Welcome to The Briefing, every Monday this season. athletic We’ll discuss the three biggest questions that can arise from a football weekend.
It was an FA Cup weekend where Plymouth Argyle celebrated the dismissal of Wayne Rooney by beating Brentford, while Manchester City had a short-lived game against Salford City. Newcastle United were given a scare by Bromley and Tottenham Hotspur needed extra time to beat National League side Tamworth.
Here we’ll ask whether defeat to Manchester United is really the start of bad things for Arsenal, whether there is a better way to reward the giant killers financially and where Kyle Walker ranks in the list of Premier League right-backs.
How bad will this be for Arsenal?
Things won’t really go as planned for Arsenal in 2025.
Sure, they started very well with a 3-1 win at Brentford, but since then they have been meek in a draw with Brighton & Hove Albion and an embarrassing 2-0 loss to Newcastle in the first leg of the Carabao Cup semi-final. I felt so helpless. And then there was the penalty shoot-out loss to Manchester United in the FA Cup third round on Sunday.
You can’t even blame the referee for this one, as they were on the good side in most of the controversial decisions. Perhaps we should praise Manchester United for a strong performance in holding on for an hour with 10 men after Diogo Dalot’s red card, but it is difficult to ignore the fact that Arsenal are in quite an awkward position at the moment.
Bukayo Saka was sidelined for some time, along with substitute Ethan Waneri, Ben White also suffered an injury and Gabriel Jesus was stretchered off injured shortly after appearing to score a goal. knee.
Perhaps even more worrying is that few healthy players are in good shape. Martin Odegaard was terrible and so was Gabriel Martinelli. Mikel Merino is yet to start and we won’t say too much about Kai Havertz’s afternoon performance against United.
The positive thing is that they have created a lot of chances in the last few games: 49 shots in 210 minutes for an xG of around 6.44. The negative side is that it’s not a good idea to take chances if you can’t take any.
After the game, manager Mikel Arteta admitted that while his side had control of the ball and created plenty of chances, “there is an element of putting the ball in the back of the net”. That’s right.
Maybe the depression is too much. They haven’t lost in the league since early November. A win over Tottenham on Wednesday could see leaders Liverpool fall three points behind should they lose to Nottingham Forest the night before. They are in good shape for automatic qualification for the Champions League. Considering the match problems it can cause, it may be better not to participate in the FA Cup.
But now the signs are not good. This probably happens even in the worst months. As the summer transfer window has been exposed for its inadequacies and failure to recruit the right goalscorers, there will be growing calls to fix this and spend money during this period. Or maybe it’s the best month because you can actually buy someone to fix your problem. But don’t hold your breath.
For now, it’s been a relatively brief run of poor performance. There is a fear that it could turn into something much worse.
Should the FA Cup structure be changed?
After 90 minutes, Tamworth were viscerally delighted to have held Tottenham to a 0-0 draw. A stunning result that could now be rewarded with a lucrative replay in a Premier League stadium.
And in the FA Cup, no more replays are required and a Tamworth side featuring builders and clothes shop workers will have to play another 30 minutes against a team of elite professional athletes, dropping their chances of avoiding defeat to zero. It’s almost close to zero.
Tamworth had a chance to beat Tottenham with almost the last kick before the game went into extra-time. (Cameron Smith – Danehouse/Getty Images)
It’s worth pointing out that we shouldn’t cry too much about Tamworth, especially considering they benefited from this exact structure in the second round, beating Burton Albion after extra time and penalties. But this illustrates a broader point.
Go deeper
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Eliminating replays in the name of easing the workload when Spurs go on post-season and pre-season tours (to Australia, Japan and South Korea respectively) in the summer doesn’t feel ideal.
Football finance expert Kieran Maguire estimated that one replay could be worth £850,000 ($1 million) to Tamworth, a club that has only recently been able to employ a manager full-time. Money that could have been the lifeblood of grassroots teams has been sacrificed, leaving the wealthiest people with just a few more spoonfuls to top up their massive cash piles.
But it’s not that simple. First, since the decision has been made and is unlikely to change, condemnation of it amounts to ‘the old man shouting at the clouds’. Second, match congestion is a real problem and the expansion of European competitions has partly eliminated replays. You can’t really blame the Football Association for this. Thirdly, extra time and penalties are often fun, as Arsenal and Manchester United proved.
One way to solve the problem is to change the FA Cup prize money structure. Tamworth will receive £25,000 for a third-round loss, while their opponents will receive £115,000 for a win. That amount increases as the tournament progresses, so the team that wins the final in May will receive £2m.
