“Arne Slot has been sacked as Liverpool head coach. The decision has been taken by owner Fenway Sports Group after Liverpool finished fifth in the Premier League with just 60 points, their lowest total for a decade. Andoni Iraola is now considered the clear favourite for the role, having finished his final season at Bournemouth with a club-first qualification to the Europa League. …”
NYT/ATH (Video)
Liverpool v Crystal Palace – Anfield, Liverpool, Britain – April 25, 2026
“The Premier League is all over for another season. The title, European places and relegation spots have been decided. Managers have come and gone, expensive signings have shone and disappointed, and now it’s on to transfers and the World Cup. But first… The Athletic’s Premier League season grades. How did your club perform? Is their grading harsh or fair? Let us know in the comments below. …”
NYT/ATH
“The 2025-26 Premier League season is done and dusted — so what better time than right now to predict who will win it next time? Arsenal were crowned champions, overcoming Manchester City and improving on three consecutive seasons finishing as runners-up, and Mikel Arteta’s team look like they’ll enter 2026-27 with momentum and stability in their favour. City are coming to terms with the new era following the departure of the iconic Pep Guardiola, and they hope to replace him with Enzo Maresca, while Manchester United will continue under the stewardship of Michael Carrick, who succeeded Ruben Amorim at Old Trafford and oversaw their turnaround in the second half of the season. …”
NYT/ATH (Video)
“If last season was a euphoric high for Liverpool, this one has been a crushing low. Few could have predicted the 2024-25 Premier League champions title defence being so limp. Head coach Arne Slot has achieved the bare minimum objective of qualifying for the Champions League but it comes with relief rather than belief and there is huge uncertainty around him and his underperforming squad heading into the summer. Liverpool actually won their first seven games of the season in all competitions but things quickly went downhill and everybody is ready to forget a horrible campaign. Should we make this the last time we speak about it? …”
NYT/ATH
Crystal Palace: love a long throw
“The silverware is being dished out, with Arsenal lifting the Premier League trophy for the first time in 22 years after pipping Manchester City to the title in the penultimate gameweek of the season. It is the first time that Pep Guardiola has gone two consecutive seasons without a league championship in a senior managerial career that began in 2008. Individually, Brentford’s Igor Thiago pushed Erling Haaland of City all the way, but the Norway international regained the Golden Boot award in 2025-26 as the Premier League’s top goalscorer with 27 goals — clinching the honour for the third time in his four years in England. …”
NYT/ATH
“Andy Mitten recently re-completed ‘the 92’ — that is seeing a game at all the current football grounds in England’s top four tiers. Before the final weekend of the season, Andy, who has visited more than 600 stadiums at all levels, tells us his best and worst aspects of each of the Premier League venues. Andy, if you didn’t know, is a Manchester United supporter. … Liverpool – Anfield Like: The way Liverpool have redeveloped and expanded Anfield, bit by bit, pushing the capacity from 44,000 to 61,000. It was needed. Liverpool stalled in the 1990s as their main rivals United aggressively expanded Old Trafford, but they’ve made a smart job of it since with four distinct stands, it doesn’t look like any other stadium. The atmosphere before a big game and You’ll Never Walk Alone impresses, though it always sounds better — to me — with a ‘MANCHESTER!’ retort. Also, the Hillsborough memorial gets the space it deserves, the gates (and gable end murals on nearby housing) for former heroes, the proximity to Stanley Park. Dislike: A new Anfield Road stand means the worst view in football from the last two rows of the away end has gone. It’s much more spacious on the away concourse beneath the stand too, so I’m left not liking the lack of public transport options and that’s about it. Oh, and the fact that Liverpool play in such an impressive home. …”
NYT/ATH
“Mohamed Salah’s extraordinary Liverpool career is drawing to an end. Since arriving at the club in the summer of 2017, the Egyptian has amassed 257 goals in 441 games — a record only bettered by two players in the club’s history. His time at Liverpool has not been without controversy — as events in the last week have underlined — but his legend is secure. His legacy, however, spreads far beyond Merseyside. This week, The Athletic is publishing a special three-part series examining Salah’s time at Anfield, including his playing legacy and his wider impact as a social and cultural icon. Today, we examine how his move from Roma transformed football’s transfer market, proving what could be done with data and why the smartest signings are not always the most obvious. …”
NYT/ATH
