United must ‘play like we
train’ in quest for top four
Adam Lanigan
The wheels are very much in motion as
Manchester United look set to appoint
Ajax’s Erik Ten Hag as their new
permanent manager.
The Dutchman has been described
as a “top coach” by the interim boss Ralf
Rangnick, who has passed on his
thoughts about the state of the United
squad to club insiders.
While no club statement has been
made, the public acknowledgement of
Ten Hag was significant.
“What I know is the managers they
have spoken to are top coaches, and this
includes Erik Ten Hag,” Rangnick said.
The German has eight games left in
his interim position before his two-year
consultancy role at Old Trafford is due
to begin. “I have told the club how I see
the squad and what needs to happen,”
he said. “If the new manager wants to
get my advice then I am more than
happy to speak to him.”
The biggest help Rangnick could
provide to Ten Hag would be steering
United into the top four, as Champions
League football would attract a higher
calibre of player. They are only three
points behind Tottenham Hotspur in
fourth before today’s game away to
Everton, and Rangnick is calling on his
squad to put together a run of results.
“We had that character quite often,
but not consistently,” he said. “But we
had a good week of training. We trained
at a very aggressive level and now it’s up
to us to play as we trained. The players
have to believe we can finish in the top
four. They have to believe we can win
away at Everton and I’m pretty sure we
can show that in our performance.”
Cristiano Ronaldo is available after
illness kept him out of the 1-1 draw with
Leicester City last Saturday, Raphaël
Varane, Scott McTominay and Luke
Shaw are missing and there will be a
reshuffle in defence.
Shaw needs minor surgery to remove
two metal bolts that were put in his
right leg after he broke it in 2015. He
also misses games at home to Norwich
City and away to Liverpool and
Arsenal. He featured in both England
games during the international break
but complained of problems and it was
felt that surgery was the best option.
“It came quite unexpectedly to me
and to our medical department,” Ran-
gnick said. “He played against Leicester
and five minutes before half-time he
had an issue and had to be treated on
the pitch. At half-time the doctor said
he could not continue.”Frank Lampard has said the threat of
the sack is an ever-present element of
modern management and that he is not
worried about his Everton tenure being
ended prematurely.
Instead, he is more concerned with
his struggling Everton side adding a
“nasty” streak to their performances,
starting with Manchester United today,
as they aim to prolong their 68-year
stay in the top flight.
The 3-2 defeat by Burnley on
Wednesday has heightened fears
among the club’s supporters that Ever-
ton will be relegated. Lampard has
collected only six points from his nine
matches in charge.
The Merseyside club sit in 17th place,
but are only one point above the drop-
zone, having been 16th and four points
clear when Lampard was appointed at
the end of January.
Lampard is Everton’s seventh per-
manent manager since May 2016 with
the owner, Farhad Moshiri, having
veered from one appointment to
another in a fruitless and expensive
search for success.
There have been talks between Lam-
pard and Moshiri, plus the chairman
Bill Kenwright, this week and the club is
continuing to back the former England
midfielder.
Yet Lampard — whose team do not
play again for ten days after United’s
visit — accepts the discussion around
his future is inevitable.
“In my relatively short managerial
career, I probably spent 18 months at
Chelsea with the same,” he said. “For
18 months, you are probably two games
from the sack. Maybe that is a symptom
of football and the Premier League.
“That’s pressure. No problem, you
sign up for that. I have no problem with
that. Even if you get to an FA Cup final,
and make the top four, you still know
the rules. I can’t control it, so I can’t
worry about it. I have tried to answer it
honestly, I am not stupid.
“You take up a job as a manager in the
Premier League, and maybe in the situ-
ation I came into here or at Chelsea,
where I go into it with a [transfer] ban,
and half a team of kids who were
playing in the Championship the year
before, yet the expectation was we
finish in the top four.
“That’s just the reality of the job we
do. So in that sense I’m not worried. I
am just worried I get my job right.
“I am just worried about picking the
right team as I see it. The people who
want to fight and give everything to the
club, to win a result. I have spoken to the
owner and chairman this week, but
don’t want to go into what we said. I
speak to them regularly, particularly
the chairman. I have a really good rela-
tionship with him.”
The defeats by West Ham United and
Burnley over the past week have not
dismayed Lampard in so far as he spot-the times | Saturday April 9 2022 1GS 9
THEBRIEFING
All the Premier League news and quotes
Arteta has no regrets over player exits
Mikel Arteta has
said he has no
regrets about
trimming Arsenal’s
squad by five players
in January despite
losing two senior
players to injury.
(Gary Jacob writes).
Arteta let four
defenders leave,
owing to their lack of
gametime, and
Pierre-Emerick
Aubameyang
followed after he fell
out with the manager.
With Kieran
Tierney and Thomas
Partey both
potentially out for the
season, Arteta might
have to play the
young pair of Albert
Sambi Lokonga and
Nuno Tavares againstBrighton and Hove
Albion today.
“They were players
that we did not really
use,” Arteta said of
Arsenal’s departures
in the January
transfer window.
