Steve

City have played a similar amount as games as Arsenal but the reason why their players seem fresher (ignore the fact that they bought 2 of the best players in the league in Jan) right now & Arsenal’s seem a bit heavy legged, Jaded & injured is down to Mikel & there’s no sugar coating it. It’s not about rotation, the best players in title winning teams play almost every game, older players like Salah & Van Djik last year for example, it’s the style of football. He’s been obsessed with playing fine margins football, I’ve moaned about it all season, we’ve wasted so many halves being passive and taken so many games into being tight wins that our players are at max effort for 90 mins most games, every 3 days a week. Compare that to City who will play front foot football, try and get games won by the hour then use their squad to make changes, our squads are a similar size. The point of players like Norgaard & Madueke was not to start games, it was to take mins off our starters (outside of domestic cups) but we’ve rarely been in positions to make that type of change because we’ve often been dragging the arse out of games, we’ve done it with Saka from time to time but not had the opportunity to do it enough because of game state. Way too many wasted first halves trying to control a game without going anywhere & now it may be starting to bite. Let’s hope we get over the line & don’t ruin a whole seasons work but if it does go tits up, that’s what I’ll be looking at more than anything else. Players on 250-300k a week should be playing every game, they don’t have to rest their way through a season being babied but they should also be managed better, fast starts allows it, wasted first halves with every game being on a knife edge doesn’t, the mental & physical fatigue is what could derail this & sadly that is self inflicted.

Trump shares image depicting himself as Jesus Christ.

Curt Cignetti: "Are there eight draft picks on this team? Probably not. But the whole was better than the sum of its parts." ... Something no coach in my professional career could say while sitting at the podium victorious after winning the national title. Indiana changed the sport today. It made this message clear: Any program in the country can do it if it's done right.