“This was supposed to be a week of celebration for Mohamed Salah and Liverpool. The announcement in March that this would be the Egyptian’s final season on Merseyside teed up this Sunday’s game against Brentford at Anfield to be a golden goodbye to one of the club’s — and the Premier League’s — greatest ever players. Instead, another public outburst from Salah last weekend — this time, the most thinly veiled of attacks on Slot’s style of play — has created an awkward question for the head coach and club executives: how do they handle the forward’s farewell now? …”
NYT/ATH
“The decline has been stark. Liverpool are 25 points adrift of the 84 they accumulated when winning the Premier League title last season. Their current tally of 60 league goals scored is 28 fewer than in 2024-25, and works out at 1.67 per game, the club’s lowest rate since 2015-16 (1.66). At the other end, Arne Slot’s fourth-placed side have already conceded 48 times — seven more than last season. If they ship three goals over their remaining two matches, it will become Liverpool’s worst defensive return in a 38-game Premier League season. This was always likely to be a difficult campaign following the death of Diogo Jota in July. Liverpool were the only club with grief counsellors at their training complex throughout pre-season, a backdrop that can’t be overlooked when assessing the past nine months. …”
NYT/ATH (Video)
“… After looking at big-chance creation and conversion last week, we will now, following events in east London last Sunday, dive into fouls won and conceded from corners. As usual, the article that follows is long but detailed, so please settle down and enjoy it all — or jump to a specific few clubs that you are interested in. Anyway, if you haven’t heard already: Premier League corners are broken. Inswingers, blocking the goalkeeper, wrestling in multiple parts of the box and several missed fouls seem to accompany most of them these days. The need for better legislation and stricter officiating to prevent moments that have become all too familiar is not lost on anyone. …”
NYT/ATH (Video)
“… This was the weekend when Arsenal took another big step towards the Premier League title, doing their neighbours Tottenham Hotspur a favour by pushing West Ham United closer to relegation, and growing frustration at Liverpool increased the pressure on their coach Arne Slot. We discuss the London Stadium VAR controversy, the huge repercussions for Arsenal in the race to be champions and West Ham in the battle against the drop, plus the reasons for a growing sense of dissatisfaction at Liverpool. …”
NYT/ATH (Video)
NYT/ATH: Liverpool and boos. Is one of Anfield’s great myths now being exposed?
“Welcome to the latest edition of The Alternative Premier League Table, where each week, The Athletic analyses the entire division through a specific lens. Matchday 35 saw teams across the Premier League score 23 of their 46 big chances. That 50 per cent conversion rate is the third best of the season after Matchday 5 (59 per cent) and 20 (55 per cent). Opta defines a big chance as ‘a situation where a player should reasonably be expected to score, usually a one-on-one scenario or a shot from close range with a clear path to goal and low-to-moderate pressure’. So, in this week’s table, we compare how teams fared when it comes to creating and converting big chances across the first 18 games to the last 17, roughly a first half versus second half of the season. …”
NYT/ATH
“Who remembers the holding midfielder? The no-nonsense anchorman who sat in front of the defence, protected that space, and contributed little in attack? The current trend in the Premier League is for players in that mould to push up, to press, to make runs into attack, and to provide goalscoring qualities too. The flip side, of course, is that the defence goes unprotected. And in Manchester United’s 3-2 win over Liverpool, the story of the game was all about both sides being exposed between the lines. …”
NY Times/The Athletic – Michael Cox
“A remarkable match at Old Trafford, and a precious win for Manchester United. This 3-2 triumph not only ensured United claimed a first league double over Liverpool for the first time since the 2015-16 season but sealed qualification for next season’s Champions League, after two campaigns away. First-half goals from Matheus Cunha and, more controversially, Benjamin Sesko put United in control against a depleted Liverpool side who looked timid and disjointed for long spells. …”
NY Times/The Athletic
YouTube: Manchester United v. Liverpool | PREMIER LEAGUE HIGHLIGHTS
“Manchester City are the only team to win the Premier League on goal difference, and this season they might need to repeat the trick. For those uninitiated in the competition’s most storied moment, Sergio Aguero’s last-minute goal for City in a 3-2 final-day victory at home against Queens Park Rangers in May 2012 meant they pipped Manchester United to the title by virtue of their superior goal difference, which was eight better than their crosstown rivals. The margins at the top could be even finer in the current campaign. …”
NY Times/The Athletic
