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Mandel’s Final Thoughts: Kirby Smart’s Georgia defense unleashes havoc on Texas offense

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Mandel’s Final Thoughts: Kirby Smart’s Georgia defense unleashes havoc on Texas offense

And now, 20 Final Thoughts from a college football weekend filled with wild comebacks, big-time performances and one heck of a mess to clean up off the field in Austin.

1. All the gentlemen who made picks on ESPN’s “College GameDay” set Saturday morning said No. 1 Texas would beat No. 5 Georgia that night. It was a perfectly reasonable prediction based on how both teams had looked in the weeks leading up to their showdown.

Unfortunately for them, past performance does not guarantee future results, especially when college players are involved.

2. In front of a stadium-record 105,215 fans, Kirby Smart’s Bulldogs (6-1, 4-1 SEC) unleashed the most havoc-wreaking defensive performance of the season in a 30-15 win. It got so bad, so fast for Texas (6-1, 2-1 SEC), trailing 20-0 in the second quarter, that Steve Sarkisian briefly benched starting quarterback Quinn Ewers for Arch Manning, only to go back to Ewers after two series. Neither had a chance, given the Horns offensive line had no answers for Georgia pass rushers Jalon Walker (three sacks, four QB hurries), Mykel Williams (two sacks) and Damon Wilson II (one strip-sack).

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This was precisely the Georgia juggernaut many envisioned when it was designated the preseason No. 1 team and again when it blitzed Clemson 34-3 in the season opener. That makes it a mystery where that team went in between. It was only three weeks ago that the Dawgs fell behind Alabama 30-7 at halftime and only a week ago that they allowed 31 points to Mississippi State. But it doesn’t matter now, does it?

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3. Had Texas come back and won, we might have had a ferocious officiating scandal. Late in the third quarter, with Georgia up 23-8, Horns cornerback Jahdae Barron picked off Carson Beck near the sideline and ran it back to the Georgia 9-yard line. Officials initially negated it with a horrendous pass-interference call, at which point Texas students began pelting the field with objects. After a five-minute delay, the officials huddled and eventually, picked up the flag, eliciting much confusion, because defensive pass interference is not reviewable by replay. But this was decided on the field, not in the booth. Ewers threw a touchdown two plays later, only for Beck and Georgia to answer immediately.


Trevor Etienne scored three rushing touchdowns to lead Carson Beck, right, and the Georgia Bulldogs past No. 1 Texas on Saturday. (Tim Warner / Getty Images)

This did not comfort Smart, who said after the game, “Now, we’ve set a precedent that (if) you throw a bunch of stuff on the field and endanger athletes, you can get your call reversed.” To be clear: The final call was the correct one. But the SEC had better act decisively before this becomes a thing.

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4. Georgia may well turn around and lay an egg against Florida in a couple of weeks, but it can afford it. With two wins over current top-10 teams, Georgia has ample margin of error between now and the College Football Playoff. That said, Beck remains cause for concern. He threw three interceptions (two in the first quarter) and finished 23 of 41 for just 175 yards. Beck, who has thrown eight picks in his past four games, is not as comfortable as he was last season when he had ever-reliable targets Brock Bowers and Ladd McConkey.

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5. That Alabama first-half explosion against Georgia on Sept. 28 now looks like an aberration for both sides. No. 11 Tennessee (6-1, 3-1 SEC) salvaged its season and put No. 7 Alabama’s (5-2, 2-2 SEC) season on the brink of disaster with a 24-17 win at Neyland Stadium. Tennessee’s defense has been stellar all season, but this was its masterpiece. Tide star Jalen Milroe completed a season-low 55.6 percent of his passes, threw two interceptions and ran for just 11 yards. Meanwhile, previously struggling Vols quarterback Nico Iamaleava had his signature performance to date, setting up one go-ahead touchdown with a 55-yard pass to Dont’e Thornton Jr. and throwing a 16-yard score to Chris Brazzell II after Alabama reclaimed the lead.

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And, of course, no Tennessee win would be complete without a big Dylan Sampson day. The Vols’ star running back carried 26 times for 139 yards and two TDs.

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6. This is quickly becoming a nightmare first season for Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer. First, he lost to Vanderbilt. Now he’s on the wrong end of the Tide’s earliest second loss since Nick Saban’s first season, in 2007. And goodness, was his team undisciplined. Alabama committed 15 penalties, including a personal foul on receiver Kendrick Law that turned a late fourth-and-7 into a fourth-and-22. The Tide still got the ball back with 1:28 left and a chance to send it to overtime, but Milroe, whose decision-making lately has been shaky, threw a ball into coverage that Will Brooks picked off.

