Even if Aston Villa slip off the title pace, Unai Emery has shown his true worth | Jonathan Wilson

After the unhappy spell at Arsenal, the Spaniard’s reputation in England has been rehabilitated – the right club at the right time

Some players are better than others. Some managers are better than others. But a lot of the time, success is a matter of contingency, of being the right person for the right job at the right time. It was four years ago last Wednesday that Unai Emery was sacked by Arsenal. As he returned to Spain, there was a widespread feeling that his methods didn’t travel and he was probably best off staying there.

It wasn’t at all an absurd thing to think. He had been sacked by Spartak Moscow in 2012 after a 5-1 home defeat to Dinamo that left them seventh. His time at Paris Saint-Germain had seemed unremarkable, most notable for him being asked to cut the cake two days into Neymar’s extended birthday party – which seemed a clear indication that the egos in the squad still ruled, a situation that culminated in his departure in 2018. Continue reading...

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‘Emotional’ Leah Williamson to make first England start in almost a year

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* Euro 2022-winning captain missed World Cup with ACL injury * Defender brings ‘flexibility in defence’, says Sarina Wiegman Sarina Wiegman has confirmed Leah Williamson will start for England against the Republic of Ireland on Tuesday night in their second Euro 2025 qualifying group game. Williamson, the Euro 2022-winning captain, said she would be emotional at the Aviva Stadium when she steps out with England for the first time in almost a year, after she was sidelined with an anterior cruciate ligament injury last April. Continue reading...
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Wiegman’s Lionesses rekindle lost energy to fire spectacular comeback | Jonathan Liew

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Nations League victory against the Dutch arrives at the last despite a lack of clarity and brittleness creeping into the team They’ll always have Paris. Throughout this Nations League campaign this has been an England team fighting its own sense of entropy, still giving everything, still trying the same plans and processes in the hope that eventually something would click. And at 9.34pm on a briskly cold Wembley night, it finally did. Ella Toone’s injury-time goal earned England three points and kept their faintly glowing Olympic dream alive. But somehow it also did so much more. It breathed life into a team and a cycle, and a moment that for so much of the evening had felt like it was drawing to its natural conclusion provided a rousing encore to a cast preparing for its final curtain. There will be new challenges and new frontiers to conquer soon enough, a fresh set of European Championship qualifiers in the spring, but for now this iteration of the Lionesses still has tricks up ...
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Khiara Keating the hero as Manchester City knock Arsenal out of FA Cup

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There was redemption at Meadow Park for the goalkeeper Khiara Keating as Manchester City won 1-0 and knocked the 14-time FA Cup winners Arsenal out of the competition in the fifth round. Keating weathered a late Arsenal charge, including pulling off a stunning save from a header destined for the top corner in added time, pushing over Lotte Wubben-Moy’s effort and clawing away a shot that looked to have crossed the line to atone for her errors for both goals in City’s 2-1 defeat here in the league that left her in tears. Continue reading...
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