What the papers say
Klopp has ‘no doubt’ Solskjær will be given permanent Manchester United job
• Klopp confirms Dejan Lovren and Joe Gomez out with injury
Jürgen Klopp has said there is no doubt Ole Gunnar Solskjær will be Manchester United manager next season having restored “all the things Sir Alex Ferguson stood for” at Old Trafford.
Solskjær remains on loan at United from Norwegian side Molde but such has been his impact as caretaker manager – 11 victories in 13 matches plus revitalising the likes of Paul Pogba and Anthony Martial – that Klopp believes his appointment as José Mourinho’s permanent replacement is inevitable.
Related: Solskjær: beating Liverpool would be ‘worthy of Manchester United history’
Continue reading...Solskjær: beating Liverpool would be ‘worthy of Manchester United history’
• Anthony Martial and Jesse Lingard could return on Sunday
Ole Gunnar Solskjær believes if Manchester United beat Liverpool at Old Trafford on Sunday it will be another step towards making his side one “worthy of club history”.
The Norwegian has won 11 of his 13 games in charge, losing just once, to Paris Saint-Germain in last week’s Champions League last-16 opening leg. Three of the victories have been away at Tottenham Hotspur, Arsenal and Chelsea.
Related: Manchester United take ‘massive belief’ into Liverpool game, says Ashley Young
Related: Premier League: 10 things to look out for this weekend
Continue reading...Football transfer rumours: Marcus Rashford wanted by Barcelona?
Today’s fluff is broadly fine
Marcus Rashford is good at football! To the surprise of no one apart from José Mourinho, the Manchester United ace is capable of doing lots of goals and assists! All he needs is an arm round the shoulder, a few words of encouragement and a regular run of games up front! Then watch him fly. Watch him go. Watch him go all the way to Barcelona!
That’s right: Barcelona have decided to make the United forward their top summer target. With Luis Suárez showing signs of decline, the Spanish champions have identified Rashford as a replacement for the Uruguayan forward and are willing to pay top dollar to get him. They’ll have to be fast, though, because United are on the verge of handing the England international a new long-term deal.
Related: Premier League: 10 things to look out for this weekend
Continue reading...Manchester United take ‘massive belief’ into Liverpool game, says Ashley Young
• United play at home to league leaders Liverpool on Sunday
• Wins at Spurs, Arsenal and Chelsea have brought confidence
Ashley Young has said that Manchester United’s victories at Tottenham, Arsenal and Chelsea have given Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s side “massive belief” as they prepare to face the league leaders Liverpool on Sunday.
The 2-0 triumph at Stamford Bridge in the fifth round of the FA Cup on Monday means United have won 11 of the 13 games the Norwegian has taken charge of since succeeding José Mourinho after the defeat against Liverpool at Anfield in December. Their only defeat came at the hands of Paris Saint-Germain in the first leg of their Champions League last-16 tie last week as Solskjær has seen his side set up a sixth-round meeting with Wolves in the FA Cup and move up to fourth place in the Premier League.
Related: Is defending making a comeback after the gung-ho attacking years?
Continue reading...Maurizio Sarri clings on to job after furious Chelsea fans lose patience
• ‘I am worried about results, not the fans,’ says Sarri
Maurizio Sarri is clinging to his job after Chelsea’s defence of the FA Cup was wrecked by Manchester United and the home supporters took out their frustrations on the manager.
Boos greeted the whistle at half-time and full-time, with discontent at Sarri’s substitutions spilling over in the second half of the 2-0 fifth-round defeat.
Related: Manchester United and Pogba extend Chelsea’s misery as fans turn on Sarri
Related: Chelsea 0-2 Manchester United: player ratings from Stamford Bridge
Continue reading...Chelsea 0-2 Manchester United: player ratings from Stamford Bridge
Marcus Rashford a joy to watch and a constant menace while Eden Hazard must be running low on patience
Kepa Arrizabalaga 5 No chance with first goal but should have done better to prevent Pogba’s header creeping in.