“Across the sporting institutions with which he is most associated, there was a sense of John W. Henry being everywhere and nowhere last weekend. On Saturday afternoon at Anfield, before Liverpool’s victory over Crystal Palace, the stadium was decorated with yellow cards and an image of him sticking his fingers in his ears. It was a protest at a potential 13 per cent rise in ticket prices over the next three years, depending on inflation, but Henry was not on Merseyside to see it. At the same time that protest was taking place, around 3,000 miles away in Boston, Henry and his executives at the Red Sox, the other crown jewel in the Fenway Sports Group (FSG) sporting empire, were deciding to fire the team’s manager, Alex Cora, along with five coaches. Later that day, Henry, the franchise’s chief baseball officer, Craig Breslow, and CEO Sam Kennedy flew on Henry’s private plane to give Cora and his staff the bad news. But at a press conference the following morning, it was Breslow and Kennedy who confirmed the news to the media. According to The Athletic’s reporting, Henry was present when players were told, but said nothing. …”
NY Times/The Athletic (Video)
“Welcome to the latest edition of The Alternative Premier League Table, where each week, The Athletic analyses the entire division through a specific lens. The Premier League title race will likely see plenty more changes at the top before and potentially during the final matchday of the season on May 24. Arsenal are top — as they regularly have been since 2022-23 — but Manchester City hold a game in hand, with goal difference another factor. A couple of spots below them, Aston Villa are fifth, eight points ahead of sixth-placed Brighton & Hove Albion. It is unlikely another side will break into the top five with just four games left but multiple teams have jumped in and out of those Champions League spots since August. …”
NY Times/The Athletic (Video)
“It took them four attempts across three competitions, and there will be concern in the aftermath over a hamstring injury that forced Mohamed Salah off, but Liverpool can at least finally celebrate a win against Crystal Palace this season. After defeat on penalties in August’s Community Shield, then 2-1 and 3-0 losses in the Premier League and Carabao Cup in the autumn, Arne Slot’s team found life more to their liking in Saturday’s spring sunshine. A pair of first-half goals set them on their way and, despite the visitors halving the deficit in controversial fashion and a frantic finale, Florian Wirtz added a third in stoppage time to prompt relief. Now Slot and his staff must assess the niggle picked up by Salah, who made a point of waving to all sides of the ground as he departed just before the hour, to determine whether this was the Egyptian striker’s fond farewell in what he has already said will be his last Liverpool season. …”
NY Times/The Athletic (Video)
NY Times/The Athletic: Liverpool fans turn Anfield crowd yellow with protest against rising ticket prices
“As Giorgi Mamardashvili disappeared down the tunnel on a stretcher, Everton smelt blood. Liverpool’s narrow lead had been wiped out by Beto, who had clattered into the visitors’ stand-in goalkeeper when turning home Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall’s low cross. It was the kind of avoidable goal Arne Slot’s side have conceded far too often this season. As the third-choice goalkeeper Freddie Woodman, a free transfer from Championship club Preston North End last summer, was introduced off the bench for his Premier League debut shortly before the hour mark, the noise inside Hill Dickinson Stadium intensified. …”
NY Times/The Athletic
NY Times/The Athletic – Everton 1 Liverpool 2: Salah delivers, Isak’s nine touches, what does this mean for fifth place?
YouTube: Everton v. Liverpool | PREMIER LEAGUE HIGHLIGHTS | 4/19/2026
A poster targeting Trent Alexander-Arnold last season
“It is called Liverpool Football Club, but only a few people who represent it at the most significant levels are either from the city or live there. Owners Fenway Sports Group is American and its main leaders are based out of Boston and Los Angeles. In 2014, it expanded its business operation by opening a bureau in London to help grow what had started on Merseyside. Meanwhile, the organisation’s head of football, Michael Edwards, originally from Hampshire, lives just outside Manchester and runs an office in nearby Altrincham. Edwards appointed Liverpool’s sporting director, Richard Hughes, a Scot who usually travels north for a couple of working days a week from his home on the south coast of England. …”
NY Times/The Athletic
“Welcome to the latest edition of The Alternative Premier League Table, where each week, The Athletic analyses the entire division through a specific lens. After looking at errors leading to shots and goals last week, we dive into long- and short-passing sequences that result in goals. As usual, the article that follows is long but detailed, so please settle down and enjoy it all — or use the index at the bottom of the page to jump to a specific club. …”
NY Times/The Athletic (Video)