Winners don’t need that much money. During the Premier League era, the FA Cup was won 28 out of 32 times by one of Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal, Chelsea or Liverpool. The last time a team from outside the top tier won the title was in 1980. The FA Cup prize money is loose change for clubs that earn more than £700m every year.
So why not distribute the prize money more evenly throughout the round? Even halving the amount for the winner would mean an extra £1 million for the minnows. Sure, it’s not £850,000, but it would be a more constructive use of the money.
Better yet, why not use some sort of inverse sliding scale based on the status of the team that won the game? For example, if you are a Premier League team and win a round you get £X, but if a Championship team wins the same game they get double £X. Will the National League team receive five times £X?
Sure, it’s not perfect and can make budgeting tricky, but it will ensure that the larger team gets what they want. Secondly, you avoid the indignity of having to play a much inferior team that can’t win, and your money is better spent on football.
Modern football is the capitalist nightmare it is, so this will not happen. But it would be better for the game if they did.
Is Walker the best right-back in the Premier League?
If Kyle Walker has played his final game for Manchester City, it will mark a slightly strange exit for one of the key players in one of the most dominant teams in Premier League history.
This is not the start of the dissolution of the team that has won six of the last seven Premier League titles. Riyad Mahrez and Ilkay Gundogan left in 2023 (although the latter version has since returned), but Walker has not since Pep Guardiola’s second season.
Go deeper
Kyle Walker asks to leave Manchester City and what it means for player and club
His decline has been evident for some time and has been on display several times this season. Perhaps it was too much of an overhaul to have Mahrez and Gundogan go together that summer, but in retrospect it probably would have been better for all involved if Walker’s move to Bayern Munich had happened 18 months earlier.
But that should not obscure what an incredible player he has been for City and England over the past eight years. He has undoubtedly been one of the best right-backs in the Premier League, and one could even argue that he is the best.
None of the other candidates – Gary Neville, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Paulo Pereira, Cesar Azpilicueta and Pablo Zabaleta – possessed the same all-round skills to defend as effectively as attack.
He never had the tactical acumen or skills to be an inverted full-back moving into midfield, but his pace and defensive ability meant he could cover for John Stones or whoever Guardiola chose to play in that role. . He was able to cover so much ground that for most of the game City could take on a three-man defense without losing a huge amount of defence. N’Golo Kante has often been mentioned as a de facto double in the midfield for Leicester City and Chelsea, but Walker has done a similar job in defence.
Later, uncertainty about his future made him look dazed when crossing, and losing a yard or two of speed meant he got burned more embarrassingly than comfortably. I’m reminded of Timo Werner completely washing his face when City lost 4-0 to Tottenham earlier in the season. But there are many other examples of how his tactical brain did not adapt to his physical limitations.
Fulham’s Adama Traore runs past Walker earlier this season (Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images)
Sometimes it feels like the British people aren’t very kind to him. Perhaps that’s the result of playing for a team that isn’t widely popular. Perhaps it has something to do with his public and private life. Maybe people don’t really appreciate him. But we should not underestimate what a great man he was.
It will be interesting to see how City adapt if Walker leaves. Because AC Milan is a likely destination. Expected new signing Abdukodir Khusanov has played as a centre-back up to this point, but so has Josko Gvardiol. Does this mean Rico Lewis will be a certain starter? Maybe the Stones will be asked to fill that part. Perhaps Guardiola has other tactical innovations up his sleeve.
But City will be saying goodbye to one of the iconic players of this era. He will be missed.
soon
- The long FA Cup third round weekend continues in Bermondsey, south London, on Monday, with expected chaos expected. Millwall, who won the Championship, host National League winners Dagenham and Redbridge. It’s a sort of London derby. Unless you’re a London purist and think Dagenham is important.
- Then there’s the bonus round of Premier League action, the highlight of which is Tuesday’s top-of-the-table clash between Nottingham Forest and Liverpool. Brentford hosts Manchester City, Chelsea v Bournemouth and West Ham United v Fulham.
- There’s another lively match on Wednesday: the north London derby between Arsenal and Tottenham. Elsewhere, David Moyes takes on his second first match as Everton manager, as they face Aston Villa, Leicester play Crystal Palace and Newcastle play Wolves.
- And finally, on Thursday, Ipswich v Brighton and Manchester United v Southampton complete the midweek fixtures.
- And the transfer window continues all week. Will Manchester City sign Omar Marmoush and Khusanov? Can Manchester United find someone to take Marcus Rashford? Will the walker move? Will Arsenal sign the forward? athletic‘s transfer live blog will be running all week with news and information from all our club writers and of course David Ornstein.
(Top photo: Getty Images)
