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That is all from me today but fear not, the football now actually begins. Join Tim de Lisle as Manchester United take on Aston Villa.
David Hytner
Tottenham: Igor Tudor will recall Guglielmo Vicario to his lineup at Liverpool today as he fights to keep his job at Tottenham. But the interim manager has sought to give his side of the story with regard to Antonin Kinsky, the backup goalkeeper, who he started at Atletico Madrid last Tuesday before controversially substituting after 17 minutes with the team 3-0 down. Kinsky made errors for two of the goals. Spurs went on to lose 5-2.
Tudor, who has lost all four of his matches in charge, was heavily criticised for appearing to ignore a distraught Kinsky as the player left the pitch. It was a move that did not play well with some of Kinsky’s teammates. But Tudor has said that he risked inflaming the situation if he had approached the 22-year-old in the moment.
“Why didn’t I go to give him hug?” Tudor said. “Because maybe he was angry. Maybe coaches do the things to avoid this scene and to get a situation worse than it was. Sometimes it is better to stay there and we hug each other at half-time. At half-time we speak and nothing [more]. The situation happened there and it finished there. Did I hug him at half-time? Of course. I took the decision [to substitute Kinsky] after thinking about it and, if I needed to, I would do the same again. It was an act of helping to preserve the guy and to preserve the team.”
Newcastle: Anthony Gordon said pundits Wayne Rooney and Alan Shearer need to “get better at what they’re doing” after they questioned why he only played in the second half of Newcastle’s midweek draw with Barcelona.
The forward was a second-half substitute during Tuesday’s 1-1 Champions League draw at St. James’s Park after spending a number of days unable to train due to illness. Rooney, Shearer and fellow pundit Roy Keane were part of a team covering the game live pitch side and all three made comments about Gordon not being involved from the start.
Speaking on Match of the Day after scoring the goal that ended Newcastle’s 14-year wait for a victory against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge, the 25-year-old said: “Usually I don’t like to clear stuff up because I don’t care too much, but this one does need clearing up because it was just nonsense.
“When I got to the stadium [on Tuesday] the manager told me I wasn’t playing, which I didn’t like very much, but that’s his decision and the team played well. Saying I didn’t want to play in the biggest game of my career is absolute nonsense.
“I think Rooney said I went past and didn’t shake their hands and went into the changing room. I didn’t. I got changed by myself in a changing room the size of this. It was just me and a sink. Complete nonsense. I think they need to do better at what they are doing.”
Speaking on Tuesday, Shearer said it would take “something extraordinary to keep myself out of this game” while Keane wondered why Gordon was able to come on as a substitute but unable to start.
Analysis: Krishna writes in to say: “If there is one team that stayed true to its ideals and methods in the last decade without losing its head and direction, it is Arsenal. And a PL win (whisper – Quadruple) is befitting the team and the understated efficient Arteta. Coming from a Chelsea fan but credit where it is due
And Barney Ronay agrees.
Maybe the thing that was supposed to kill Arsenal in this title race is also the thing that has become their key point of difference. Nervous energy is still energy. An edgy, fretful team is still a team.
The thing that really gets you these days, and which will kill this sport if we keep hammering away at it, is entropy, a lack of feeling, a loss of identity. Arsenal may not be free-flowing and imperious, but they always generate urgency, always play every second as though it matters.
Read his full column below.
National League: Billy Munday was at the Dave Bryant Stadium on Saturday to watch Dagenham & Redbridge at Enfield, with fans hopeful that the YouTube superstar KSI, their club’s new minority owner, is the real deal
In the sun on Saturday, there was a sense of two clubs with varying ambitions. Enfield, who boast about being England’s first fully fan-owned club, are losing their fight for survival. Dagenham are now nine points off the playoffs. There is an expectation they will start climbing the ladder, pronto.
The model is Wrexham, who are reaping the rewards of the hands-on approach of Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mac. Their journey from non-league to Premier League is perhaps nearing an end. Following the Reynolds-Mac playbook, this week KSI mucked in at the Leisure United training hub, chatting in depth to the manager, Lee Bradbury, and playing table tennis with the players.
Like Wrexham, Dagenham and Redbridge will be the focus of a documentary series, this one titled Race to the Top and running on KSI’s 17m-subscriber YouTube channel. The National League’s broadcast partner, Dazn, showed the Enfield game to a global audience during the UK’s 3pm TV blackout. Misfits Boxing, a sports promotion company founded by KSI, also has a deal with Dazn.
Inside football: Modern, exciting football and the rise of set-pieces. Can they coexist? Some say no, including Liverpool’s Arne Slot. Some, like Mikel Arteta of Arsenal, are willing to pave the way.
But if the Champions League last 16 first ties proved anything, it is that humbled English clubs must realise that what works against the very good turns out to be inadequate against the best.
Here is Jonathan Wilson on the dilemma:
But this past week felt different. It’s one round of matches in which five of the Premier League sides played away and it would be wrong to read too much into that. Each game can be analysed and specific reasons found for the result. Tottenham are going through a moment and individual errors had them 3-0 down inside 15 minutes. Chelsea matched Paris Saint-Germain until a goalkeeping howler put them 3-2 down and, chasing the game, they leaked two more.
