Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
TYKE A BOW
2008 Barnsley recall their famous FA Cup win over Chelsea. One Blues star knocked on the dressing room to say ‘well done’.. it was JOHN TERRY
and SIMON BIRD THE champagne was being sprayed, as the Barnsley players celebrated their FA Cup giant-killing of Chelsea, when there came a knock at the dressing-room door.
Standing there was John Terry and the home changing room at Oakwell fell silent when he stepped in to congratulate the Tykes on their 1-0 victory.
Simon Davey, who was Barnsley boss for that epic quarter-final success in 2008, has not forgotten Terry’s classy act.
“He said, ‘Well done boys, that was a fantastic game, you deserved to win and good luck in the semifinals’,” recalled Davey.
“It was a surreal moment. That was the first time I’d known an opposition player to say that and it carried more weight because he was the Chelsea and England captain.
“That’s testament to him as a man and it meant a huge deal to my players. They were elated to get the result, but then to get that knock on the door was the icing on the cake.”
Kayode Odejayi scored the only goal and Davey insists Barnsley’s win, which came after their victory at Liverpool in the previous round, was deserved. In the semis, they were beaten 1-0 by Cardiff.
Now it is the turn of current manager Valerien
Ismael to look to stun the west Londoners at Oakwell, and he said: “I heard a lot about the 2008 Cup tie – maybe it is a good omen. Will it be harder now? Yes, for sure. We have the power to play to the end. We want to make it a great game.”
Thomas Tuchel’s Borussia Dortmund beat Ismael’s Wolfsburg 3-0 the last time the two men
met, but the Championship
boss is convinced his hard-pressing style can cause Chelsea’s new chief problems. Ismael (below) said: “They will have a lot of joy with him. It is a big, big pressure but a challenge. “For him, it is all about him getting a title. Premier League, FA Cup or Champions League. It is about trophies. That is the minimum at Chelsea.
“We played one time when I was Wolfsburg manager and he was at Dortmund. He is a great manager. Everywhere he trains the team has big success. Dortmund played brilliant football. PSG, I saw what he did there as a Frenchman.
“Chelsea will get better and better but, for this game, the pressure is on them. They expect to go through and we don’t. But anything is possible. We want to look after our chance.
We can already see his methods, lots of possession and lots of chances. But also the opponent has the opportunity to score.”
The teams have already met this season. Back in September, Barnsley were beaten 6-0 by Chelsea in the Carabao Cup, and midfielder Alex Mowatt says he learned lessons during that game at Stamford Bridge.
Mowatt said: “We couldn’t believe the level of some of their players who were not in the starting line up. Ross Barkley was the best midfielder I have played against and he was loaned out to Villa!”
“In the first half hour, we did well. We didn’t take our chances and they punished us, but we did do good things on the night.
“This is a fresh game. The pitch is different and smaller, but they are still great players.”
REALITY comes at you quickly in football if you stand still.
This time last year Liverpool were reigning World Club and European champions, unbeaten on their march towards the English title, 22 points ahead of the field.
Tonight they will lose their world crown, four days after delivering their English one, on a plate, to Manchester City.
Roy Keane was clearly playing to the gallery when he called them “bad champions” who lacked the required mental steel.
When Jurgen Klopp’s men drew at Manchester City in November, Keane spoke about loving their “mind-set, body language and desire”, totally contradicting his latest sour headline grab.
But that’s par for the course for someone who approaches football analysis like a disgruntled circus clown swinging a sledgehammer.
However, he was right to point out that, “If you’re a huge club, you have to deal with setbacks”.
Three months ago today Joe Gomez’s knee buckled underneath him while training with England, meaning, following Virgil van Dijk’s injury weeks earlier, their firstchoice central defence was out for the season.
Even worse, having failed to replace Dejan Lovren in the summer, Joel Matip, who had been plagued with injuries since joining the club, was the only fit senior central defender.
That’s when champions who harbour serious ambitions about retaining their title pull out all of the stops to have another top-class defender on the training ground by the first week of January.
Telling the manager to plug the gaping hole for six months with raw kids and his two best midfield players, who are needed further up the pitch, was not the leadership you would expect at a club that sees itself as one of the biggest in the world.
The fact they tried to partly rectify that error on the last day of the transfer window, by bargain basement hunting, added insult to an injury crisis.
It was an admission that they got it wrong but weren’t prepared to fully put it right.
In terms of defending their title,
Roy Keane was clearly playing to the gallery when he tore into Liverpool, having praised their ‘mind-set, body language and desire’ as recently as November
it was too little, too late. Fenway Sports Group have been decent owners.
They hired Klopp, broke world records for Van Dijk and Alisson, rebuilt the stadium and training ground and brought the English title back to Anfield.
And fate does seem to be against them this season.
Covid came at a bad time for a club without limitless funds, Liverpool probably miss a packed home ground more than most because Klopp reforged the psychological bond between fans and players, and there was bound to be a natural fall-off following two intense seasons when they finished with 97 and 99 points.
Especially when an already formidable Manchester City strengthened by spending £126million on Ruben Dias, Nathan Ake and Ferran Torres.
But to limp out of the title race so early and so submissively when they had a chance to find a solution to rebalancing the squad by New Year’s Day shows a negligence and lack of ambition that is worrying.
Even more so if rumours are true that Klopp is beginning to see it that way. If Liverpool are to be more than two-season wonders the owners have to think like a big club in the modern era and heavily invest again in the squad.
It certainly needs it. Seven of the starters on Sunday who saw Alisson throw away a big game watched Loris Karius do the same in the 2018 Champions League final. The spending gap between FSG and their rivals these past five transfer windows is stark.
This summer needs to see that gap close.
Peripheral players need to be moved on and fresh quality and legs brought in. It’s in FSG’S interest to do so.
Because right now it looks like the owners of the champions, not the players, are the ones performing badly at their job.
THERE is a sense of history repeating itself for Pep Guardiola’s record breaking side.
Manchester City made it 15 wins in a row in all competitions which broke the record they shared with Preston (1891-92) and Arsenal (1987) for consecutive victories by a topflight side.
Incredibly, it was also Guardiola’s 200th win as City boss and, when you consider he only took over in 2016, that is a remarkable achievement and he is already on his way to being one of English football’s all time greats.
It was also familiar territory for City who beat Swansea on the way to winning the FA Cup and the domestic Treble as they swept all before them in 2019.
Football often follows a familiar path to success but it is not just fate which suggests they could be on course for another clean sweep.
It is hard to see anyone stopping them doing it again because they are now in tonight’s FA Cup quarter final draw, already in the Carabao Cup final and are top of the
Premier League. It certainly was not going to be Swansea who put up a brave fight but City’s squad is so strong they were able to make seven changes and still look a class apart at the Liberty Stadium.
This time it was Kyle Walker, Raheem Sterling and Gabriel Jesus on target but Guardiola is able to chop and change, rotate his internationals and still produce a scintillating exhibition of football.
Swansea were by no means supposed to be a pushover as Steve Cooper’s side are going great guns in the Championship but they just could not live with