Game to watch – Manchester City v Arsenal
“Liverpool’s advantage is not huge but it’s there – we have to win a lot of games now. But if we want to keep going up as a club we have to accept the challenge.”
Liverpool’s one point gained/two points dropped against Leicester notwithstanding, Pep Guardiola’s initial post-Newcastle assessment stands. Manchester City need to win a lot of games now. They would have liked an easier start to that run than Arsenal.
It is now, though, a chance to put some real pressure on the small cracks that appeared in Liverpool’s play on Wednesday night and maybe help prise them open. Victory over the Gunners on Sunday would cut Liverpool’s lead to just two points, which would in turn make Liverpool’s Monday night trip to West Ham – up there with Wolves and Leicester right now in terms of big-boy nose-bloodying – a nervous adventure indeed.
City may need a result just to hold on to second if Spurs have got the better of Newcastle on Saturday, but it’s fair to say Liverpool are the focus.
And City should be confident. They’ve won 11 of their 12 home games this season, while Arsenal have lost three and drawn two of their last five away from home. City have also won their last four clashes with Arsenal by at least two clear goals. Basically, you need to watch this shizzle.
Player to watch – Fernando Llorente
Because how could you not? Having been essentially a part-time footballer for a year and a half, the big Spanish not-Kane is giving 2019 the full gun.
Before January was out he had:
– Scored a hat-trick
– Scored an own goal to prompt a flurry of ‘Lolrente’ tweets
– Missed at least three absolute sitters to prompt a flurry of ‘Lolrente’ tweets
-Scored an equaliser (on aggregate) out of nowhere against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge
– Scored an 87th-minute winner out of nowhere against Watford at Wembley
Who the f*** knows what he’s going to do next, but what is for damn sure is you definitely don’t want to miss it. Saturday lunchtime. Newcastle. Wembley. Tickets bafflingly still available, we’d imagine.
Team to watch – Liverpool
The 1-1 draw with Leicester may have extended Liverpool’s Premier League lead to five points, but it also betrayed signs of nerves as that long-awaited title moves ever closer to their grasp.
By the time they travel to West Ham on Monday night they may be only two points clear of Manchester City – and only four clear of Spurs. West Ham have already beaten Manchester United and Arsenal at the London Stadium this season and are gloriously prone to losing shambolically in supposedly winnable games only to turn it on against better opposition.
In many ways they represent the worst possible opponents for Liverpool if indeed the pressure is beginning to tell: precisely the sort of team Liverpool will fully expect – and be fully expected – to beat, but precisely the sort of team that might not make it easy.
Manager to watch – Ole Gunnar Solskjaer
A first misstep for Solskjaer, but Manchester United’s position still improved thanks to Chelsea’s astonishing thumping at Bournemouth (see below).
As we know, Solskjaer is only interested in winning trophies, but United’s improvement and Chelsea’s stumbles mean Champions League qualification – which looked completely off the cards in the dying days of Mourinho’s joyless reign – is now very much back on the agenda and would represent a compelling case for his future prospects, given the starting point.
The nature of the draw with Burnley means the Solskjaer honeymoon continues but a win is needed to maintain the pressure on the stumblers ahead in the top-four chase. And in many ways, he and his team face a similar challenge this weekend to Liverpool’s: trying to restore momentum after a disappointing home result with a ticklish away trip.
Leicester are a curious beast, so often limp and disappointing against teams they ought to beat but enormously fond of cutting the big teams down to size.
In the space of just seven league games they have beaten Chelsea and Manchester City as well as deservedly drawing at Anfield, while also losing at home to Cardiff and Southampton. It’s magnificent stuff.
One-on-one battle to watch – Maurizio Sarri v Chelsea’s players
Chelsea are in the final of the Carabao Cup and the last 16 of the FA Cup, but their Premier League season is in very real danger of disintegrating.
Having lost none of their first 12 Premier League games under Sarri, they have lost five of the next 12 to tumble first out of the title race and now out of the top four. A second successive season outside the elite would be unconscionable.
A home game against Huddersfield would always fall into the ‘must-win’ category, but even more so after successive defeats, with Manchester City and Tottenham their next two Premier League engagements.
Sarri admitted after an hour-long lock-in in the away changing room at Bournemouth that he remains none the wiser about just how and why his tactics are now failing so spectacularly.
He needs to find an answer soon. Chelsea have made an enormous freewheeling success of their focused short-termism in recent years; giving Sarri the time it will take to fully implement his methods is a significant change of approach and that approach is now coming under serious pressure.
At no other big club do the senior players hold as much sway as Chelsea. Sarri really needs a win and ideally a clean sheet here. Happily for him and his players they may not need to see eye-to-eye to get both against the Terriers.
Football League game to watch – Leeds v Norwich
First v second with top spot on the line? Two teams whose matches keep ending in ridiculous fashion with at least two injury-time goals LITERALLY* EVERY SINGLE TIME and sometimes also a red card or something?
Two teams who appear hellbent on making promotion as bum-squeakingly difficult as it can possibly be? Two teams who, despite sitting first and second, have between them managed to win only three of their last 10 games?
Absolutely ideal.
European games to watch – Napoli v Sampdoria and Juventus v Parma
Just a lovely pair of games back-to-back on Saturday evening for anybody who grew up in the 1990s watching the Italian football on Channel 4. Proper Italian games between proper Italian teams. Lovely to see Parma back, isn’t it? Hmm? Marvellous.
And to complete the vibe, Premier Sports have even chucked both games on their Freeview channel after getting the Serie A rights from Eleven Sports. While the ever-growing list of subscriptions fans now need if you want to watch All The Football is a bothersome issue, for one weekend let’s just party like it’s 1993 and enjoy some lovely Italian football for free, eh?
*Okay not literally
Dave Tickner