“You may have seen a Premier League stadium up close. You might have seen one on television. But seeing one from a satellite uncovers things that are not obvious from the ground or television cameras. The Athletic tasked its expert writers with analysing their club’s grounds from above to see what they could find out. From the roads, railways and supermarkets that could cause problems for redevelopment to the regeneration of areas, this is what they discovered. …”
NY Times/The Athletic
“Liverpool’s hopes of a famous Champions League comeback against Paris Saint-Germain came to nothing on Tuesday night, with the French champions winning 2-0 at a rain-soaked Anfield. Expectations that a typically feverish European atmosphere would unsettle the visitors early on were dashed when PSG looked dangerous from the off. The movement of their front three — Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, Ousmane Dembele and Desire Doue — caused as many problems for Virgil van Dijk and his defensive colleagues as they had in Paris last week. …”
NY Times/The Athletic
NY Times/The Athletic: How Paris Saint-Germain turned the long throw into a very different kind of attacking weapon (Video)
Guardian: Ruthless PSG prove that not even Anfield has an infinite capacity for miracles – Jonathan Wilson
YouTube: Liverpool vs PSG Highlights & Goals | UCL Quarter Final 2nd Leg
“Liverpool were outplayed and outclassed in the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final against Paris Saint-Germain. Even if they managed to escape Paris with the tie still alive, they have their work cut out to overturn the 2-0 deficit. Luis Enrique’s reigning European champions are unquestionably one of the best teams in the world — but PSG are not unbeatable. The Athletic explores how other teams have earned positive results against the Ligue 1 side, and how Liverpool can turn this quarter-final around. …”
NY Times/The Athletic
“There’s nothing like the wonder of a young player showing what he can do to lift the mood, and Rio Ngumoha did just that with a brilliant finish in Liverpool’s win over Fulham. It has been a tough time of late for Arne Slot and Liverpool, but the sight of the 17-year-old Ngumoha bending the ball in from just inside the area and then Mohamad Salah — who has had his own troubles recently — doubling the lead will have brought some much-needed positivity. …”
NY Times/The Athletic
YouTube: Highlights: Liverpool 2-0 Fulham | Rio & Salah Goals! Premier League
“It’s the halfway stage of the Champions League quarter-finals, which is the perfect time to pause for breath to reflect. In football parlance, the job is only ‘half done’ for Bayern Munich, Paris Saint-Germain, Arsenal and Atletico Madrid, all of whom go into the second leg next week with a lead. As for Real Madrid, Liverpool, Sporting CP and Barcelona, they ‘have it all to do’ to reach the last four. …”
NY Times/The Athletic
“The whistles got louder and louder. Joe Gomez was standing on the touchline at the Parc des Princes, using a towel to dry the ball before he could take a throw-in, and the locals were not impressed. The Liverpool defender looked uncomfortable, but he kept on drying. Eventually, with the noise reaching a crescendo and the referee hurrying him along, he hurled the ball into the penalty area. Nothing came of it, but at least Gomez had given Paris Saint-Germain something to think about — even if their supporters took it as an affront. …”
NY Times/The Athletic (Video)
NY Times/The Athletic: Hugo Ekitike toils on Paris return as passive Liverpool look to Alexander Isak (Video)
NY Times/The Athletic: Is this a low-quality race for Champions League qualification, or evidence of a competitive Premier League?
YouTube: PSG vs. Liverpool: Extended Highlights | UCL Quarterfinals – Leg 1
“Goals from Desire Doue and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia ensured Paris Saint-Germain built a convincing first-leg lead against a Liverpool side that struggled to lay a hand on the European champions. Arne Slot’s side will take limited consolation in the knowledge that it could have been worse, were it not for some erratic fishing from the hosts and a couple of important saves from Giorgi Mamardashvili. Liverpool lined up with three at the back, which meant Mohamed Salah was reduced to a place on the substitutes’ bench — where he remained for the duration, despite Liverpool chasing the game. …”
NY Times/The Athletic
“If you were picking a match to play after losing 4-0 to Manchester City, it would not be a trip to France to face defending European champions Paris Saint-Germain. Yet that’s the challenge for Arne Slot and his players as they aim to bounce back from this season’s latest low and keep their hopes of winning the Champions League alive. Even if Liverpool were at the peak of their powers, a trip to the Parc des Princes would be laced with an element of trepidation due to the quality of the opposition. For supporters who have been watching this iteration of Liverpool, there is a fear of not just defeat on Wednesday but of another 90 minutes like they witnessed at the Etihad Stadium on Saturday. …”
NY Times/The Athletic
Can PSG become the first team other than Real Madrid to retain the European Cup since Milan in 1990?
