I like and respect Roy Keane but I thought he was completely wrong when he laid into Tottenham’s full-backs after their defeat by Liverpool.
Spurs played well and if Heung-min Son’s effort had gone in rather than hitting the bar it would have been 2-0 and Liverpool wouldn’t have been winning because it would have been too much of a mountain to climb.
What I really like about this Liverpool side is the character they are showing to win games and I want to put up a hand and say I got Jordan Henderson when I questioned him 18 months ago.
He’s not the world’s greatest midfielder but he enables those around him to flourish and thrive, and he looks the ultimate team player.
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When I was at Nottingham Forest, Steve Stone was the same and those players are important because you look at them and say, ‘I know what I’m going to get today, and if he’s buzzing around and winning the ball, that’s good enough for me because it enables me to do what I do’.
Liverpool have two players like that in Henderson and James Milner, and they are lucky to have them.
Rashford proves his worth
(Image: Joe Toth/BPI/REX)
Marcus Rashford’s goal for Manchester United against Norwich made a mockery of suggestions he can’t play as a centre-forward.
Touch, movement, finish: tick, tick, tick.
Jose Mourinho reckons Rashford doesn’t have what it takes to play through the middle but maybe if he and some of the United coaches had actually coached the lad as a striker, he’d have scored plenty more of those types of goals.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer should play him and Anthony Martial at the top of a good, old-fashioned 4-4-2, let them have 10 games together as a partnership and watch them thrive.
Leicester aiming for top four
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Even before Leicester’s 9-0 mauling of Southampton on Friday we knew there were more good times ahead.
But rather than just aiming to be the best of the rest now they should be aiming for the top four again this season.
A lot of people have credited Brendan Rodgers for the way he has brought the kids on since he pitched up at the King Power Stadium.
But his best work has actually been in putting an arm round Jamie Vardy, who is not only scoring for fun but running the dressing room, something Claude Puel mistakenly tried to break up.
VAR nightmare getting worse
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Wilfried Zaha’s penalty and Sokratis Papastathopoulos’s cancelled-out ‘winner’ was further proof that my VAR dream is shattered.
It wasn’t a foul by by Calum Chambers, Zaha looked for contact and dived, and referee Martin Atkinson was bang on in not awarding the spot-kick and booking the Crystal Palace star.
And as for Sokratis’s late effort, it was just handbags in the box, there was no clear foul by anyone, and the goal should have stood.
It’s as if the guys at Stockley Park have now been spooked by the number of times referees have come to them to make a decision and, week by week, the nightmare VAR has become is getting worse.
The elite professional game has never looked more amateur.