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Milroe, like his coach, has had better days.

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7. While Alabama falters, rival LSU continues to surge. The eighth-ranked Tigers (6-1, 3-0 SEC) went on the road and hammered Arkansas (4-3, 2-2 SEC) 34-10. Freshman Caden Durham (21 carries, 101 yards, three TDs) had his second 100-yard output in three games. But the face of the Tigers this season is remarkable linebacker Whit Weeks. The sophomore had 18 tackles against Ole Miss last week. This week, he turned the entire game with LSU leading 16-10 when he rushed the passer, tipped Taylen Green’s pass into the air, caught the ball and returned it to the 2.

There’s no top-five showdown in the SEC next week, but the stakes are no lower. LSU visits No. 14 Texas A&M (6-1, 4-0 SEC), which beat Mississippi State 34-24. The LSU-A&M winner will be alone in first place in the 16-team conference.

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8. Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione said he gave third-year coach Brent Venables a raise and extension last summer as a sign of “stability and strength” entering the SEC. All it did was make it harder to get out of a problematic situation.

South Carolina (4-3, 2-3 SEC) went to Norman and raced to a 32-3 halftime lead — the largest of any OU opponent in that stadium in 27 years — in handing the Sooners (4-3, 1-3 SEC) a humiliating 35-9 defeat. Oklahoma has scored five offensive touchdowns during its past four games. Venables’ surprise decision during a Sept. 21 loss to Tennessee to bench decorated quarterback Jackson Arnold for true freshman Michael Hawkins Jr. initially provided some hope, but OU went back to Arnold on Saturday after Hawkins committed turnovers on his first three series.

Injuries have decimated the Sooners’ receiving corps, but that’s not the only problem. Venables, who went 6-7 and 10-3 in his first two seasons, is now 11-11 in conference games.

9. Illinois honored the 100th anniversary of Red Grange’s famous six-TD game against Michigan by wearing 1924-style uniforms. Michigan played its part by showcasing a 1924-caliber passing game. The Wolverines’ third attempt at a starting quarterback in Jack Tuttle did little to reverse their fortunes. The No. 22 Illini (6-1, 3-1 Big Ten) won 21-7, marking the second time in three seasons Bret Bielema’s team has won six of its first seven games, and its fan base seems galvanized. A sold-out Memorial Stadium got to see Illinois’ first win over the Wolverines since 2009.

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Meanwhile, Michigan (4-3, 2-2 Big Ten) scored its fewest points in a decade. That’s the best it could muster following an off week.

10. As impressive as Indiana looked during its 6-0 start, I was reticent to use “Indiana” and “Playoff” in the same sentence. Not anymore. The 16th-ranked Hoosiers (7-0, 4-0 Big Ten) smacked Nebraska 56-7, despite star quarterback Kurtis Rourke leaving with a thumb injury. The Huskers (5-2, 2-2 Big Ten) aren’t Oregon, but they did enter the game at 5-1 with a top-10 defense. That didn’t stop IU from averaging nearly 8 yards per play. The Indiana defense produced five turnovers, including three interceptions from Nebraska quarterback Dylan Raiola.

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Rourke’s injury seemed minor, and Indiana now plays two more middling opponents, Washington and Michigan State, before a Nov. 9 home date with Michigan. It could be the biggest game in Bloomington in more than a half-century. According to The Athletic’s model, the Hoosiers now have a 61 percent chance to make the Playoff.

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11. Lincoln Riley forever will get credit for developing Baker Mayfield, Kyler Murray, Jalen Hurts and Caleb Williams. But it now seems those quarterbacks helped mask Riley’s head-coaching shortcomings.

USC’s coach has lost nine of his past 14 games, and somehow, Saturday’s 29-28 defeat at Maryland (4-3, 1-3 Big Ten) was the worst one yet. The Terps were winless in the Big Ten, having lost 37-10 at home to Northwestern eight days earlier. And the Trojans (3-4, 1-4 Big Ten) led 28-22 with two minutes left, facing a fourth-and-1 at the Maryland 24, but rather than trying to get 1 yard, Riley opted to attempt a 41-yard field goal, which the Terps blocked. They then drove for the go-ahead touchdown and stopped USC’s last-ditch drive.

