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Start deleting those posts now. Take the mocking videos down from YouTube and adopt the brace position, Florian Wirtz hate-watchers. Liverpool’s transfer brains trust might have been onto something after all.

Wirtz has been getting better for weeks but a majestic performance in the Sunderland maelstrom felt massive. For a start it moved Liverpool closer to the promised land of Champions League qualification, which is surely a non-negotiable if Arne Slot is to cling onto his job after a desperately patchy title defence.

More than that, it was a sign that Wirtz looks increasingly able to handle everything the Premier League chucks at him. A cold, wet night on Wearside against hosts who hadn’t lost a game at home this season? Completed it, mate.

No one has ever doubted Wirtz’s ability but there was a time when he would have looked lost in a game like this.

Sunderland are typical of the Premier League’s shift this season to a whir of endless energy, physicality and a tenacious press but on Wednesday night Wirtz seemed to have all the answers.

Liverpool find the breakthrough at the Stadium of Light!

Virgil van Dijk's header deflects off Habib Diarra and goes in

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That sound you hear is the rest of the Premier League gulping. If he has found his rhythm it is going to be a problem for Liverpool’s rivals.

It is also a lesson for those who put the boot in early on, especially the likes of Jamie Carragher, who really should have known better. The former Liverpool defender is a thoughtful, studious pundit but it is only four months since he said that Wirtz’s slow start was an ominous sign, claiming that foreign signings either adapted early or withered on the vine at Anfield.

Carragher has changed his tune since, describing Wirtz as a “special player”. But the Reds have kept the receipts and it is a reminder that we need to be a little bit more patient, even with players who cost £116m.

For Slot, Wirtz’s revival might end up being a double-edged sword.

Liverpool insist Slot is their long-term choice but the red lights will be flashing on the dashboard at the prospect of missing out on the Champions League riches. Winning the Premier League buys him time but the bottom line demands they finish in the top five at the very least.

So far this season he has been able to fall back on the mitigation that Liverpool’s inconsistency is down to new players taking time to settle. Alexander Isak, who arrived half-fit after his ill-advised strike action, has struggled to match sky-high expectations.

But now Wirtz is playing well, what is Liverpool’s excuse?

They were much better at Sunderland as they claimed the last unbeaten home record in the Premier League but an inability to finish off opponents they had dominated felt very familiar. Slot’s men have been having an identity crisis all season – neither the all-encompassing press monsters of Jurgen Klopp’s day or the masters of control that their head coach hopes they can become.

With Wirtz pulling the strings, there is an opportunity for them to blossom in the second half of the season, and, if they do not, it calls Slot’s stewardship into question. He cannot justify finishing sixth with a star like Wirtz in his starting XI.

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There was a delicious irony to Sean Dyche being sacked after Nottingham Forest had 35 shots and failed to score. It was the most a Dyche team has ever managed in a Premier League match. Are you not entertained?

Well no, not really Sean. Lots of them were from outside the box and there were still long periods during which a half-decent team did not really know what to do differently. You were here because the results were king and the results turned.

This was not an evening for hard luck stories even if they carried some weight. This unhappy marriage of convenience had begun to turn sour and three winnable league matches – Crystal Palace, Leeds, Wolves – were sold as saving the season before a tricky run. Forest took two points from the three and may well now be relegated.

The age-old Dychian equilibrium: before then the results have been OK and the performances have not. Nottingham Forest sat 14th in a Premier League table since his appointment before Wednesday. It is just that the shambolic defeats to Leeds United, Brighton and Everton (twice) tend to stick longer in the mind. He will claim that he is being misjudged.

His critics will point out that he always said he would change style with better players. There were reports of players being unhappy with training methods and Dyche calling out the backups after they performed unacceptably at Wrexham in the FA Cup. This never really felt like it would work beyond emergency avoidance and that is no way to live when you just finished seventh in the Premier League. It is as baffling as everything else is within this club.