Manchester City, with a weirdly open midfield, ran into a Real Madrid side benefiting from the absence of several of the stars who typically unbalance the side, allowing the underrated and self-sacrificing Fede Valverde to have the game of his life. Liverpool yet again conceded to their opponent’s first real attack. Newcastle had the beating of Barcelona but gave away a daft last-minute penalty.
What was striking, though, was how their opponents’ expansiveness seemed to befuddle English sides, as though Premier League teams have become so used to the crabbed nature of the modern domestic game, all intense pressing and intricate marking structures, that the idea of players running at pace, rapid flurries of passes or forwards performing tricks no longer computes, as though stop-start, disjointed football has become the default, that fluency seems like some devastating alien invention. What works against the very good turns out to be inadequate against the very best.
Women’s League Cup final: A little over three hours until kick-off between Chelsea and Manchester United in the Women’s League Cup final.
Sonia Bompastor’s side have a stellar record in finals, sweeping the domestic trophies last season, and they will back themselves to go back-to-back, having won five of the last six encounters against Marc Skinner’s team.
Tom Garry sat down with Fridolina Rolfö, the Swedish winger who was a serial winner at Barcelona and hopes her experience can help Manchester United claim an all-important win today.
This showdown at Ashton Gate is in line to be Rolfö’s 14th major final appearance. The 32-year-old has been involved in two Swedish cup finals, two in Germany with Wolfsburg, three Copa de la Reina finals, an Olympic final and five Champions League finals, so how does she prepare for the big occasions?
“I usually try, especially when it’s an afternoon or evening game, to do something throughout the day so I’m not only thinking about the game and getting stuck in my head, so I’m trying to [go] grocery shopping or doing something that can distract my mind a little bit,” the two-time Champions League winner says.
She also tries to pass on her experience to younger players, be that “through communication” or “leading by example”. She says: “I know how you win. I know what I can bring to the team to help in those games. I hope I can help with my experience when we’re getting to those big games.”
Manchester United v Aston Villa: Michael Carrick says there is a hunger at Manchester United to get back to the top as the club looks to mark their 150th anniversary with Premier League glory in 2028.
‘Project 150’ was announced internally during a wretched 2024-25 campaign in which Ruben Amorim’s Red Devils slumped home 15th and suffered a costly Europa League final loss to Tottenham. The mission to bring a 21st English league title to Old Trafford has looked fanciful at stages and the Portuguese coach’s acrimonious January exit after a topsy-turvy start to the campaign did little to lift the mood.
But Carrick’s inspired appointment for the remainder of the season has brought renewed hope to United, who enter the weekend third in the table ahead of hosting fourth-placed Aston Villa on Sunday.
A seventh win in nine matches in charge would hugely boost their Champions League hopes and the former midfielder – part of the last Premier League triumph in 2013 – says there is a drive for more.
“You’ve got take it step by a step, I think,” the five-time league winner Carrick said when asked about ‘Project 150’. “Certainly, we want to keep improving and keep moving up the table. I’ve sat here and said that before. I mean, at the moment being in and around where we are is an exciting time because we’ve got something to play for. We would love to be playing for something a little bit more, that little bit higher and really challenging for leagues.
“There’s no way you can just say it’s going to happen and assume it’s going to happen. There’s a lot of work that needs to go into that and a lot of things that need to be put in place to achieve that. It’s tough to win the Premier League and we understand that, but certainly we’re definitely working towards it. We feel that’s where we want to be.
“We have been in the past and we want to get there again, but it’s certainly just not straightforward and I think we all understand that, but we’re certainly hungry to do it.”
Tottenham: Spurs were last relegated in 1977 and it was a big shock when Keith Burkinshaw’s talented side went down – but will the current team avoid that fate? Here is Sam Cunningham’s verdict.
What happened to reach this catastrophic point? How had one of the country’s biggest clubs dropped out of the top flight? And can lessons learned from Spurs’ unlikeliest relegation help the current team, who are sucked into a struggle with Igor Tudor unable to halt the freefall?
“Sad Spurs hit rock bottom,” read a headline in the Sunday Mirror the day after relegation. Pat Jennings, considered the best goalkeeper in the world, told reporters: “Relegation has not just happened today – it’s been happening for three years.”
He was referring to Nicholson’s resignation after losing the first four games of the 1974-75 season, ending a 16-year managerial reign and sending “shock waves through the dressing room”, Jennings recalled in his 1983 autobiography. In truth, the Spurs empire had been crumbling in the seasons before that, mainly owing to an inability to replace players.
Liverpool v Tottenham: A reminder of these two sides’ last Premier League matches.
Will Unwin
Liverpool v Tottenham: Can things get worse for Spurs? Of course they can. Igor Tudor takes his miserable band of men to Anfield to face the Premier League champions. There is a catalogue of absences and the defence will probably resemble Frankenstein’s monster, cobbled together from what is left. The past five league games have ended in defeat, and that’s before we look at the nadir in Madrid. A Liverpool victory must surely end the worst tenure in English football history.