“We are down to the final eight in the Champions League after a riveting round of 16 that saw an astonishing 68 goals scored across 16 matches. Seven of the eight ties saw one team score at least four goals. Two teams scored eight while Bayern Munich hit double figures against Atalanta on aggregate. We don’t know if the quarter-finals will be as explosive, but we do know that they will provide us with some classic matchups. Throughout this Champions league campaign, The Athletic’s projections — powered by Opta — have assessed each team’s chances of making it out of the league phase and each knockout round. So here, with just eight storied clubs remaining, we rank their chances of lifting the famous trophy in Budapest on May 30. …”
NY Times/The Athletic
Michael Owen scored on his Liverpool debut on May 6, 1997
“The last of the 3,653 days of the 2000s featured no Premier League football but did, we know now, see the birth of the competition’s youngest goalscorer. This is because Max Dowman entered the world on December 31, 2009 and 16 years and 73 days later, playing for Arsenal against Everton on March 14, 2026, ran more than three-quarters of the pitch before sliding the ball into an empty net to earn this coveted distinction. Dowman’s goal also means the Premier League, which began in August 1992, has now had a scorer born in every year of the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s (the 1950s becomes the only incomplete decade and, despite notable recent advancements in sports science, is likely to remain so). So, The Athletic explores the first player born in each year to have scored in the competition: from Viv Anderson in 1956 to Dowman in 2009, and the 52 individuals in between. …”
NY Times/The Athletic
“Manchester City advanced to the semi-finals of the FA Cup with a 4-0 win over Liverpool on Saturday afternoon. In the opening 20 minutes, Mohamed Salah and Rayan Cherki both spurned opportunities to put their sides ahead. City also felt as though they were denied a penalty when Cherki appeared to be felled in the box, but both referee Michael Oliver and the video assistant referee decided it was not a foul. However, City were awarded a penalty in the 36th minute when Nico O’Reilly was felled by Virgil van Dijk. Erling Haaland converted the subsequent spot kick. Haaland then got his second in first-half added time, heading past Giorgi Mamardashvili. …”
NY Times/The Athletic
“… Klopp has been mindful to keep his distance since the emotional goodbye of May 2024. He didn’t return to Anfield until 12 months later when he stood in the directors’ box applauding as his successor Arne Slot lifted the Premier League trophy. The mood could hardly have been more different for Klopp’s latest visit back to Merseyside in his role as an honorary ambassador for the foundation. Slot is under pressure and Liverpool’s troubled season is about to enter a defining period. The sight of his popular predecessor back on the Anfield touchline and being serenaded by a capacity crowd as he unleashed fist pumps in front of the Kop certainly didn’t make Slot’s life any easier. …”
NY Times/The Athletic (Video)
Guardian – Five matches, 16 days, a season to save: Slot’s Liverpool vision faces a defining moment
“Liverpool will face Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City for the 27th time when they meet in the FA Cup this weekend. While we know it will be the last time Mohamed Salah plays in this fixture after announcing he will leave Anfield this summer, it could also be Guardiola’s last dance for City against Liverpool. He arrived in the summer of 2016, the season after Jurgen Klopp took over from Brendan Rodgers, and tussles between City and Liverpool have defined the era. … The Athletic looked back at all 26 matches to rank them for quality, entertainment and significance. …”
NY Times/The Athletic (Video)
“Arne Slot’s name was being bellowed inside Anfield 10 months ago as fans celebrated the 5-1 thrashing of Tottenham Hotspur that secured a 20th league title. The Dutchman was master of all he surveyed, hailed as a hero for delivering the Premier League in his first season in English football after accepting what seemed a treacherous job in succeeding Jurgen Klopp. Those days seem very distant now. …”
NY Times/The Athletic (Video)
“‘My players made the decision that they wanted to be around the ball, to respect the ball and show unity and leadership.’ Liam Rosenior’s explanation of the Chelsea huddle just before kick-off against Newcastle last weekend is destined to be one of the most memorable quotes of the season. Not only did referee Paul Tierney loom in the midst of the players’ centre-circle gathering like a sort of PGMOL meerkat, but their head coach also introduced the idea of reverence towards an important, but ultimately inanimate object: the PUMA Orbita Ultimate (Thrill Edition). …”
NY Times/The Athletic (Video)
“We’re at the business end of the Champions League, with the eight quarter-finalists now decided. It’s a heavyweight line-up, with four of the competition’s five most successful clubs still in the tournament, plus last year’s winners Paris Saint-Germain and Premier League leaders Arsenal. Real Madrid (15), Liverpool (six), Bayern Munich (six) and Barcelona (five) have won 32 of the 70 European Cup/Champions League trophies between them since Madrid lifted the first trophy back in 1956, but who has their name on this year’s trophy? …”