Related: Manchester United and Pogba extend Chelsea’s misery as fans turn on Sarri
Related: Vision plus precision – a swaggering Paul Pogba slices through Chelsea | Amy Lawrence
Continue reading...Vision plus precision – a swaggering Paul Pogba slices through Chelsea | Amy Lawrence
On nights like this it makes no sense at all to think a manager would not search high and low for the key to Paul Pogba and then turn it to the fullest degree. The slow-burning intensity of this FA Cup tie was wrapped up in the chasing and harrying, the bundling challenges and hopeful pot-shots, until Pogba suddenly elevated himself, the game, and Manchester United’s vibrant Cup run.
In a 14-minute spell at the end of the first half they carved out an unassailable lead thanks to the blend of vision, technical precision and physical force that is Pogba at his swaggering best. First, the cross: Ander Herrera set off on a sudden sprint up the right, anticipating that United might be about to unleash an invaluable weapon. Pogba with the ball at his feet on his current form always presents the possibility of a stirring touch.
Related: Chelsea 0-2 Manchester United: FA Cup fifth round – live!
Related: Manchester United and Pogba extend Chelsea’s misery as fans turn on Sarri
Continue reading...FA Cup quarter-final draw: Manchester sides kept apart
• Millwall v Brighton and Watford v Crystal Palace
Both Manchester clubs were kept apart in the draw for the FA Cup quarter-finals.
Manchester City will travel to Swansea for another trip to south Wales after beating Newport in the fifth round.
Continue reading...Manchester United and Pogba extend Chelsea’s misery as fans turn on Sarri
Chelsea will not stand for much more of this. Maurizio Sarri, isolated and alone, shuffled around his technical area as his team were out-muscled, out-manoeuvred and out-classed by Manchester United to leave the FA Cup. The Italian’s eyes never left the pitch but he could not have been deaf to the repertoire of chants, whipped up by the fans in the Matthew Harding stand where faith in the current regime is wrecked beyond repair, which damned their own head coach. The humiliation was brutal.
They veered from “You don’t know what you’re doing”, via an industrial and scathing assessment of Sarri-ball, to bellowed praise of Frank Lampard, a favourite figure whose candidacy as a potential replacement, for all that his current focus is with Derby, has been enhanced by Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s startling success with United since December.
Related: FA Cup quarter-final draw – live!
Related: Chelsea v Manchester United: FA Cup fifth round – live!
Related: FA Cup predictability, trouncings and wild finales – Football Weekly
Continue reading...Chelsea v Manchester United: FA Cup fifth round – live!
- FA Cup fifth-round updates from the 7.30pm GMT kick-off
- Football Weekly: FA Cup predictability, trouncings and wild finales
- And feel free to email Jacob or tweet him @JacobSteinberg
6.39pm GMT
Pre-match reading
Related: Alexis Sánchez goals will start to flow like ketchup, says Ole Gunnar Solskjær
Related: Ryan Giggs: ‘It didn’t work for United but Van Gaal was brilliant for me’
6.36pm GMT
A reminder: VAR is in use for this game and there will also be extra-time and penalties if it ends in a draw. No replay! The quarter-final draw will also take place once this is over.
6.34pm GMT
Chelsea start in their Sarri-approved 4-3-3. Antonio Rudiger, Marcos Alonso, N’Golo Kante, Eden Hazard and Gonzalo Higuain replaces Andreas Christensen, Emerson Palmieri, Ross Barkley, Willian and Olivier Giroud, all of whom make way after deputising in last Thursday’s away win against Malmo in the Europa League.
Manchester United make four changes after last week’s defeat to PSG. Sergio Romero starts in goal instead of the rested David De Gea and Chris Smalling replaces Eric Bailly, while Romelu Lukaku and Juan Mata come in for the injured pair of Anthony Martial and Jesse Lingard. We’ll have to wait to see if Ole Gunnar Solskjaer can squeeze any ketchup out of Alexis Sanchez, who starts on the bench.
6.29pm GMT
Chelsea: Kepa; Azpilicueta, David Luiz, Rudiger, Alonso; Jorginho, Kante, Kovacic; Pedro, Higuain, Hazard. Subs: Caballero, Christensen, Zappacosta, Hudson-Odoi, Barkley, Willian Giroud.