The atmosphere has changed at the City Ground over the course of 2025-26, but can you blame the supporters? It is not entitlement and it is not even deliberate. They have no idea what to think, simply split into factions as their club lurches between managerial styles and recruitment scatterguns.

On Wednesday, they jeered when expensive summer signings failed to do the basics and booed loudly at full-time. The television cameras immediately panned to Forest’s manager, who attempted half an applause before thinking much better of it and heading down the tunnel. Keep on walking, Sean.

That tenseness, the psychodrama of supporting Forest, is unhelpful and exhausting. It is also undeniable. Every game here is presented as a day of judgement, the emperor waiting to raise his thumb up or down while the braying masses have their own say to try and shift the agenda. With a third of the season still to go, they are onto their fourth manager of the season, another guy forced to run from the lions.

And that is on the club. Ambition can lift you up but it can also tie you down with a weight around your legs. Tell your people that you intend them to live out their dreams and do not act surprised when hard, unpleasant reality goes down badly. Dyche is many things but a purveyor of escapism has never been one of them. It runs beyond who is picking and guiding the team when an entire club perennially feels three games away from existential crisis.

The irony does not so much ring here as explode. In July, the intention of the club was for Nuno Espirito Santo to overhaul the aesthetics of this team on the pitch, marrying success and front-foot football rather than one or the other. There is a sporting chance that Nuno could relegate Forest playing his way while Dyche, and his own distinct style, played a large hand in taking Forest down.

You can present this season as a series of unfortunate events, mistakes that get piled on top of mistakes as you chase your tail trying to fix the first one. You appoint a sporting director who falls out with your fine manager. You appoint a tactical dogmatist and he never wins a game. So you appoint the firefighter and it ends with him playing with matches. Vitor Pereira may well be next.

Maybe this all gets sorted out. Maybe West Ham’s revival peters away. Maybe the new manager somehow navigates Liverpool, Manchester City and Fenerbahce (twice) in his first four games and maintains a gap to the dreaded dotted line. Maybe, maybe.

But right now, Nottingham Forest appear as a how-to guide for getting unexpectedly relegated: backing the wrong people as decision-makers, eroding an environment that worked, wasting your revenue in the transfer market, haphazardly darting between managerial personalities and then left with little option but to try the whole thing again. This is what they do around here. The appropriate punishment may come in May and they will deserve it.

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The Championship play-offs, the undisputed peak of the EFL’s season drama, could be changing for the first time since 1990. Then, the two-legged finals were abandoned for a showpiece occasion increasingly headlined principally for how much money its winner will make. 

Next month, according to a report in The Times, the 24 clubs will vote on whether to expand the play-offs from four teams to six. The format would mimic that in the National League, where fifth and sixth play seventh and eighth at home with the winner meeting third and fourth as usual in the semi-finals.

You can see why the EFL and its principal broadcaster and sponsors would be keen: more games, more knockout matches, more revenue, more interest. Play-off matches tend to be their most-watched (outside occasional local derby exceptions) and in the last few years have almost always delivered moments of astounding drama.  

We should also say: it will almost certainly be upvoted and thus introduced. The effective question to owners of football clubs in a league where desperation culture is probably higher than anywhere else in world football is “Do you want two extra chances of promotion?” The answer is going to be “Yes” in 24 different ways. 

I understand the desire for greater jeopardy, which is sold as the driving influence. Two years ago, 14 of the 24 Championship clubs avoided the top six and bottom three by at least three points. The Championship has a lower percentage of “active” positions (nine of 24 either go down, up or make the play-offs) than the Premier League (replace play-offs with European qualification) and League One. It has the same number as League Two, but three teams being relegated from that division is long overdue.

It also strongly assists the Championship’s “stuck” clubs, intended as a description in some cases and a slur in others. Stoke City, Millwall, Preston and Queens Park Rangers have all finished below sixth in each of the last seven to 10 seasons. Offering extra incentive to move away from a funk – although Millwall have done that themselves this season – could inspire greater flow between divisions. New Premier League teams is a good thing.