NY Times/The Athletic (Video)
“It was the only moment all night when a hush descended on Anfield. A fervent crowd had been braced for the net to bulge. Instead, there was a collective state of incredulity at the sight of Mohamed Salah failing to convert a penalty just before the break. The Egyptian attacker, who had scored 10 successive spot kicks for Liverpool since missing against Real Madrid in November 2024, was furious with himself. He had got it horribly wrong — clipping the ball so tamely down the middle that the Galatasaray goalkeeper, Ugurcan Cakir, who had dived to his left, was able to use his right boot to hook it away. …”
NY Times/The Athletic (Video)
“The contrast could hardly have been greater. On Tottenham Hotspur’s previous visit to Anfield 11 months earlier, Arne Slot’s name was chanted repeatedly by the Kop. An emphatic 5-1 victory ensured that the Dutchman became just the fifth manager in the Premier League era to win the title in his first season in English football. Having surpassed all expectations since the departure of the beloved Jurgen Klopp at the end of the 2023-24 campaign, the club’s first league triumph secured in front of their supporters for 35 years triggered scenes of unbridled joy. It felt like the start of a new golden era. …”
NY Times/The Athletic (Video)
YouTube: Richarlison SILENCES Anfield! | Liverpool 1-1 Spurs | Premier League Highlights
Richarlison celebrates his goal
“A late Richarlison goal gave Tottenham a vital point in their fight against relegation and left Liverpool scratching their heads at Anfield after a disjointed display. Dominik Szoboszlai had given Arne Slot’s side the lead in the first half with another goal direct from a free kick. But after that, the home side tailed off, producing little of note, despite an impressive first start for 17-year-old Rio Ngumoha. …”
NY Times/The Athletic (Video)
“Liverpool’s return to the summit of the Premier League last season dovetailed with a return to profitability, and the club’s 2024-25 financials, publicly released last Thursday, unveiled the platform from which they launched last summer’s £400million transfer splurge. The champions booked a £15.2million profit, their best financial result since the 2018-19 season and a first profitable year in three. Revenue shot up £89m and 15 per cent to £702.7m, easily a club record, making Liverpool only the second English side, after Manchester City, to top £700m in annual turnover. …”
NY Times/The Athletic (Video)
“The received wisdom was that the Premier League would have three, possibly four, of its six representatives in the quarter-finals of the Champions League. It might now be lucky to have one. Expectations have flipped in 48 hours. It is one of the reasons we love this sport and, in particular, this competition. Fatigue has been the lens through which people have viewed the shortcomings of the Premier League teams halfway through the round of 16. …”
NY Times/The Athletic (Video)
Virgil van Dijk and Galatasaray’s match winner, Mario Lemina
“In so many ways, this was a microcosm of Liverpool’s season. There was defensive frailty and profligacy undermining their own attacking efforts. Arne Slot saw his team concede from a set piece — Galatasaray’s first effort of the evening. All of it felt uncomfortably familiar as the Turkish side, who pride themselves on making the Ali Sami Yen Spor Kompleksi a fortress, claimed a narrow lead from the first leg of the last-16 Champions League tie. This was a wonderfully frenetic contest from the opening exchanges. Liverpool had actually threatened to open up their hosts early on but having failed to take their chances, were exposed defending Galatasaray’s first corner. Slot, who was overseeing his 100th game in charge, saw his team’s marking system evaporate. …”
NY Times/The Athletic
YouTube: Galatasaray vs Liverpool | Highlights | UEFA Champions League 2026
“Following Liverpool’s late defeat by Wolves at Molineux earlier this week, head coach Arne Slot lamented that it was the ‘same old story and sums up our season’. And it does. Liverpool have now lost five times to 90th-minute-plus goals this season, the most ever by a team in a single Premier League campaign. What should be a rare event has become worryingly commonplace for the reigning champions. But they are not alone — every football supporter at any level of the sport knows that there is a certain, depressingly familiar, scenario that plagues their team. So we gathered The Athletic’s club writers to pinpoint what the ‘same old story’ is at each of the 2025-26 Premier League’s 20 sides. …”
NY Times/The Athletic (Video)
The Athletic surveyed fans of remaining FA Cup clubs, including Arsenal and Chelsea
“The last 16 of the FA Cup is here, and the glint of the trophy is now in sight for the teams that remain. This felt like a good time to test the water of what people think about the grand old competition, how big a role it plays in an increasingly crowded football landscape, and where it ranks in the priorities of those still left in. We asked a series of questions related to the FA Cup — and a couple more general ones — to the 14 teams remaining that you can follow on The Athletic. Apologies to Port Vale and Mansfield Town fans — if you have some thoughts, leave them in the comments. …”
NY Times/The Athletic