“You put them in
the context now — I
don’t know howmuch they would
have played. You
don’t know; I don’t
know. We made a
decision on what we
believed was the right
thing to do for the
club, team, and the
individual players
that were asking for
the opportunity to
play because they
didn’t have any
minutes in several
months.”
Arteta could offer
no assurances that
Partey will play again
this season after the
midfielder suffered a
“significant” thigh
injury, and Tierney,
the left back, has
already been ruled
out after a knee
operation.Beware of
karma, saysMoyes
David Moyes,
the West Ham
United manager,
expects Moussa
Dembélé to
experience payback
after the Lyons
forward was caught
winking over Aaron
Cresswell’s red card in
their Europa League
quarter-final first leg.
Dembélé was
brought down by
Cresswell — leading
to a dubious red card
— and Moyes offered
the Frenchman a
stark warning.
“This game has got
a strange way of
coming back to catch
you, you just never
know,” Moyes said.
“You can see the
action...Unfortunately
it happened and it
didn’t help us.”Rodgers to
ring the
changes
Brendan
Rodgers, the
Leicester City head
coach, has said he will
make changes against
Crystal Palace
tomorrow owing to
fixture congestion.
Leicester drew 0-0
with PSV Eindhoven
in their Europa
Conference League
quarter-final first leg
on Thursday, and the
game against Palace
is their third of eight
fixtures this month.
“The same team
won’t play every
game,” Rodgers said.
“The attitude of the
players would always
be first class, but the
game is about energy,
intensity, urgency, so
for that, naturally, we
would have to make
changes.”Dyche takes tips from Jones
Sean Dyche, the
Burnley
manager, is taking
inspiration from the
England rugby head
coach Eddie Jones in
his side’s fight against
relegation.
Burnley are 18th in
the table before
tomorrow’s clash
against bottom-
placed Norwich City,
but they find
themselves only one
point behind Everton
after beating Frank
Lampard’s team 3-2on Wednesday.
“These are tough
games, the ‘hard
yards’, as Eddie Jones
terms it when I speak
to him,” Dyche said.
“He always says it’s
the hard yards, and
that’s important over
a season. Doing the
hard graft, the miles,
the details, putting in
the mental and prep
effort, players giving
up a lot at this time of
the season to zone in
and give everything
to the cause.”20
Son Heung-Min,
right, will hope to
extend an impressive
record for Tottenham
Hotspur against Aston
Villa today — he has
scored and assisted in
20 Premier League
games for
Tottenham
Hotspur. Since
his debut, only
Mohamed Salah at
Liverpool has done so
more often (23 games).“I would say [it’s] congenial, maybe
too congenial for me... It’s hard for
me to sometimes be friendly with
competitors because in my mind I
want to not like them.”
LEEDS UNITED’S JESSE MARSCH ON THE
MANAGERIAL ENVIRONMENT IN ENGLANDRoma coach
assault claim
One of José Mourinho’s assistants at AS
Roma may be reported to the police
after being accused of grabbing the
Bodo/Glimt manager Kjetil Knutsen
by the throat after an ill-tempered
Europa Conference League match in
Norway on Thursday.
After their 2-1 quarter final first-leg
defeat, at the ground where Roma suf-
fered a humiliating 6-1 loss in the group
stages back in October, the Italian side’s
captain Lorenzo Pellegrini said Roma’s
goalkeeping coach Nuno Santos had
been attacked.
But Knutsen said: “Everything cul-
minated in a physical attack on me in
the tunnel. Usually I’m so calm by na-
ture that I would withdraw. In this case,
I was physically attacked. He [Santos]
grabbed me by the throat and pushed
me into the wall. It is only natural that
I then had to defend myself.”
Pellegrini had said: “Even their coach
attacked our goalkeeper. It is an insult.”
Bodo said they would report the inci-
dent, which is being investigated by Ue-
fa, to the police, but the local authorities
said they were yet to receive anything.
Mourinho was also unhappy with the
artificial pitch in Norway, blaming the
synthetic surface for the injury that
forced defender Gianluca Mancini to
be substituted.I am always two games
from sack, says Lampard
Paul Joyce
ted signs of improvement in the way his
team are performing. Individual errors
were responsible for both losses.
He also stood up for his players, but
acknowledged results must improve.
“I want to defend the players, they are
a good group of players,” he said.
“People can talk about how many
leaders [there are], how nasty they are,
that sort of thing, but I know that the
players have a real desire to get out of
this situation, and they are really recep-
tive to everything you say.
“We are in this position for a reason.
You look at other teams around us. Roy
Hodgson comes in [at Watford], an
incredible manager who I played under
for England, [and] they are in a relega-
tion battle like we are.
“Dean Smith [at Norwich City] and
Sean Dyche [at Burnley] are in a relega-
tion battle. It should be no different for
Everton because of our name and the
70 years we haven’t been relegated for.
I just have to keep working and trust
that good work will get good results.”Lampard says he will “trust that good work will get good results” for Everton