Manchester United: Romero; Young, Lindelof, Smalling, Shaw; Matic, Herrera, Pogba; Mata, Lukaku, Rashford. Subs: De Gea, Bailly, Dalot, Fred, McTominay, Pereira, Sanchez.
6.21pm GMT
Hello. Who’d be a football manager in 2019, eh? Offered the chance, probably all of us. After all, most of them get paid pretty well. The pay-off when you’re fired after two seconds would be wonderful. But don’t get too excited. Nobody likes being fired. You’d actually be pretty upset. All those millions, but you’d just want to get back out on the training ground again and smell the grass, lay out the cones, get involved with the banter, bark out some orders, slice some oranges. You’d just want someone to refer to you as The Gaffer again. Or The Gaffa.
The problem is nobody gets much time to do much coaching these days, especially at the highest level, which makes it hard to maintain a sense of perspective when things aren’t going to plan. Everybody wants success and everybody wants it now. The demands simply grow louder, more intense and harder to ignore, because we all need to Have Our Say, which is how we get ourselves into the situation where this FA Cup tie between Chelsea and Manchester United is being billed in some quarters as an audition for the managers of both teams to prove that they deserve to still be in a job this time next week.
Continue reading...Alexis Sánchez goals will start to flow like ketchup, says Ole Gunnar Solskjær
• Manchester United manager backs his Chilean forward
• Sánchez looks to rediscover form against Chelsea in FA Cup
Ole Gunnar Solskjær has denied Alexis Sánchez is past his best, saying that once the Chilean forward scores it will be like squeezing a “bottle of ketchup” and his best form will be released.
Related: Ryan Giggs: ‘It didn’t work for United but Van Gaal was brilliant for me’
Related: The Dozen: the best FA Cup fifth round pictures
Continue reading...Ryan Giggs: ‘It didn’t work for United but Van Gaal was brilliant for me’
“I think every manager feels that loneliness,” Ryan Giggs says as he identifies the usually unspoken difficulty at the core of his work. The manager of Wales since January 2018, Giggs has had nine games to get used to the isolation.
“I’m lucky to have great staff around me and, during the week, you’re constantly in meetings and on the training ground. But it’s that hour before the game, when the coaches take the lads out to warm up, that you feel it. You’re alone in the dressing room and you’ve done everything you can. That’s a lonely time. There’s nothing left to do. You’re on your own.”
Related: Arjen Robben: ‘If you ask what is the worst stadium for me, it’s Liverpool’
If it is Ole, keep it among the club and start planning. Our problem the past few years is we were always playing catch up.
Continue reading...Manchester United and Chelsea seek some salvation in a Wembley return | Paul Wilson
The clubs are meeting in the FA Cup’s tie of the round after sobering defeats last week
The fast-moving world of football has managed to overtake what promised to be an FA Cup treat at Stamford Bridge on Monday night. When the draw was made, Chelsea’s pairing with Manchester United was the obvious fifth-round highlight, but that was before both clubs suffered chastening setbacks.
Chelsea suffered their heaviest defeat of the Premier League era at the hands of Manchester City last Sunday, a 6-0 thrashing that left Maurizio Sarri in a state of shock. It is highly unlikely that Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s United will be quite so ruthless and relentless, though with a Carabao Cup final against City due at the end of the month one could readily understand Sarri and his players feeling apprehensive about the possibility of setting up another meeting in a different competition.
Related: Maurizio Sarri still seeking solutions for Chelsea’s mental fragility
Twitter: follow us at @guardian_sport
Related: How Swansea City went from model club to desperate cautionary tale | Stuart James
Continue reading...Chris Smalling says Manchester United are once again a team to be feared
• United away to Chelsea in FA Cup on Monday
Chris Smalling can draw on his own challenging childhood when talking to the pupils of Salford City Academy. He is there as the new patron of Football Beyond Borders, a charity that hopes to provide stability and hope for disadvantaged youngsters. Smalling’s glittering career shows how difficult beginnings can be overcome. The 29-year-old lost his father as a child and was raised on a council estate, the family requiring social security.
“I grew up with my mother and brother and was in education to 18, so I feel hopefully I can relate to them all,” he says, speaking at the comprehensive school the day after Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s team lost 2-0 to Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League. “Football was always a dream, but a distant dream until when I was about to go to university. I’d had a couple of trials, but it wasn’t a realistic dream, it was a kid’s dream.”
