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Hello! The Super Bowl didn’t get its three-peat — and English football won’t get a quadruple either.
On the way:
😮 Liverpool’s shock cup exit
🙌 Wonderstrike against City
🌟 Ancelotti’s superstar complex
🚶 Walk-off/resignation in Turkey
Pulled Quad: Plymouth bridge £356m wage gap to end Slot’s shot at history
(Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images)
Feel free to blame us. On Friday we asked how many trophies Liverpool would win this season… and then their FA Cup prospects went down in flames against a team they should be beating in their sleep.
In TAFC’s defence, we made the point that no English club has ever done the quadruple (the Holy Grail of three domestic trophies plus the Champions League) and realistically, no club will. The reason Manchester City fell short in 2023, like Manchester United in 1999? There’s always that one game.
For Arne Slot, it was Plymouth Argyle in the FA Cup’s fourth round yesterday. He made 10 changes to his line-up and his squad depth wasn’t up to it, despite Liverpool topping the Premier League and Plymouth — on a stretch of England’s south coast affectionately known as the ‘riviera’ — flailing at the bottom of the Championship.
Argyle’s year has been a trial but they’ve got a certain spirit about them. After sacking Wayne Rooney in December, they replaced him with Bosnian coach Miron Muslic, who made headlines by addressing his new troops in the manner of Russell Crowe in Gladiator. They’ve got a berserker of a defender in Ukrainian Maksym Talovierov and a chairman, Simon Hallet, who wasn’t shy in telling Muslic that he had to do more than make the right noises.
The following comparisons get made all the time, but they’re worth repeating. There’s a gap of 44 league places between Argyle and Liverpool. Moreover, there’s a staggering gulf in wage bills: at the last count, a difference of more than £350m ($434m), hence why before yesterday’s 1-0 win, Plymouth last beat the boys from Anfield in 1956.
The weekend as a whole was light on FA Cup upsets — but, as with the quadruple, there’s invariably that one game.
Tottenham tottering
Meanwhile, for Tottenham Hotspur, Groundhog Day. A 2-1 defeat to Aston Villa was their second cup exit in four days. Once again, they engaged with the rutting vigour of a celibate monk.
The problem now is that it’s February 10 and Spurs have only the Europa League to get out of bed for — the perfect climate for in-fighting and retribution. The away end at Villa chanted against chairman Daniel Levy and if Ange Postecoglou survives the run-in (a fairly big ‘if’), he’ll have less breathing space next season than the aliens in the claw machine in Toy Story.
The best outcome Tottenham can envisage? A repeat of 2024, when north London rivals Arsenal fell short of the Premier League title.
Long-range bangers
Two bits of magic to bring you now, which at least kept a couple of top-flight teams honest.
Leyton Orient’s Jamie Donley (of League One) gave Manchester City momentary jitters with the lob of his life on Saturday (below). It went down as a Stefan Ortega own goal but let’s credit the architect rather than the jobsworth building inspector.
And while Birmingham City lost narrowly to Newcastle United, this Tomoki Iwata effort was top of the tops. It didn’t pull them through — but, as we explained on Friday, it’s a prime example of why Birmingham should win League One at a canter.
News round-up
Who’ll reign in Spain?
After a week of politics about refereeing in Spain, Saturday brought the Madrid derby. Real’s mood (for it’s they who are leading the charge against the officials) wasn’t helped by the award of a faintly ludicrous penalty to Atletico (above). Decide for yourselves, but from my point of view… give over.
Some introspection at the Bernabeu would be helpful too, though. Carlo Ancelotti cannot get his billion-dollar front four of Vinicius Jr, Kylian Mbappe, Rodrygo and Jude Bellingham to work when it matters. Bellingham ended up as a bit of a makeshift No 9 as Real recovered from Julian Alvarez’s spot kick to draw 1-1.
That result and Barca’s 4-1 hammering of Sevilla last night, with Raphinha at it again, leaves Real on 50 points, Atletico on 49 and Barca on 48. Fear and loathing is consuming the top of La Liga (doesn’t it always?) but it’s generating a white-hot title race. Place your bets.
Around The Athletic FC
- Has February 5 ever caught your attention? Because according to Duncan Alexander, it’s football’s GOAT date. Read on.
- Adidas and Nike have dominated football’s manufacturing scene for years but New Balance is doing a decent job of muscling into the market, picking up clients like Bukayo Saka and Tim Weah. Art de Roche laid out its strategy.
- This is an article that was begging to be written, and Jack Lang has: will anybody succeed in making perennial transfer target Joao Felix all he can be?
- Check out The Athletic FC Tactics Podcast’s views on which winter signings will make the biggest splash. Download it here.
- Quiz answer: the four Premier League sides who had gone longest without reaching round five of the FA Cup? Villa, Ipswich Town, Brentford and Arsenal. Villa, with new signings Marcus Rashford and Marco Asensio on show for the first time, finally cracked their streak. As did Ipswich.
- Most clicked in Friday’s TAFC: Slot and the quadruple. Ahem.
Catch a match
(Selected games, ET/UK times)
FA Cup fourth round: Doncaster Rovers vs Crystal Palace, 2.45pm/7.45pm — ESPN+/BBC iPlayer.
Serie A: Inter vs Fiorentina, 2.45pm/7.45pm — Paramount+, Fubo/OneFootball.
La Liga: Real Mallorca vs Osasuna, 3pm/8pm — ESPN+, Fubo/Premier Sports.
And finally
Galatasaray versus Adana Demirspor was 11 minutes old when Galatasaray’s Dries Mertens manufactured this penalty, above. The VAR let it stand and not long after, on the instructions of their president, Bedirhan Durak, Adana’s players abandoned the match. Durak has resigned this morning. We’ll call him a man of principle.
Correction: thanks to the TAFC readers, including Marcos Lupp, who pointed out that we referenced the wrong Botafogo in our mention of Neymar on Friday. Neymar was playing against Botafogo-SP from the Sao Paulo region, not Botafogo de Futebol e Regatas from Rio de Janeiro. Apologies for the mix-up.
(Top photo: Charlotte Wilson/Offside/Offside via Getty Images)
