Jonathan Wilson's Blog

Winning the Premier League means the Dutchman can ride out the setbacks after making radical changes to his gameplan

Replacing a legend is difficult. Even if that legend has lingered too long, even if he has stayed beyond the scope of his powers, coming next is an almost impossible job. David Moyes could not follow Sir Alex Ferguson. Unai Emery could not follow Arsène Wenger. Brian Clough could not follow Don Revie.

When there has been a successful transition it has tended to come from within. George Allison continued Herbert Chapman’s work at Arsenal. Dave Mackay took the Derby Clough had built to another league title.

In this mailbag edition of his newsletter, Jonathan answers questions about the evolution of tactics, heat and World Cup outsiders

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Do you believe playing styles are developing incrementally or cyclically? Will things naturally come back around, or is it more a matter of rock, paper, scissors where one style counters another for a short while, as the current style gets broadly adopted? – Paul

I dislike the term “cyclical” for tactics because it implies inevitability. Winter, spring, summer, autumn is a cycle; what happens in football tactics is not. When older ideas are repurposed for the modern age, they come with knowledge of what went before. So, to take an extreme example, when Pep Guardiola started fielding teams in a sort of 3-2-2-3 shape, it wasn’t the W-M used by Herbert Chapman in the late 1920s, because in the 100 years since, football has changed enormously: players are fitter, pitches are better, kit is better, we understand pressing, we have data and sophisticated analytical modelling.

This is an extract from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, a weekly look from the Guardian US at the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here. Have a question for Jonathan? Email soccerwithjw@theguardian.com, and he’ll answer the best in a future edition.

There is no grand PSR conspiracy against Unai Emery’s side. They should be challenging Newcastle or Tottenham for fifth

Four wins in a row, seven games unbeaten and suddenly life does not seem so bad for Aston Villa. They are up into mid-table and if a 2-0 victory over Feyenoord in the Europa League will not quite live in the memory in the way last season’s games against Bayern Munich, Juventus and Paris Saint-Germain do, a return to Rotterdam at least evoked the glory days of 1982.

It will be a while yet before the frustration at missing out on the Champions League fades, but there does now seem to be a gathering recognition that Villa have a decent chance of winning the Europa League, potentially adding Istanbul’s Besiktas Park to De Kuip as a venue where they have won a European trophy.

Three straight defeats laid bare the issues with Arne Slot’s offseason makeover, with one departure looming particularly large

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It’s not a crisis, not yet, but Liverpool’s run of three defeats in a row is reason to take stock. It’s true that the two league games in that run were both lost via last-minute winners, and that in isolation these three games could be explained away relatively easily. But context matters, and the truth is that while Liverpool won their first five league games of the season, they did not play well in them.

New players are struggling to settle and Arne Slot’s rejig of the formation has not really worked, while a number of regulars look out of sorts. Last season Liverpool won the league playing extremely controlled soccer, making 2-0 almost a trademark scoreline, establishing their lead and then running the clock down. This season there has been none of that, no sense of playing within themselves. They’ve been extremely open through midfield and most of their wins have come through late goals. There’s been an unexpected wildness to them, almost as though Slot is going through his transition a season late.

This is an extract from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, a weekly look from the Guardian US at the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here. Have a question for Jonathan? Email soccerwithjw@theguardian.com, and he’ll answer the best in a future edition.

London City Lionesses snatched a late winner against Liverpool, while in the Championship, Ipswich beat Norwich for the first time in 16 years

There were some pretty unhappy scenes in the EFL yesterday, namely at Hillsborough where play was stopped for five minutes due to the latest fan protest against Sheffield Wednesday owner Dejphon Chansiri. It was a miserable afternoon for Owls fans as their side was shellacked 5-0 by visitors Coventry. Steve Bruce also had a bad day. Blackpool’s poor start to the season continued with a 2-0 home defeat against AFC Wimbledon and afterwards Bruce was dismissed from his position at Bloomfield Road. Blackpool fans, who do you want to see come in? Still plenty of time to turn the season around. Wednesday fans, I’m sorry, you have my deepest sympathies.

On the subject of doing the opposite, how are Ipswich fans feeling about today? Will the Old Farm hoodoo finally be broken? Get in touch via the link above or below the line the comment section.

⚽ Latest news from the WSL and the East Anglia derby
⚽ Jonathan Wilson on Palace’s flight | And email us here

There were some pretty unhappy scenes in the EFL yesterday, namely at Hillsborough where play was stopped for five minutes due to the latest fan protest against Sheffield Wednesday owner Dejphon Chansiri. It was a miserable afternoon for Owls fans as their side was shellacked 5-0 by visitors Coventry. Steve Bruce also had a bad day. Blackpool’s poor start to the season continued with a 2-0 home defeat against AFC Wimbledon and afterwards Bruce was dismissed from his position at Bloomfield Road. Blackpool fans, who do you want to see come in? Still plenty of time to turn the season around. Wednesday fans, I’m sorry, you have my deepest sympathies.

On the subject of doing the opposite, how are Ipswich fans feeling about today? Will the Old Farm hoodoo finally be broken? Get in touch via the link above or below the line the comment section.

Why does a system that has drawn so much scepticism at Manchester United work so well at Crystal Palace?

Some fixtures just don’t sound right. Maybe it’s just about conceivable that, had things gone slightly differently in the 70s, Malcolm Allison or Terry Venables could have been leading their side behind the Iron Curtain for a crack at Valeriy Lobanovskyi’s cybernauts, but Dynamo Kyiv against Crystal Palace is still a clash that provokes a double-take. It feels like a category error: how can those two clubs possibly be in the same competition?

But this is the modern world. Ukraine is battling invasion, its teams diminished. The Premier League is extremely rich. And Crystal Palace are managed by one of the rising talents of the European game. They didn’t just play each other on Thursday, but Palace won with a degree of comfort. It was their third straight win, their 19th consecutive game without defeat.

Creative flatness threatens to stymie start to season

Van de Ven: ‘He can create a lot of special things’

Micky van de Ven believes Xavi Simons could be the solution to the creative flatness threatening to undermine Tottenham’s start to the season. With Dejan Kulusevski and James Maddison sustaining long-term injuries and Dominic Solanke undergoing a procedure on his troublesome ankle, Tottenham have started to look a little predictable in forward areas and form has stuttered over the past month.

Thomas Frank acknowledged before Tuesday’s 2-2 Champions League draw with the Norwegian champions Bodø/Glimt that the almost complete change to the front four – with Son Heung-min also departed – has created issues. Simons arrived from RB Leipzig just before the end of the transfer window for more than £50m. He is still adapting, but he set up a goal against West Ham and played a key role coming off the bench in Spurs’ late comeback in Norway.

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Nicky Bandini and Jonathan Wilson as Liverpool lose back to back games, Spurs are lucky to win a point in Norway and Chelsea welcome back José Mourinho to Stamford Bridge

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On the podcast today; another defeat for Liverpool. They were poor defensively and uncharacteristically loose on the ball, is it just a case of new players still settling in? It is certainly too early to panic.

These are strange times for Tottenham. Historically they have often been a side whose performances did not match their results, but tradition has it they would be pretty and ineffective. Under Thomas Frank they have become the opposite.

Midway through the second half Spurs were 2-0 down and apparently on their way to a convincing defeat. They rode their luck as Andreas Helmersen hit the bar with an effort that would have made it 3-1, but they had the character to battle back and secure a 2-2 draw.