Riley admittedly has suffered some tough luck. All four of USC’s losses came down to the final possession. But this one should have never been a close game to begin with.

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12. Sixth-ranked Miami (7-0, 3-0 ACC) is doing its best to make every week an adventure. The Canes did not need another last-second escape this week at Louisville (4-3, 2-2 ACC). But Cardinals quarterback Tyler Shough (31 of 51 for 342 yards, four TDs, zero INTs) kept pace with Miami star Cam Ward (21 of 32, 319 yards, four TDs, zero INTs) for much of the day until the Canes wrapped up a 52-45 victory. Miami’s defense has been an issue for three straight games, but Ward, who should remain near the top of Heisman Watch lists, is the kind of big-time QB who can help mask deficiencies. The question is, can he do it all the way to an ACC championship?

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13. No. 9 Iowa State (7-0, 4-0 Big 12) and No. 13 BYU (7-0, 4-0 Big 12) are defying the prevailing theory that the Big 12 is wide open. Both remain perfect, thanks to game-winning drives by their quarterbacks and wins by identical scores.

Trailing 35-31 to visiting Oklahoma State (3-4, 0-4 Big Ten) and with his team stuck at its own 38 with fewer than 30 seconds left, BYU’s Jake Retzlaff scrambled 27 yards and two plays later, hit receiver Darius Lassiter for a 35-yard touchdown to prevail 38-35 late Friday night. Retzlaff is hardly a “wow” passer, but he’s a gamer. And BYU’s offense is more explosive now that running backs LJ Martin (20 carries, 120 yards, two TDs) and Hinckley Ropati (six carries, 47 yards) are both healthy.

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And Iowa State found itself in a dogfight at home against visitor UCF (3-4, 1-3 Big 12), which ran for 354 yards against the Cyclones. Trailing 35-30 with 1:47 left, Rocco Becht led his team 80 yards in 11 plays, then converted a two-point conversion for the win. Iowa State is 7-0 for the second time in program history.

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14. Much to the chagrin of its many haters, Colorado (5-2, 3-1 Big 12) is off to just its second 5-2 start since 2005 following a 34-7 rout at Arizona (3-4, 1-3). The Buffs rebounded from last week’s heartbreaking home loss to Kansas State with the best defensive performance of the two-year Deion Sanders era, notching six sacks and three turnovers. Arizona quarterback Noah Fifita threw for just 138 yards.

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CU will play for a bowl berth next week against Cincinnati, which was always the primary goal for Sanders in Year 2. But at this point, he should aim higher than that.

15. In its first game away from home since Sept. 14, No. 12 Notre Dame (6-1) held Georgia Tech’s top-25 rushing offense to 64 yards on 29 attempts in an easy 31-13 win at Mercedes Benz Stadium. Marcus Freeman even pulled out a fake punt and a fake field goal (and both worked).

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Before the season, it seemed possible the Irish might not face many ranked opponents, but they’re 2-0 in those games so far (at Texas A&M and against Louisville) and another Top 25 foe awaits next week at another NFL venue: undefeated Navy at Met-Life Stadium.

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16. Embattled Florida coach Billy Napier refuses to go quietly into the night. In the Gators’ first game since losing veteran quarterback Graham Mertz for the season with an ACL injury, they rode a pair of true freshmen to a 48-20 rout of Kentucky (3-4, 1-4 SEC). Five-star quarterback DJ Lagway completed seven passes, but five of them went for 40-plus yards, and running back Jadan Baugh, making his first career start, ran for 106 yards and a program record-tying five touchdowns.

After an off week, Florida (4-3, 2-2 SEC) begins its long-awaited gauntlet of Georgia, Texas and LSU back-to-back-to-back. So it’s good for Napier he won this one.

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17. Auburn (2-5, 0-4 SEC) is so beatable these days that Missouri quarterback Brady Cook had time to leave in the first quarter, go to the hospital, get an MRI on his ankle, come back and lead 19th-ranked Mizzou (6-1, 2-1 SEC) to two fourth-quarter touchdowns and win 21-17. Cook hit Mookie Cooper for a 78-yard pass to set up a touchdown that cut Auburn’s lead to 17-14, then drove his team 95 yards for the go-ahead score. Cook threw for more yards in a quarter-plus (194) than Auburn quarterback Payton Thorne did the entire game (176). Looking to keep its CFP hopes alive, Mizzou visits Tuscaloosa next week to face a desperate and vulnerable Alabama team.

