gone out of the FA Cup, which the manager tried to suggest was a good thing because it meant they could concentrate on the league, and then promptly lost even more heavily in the league to the exact same mid-table teamthat just knocked them out of the FA Cup.
This is a very poor look anywhere, but Chelsea is inexplicably small-time. Particularly since focusing on the league now entails attempting to win Europe rather than compete for the title. Theyve won just two of their last nine Premier League games, and the last time they beat anyone half-decent was Aston Villa back at the start of December.
Chelsea placed second in the table with a record similar to Arsenal’s right down to goals scored with a 3-0 victory that day. They now face Villa, but this time they are six points ahead of Arsenal, with Liverpool already having lost all of their points.
The Champions League remains a perfectly viable target especially with fifth place likely to be enoughbut there is also now a very real danger of missing Europe altogether through the league. They will still be able to win the Europa Conference, but it will be a vaguely disrespectful way for a club of Chelsea’s stature and expenditure to return to Europe.
Villa would suddenly be back in the mix, bringing them within a point of the faltering Blues, as a result of
.
Player to watch: Chris Wood
While the two title rivals do battle without so much as a Proper Centre Forward between them, this weekend sees a clash of two of the very best the Barclays has to offer. There is also a lovely contrast between the two styles.
In Alexander Isak, a player of outstanding skill and finesse who oozes quality and draws the attention of the world’s best.
Then there is the former Newcastle striker now tearing it up at Nottingham Forest. Because Woods ‘ game doesn’t really focus on being a big, strong nuisance, headers, and pointy elbows, it always feels like a thinly veiled dig. You just can’t match his goal total this season playing it that way.
But he is undoubtedly a striker more from the old school, and a great deal of Forests success has been built on the principle of playing unapologetically to his strengths strengths which Premier League defences really dont have to deal with all that often in big 2025.
And having scored a hat-trick on his previous visit to St James Park when neither he nor Forest were as effective as they are this time around, he should feel confident enough to add to the 18 goals currently sat neatly if faintly incongruously between Erling Haaland ( 19 ) and Isak ( 17 ) as the three undoubted stand-out centre-forwards the Barclays currently boast. It’s easy to feel sympathy for Ruben Amorim, a manager who didn’t actually cause any of the issues that are to blame for Manchester United’s malaise but who is still in charge of Scrooge McRatcliffe’s most recent incarnation of the cost-cutting misery.
But it is increasingly undeniable that he isnt currently helping himself or the club get out of this mess. Yes, the attempted full culture reset that exposes both the current playing staff and the hiring that brought the Uniteds squad to this point of despair, is painful and necessary, but they also, unquestionably, don’t need to be this wilfully, persistently bad. Yes, it is a shocking indictment of the football talent and technique of the Amorim squad because they are so completely incapable of playing his system, one that has a track record of success when succeeded when challenged by players who can deliver it.
That, though, is the reality Amorim must face and address. Although there is a case, he probably felt the need to make it clear how inadequate the squad was in order to bring attention to how much needed to change, but that point has since been labored into the depths of ignorance.
It seems unlikely hell would change course now that the threat of relegation is still largely hypothetical given the state of the bottom four and you can see why Man United is likely currently 16th in the league table.
And the fixture computer is at its most mischievous once again here, sending Amorim and United at their very lowest ebb to face a rejuvenated Everton side who have leapfrogged them in the table and are bouncing along wonderfully well since the return of David Moyes, the first but absolutely not last manager to be chewed up and spat out by the impossible reality of post-Fergie Manchester United. One of his sprinkling of Premier League victories against Everton back in December was
but December is now considered to be a long-gone, irrelevant period of history. Although Moyes wasn’t present, Marcus Rashford scored two goals in the 4-0 win if you really want to understand how far in the future that United victory really is.
Football League game to watch: Sheffield United v Leeds
Does Monday night come under any sensible definition of weekend? No, it doesn’t, of course. However, you are dreaming if you believe you won’t cheat to obtain this.
We can pretend theres a bigger game in the Football League that conveniently takes place on the actual weekend, but wed only be fooling ourselves. This is a legitimate heavyweight title match between two formidable foes, which follows a similar Monday night Leeds game that had everything you could want from Sunderland before being completely undone. It appears that these two will both be back in the Premier League at some point next season with no exception given that Burnley appears to be determined to 0-0 their way into the play-offs under football terrorist Scott Parker. But Monday night will tell us a great deal about who might do so as champions. Bayern Munich vs. Eintracht Frankfurt
Bayern have done just enough for them this week. The Bundesliga title race was firmly in their hands thanks to a goalless draw at Bayer Leverkusen, and their tie-winning goal against Celtic in the Champions League’s final drama masked a mediocre performance.
They are ticking off obstacles, though, however unconvincingly, and have another such to clear on Sunday against third-place Eintracht Frankfurt, whose role as potential disruptor in the title race continues next week when they host Leverkusen. We will be in the Harry Kane Trophy Curse’s final days if both of those games take place in Frankfurt. Read more aboutRead More