Related: Kylian Mbappé’s teleportation device leaves Manchester United floundering | Barney Ronay
Continue reading...Manchester United’s Martial and Lingard ruled out for three weeks
• Gomes, Chong, Sánchez and Lukaku in line to deputise
Anthony Martial and Jesse Lingard are out for up to three weeks because of injury, with Ole Gunnar Solskjær saying that means a chance for Alexis Sánchez and Romelu Lukaku to step up for Manchester United.
Martial and Lingard were forced off during Tuesday’s 2-0 defeat by Paris Saint-Germain at Old Trafford because of groin and hamstring problems respectively.
Related: Sportswashing and the tangled web of Europe's biggest clubs
Twitter: follow us at @guardian_sport
Continue reading...Eric Harrison, the man to whom the Class of ‘92 owe it all
Originally they were called Fergie’s Fledglings, then the Class of ’92, though it was fitting that Eric Harrison’s death at the age of 81 led everyone at Manchester United to acknowledge where the credit for a remarkable generation was due.
“Eric we owe you everything,” Gary Neville said. “We’ve lost our mentor, our coach and the man who made us. He taught us how to play, to never give up and how important it was to win your individual battles.”
Related: Eric Harrison, Manchester United’s Class of 92 coach, dies aged 81
He instilled values that stood us in good stead for the rest of our lives. I'll be for ever indebted to him
Continue reading...Manchester United reveal £19.6m payoff for José Mourinho and his staff
• Portuguese’s next move will be to host show on Russian TV
Manchester United have revealed that José Mourinho and his staff received a £19.6m payoff following the Portuguese’s sacking at Old Trafford.
The staggering sum was disclosed in figures released on Thursday in the club’s half-yearly accounts. It was called an “exceptional item relating to compensation to the former manager and certain members of the coaching staff for loss of office”. The other coaching staff thought to be compensated are senior goalkeeping coach Silvino Louro, opposition scout Ricardo Formosinho, fitness coaches Stefano Rapetti and Carlos Lalin and analyst Giovanni Cerra, although Mourinho is expected to have received the bulk of the money.
Related: Eric Harrison, Manchester United’s Class of 92 coach, dies aged 81
Continue reading...Football transfer rumours: João Felix to Manchester United for £100m?
Today’s fluff has got apple pie in the sky hopes
João Félix, the 19-year-old Benfica forward, is in the kind of form that was bound to attract somebody’s notice. In each of his last three league appearances he has scored and assisted a goal, helping his team to 5-1, 4-2 – over Sporting, no less – and 10-0 wins. And according to the Sun he has been watched “on a number of occasions” by scouts representing Manchester United, who have bought some decent Portuguese teenagers in the past and feel ready to dip their toe into that market once again. United “are looking to launch a bid in the next transfer window” and Benfica “would be willing to sell the youngster”, with the only thing standing in the way of an easy deal being the fact that As Águias value him at an eye-popping £100m. “The club went to see Félix in action and it was all positive,” an Old Trafford source tells the Sun. “He is definitely someone who is increasingly of interest.”
Related: Maurizio Sarri still seeking solutions for Chelsea’s mental fragility
Continue reading...Eric Harrison, Manchester United’s Class of 92 coach, dies aged 81
• United pay tribute to ‘mentor of young players’
• Harrison helped produce Fergie’s Fledglings
Eric Harrison, the coach credited with producing Manchester United’s famous Class of 92 youth side, has died at the age of 81.
News of his death was confirmed on Thursday by United, where Harrison spent 17 years as a youth team coach after moving from Everton in 1981.
Related: Manchester United's most influential Eric speaks
Continue reading...Manchester United charged by Uefa after bottles thrown at Ángel Di María
• PSG face series of charges over the conduct of their fans
Uefa has opened disciplinary proceedings against Manchester United after two bottles were thrown from the stands towards Ángel Di María during Paris Saint-Germain’s win at Old Trafford on Tuesday.
Related: Did Neymar’s absence help PSG to prosper at Manchester United? | Jonathan Wilson
Continue reading...