18. Cincinnati (5-2, 3-1 Big 12) quietly has won three of its first four conference games, with an overtime loss in the other, after shutting down visiting Arizona State 24-14. Second-year coach Scott Satterfield did not engender confidence with his 3-9 debut last season, but the program, which won at least nine games five straight years under the departed Luke Fickell, seems to have stabilized. The Sun Devils (5-2, 2-2 Big 12) missed quarterback Sam Leavitt due to a rib injury. Former Georgia Tech and Nebraska quarterback Jeff Sims was ineffective. Also: Coach Kenny Dillingham was so peeved about missing two field-goal attempts that he vowed to hold an open kicker tryout on Monday.

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19. Michigan State coach Jonathan Smith’s first season has been expectedly rocky, but one of the sport’s most respected offensive coaches showed what he’s all about in the Spartans’ 32-20 home win over Iowa (4-3, 2-2 Big Ten). Smith’s team ran for 212 yards against the Hawkeyes’ normally stingy defense. Talented quarterback Aidan Chiles, who followed Smith from Oregon State, was a big part of the Michigan State (4-3, 2-2 Big Ten) attack with 11 carries for 51 yards. It may be too little, too late for this season, but Chiles may be part of bigger wins down the line.

20. Finally, congrats to FCS No. 2 North Dakota State for ending a five-game losing streak to No. 1 South Dakota State (5-2, 2-1 MVC) in dramatic fashion. The Bison (7-1, 4-0 MVC) trailed 9-7 for the entire second half until Cam Miller drove them 92 yards, culminating in a 20-yard touchdown to RaJa Nelson with 1:49 left. A Logan Kopp interception on the Jackrabbits’ next drive sealed a 13-9 win. The Dakota Marker returns to Fargo for the first time since 2019.

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While impossible to confirm, it’s believed not one single person there suggested the game was meaningless because the FCS has a 24-team playoff.

(Top photo of Julian Humphrey: Tim Warner / Getty Images)

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Man City’s Premier League charges – exploring what their past cases and evidence reveals

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Man City’s Premier League charges – exploring what their past cases and evidence reveals

On February 6, 2023, Manchester City were charged by the Premier League with more than 100 breaches of the competition’s rules.

As champions in six of the past seven seasons, the eventual verdict of an independent commission will have a seismic impact on the Premier League, regardless of which way their decision goes.

Each of the 115 (or more accurately 129) charges is related to the competition’s financial fair play rules, which are complicated and ever-changing — with both sides fighting tooth and nail over the details of each alleged breach.

One key part of the evidence in the bundle is internal emails from Manchester City, published by German newspaper Der Spiegel, which suggest potential wrongdoing. These formed the basis of a UEFA case against City — where the club were initially found guilty, before being cleared in July 2020 by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). You can read that ruling in full here.

In the latest case, the Premier League has since gathered what it believes is further evidence through the process of disclosure. City have insisted throughout the process that they have not broken any regulations.

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That hearing is now over and the three-person panel has gone away to make its judgment. Its decision is expected before the end of the season.

But it is worth explaining exactly what it will be ruling on, so here is an explanation of the charges, broken down, using all the publicly available information and rulings about City’s case and graphic illustrations of the key points.


Fifty-four charges of failure to provide accurate financial information

These charges range over nine seasons, the longest such span of the alleged breaches. A complicating factor is that Premier League rules on this subject are often subtly revised, meaning the information City had to provide might have changed each season.

Generally, this addresses the demand for clubs to release financial information in order to demonstrate their adherence to FFP. Think of it like declaring all of your income so that a correct tax amount can be calculated — failure to do so is an offence.

The below graphic, like all others in this article, is based on the published judgment by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), with its context and the page it refers to noted above each excerpt.

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Fifty-four charges are a lot, but they are all governed by the same principle.

Each individual charge in this section — for example, in 2014-15, City are accused of breaching six Premier League laws — relates to the specifics of what they were expected to provide information on. These include separate financial areas such as revenue, related parties, and operating costs. Effectively, City are alleged to have breached five or six clauses every year for nine years.

But rather than 54 separate cases, there is one key broader question at hand: were all of these figures accurate? To get specific: were Abu Dhabi-owned City reporting the true revenue they were gaining from sponsorship deals with Abu Dhabi-linked companies as they maintain, or only declaring part of it?