The losers are the teams who finish fifth and sixth, who now have a two-legged semi-final and will get an extra fixture at the end of a brutally long league season before facing one of two teams that have had an extra week’s rest. Perhaps you consider that to be just reward for finishing higher, but it nags away at me.

There are three obvious issues with this proposal. The first is a basic question of fairness: should a team that finishes eighth in a 24-team league, on average winning 18 of their 46 games and taking points at a rate of 1.44 per match, have a shot at promotion? In the last two seasons, eighth has finished 24 and 21 points behind third. That is a vast gap established over more than eight months to reduce it to two ties, given how misfortune or controversy can swing them. 

I also have misgivings about how this alters competition and mindset within the division – make the play-offs appear even more important and you risk reducing the intrigue of the league season, not increasing it. With two extra spots, it is easy to envisage a team going behind away at a strong opposition and half-playing the match to preserve energy for more realistic opportunities to win. The last thing the Championship needs is more clubs getting 100 points or more. 

But more than all of that, the play-offs are perfect as they are. It is, repeatedly, the most extraordinary drama in English football. Watch the denouement of Coventry vs Sunderland and Sunderland vs Sheffield United from last season; if you can find fault then your standards are too high. 

Anything that interferes with that glorious equilibrium – more matches, more fatigue and injuries – represents a risk. Everybody in power only ever seems to argue for more football because more automatically means better. That is often proven false by hindsight. I hope that the integrity of the Championship play-offs are not being damaged; that is the danger.

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Thomas Frank was axed by Tottenham after a chaotic six weeks in which players were left baffled by his tactics and the club was plunged into a relegation battle.

A number of players felt they could no longer support him as Frank departed with the worst win rate in Spurs’ Premier League history. Tuesday’s toxic 2-1 home defeat to Newcastle United was their 11th loss of the season and left them just five points above the drop zone.

The i Paper understands a number of players felt they did not always understand what they were being asked to do and were left confused by a negative approach in what they perceived as winnable games.

Cristian Romero’s recent social media posts, which appeared to criticise the board for a lack of investment in the squad, had support from others in the dressing room, particularly as the club’s injury crisis worsened over the winter.

At least two players voiced a desire to leave in January, with Mathys Tel going public in his hope of a loan spell to gain more minutes. Frank had limited his opportunities and initially left him out of the Champions League squad altogether for the league phase and knockouts due to limits on squad size and homegrown player requirements.

Inside Spurs there was some sympathy with Frank on two counts. The board agreed with his assessment that this was always going to be a transitional season after finishing 17th last term (though Ange Postecoglou had also won the Europa League).

Injuries were also seen as a major factor in Tottenham’s plight. Frank never had a fully fit squad to choose from as he oversaw just two home league wins, with Dejan Kulusevski and James Maddison missing the entire season so far and Dominic Solanke facing long spells out.

Frank had an especially strong relationship with sporting director Johan Lange, a fellow Dane. He also had regular lunches with chief executive Vinai Venkatesham, as well as Nick Beucher – a key powerbroker representing the Lewis family who own the club.

The i Paper was told contingency plans were first made after the shock defeat to West Ham on 17 January. That was the first indication that it had been accepted the appointment – made under previous chairman Daniel Levy – had not worked out, but he stayed in place to buy more time.

Levy’s exit in September further complicated matters. There has been ongoing speculation around a takeover and Levy still owns a 29.88 per cent share in the ownership group Enic.

Since Ventakesham took a more prominent role, with non-executive chairman Peter Charrington less involved in the day-to-day running, there have been a number of major changes.

Former Arsenal CEO Venkatesham plans to overhaul the wage structure to attract more high-profile players, but in keeping with the rest of the top flight Spurs had a relatively quiet January, signing just two players – Souza and Conor Gallagher – and buying no attackers, despite it being the most urgent requirement.

The threat of relegation and its financial implications after just two wins in 17 games is now very real and that is what forced a decision. Spurs had already been knocked out of both domestic cups by January, though they have enjoyed some respite in Europe.

