Welcome to The Briefing, where every Monday this season The Athletic will discuss three of the biggest questions to arise from the weekend’s football.
This was the weekend when Sheffield United’s relegation was confirmed in suitably meek fashion, Manchester City continued their relentless chase of Arsenal at the top of the Premier League, Chelsea felt aggrieved by VAR and Everton secured their survival.
Here, we will ask if Jurgen Klopp’s tenure is coming to a slightly undignified end, whether Erik ten Hag’s optimistic view of things will prove counter-productive and whether Bukayo Saka is back… if he ever went away…
Is this a sad, messy end to Jurgen Klopp’s time at Liverpool?
Watching the celebrations after Liverpool won the Carabao Cup in February, it was impossible not to get a bit caught up in the emotions of it all — not just the emotions of the day, but the emotions of what the last days of the Jurgen Klopp era could hold.
They were still on for a possible quadruple: still in the FA Cup and the Europa League, and top of the Premier League. All four trophies were always unlikely, but it did look like Klopp would be going out with some glory.
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All of that has collapsed in the last few weeks, and it would now take a miracle for them to end with anything more than that Carabao Cup. Merely winning one trophy in his final season is not a disaster and will not make anyone think less of Klopp in years to come. He will still be the man who brought their first league title in 30 years, still be the man who won their sixth Champions League and still be the man who made their fans feel things they had forgotten.
But it’s all ending in a bit of a mess, further shown by the argument between Klopp and Mohamed Salah during the 2-2 draw with West Ham at the weekend.
Salah is the defining signing of Klopp’s time, the scorer of 210 goals and a man who will rank alongside Kenny Dalglish, Ian Rush, Steven Gerrard and Roger Hunt as the greatest in Liverpool’s history. Without him, Klopp’s reign might have looked pretty different.
Even with all that in mind, Salah deserves to be on the bench at the moment. He’s not the only Liverpool player in bad form, but equally, his previous brilliance shouldn’t guarantee him a place in every game. If the argument between the player and manager was because of that, his frustration was understandable from an emotional standpoint, but it still looked like petulance, and perhaps like a man looking forward to a fresh start with a new manager.
Ultimately though, it all just feels quite sad. Klopp’s time is not just ending without the glory that looked possible only a few weeks ago, but also amid bickering and unpleasantness. Their near rivals would disagree, but the combination of Klopp and Salah over the last seven years has given even neutrals much excitement and enjoyment, if only because for much of that time Liverpool have been Manchester City’s only realistic challengers. We’ll miss them both when they’re gone.
The Premier League run-in
Is Erik ten Hag talking himself out of a job?
In some ways, you can’t blame him. When asked about Manchester United’s form, prospects and style of play, Erik ten Hag is hardly going to say, “Yes, we’re terrible and, actually, I don’t want to keep my job.”
But there’s a middle ground between that defeatism and the sort of comments, detached from the reality that the rest of us are experiencing, that Ten Hag has offered after some United games recently.
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Take his, erm, take on United following their 1-1 draw with Burnley at the weekend.
“We are one of the most dynamic and entertaining teams in the league at this moment,” he told the BBC. “We are creating loads of chances by playing good football. It was unnecessary to lose control. We repaired this at half-time and the second half was much better.”
He’s right in one sense: United are one of the most entertaining teams in the league, but not really for the reasons he might think. They’re entertaining because they’re so chaotic that anything could happen. They’re entertaining because they can take a lead against the second-bottom team in the table into the last 10 minutes and not feel remotely secure. They’re entertaining because their goalkeeper could, at any second, punch an opponent in the head and give away a penalty.
He continued: “The great Manchester United team, we forget they were also built. I have seen I think in 2004-05 they also didn’t play that great football. They were building, and it takes time.”
Leaving aside that in those quotes he effectively admitted his version of United are bad, trying to compare his team to one of Sir Alex Ferguson’s does feel like quite a bold move. United were indeed afforded patience in 2004, but that is broadly because they had won the Premier League the year before, and were managed by a man who, even if he had left then without achieving anything else, would still have been the club’s greatest.
Furthermore, teams and managers are afforded patience if there is evidence of progress. United are probably going to finish a minimum of three places lower and nine points worse than last season, and the football is frequently unwatchable and disjointed.
Ten Hag has to deal with new employers who are presumably assessing whether to keep him for a third season. From that perspective, you can see why he’s trying to talk himself up. The problem is that with a viewpoint that not many others would share, it’s possible he’s actually talking himself out of a job rather than into one.
Is Saka returning to form at the perfect time?
The good thing about Arsenal is that they are not reliant on one player. Take out Martin Odegaard, Declan Rice or William Saliba and they would look very different, but the beauty of them this season is that so many players have stepped up.
It’s why the debate earlier in the season about their lack of a top-class, traditional No 9 was misguided. They didn’t need one main goalscorer, they just needed their other goalscorers to start, well, goalscoring again.
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And they have done exactly that. Kai Havertz has 12 league goals, Leandro Trossard has 10, Odegaard is on eight, and Ben White and Gabriel have eight between them from defence. In total, 15 players have scored a league goal this season. It’s how they’re top scorers in the league and effectively have an extra point on Manchester City, because their goal difference is seven better.
All of that said, Arsenal are a point clear of City, who have a game in hand. Arsenal will need to win their three remaining fixtures and hope City slip at some point. To do that, they will need their best attackers to be on top form at least, and ideally even better than that.
Bukayo Saka’s goal and performance in the 3-2 win over Tottenham was welcome. A few weeks ago, he looked cooked, the cumulative effect of all those games and all those kicks to the shins taking their toll. It made you wonder if Mikel Arteta should have managed his playing time more carefully.
Maybe he should have, but that feels slightly irrelevant now, because Saka looks very firmly back in business. Admittedly he was helped for his goal (his 15th of the season) by Ben Davies adopting the eccentric approach of actively showing Saka onto his left foot, allowing him to breezily stroke the ball home. But he also sent in the corner from which Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg scored an own-goal, and in the second half his general approach play was superb.
He looks like he’s back. Did he ever really go away? Maybe not, but at a time of a title race where perfection is a minimum requirement, Arsenal will be delighted to see their top scorer excel.
Coming up
- It’s a big week at the top of the Championship. Having secured promotion, Leicester can win the title if they beat Preston North End on Monday night. On Tuesday, Ipswich Town can take a great big step towards joining them should they get the better of Coventry City. Then, it’s all down to the final day, with the games kicking off at 12.30pm next Saturday.
- Then we have a couple of big daddy games in the Champions League: the semi-finals, in fact, with Bayern Munich and Real Madrid facing each other for the first time since their semi in 2018.
- And on Wednesday, the ‘exchanging rueful glances about Thomas Tuchel’ derby, as Borussia Dortmund host Paris Saint-Germain in the first leg of their semi-final.
- Thursday sees another set of semi-finals: in the Europa League, it’s Marseille vs Atalanta and Roma against the implausibly still undefeated Bayer Leverkusen. Then the Europa Conference League has Aston Villa playing Olympiacos, and Fiorentina against Club Bruges.
- There’s also a nice fat slice of bonus Premier League: on Thursday it’s Chelsea vs Tottenham, a repeat of that madcap game from November, the good news being that both teams are still pretty chaotic so who knows what will happen. And on Friday, Luton host Everton, which a couple of weeks ago looked like a humdinger, but now only has real meaning for the home side.
- Finally, briefly skipping back to Wednesday, because there’s a pretty hefty game in the WSL — one of Chelsea’s games in hand, in fact, as they travel to Liverpool.
(Top photos: Getty Images)
