More Than A Game Weekly
Forest roll the Dyche. Plus, why the FA Cup is dying.
THE TOP STORY
A few weeks ago, we published the piece below.
Hit through it to read in full, but essentially, it boiled down to this: If you’re going to hire Sean Dyche, you have to accept him for what he is, and grin and bear it while it plays itself out.
Over the last few years, Dyche’s work has been subject to the law of diminishing returns. But, he does usually average out the points, even if they do not come as swiftly as fans or owners may like, to keep a club’s head above water.
But it wasn’t enough for Nottingham Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis.
He had hired Dyche on the proviso he would have guided Forest away from danger by now, but last week’s draw with Wolves leaves them just three points above the bottom three.
They are hardly the only team involved in the scrap. There’s a fair case to be made that four or five other sides have now been dragged in, but Marinakis clearly decided Dyche’s approach was not worth the risk.
Dyche, for his part, will likely come away from this clean, just like he did from Everton, and, to a much lesser extent, Burnley.
It seems the majority of Forest fans, and the players, had already had it with Dyche. He does tend to drag teams down to his bar, rather than elevating them.
But he was averaging 1.2 points per game in the Premier League. With 12 fixtures remaining, had he maintained that average, Forest could have expected another 14 points — it would surely have been enough to keep them up.
Of course, that’s not an exact science, but turning to Vitor Pereira shows the paucity of options available.
Forest will be hoping they get the version of Pereira who first went in at Wolves, rather than the manager who led the West Midlands club on a 10-game winless streak at the start of this season.
We’ll now see if the gamble will pay off, but whatever happens, Forest’s owner has to learn some lessons from this terrible season. Whether he will or not, well that’s another matter.
MOMENTS OF THE WEEKEND
Chris Kavanagh and his assistant Nick Greenhalgh will not officiate a Premier League game this coming weekend; frankly the PGMOL had little choice. The duo combined for at least two of the most shocking officiating calls of the post-VAR implementation era on Saturday as Aston Villa hosted Newcastle United in the FA Cup — the irony being, VAR wasn’t in use at Villa Park; if it had been, the pair’s humiliation may have been spared. As it is, they have been (fairly) punished for getting two decisions clearly and obviously very, very wrong. Greenhalgh failed to flag a blatant offside from Tammy Abraham in the build-up to Villa’s opener, before he and Kavanagh both failed to spot that Lucas Digne’s handball took place several yards inside the penalty area. Digne was also fortunate to escape a red card for a reckless tackle, but in fairness, at least that can be classed as subjective. PGMOL continue to hide behind statistics to suggest they are trending in the right direction, but there was no hiding from this one.
Macclesfield’s fairytale FA Cup run was ended in heartbreaking fashion — a Sam Heathcoate own goal seeing Brentford to a 1-0 win on Monday. The sixth-tier club, who dumped out holders Crystal Palace last month to mark the biggest shock in FA Cup history, have done wonders, and their run will no doubt have boosted the coffers significantly. What it’s all about!
THE GLOBAL GAME 🌎
🇩🇪 Bayern Munich beat Werder Bremen 3-0 on Saturday to maintain the gap at the top of the Bundesliga, but the main story was Harry Kane. His brace, which came in the space of three first-half minutes, saw him hit two milestones. First off, he has now scored 301 goals in a big-five European league, across his spells with Tottenham and Bayern. But also, he has now netted 500 career goals, including his 78 for England. He is the first Englishman to hit that feat, and needed 743 appearances to get there.
🇪🇸 Barcelona, who were ravaged by Atletico Madrid in the Copa del Rey semi-finals last week, lost to Girona 2-1 on Monday night, meaning Real Madrid now hold a two-point advantage at the summit of LaLiga. Vinicius Junior, meanwhile, scored two penalties for Los Blancos in their 4-1 win over Real Sociedad, taking his tally of goal involvements for the club to 200.
🇫🇷 Paris Saint-Germain dropped points to open up the Ligue 1 title race yet again, with Lens nipping in ahead of them after the European champions’ 3-1 defeat to Rennes. Luis Enrique’s team now turn their focus to the Champions League, and ensuring they get through the play-offs. Oh, and Lyon have now won 13 games in a row in all competitions.
🏴 There was plenty of drama north of the border. Celtic sparked chaotic scenes in the away end as they won 3-2 at Kilmarnock in the dying seconds, turning around a 2-0 deficit, while Rangers then went and beat leaders Hearts 4-2, with Youssef Chermiti netting a hat-trick at Ibrox. The Old Firm are right on Hearts’ coattails. Will the Jam Tarts hold on?
🇺🇸 MLS is back this week, with Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami out to start their title defence.
ANY OTHER BUSINESS
The FA Cup is dying.
There’s still brilliant moments, but the lack of mainstream coverage of the competition this weekend was sad to see.
The majority of the games, plus the draw, are on TNT Sports, so behind a paywall. Great if you have a subscription, but in this writer’s view, the FA Cup should always be on terrestial TV, while those channels should also have the priority of the games to pick from.
The FA Cup is one of the reasons I fell in love not just with football, but with the idea of going into sports journalism. And that wouldn’t have happened if, back in the day, matches were not shown free-to-air.
COMING UP
A few highlight fixtures for this week (all times GMT).
Tuesday: Benfica v Real Madrid (20:00) — UCL
Thursday: Fenerbahce v Nottingham Forest (17:45) — UEL
Saturday: Man City v Newcastle United (20:00) — PL
Sunday: Tottenham v Arsenal (16:30) — PL
MTAG’S RECOMMENDATION
The latest feature on The Football Weekend is typically excellent, albeit a little different to normal.