Discussion in the Der Spiegel emails as published in the CAS ruling shows City executives discussing cashflow between sponsors and the football club, as well as what they were expected to show for auditing purposes. Under Premier League rules, City were expected to provide “(in) the utmost good faith, accurate financial information that gives a true and fair view of the club’s financial position”.

Initially, Manchester City were found guilty by UEFA’s adjudicatory chamber, which stated it was “comfortably satisfied” that City “did not truthfully declare their sponsorship income as payments purportedly made by sponsors were in reality payments from (owners) ADUG or (Sheikh Mansour).”

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City subsequently appealed the case to CAS, arguing that UEFA, European football’s governing body, was misreading the emails.

In the CAS case, though found guilty by the initial panel, the appeal committee found that they could not consider the legitimacy of the alleged payments from Etisalat because they were time-barred — a barrier which is not expected to affect the Premier League, according to legal experts consulted by The Athletic.

The CAS panel decided that evidence related to the Etisalat sponsorships was time-barred, meaning they could not consider it when making their final judgment.

Two of CAS’ three-man panel dismissed the main charges that City had received disguised payments through Etihad and Etisalat, finding that all claims relating to payments from Etisalat were time-barred, as were some of those from Etihad, and that in any event, the charge of providing incorrect information had not been established.

The Premier League is unlikely to be blocked by time-barring rules in the same way UEFA was, while it is also understood that the legal process of disclosure has resulted in it gaining additional documents than those UEFA had.

If the commission finds on “the balance of probabilities” that City failed to provide accurate financial information, based on misreporting the origin of sponsorship money, the club will be found guilty.

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Fourteen charges of failure to provide accurate details for player and manager payments

This is another alleged example of failing to share correct information for FFP purposes but differs slightly. Rather than being accused of injecting funds into the club by disguising it as sponsorship deals, here City are charged with hiding money being paid out to players and coaches.

Effectively, this has the advantage of being off-the-books, meaning portions of salaries would not count under the FFP cap. The Premier League alleges this occurred between 2009 and 2016.

The most high-profile examples discussed in the leaks from Der Spiegel relate to alleged payments made to manager Roberto Mancini and midfielder Yaya Toure during their days at the club.


(Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images)

In Mancini’s case, City’s then manager signed a deal with Abu Dhabi club Al Jazira — owned, like City, by Sheikh Mansour — which would pay him £1.75million annually for a minimum of four days’ work per year. The Premier League will claim this constituted part of his City salary, with executives at the club (including the chief financial officer and head of finance) sharing emails related to the Al Jazira payments. Mancini and City have always denied any wrongdoing.

With Toure, the questions relate to image-rights payments allegedly made by Sheikh Mansour’s Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG) rather than City themselves, and subsequently were not declared as salary. As with Mancini, club and player deny any wrongdoing.

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Seven (or 21…) charges of breaching profit and sustainability rules

The exact subject matter here is slightly less certain; it is based on information gathered during the Premier League’s investigation rather than the leaked emails. The charges can be split into alleged breaches over three seasons: 2015-16, 2016-17 and 2017-18.

Arguably, this is where it is more accurate to use 129 charges rather than 115 to describe the total number of offences allegedly committed by City. The Premier League has charged them with breaching seven PSR rules in each of those three seasons — during early explanations of the case, these were grouped as a total of seven charges rather than added together to make 21.

The Premier League has not engaged with the media on any aspect of the case since February 2023, including confirming the current number of charges.

While Everton and Nottingham Forest were also charged with breaching PSR rules, their situations are not directly comparable with City’s — those two clubs were subject to an updated Premier League rulebook from 2022-23 onwards and their cases only related to whether they exceeded the maximum allowable loss, where the rules in their entirety are far broader.


Guardiola’s side are still awaiting their fate, but City deny any wrongdoing (James Gill – Danehouse/Getty Images)

Regardless, the Premier League’s historic PSR rules indicate areas in which it may seek to prove wrongdoing by City.

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For example, Rule E.53.2.2 states that a PSR balance sheet should be “to the best of the club’s knowledge and belief, an accurate estimate of future financial performance”. If any of the charges already discussed should be upheld, it is clear how City may be in breach.

Rules E.54-57 relate to related party transactions, which are relevant to the Abu Dhabi-linked sponsorship deals City are alleged to have illicitly struck.

Finally, Rule E.59 relates to the well-known “losses in excess of £105million” limit — again, if previously discussed charges are upheld, a recalculation of City’s PSR submissions with the new figures may find them in breach of this permitted total.


