Michael Cox

How Arsenal unlocked Tottenham: Merino as a false nine left Spurs defence with no one to mark Arsenal didn’t have a permanent penalty-box threat, but this helped them put constant pressure on Spurs, who barely got out of their half

Arsenal played yesterday very well before even before Eze took charge. Merino deep - rather than as a fixed No 9 - left Spurs three centre-backs redundant. The runs came from everywhere else. A good gameplan.
www.nytimes.com/athletic/683...

Celebrating the chaotic variety of Premier League club commentary: ‘Have some of that!’ There is no standard way for football clubs to narrate highlights of their games – and that's a very good thing indeed

I have long been fascinated by the sheer variety in commentators on Premier League clubs' YouTube highlights. You might get Martin Tyler. You might get the local BBC Radio feed. And you might get Gentleman Jim, always just about stopping himself from swearing.
www.nytimes.com/athletic/680...

seems a bit far-fetched

Well the point is that the men’s CL is at least on a channel I need to subscribe for to watch the PL. the women’s CL is on an additional subscription channel

not sure that’s the point

Yeah honestly them being completely unfamiliar platforms really rattles me

Yeah I watched the Man Utd game on BBC, but fancied the Arsenal one really which was Disney

FFS, I have that, I thought it was on Amazon PPV as well...

funny week of football television viewing. I have the usual tv subscriptions. Quite fancied some women's CL but not enough to subscribe to Disney+, sorry. Quite fancied some men's WC qualifiers but not enough to *pay-per-view* on Amazon Prime, sorry. How many different things should we need?!

Billionaire buys football club and puts his daughter in charge? That glass ceiling has been well and truly smashed!

Fulham’s top scorer is… own goals. They are in trouble The Premier League has gone all 1990s — an era where Fulham weren’t in it — and they are struggling to compete

Liverpool: Fulham were really drab at Everton. I thought they'd go well this season. But 11 games in they haven't really played well once, and their top scorer is own goals. They're clearly not terrible and shouldn't get sucked in, but this isn't the season to be bad.
www.nytimes.com/athletic/679...

Pep Guardiola has solved another tactical challenge – and Jeremy Doku is the answer Why Manchester City's Belgian winger symbolises a potentially significant tactical shift from the most revered manager of the modern era

Manchester: really seems like Guardiola has reinvented himself, potentially in the most dramatic way left. Doku the big beneficiary. Article only makes sense if you're into Sudoku.
www.nytimes.com/athletic/679...

a great pleasure to do a Liverpool-Manchester double this weekend, for the first time since September 2015 (seeing England defeating Australia by 93 runs in a one-day international and Tame Impala playing at the Liverpool Olympia)

😂

Look sometimes the “word” just doesn’t work very well, and people should accept that.

Long throws and direct attacks are trending up. But what three things are down? The shift toward old-school football is not necessarily a problem in itself, but does it come at the expense of something important?

Touches in the box = down. Dribbling = down. Good passing moves = down. A look at the things that aren't happening now the Premier League is mostly long throws.
www.nytimes.com/athletic/678...

just had to type out a mention of (Fulham’s) Kevin for the first time and it just reads weirdly. Can we not call him Kevin Santos?

😂😂

hahaha wow!

stunned to learn that Ashley Barnes has played in the Premier League for Burnley this season, it really is an old-school campaign

🔺 The positivity being stoked at Sunderland
🔺 The afternoon he was booed from the field at the Emirates
🔺 The chaos Mikel Arteta confronted at Arsenal

Ahead of the visit of his former club Arsenal, Granit Xhaka talks exclusively to @mwalkerfoot.bsky.social.

🔗 www.nytimes.com/athletic/677...

No

The audit: Brentford | The Observer As part of our occasional series, we examine a Premier League club in detail

I have really given the new version of The Observer a good go but I just don't know what they're trying to do. For example: what is this article? What's it trying to be? Who's it for?
observer.co.uk/news/sport/a...

If it took 96 games to get to the round of 16 before, and now it’s 160, then by very definition the individual games matter less.

This confused me too. I assumed that was the case until the draw for the round of 16

yeah agreed that was great. Obviously England the main story (from my perspective at least) but the Scotland/France/Italy group was mad too

I disagree. You knew what was happening in each group. That involved some of them being foregone conclusions, granted. But following eight groups of four, two through from each, was fine. One league of 36, when the key question is who comes 24th instead of 25th...a struggle.

fair enough!

Yeah I didn't mind that feature either although seemed to be the only one (aside from you!)

Well yes but (a) the league season hasn't suddenly replaced a much quicker/shorter format, (b) no league has 36 sides, which is just far too many to keep on top of