Fans had frequently voiced their fury at Frank over his eight months in charge, goading him with chants of “sacked in the morning” again this week and singing the name of Mauricio Pochettino, one of the favourites to replace him after he leads the USA into this summer’s World Cup.

While Frank’s relationship with supporters strained by him claiming that those who booed Guglielmo Vicario for his error against Fulham were “not true Tottenham fans”, there was some understanding in the club as to why he said it. It was interpreted as him backing the goalkeeper rather than a deliberate effort to attack the fans.

That anger came to a head – and came very close to home for the board – against West Ham, when one fan confronted senior managing director Vivienne Lewis near the hospitality section after the final whistle.

Spurs have a window to decide on their next appointment as they do not play again until they face Arsenal on 22 February. The i Paper understands there is no prospect of procuring Andoni Iraola from Bournemouth in mid-season. Ex-Brighton boss Roberto De Zerbi is available after leaving Marseille and former Spurs striker Robbie Keane, now managing Hungarian side Ferencvaros, has also been linked.

It took Frank’s position becoming untenable for Spurs to begin the hunt for their third manager in nine months – one who will keep them from crashing into the Championship.

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Words, words and more words, not one of which made any difference to a league table recording the inexorable slide of Tottenham Hotspur. Thomas Frank gave arguably the best performance of any on another depressing night for Spurs, treating with patience and respect every question that came his way, but it was not enough to save him.

Had his inquisitor with the TNT mic joined the chorus promising the prophetic sack in the morning he could not have been more deliberate in his provocations. It felt gratuitous but Frank did not falter, countering every journalistic thrust with explanations if not answers. It is clear he did not have any of those.

He cited injuries, 11 before the game and another to Wilson Odobert after 35 minutes. He referenced a lack of confidence. The players would, he said, be unstinting in their preparations for the north London derby on 22 February, assuming he would still at the wheel by then.

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Frank was, as he also pointed out, just one cog in a system that was already failing. The interrogation continued in the Spurs media suite which hosted exactly the same trial a year ago when Ange Postecoglou was in the dock. Big Ange offered mitigations. There were none then, not even a European trophy saved him, and there are none now with Spurs holed up in 16th place, just five points clear of the bottom three.

Had Benjamin Sesko not smashed Manchester United level in added time at West Ham, the Hammers would have closed to within three points. As it is Nuno and the lads sense the panic gripping their London neighbours.

The fans were done with Frank, no matter how sincere his pledge to fight. His presence had become counter productive, the lack of buy-in from the players and the supporters contributing to the negative spiral. It seemed a cruelty to keep him in post as long as they did when it is clear he had lost what power he had to influence those around him.

These moments carry their own ritual elements, a football manager hung, drawn and quartered for our entertainment like a medieval execution, the spectacle intended to gather up the blame and dump it on the defendant, leaving the higher-ups in the clear. Again.

The blurb just a few months ago when Spurs unveiled a new structure aimed at “sustained high performance” powered by a “modernised football operation” under technical director Johan Lange promised rebirth befitting the palatial setting. A jargon-led Spurs fit for the future.

A relegation fight was not mentioned in that brochure, but that is the reality now. Despite finishing 17th, Postecoglou was spared that fate by the hopeless cases beneath him, Leicester, Ipswich and Southampton too far gone to survive.

Whilst Wolves and Burnley appear irretrievable in 2026, Spurs are left to dog it out with West Ham, Nottingham Forest, Leeds, Brighton and Crystal Palace to avoid the Championship. And of that cohort Spurs appear the most fragile alongside Forest. At least Sean Dyche knows the terrain.

Football does not have the patience Frank demanded. It is not like the corporate environment that today’s ownership structures ape. Fans aren’t customers, no matter the desire to make them so. The atmosphere against Newcastle hung like sacks of coal on the backs of the players.

A group that looked organised and plausible at Old Trafford a week prior before the immolation of skipper Cristian Romero, were hesitant and fearful against Newcastle, rolling over against a team dealing with its own strife.