“Liverpool beat Wolverhampton Wanderers 3-1 to advance to the sixth round of the FA Cup on Friday night. Cody Gakpo hit the Wolves upright in the opening exchanges, but he was ruled offside. Neither side broke the deadlock in the first-half, even though Liverpool did have six shots at the Wolves goal. Wolves had none — the same as on Tuesday night. Just five minutes after the break, though, Gakpo broke before playing in Mohamed Salah. Salah worked the ball well to Curtis Jones, who then played in Andy Robertson to strike from distance. …”
NY Times/The Athletic
NY Times/The Athletic: Liverpool, Wolves and the strange problem of playing the same opponents twice in three days (Video)
YouTube: Wolverhampton Wanderers v Liverpool | Key Moments | Fifth Round | Emirates FA Cup 2025-26
“SOME big clubs are in a perpetual state of flux. Some believe they have the right to perpetual success, others have been striving for it for decades. Managers have been sacked, often by that default explanation, ‘mutual consent’, and the club response has invariably been around finding a new coach who ‘understands the DNA of the club’. They invariably believe that “winning is in our DNA” but it is more appropriately described as the desire to win, which should actually be in every club’s ‘DNA’. Not everyone can win, however, and nobody is entitled to be on the victory podium on a regular basis. If you examine the honours list at most clubs, not many are regular champions or winners. Liverpool have 47 major honours, Manchester United 44, Arsenal 31. …”
Game of the People
“The cold, hard statistics make for uncomfortable reading. Liverpool have lost five Premier League games after conceding in the 90th minute or later this season, the most ever by a team in a single campaign. With the two equalisers they have also let in during stoppage time, that’s nine points dropped in what is the most alarming issue in their faltering season. The strongest teams in the division are supposed to go on and win games when opponents begin to crumble, yet more often than not it’s turned the other way. Over the last seven seasons, Liverpool averaged one defeat per campaign to last-gasp goals so to see the numbers increase so dramatically is both as shocking as it is surprising. …”
NY Times/The Athletic (Video)
“Virgil van Dijk is just one game away from another incredible milestone. The evergreen centre-half will mark two and a half years of continued availability for Liverpool by the middle of March and, if he starts against Wolverhampton Wanderers on Tuesday night, he will have played 99 of the last 100 Premier League outings. The lone blemish came in the penultimate fixture of the 2024-25 title-winning season when head coach Arne Slot rotated his side to give fringe players a rare outing. Van Dijk was an unused substitute in the 3-2 defeat at Brighton & Hove Albion and would have relished the chance to keep his run of consecutive appearances going, yet that solitary omission does little to diminish the broader picture. …”
NY Times/The Athletic
“If somebody had told you that, this season, a team would break a Premier League record by scoring seven successive non-penalty set-piece goals, who would you guess? Mikel Arteta’s set-piece machine at Arsenal? Brentford, who appointed a set-piece coach as their manager? Either way, Liverpool would probably not have been towards the top of your list. …”
NY Times/The Athletic
“The first half of Everton versus Manchester United was a low-on-entertainment slogfest. The Monday night kick-off was in keeping with many Premier League games this season, with teams finding it harder to create goalscoring chances in open play and focusing more on set-piece opportunities. Football can often be described as “a game of mistakes”, and this season has seen an increase in games where teams are so focused on avoiding them that they lose sight of how to proactively force one from the opposition. Thankfully, the second half brought something more entertaining. …”
NY Times/The Athletic (Video)
“We all watch an awful lot of football and not all of it is especially riveting. When it’s good, it is exceptional entertainment, but there’s a certain predictability and pattern to everything these days. Most teams do not have any chance of major success and defeats for the elite clubs are like the periodical appearance of a major comet. The game is so heavily marketed and packaged these days that we are frequently told everything is great even when we’ve watched two hours of dross. The most entertaining football I have seen in the past week was The Big Match Revisited, an episode of action from October 1971 when the game seemed so much more innocent than it is today. It’s not just a case of the actual football itself, but also the way the action was analysed and the post-match interviews and reaction from the players and fans. A league defeat in 1971 was never seen as the end of the world by everyone concerned, at least not until the last few weeks of the season. By contrast, elimination from the FA Cup was a calamity because it was sudden death. Today, each and every defeat is greeted by hand-wringing, tears and major inquests. Jobs seem to hang on every result. …”
Game of the People
W – The Big Match Revisited
YouTube: The Big Match Revisted – 33 videos
Leeds vs Liverpool | October 1977
Manchester City’s Jeremy Doku running with the ball
