Talking points: Fulham lose their minds, Conte should look closer to home
LOST THE PLOT: Fulham's Aleksandar Mitrovic (centre) is sent off. Pic: Martin Rickett/PA Wire.
For most of their cup quarter-final, Manchester United were insipid. Fulham were easily the better side, Palhinha easily their best player. Mitrovic scored a poacher's goal to give Fulham the lead. Still, United couldn’t shake themselves out of their torpor.
Weghorst was running around aimlessly like a loose horse at the Grand National, Sancho was anonymous, Harry Maguire was attracting ire from the crowd. Ten Hag brought on Antony and took off Scott McTominay so Rashford could play through the middle with the Big Wout as the 10. It made no difference at all.
The crowd waited and waited for United to find a second gear, while David de Gea kept them in the game. Then it all went crazy. Fulham, cleverly, got their manager, Willian and Mitrovic sent off in conceding a penalty. United scored three times and won. Fulham had gifted them the game and it was impossible not to conclude that United had got lucky.
After surrendering a 3-1 lead to draw 3-3 against Southampton, Antonio Conte looked like a man who had totally lost faith in this project and wanted to be sacked. His post-game press conference confirmed as much as he dished out a blistering if accurate critique of the club and those who play for it.
What he missed out was the fact he’s also been a £15 million flop. He will surely get his wish and be sacked this week. There’s no doubt Conte has, in the past, been a successful manager, but football moves fast and in the last year he has looked like yesterday’s man, treading water and being overtaken by the games’ ever changing moods. Like Mourinho, he seems angry at the fact that his methods won't work in 2023.
But he is just the latest to fail to improve Spurs. Many have tried but all have failed. At some point it might be useful for someone at the club to try running Spurs without Daniel Levy having any part of it. He’s the only constant in this long period of rather pathetic underachievement.
On the last three occasions Leeds have started a game in the relegation positions, they have gone on to win. And so it was again at Wolves, despite having only won once in the last 13 games. However, Leeds never do anything the easy way. They raced into a 3-0 lead with three goals from three strikes on target Everything that had gone wrong for months in front of goal finally went right. But this is Leeds and of course they let in a bizarre Wolves goal, Jonny beating Meslier from 40 yards. After a second from Matheus Cunha, pretty much everyone was expecting the home side to equalise and they certainly threw everything at Leeds, with 23 shots, eight on target. But Jonny got himself sent off and Moreno Rodrigo scored a 96th minute fourth for the Whites, after more VAR mayhem. The game ended with players squaring up to each other and the fans in uproar. It took Leeds two points above the drop but it is going to be a fight to the death.
A lesson for Sean Dyche. In the first 10 minutes, Chelsea had 87% possession and Everton were lucky to get 13%. They did what Dyche’s Everton always do, put nine or 10 behind the ball and booted it long. The problem is when you’ve 10 behind the ball, when you win it back, you’ve no-one in an advanced position to pass it to, so cede possession immediately.
The best thing to happen to the game for Everton was Chelsea scoring. It forced Dyche to shake off this negative mindset and be more progressive.
And when they started to press higher up the pitch they became more dangerous. They equalised in the most Dychian fashion; a centre-half deflecting a set play into the net off his shoulder. Ellis Simms' second equaliser was a touch of old-school centre-forward play, outmuscling Kalidou Koulibaly to slot home. Dyche will get better results if he ditches his super-defensive reflexive defaults. There’s no future in his addiction of trying to hold on to nil.
Villa ran out 3-0 winners against Bournemouth but the heartwarming moment arrived when David Brooks was brought on 532 days after he last played for the Cherries, after a successful fight against Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. The whole of Villa Park rose to applaud him. A reminder that some things are more important than three points and that football fans can be thoroughly decent.
After a comfortable 4-1 win, Arsenal go into April with an eight-point lead. The biggest advantage any club has had going into April without winning the title is just three.
Any doubts that Thursday’s penalty shoot out defeat in the Europa League would leave a hangover were quickly dispelled. They dominated the ball, played fluid, quick, intricate passing football, found space and got in behind Palace time and again.
Arsenal had to wait 28 minutes to take the lead with a Gabriel Martinelli power hit, but no-one inside the Emirates, including their opponents, doubted that they would, or that they would add to their total. It was so easy for Arsenal that they had a sloppy 15 minutes in the second half, during which Palace scored, but that woke them up again and Bukayo Saka scored a second, his eighth since the World Cup.
They were in a different class to their opponents, it was their sixth league win on the bounce and they are going to have to try really hard not to end the season as Champions.
Another tsunami of goals for the Norwegian. His numbers have become a kind of statistical pornography, with people drooling over their ever more ridiculously inflated size. Are City better or more successful because of Haaland’s extraordinary numbers? Not yet. This iteration of City isn’t any better than previously, which isn’t to say they are worse either, but the light from Haaland’s amazing goal figures too easily blinds us to the bigger picture.
A cup tie that harked back to the muck and nettles cup games of yore - everything fans want from Association Football. In these days of fielding weakened teams in the cup, here were two sides throwing themselves into every challenge, scoring five goals, with Sheffield United twice coming from behind to beat Blackburn 3-2 to the wild delight of their home crowd. This is what cup football is all about with two teams giving everything they had.
It is what the Big Money at the highest levels has taken away all too often. This knife-edge sort of game is why winning the cup, or even ‘a good cup run’ was always held to be the biggest, most glamorous of achievements. The Blades appropriately won the game with a 90th minute Tommy Doyle piledriver from outside the box.
Doyle is on loan from Manchester City and is the grandson of both Mike Doyle and Glyn Pardoe, two City legends who had won the FA Cup in 1969. Must be something in the genes. Tremendous football and a reminder of less cynical days when money wasn’t the be-all and end-all.
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