Frank is clearly a capable coach and were he working in a laboratory under stable conditions would work it all out. But in this game the men and women in white coats respond to mood not fact, and come for you at the first sign of trouble.

It would have been an astonishing act of faith were Spurs to have stood by Frank. Like it or not he was part of the problem, unable to counter the forces dragging everybody down. Getting rid of him might not work. Keeping him felt like a guarantee it wouldn’t.

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This weekend, Wigan Athletic travel to the Emirates to face the best team in the country away from home in the FA Cup. It recreates memories of old Wigan, successful Wigan, competing with giants as equals.

In April 2012, Roberto Martinez’s team won a Premier League game there as part of their late-season great escape. The following year, a first major trophy but relegation. And then everything fell apart. 

There had been too much chaos here for too long. Between 2013 and 2023, Wigan won their only major honour, suffered five relegations, enjoyed three promotions, employed 12 different managers. Hard to even stand still when everything is always moving.

Those managerial decisions were made by five different owners; nothing indicates the chaos and emergency better.

From International Entertainment Corporation (Hong Kong) to Next Leader Fund, another Hong Kong-based consortium that put Wigan Athletic into administration. From the magnificent, club-saving work by Caroline Molyneux and the supporters’ club to Abdulrahman Al-Jasmi and Talal Mubarak al-Hammad, who paid players late and were eventually forced out.

Mike Danson was the saviour, the local businessman made good who agreed to take ownership and try to take Wigan forward. So how is it that it is Danson who is overseeing a club 22nd in League One? That would be Wigan’s lowest finish since 1997 and return fourth-tier football for the first time since the same year.

Once existential threat has subsided, and financial emergency has given way to strategies that aim to reduce repeated annual losses, something else appears that is just as hard to manage: the ordinary. Focus switches to league position, recruitment decisions and failed managers, the stuff that decides seasons rather than saves social institutions.

Last week, Wigan Athletic’s hierarchy publicly backed manager Ryan Lowe. On Saturday, Wigan promptly lost 6-1 at Peterborough United and the club dusted off the corner flag photo and sacked Lowe. You can (generously) credit sporting director Greg Rioch and chief executive Sarah Guilfoyle for their loyalty, but when that turns in an instant it does rather suggest that they have little handle on a perilous situation. 

Lowe, their appointment, did not work out at all: 11 months, 49 matches and a win ratio below one every four matches. The feeling is that the squad should at least have been able to finish mid-table, but then Lowe followed Shaun Maloney for their inability to extract better.

I have read reports from supporters who were at London Road on Saturday. One describes it as “worse than admin”; another says it was his “lowest point in 25 years watching Wigan.” 

It would be easy to accuse those fans of possessing short memories, or even entitlement given everything that came before. But I think that misses the point. There is a fascinating psychodrama that can envelop post-crisis football clubs and their fanbases.

Financial emergencies are grim to experience, but they are also simplifying. A club becomes stripped down to the basics: survival over progress. Players are judged generously simply because they are there at all.

Managers are judged similarly (take Henrik Pedersen at Sheffield Wednesday and his current win percentage of 2.9) due to the enormity of the task. When that threat recedes, mirrors are uncracked and cleaned and a club is left staring at its own reflection again.

It creates an inescapable dichotomy. In crisis, the mood rarely gets toxic (and if it does, that toxicity is directed towards an errant owner). In “ordinary” times, that toxicity grows more quickly and is shared out amongst many supposedly guilty parties. Pride in the club’s existence is warped into frustration at its direction.

Stability has returned to Wigan if you view the club through the wider lens. No longer am I coming here to report upon financial devastation or the piecemeal recovery from it. Players are not being sold to keep the lights on. Supporters are confident that they will at least be able to attend matches in 12 months’ time. For a long while even that felt like a privilege. 

But surviving chaos does not end the challenges, merely reforms them. Neither does it automatically bestow an ability to function efficiently or logically. Tell supporters that you have overcome one mountain and they will ask – as is their right – where the next peak lies and how the club intends to climb it.

