Football: why Man City won’t win the league
Unpredictable football teams do not win “the really big prizes”, said Ian Ladyman in the Daily Mail. Sustaining a title challenge requires consistency, the ability to “bulldoze” opponents week after week. And on Sunday, in their 1-1 draw with Liverpool, Manchester City demonstrated just why they have failed to truly compete with Chelsea this season: it was a “terrific”, chaotic match, made all the more compelling by both sides’ flaws. Third in the table, 12 points off the top, this City team is not built to win the Premier League – “not yet, anyway”.
They’re not built to win the Champions League either, said Paul Wilson in The Observer. Last Wednesday, they were knocked out in the last 16 by Monaco, who beat them 3-1 (drawing 6-6 on aggregate) and went through on away goals. Few clubs take the competition as seriously as City – that, ultimately, is why they hired Pep Guardiola, a manager who won the Champions League twice at Barcelona. Yet in his first season in Manchester, he has fallen short. It’s not as if he was up against one of Europe’s giants, said Martin Samuel in the Daily Mail. Yes, Monaco lead the French league – but when did that country “last produce the European champions”? The solution is “very simple”: Guardiola must address the issues with his defence, who let in six goals over the two legs of the tie. But the manager has little interest in defending, said Jamie Jackson in The Guardian; he’s a specialist in attacking. After the Monaco match, he pointed the finger at his forwards – even though they scored six goals – rather than the defenders. Recruiting better players this summer won’t be enough: Guardiola must also be willing to draw up a “more defensive blueprint”, even if it means abandoning his high-minded ideals. That way, he might not “fail quite so badly a second time”.
To The Guardian
Irrespective of what many Leftists think of Tom Watson (not a lot), how can they believe the delusional cant spouted by Momentum’s Christine Shawcroft on the Today programme? Her insistence that mass membership – 550,000 out of a UK population of 65 million – should dictate the party’s direction of travel, no matter what, is Labour’s “will of the people” moment; an arrogant assertion that traduces the greater democratic good outside their political echo chamber.
To then imply that the failure of their leader to reach out beyond the echo chamber and capitalise on the vulnerability of one of the most chaotic governments in recent memory is the fault of the media, rather than his own shortcomings, is risible. We’re not all thickos who can’t see beyond the naked agenda of right-wing newspapers; the empirical evidence is there for all to see. Corbyn had his chance and he blew it. He’s incompetent, aloof and vain, and not fit to be a leader of anything other than a protest group. Colin Montgomery, Edinburgh