After Chelsea’s loss yesterday, Liverpool will be hoping to take advantage in their battle for Champions League qualification. It has not been a great season for Arne Slot but there is plenty of quality in his squad and if Florian Wirtz can get back up to speed after his injury interruption, then it could be a very difficult day for their north London visitors.
Bournemouth: Andoni Iraola refused to blame the loss of Antoine Semenyo for Bournemouth’s difficulties in front of goal.
Semenyo has continued to rack up the goals since joining Manchester City in the January transfer window while the Cherries drew a fourth successive game in a stalemate against Burnley on Saturday, failing to score in three of them.
“I don’t think it is for me now the reason to say this,” said the Cherries boss. “Obviously Antoine is a very good player but we are one of the teams who has scored more goals. I think before these two games we were fifth in the league with the most goals scored. Now we are a little bit more solid at the back but probably it’s taking us a little bit offensively.
“The xG (expected goals) is through the roof but we are not scoring. But I trust my forwards. As long as we play well, someone will score goals.”
Chelsea: Liam Rosenior said the referee Paul Tierney should have focused on his job rather than on crashing Chelsea’s pre-match huddle after Newcastle won at Stamford Bridge for the first time in 14 years.
Anthony Gordon scored the only goal in the 18th minute as the Blues made a hopeless mess of pressing the visitors, but the focus afterwards was on the bizarre moment before kick-off when Tierney stood in the centre of the Chelsea players as captain Reece James spoke to the team.
Rosenior, who signalled his intention to contact referees’ body PGMO over the incident, said: “I’m respectful to the game. My players made a decision that they wanted to be around the ball, to respect the ball and show unity and leadership.
“That is not my decision. That is a decision between the leadership group and the team. There is nothing that they’re doing with that huddle that is disrespectful to the opposition.”
Manchester City: Meanwhile, Pep Guardiola’s side were left nine points off Arsenal with a game in hand after a draw at West Ham.
The City manager watched from the stands as his side failed to find a winner and he faces a tough task now: to go on a winning run that will trouble Mikel Arteta’s men. Jacob Steinberg was at the London Stadium:
City were short of ideas before raising the tempo during a desperate finale. Erling Haaland’s aim was awry and although a defensive West Ham were limited to one shot, the problem for Pep Guardiola is the one that was allowed was the Konstantinos Mavropanos header that cancelled out a strange goal from Bernardo Silva and left Arsenal nine points clear in first place.
With Gianluigi Donnarumma at fault for the equaliser, this was City again failing to take care of the details. After twice squandering the lead against Forest in their previous league game, a similar lapse at the London Stadium was a reminder that this is a long way from being one of the great Guardiola sides. Arsenal, of course, will still fear a trademark City comeback from here, not least because the hunters still have a game in hand. For all that Arsenal will fret until the job is done, though, Guardiola will know there will be a breathless sprint for the finish if his side continue to play with such a lack of identity, cohesion and belief.
Arsenal: We will start with the Premier League leaders, Arsenal, who found a will and a way against Everton and it was largely due to Max Dowman. His cross in the 89th minute caused a scramble and unlocked Everton’s defence, allowing by Viktor Gyökeres to score the first. The 16-year-old’s audacious with a second that sent Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall to no man’s land. David Hytner was at the Emirates Stadium to witness all the glory:
Everton had sent Pickford forward for an all-or-nothing corner but when Arsenal cleared and the ball was worked to Dowman, he took over. He got away from Vitalii Mykolenko but it was the feint inside and away from Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall that took the breath. The Everton midfielder slumped to the turf and stayed there. He could see what was about to happen. Everybody could.
Dowman motored across halfway and nobody was going to catch him. It was a run to glory, just him and the goal, Everton’s players fading into the background behind him. He might have shot but instead he kept running, all the way to the penalty spot before he rolled the ball home.
The noise in the stands exploded like a firecracker, Arteta taking off in a celebratory leap. It seemed as if Dowman had been installed as more than the Premier League’s youngest ever scorer. Has he provided the spark for Arsenal’s first title in 22 years?
Preamble
Hello and welcome to another Matchday live, where we look ahead to all the live football in a super-sized Sunday. We’ve got Premier League strugglers 1 (Liverpool) taking on Premier League strugglers 2 (Spurs). Fighting for their fifth straight Old Trafford victory under Michael Carrick, Manchester United are in action against Aston Villa. Plus Crystal Palace host Leeds and Fulham head to Nottingham Forest.
The Women’s League Cup final this afternoon sees Chelsea and Manchester United battle to trophy with the holders, Chelsea, attempting to defend the first of three domestic titles this season.
We will also be taking in on the reaction from the week, including Arsenal’s win against Everton that took them yet another step closer to the title – even more so after Manchester City’s humbling draw at West Ham.
So much to preview, so much to look forward to. Join me.