And so Wigan Athletic, after all their previous misdirection, arrive at another crossroads. The concerns over those in positions of influence will only ease if they get their next appointment right and reconnect strands that have become disparate. There are obvious ingredients: better communication, better choices, better results. They fought for years to be normal again. Now they are fighting for disappointment to avoid becoming the norm.

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Great news for Peter Shilton, David Beckham and Kyle Walker. All are up for this year’s Pulitzer Prize, by virtue of having played football for England a few times.

That was the logic behind Eni Aluko’s latest two-footer on Ian Wright: that if you have won 105 caps for the Lionesses, you should qualify automatically for the big gigs in journalism and broadcasting. Wright, she said, was not an “ally”, because he refused to give up punditry jobs to make way for her.

In an unspeakable affront to her sensibilities, Aluko was forced to watch England win the Euro 2025 final from the stands, all because the best TV jobs had not been “gate-kept” for women.

Wright may be a man who has supported the women’s game for more than 30 years, long before it was lucrative or fashionable to do so, but he is still a man – Aluko appears to think that alone should have seen him barred from the stadium.

Here’s the reason Aluko’s comments are so damaging. For no reason other than ego, they seek to stifle the growth of a sport that is meant to be flourishing. Those who genuinely want to see women’s football thrive should be encouraging people of all genders, ages and persuasions to engage with it. ITV are lucky to have Wright, one of the most popular pundits in the country, to help them do that.

But whatever the intention, what Aluko said is disparaging to women too. It implies female pundits and presenters have been selected because of their anatomy rather than their ability. Pundits like Alex Scott already have to deal with constant insinuations that they have been appointed only as a token woman.

Another superb broadcaster, Laura Woods, replied deftly on social media: “Caps don’t win automatic work and they don’t make a brilliant pundit… The way you communicate, articulate yourself, do your research, inform your audience, how likeable you are and the chemistry you have with your panel are what makes a brilliant pundit.

“‘The women’s game should be by women for women’, is one of the most damaging phrases I’ve heard.”

As Aluko doubled down on Talksport, panellist Simon Jordan put it pretty well too: “The sheer weight of entitlement you seem to believe you have would sink the weight of the Titanic”.

That one will have stung. Aluko is not keen on entitlement – in fact she once insisted that those whose incomes were decimated by the pandemic were indulging in a “do-nothing” mentality by relying on the Government’s furlough scheme. The next day, she apologised

These are infinitely weird hills to die on and just prove Woods’s point – that pundits will only get work if they are popular.

Aluko’s sad descent into a pantomime villain has obscured her voice on more valuable subjects. She has spoken bravely about the difficulties faced by black women in sports media and has previously said she did not believe men’s football was a “safe space” for women. Many women will disagree but that should not discount her telling of her own experiences.

Last year, Aluko also suffered appalling online abuse at the hands of Joey Barton, for which he was prosecuted.

Men like Barton and Mark Sampson, the former England coach whom she accused of racism and harassment, are the real enemies of women’s football. Not Wright.

Aluko insists she has “nothing against Ian” but suggested his failure to accept her apology 10 months ago, the last time she criticised him for working in the women’s game, had “greenlit further abuse”.

You have to wonder how she might speak about people she does have something against. Instead it comes across as another act of needless self-sabotage.

In the same way that sports journalists do not necessarily make very good footballers (something to which I can attest), elite players do not always translate their abilities into the studio. On the contrary, Match of the Day’s post-Lineker success has been built on the humour, knowledge and insights of Mark Chapman, Kelly Cates and Gabby Logan – none of whom played the game professionally.

Wright goes even further by campaigning for girls to be given equal access to football in PE. One of the great joys of the past few years has been the sight of men and boys with female players’ names on the back of their shirts. Excluding Wright would be a message that they are not welcome, when the vast majority of people in the women’s game say that they are. That is why Aluko’s one-woman crusade is going to fail.

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