“There has been a refreshing aesthetic to the Premier League this season. Some might think that the style of football has regressed to a bygone era, but the increased quality across all teams means that we find ourselves in a moment where greater focus is being spent on small margins. Throughout the division, teams are more willing to play with an aggressive, man-for-man defensive structure, which has led head coaches to look for creative solutions to find space to exploit. As a result, individual battles have never been more important. Players whose strengths lie in one-v-one profiles are worth their weight in gold — both in and out of possession. …”
NY Times/The Athletic
“Welcome to The Briefing, where every Monday during this season, The Athletic will discuss three of the biggest questions to arise from the weekend’s football. This was the round where Arsenal answered a few critics with another 4-1 victory against Tottenham Hotspur, Liverpool boosted their Champions League prospects with a smash-and-grab win at Nottingham Forest, moving them level on points with Chelsea, who stuttered at home to Burnley. We will ask whether talk over Arsenal’s supposed fragile mentality is valid, question just how much trouble Spurs are in and ponder what on earth has happened to Crystal Palace. …”
NY Times/The Athletic
“Liverpool had one Alexis Mac Allister goal disallowed in the 90th minute and one Alexis Mac Allister goal allowed in the 97th minute, earning Arne Slot’s side a late victory against Nottingham Forest at the City Ground. The first was ruled out for striking his elbow, and the second was given after a lengthy delay ruled that Ola Aina’s left boot had played Virgil van Dijk onside in the build-up to Mac Allister finding the back of the net with seconds left to play. The win papers over the cracks of a disappointing display from Liverpool against a team that beat them 3-0 at Anfield earlier in the season. …”
NY Times/The Athletic (Video)
“… Mohamed Salah is not a man who uses words lightly, so his compliment to Dominik Szoboszlai as he stood next to the Hungarian after Liverpool’s 3-0 victory over Brighton & Hove Albion in the FA Cup fourth round resonated. Szoboszlai and Salah, good friends off the field, had just combined on it to score one of Liverpool’s best goals of the season. Salah cushioned Cody Gakpo’s cross-field pass into the path of Szoboszlai, who rifled a first-time shot past Jason Steele, his 10th goal of the season in all competitions to go along with seven assists. …”
NY Times/The Athletic
W – Dominik Szoboszlai
The Champions League trophy on display at holders Paris Saint-Germain’s Parc des Princes stadium last August
“The holders and the record winners — Paris Saint-Germain and Real Madrid — will compete in the Champions League’s knockout play-offs this month. Twelve of the 36 teams were eliminated in January following the wild final round of the league phase, so things are starting to shape up. Last month’s draw means we can forecast the possible matchups in the round of 16, which starts in March. …”
NY Times/The Athletic (Video)
Fabian Hurzeler pictured during Brighton’s FA Cup tie at Anfield on Saturday
“Fabian Hurzeler must find a way to get his team scoring goals again if Brighton & Hove Albion are to avoid being dragged into a relegation fight. The task has been crystallised for the head coach for the rest of the season. It is all about 12 games to climb into calmer waters in the Premier League table following Saturday’s 3-0 exit from the fourth round of the FA Cup against Liverpool. Goals win games, but there have been precious few of them lately for Hurzeler’s ailing side. They failed to find the net for the third match in succession in defeat at Anfield. Only four goals have been scored as they’ve gone winless in the past six league fixtures. There is no threat or confidence in front of goal to knock opponents out of a comfort zone. …”
NY Times/The Athletic (Video)
Tottenham Hotspur’s sporting director Johan Lange (left) and CEO Vinai Venkatesham, the men who will appoint a long-term successor to Thomas Frank
“The appointment of a manager or head coach is probably the most important decision a football club’s ownership have to make, so why are so many getting it so badly wrong? The sackings of Thomas Frank at Tottenham Hotspur and Sean Dyche at Nottingham Forest last week took the number of managerial changes at the 92 Premier League and Football League clubs this season to 31. That does not quite equate to a third of sides making a switch, given two have done it more than once — Watford have named a new manager twice since the games began in August while Dyche’s departure is the third of the campaign at Forest — but it is still a staggering tally. …”
NY Times/The Athletic – Michael Cox (Video)
“After beating Barnsley in the FA Cup last month, Arne Slot admitted that his approach to analysing opponents might need a rethink. ‘We’ve played 30 games this season and I’d say 28 of my pre-match meetings, I could just throw in the bin,’ he said in a press conference, highlighting the extent to which he feels teams have altered their approach when lining up against Liverpool. For context — and this is important — Slot was not suggesting that opponents should roll over and play into Liverpool’s hands. Against Barnsley, for example, he acknowledged that he also would have adopted defensive tactics in their position. …”
NY Times/The Athletic (Video)
Scissors Kick 