Five charges of failing to comply with UEFA’s FFP regulations

In 2014, City made a deal with UEFA after £118.75million of sponsorship was questioned and the club’s own accounting was rejected. Their settlement saw City repay UEFA €20m from TV revenue, as well as submitting themselves to future spending guardrails. City publicly announced their displeasure with UEFA’s findings.

These charges, however, are slightly different, beginning in the 2013-14 season and continuing until 2017-18. In some sense, this predominantly comes under UEFA’s remit, but the Premier League has its own rules requiring that clubs also follow the continental ones — these are the laws that City are alleged to have broken.

The Premier League has not explained exactly which UEFA rules it is referring to. For example, Rule B.15.6, as it stood from 2014-15 until 2017-18, simply reads: “Membership of the league shall constitute an agreement between the league and each club to be bound by and comply with the statutes and regulations of UEFA”.

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But it is likely to relate to the possibility that if City’s true PSR numbers are found to be different to their publicly declared ones, they break UEFA’s maximum-allowable-loss restrictions as well as those of the Premier League.


Thirty-five charges of failing to cooperate with Premier League investigations

This is straightforward to explain, although 35 is another very high number.

Simply put, the Premier League accuses City of breaking numerous rules related to “acting in good faith” since its investigation began in 2018 — the charges relate to each of the seasons from 2018-19 to 2022-23, inclusive.

They were found to have done similar by UEFA.

Specific rules City are alleged to have broken include the failure to release documents to the Premier League by insisting they are confidential, and not providing “full, complete, and prompt assistance to the (Premier League) board”. City expressed their surprise at this during the initial public comments following the charges, “given the extensive engagement and vast amount of detailed materials that the EPL has been provided with”.

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To get some sense of the mood of this process, one witness who had already been spoken to by City’s lawyers described it as “hardcore”, “aggressive”, and “no-holds-barred” — though this is more illustrative of the enmity between the two sides rather than specifically related to non-cooperation.

Initially, the CFCB hearing found that City had breached Article 56 of its laws by failing to provide requested information and at one point advancing a case that the club’s ownership “must have known to be false”.

City appealed to CAS, stating they did not need to authenticate the leaked emails and arguing they went beyond what was needed in helping the panel.

City's lawyers told CAS they had cooperated as far as was reasonable and had no need to authenticate leaked emails.

However, the CAS upheld the decision of the CFCB, pointing to the club’s failure to provide witnesses, complete copies of the leaked emails, and prevaricating over the identity of the mysterious “Mohamed”.


What comes next?

With closing arguments made on December 6, the three-person commission is now compiling its verdict. The identity of that panel has been tightly guarded.

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There is no set time frame on how quickly it must reach a decision, unlike last season’s PSR cases involving Everton and Forest. Those cases took around a month to reach their judgments, while City’s case is far more wide-reaching and complex.

Nevertheless, all parties expect a decision to be released before the end of the season. With the process governing a case of this scope effectively unprecedented, it is not clear whether City, if guilty, will immediately be given their punishment or whether that will be finalised at a later date. City have denied any wrongdoing throughout.

Both sides have the right to appeal any verdict. English (and European) football awaits.

(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)

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Bill Gates Isn’t Like Those Other Tech Billionaires

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Bill Gates Isn’t Like Those Other Tech Billionaires

The older he gets, the more Bill Gates is surprised by what the world dishes up.

Take billionaires. There are many now from the tech industry, quite a few with politics that skew forcefully right.

“I always thought of Silicon Valley as being left of center,” Mr. Gates said. “The fact that now there is a significant right-of-center group is a surprise to me.”

Or take the evolution of technology in the decades since he began Microsoft and made it one of the world’s most valuable companies.

“Incredible things happened because of sharing information on the internet,” Mr. Gates said. That much he anticipated. But once social media companies like Facebook and Twitter came along, “you see ills that I have to say I did not predict.”

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Political divisiveness accelerated by technology? “I didn’t predict that would happen,” he said. Technology being used as a weapon against the broader public interests? “I didn’t predict that,” he said.

Mr. Gates is a techno-optimist but he has limits, like cryptocurrency. Does it have any use?

“None,” he said. “There are people with high I.Q.s who have fooled themselves on that one.”

Even artificial intelligence, which Mr. Gates has spoken of enthusiastically, and which Microsoft is heavily invested in, produces a few qualms. “Now we have to worry about bad people using A.I.,” he said. (The New York Times has sued Microsoft and its partner OpenAI over copyright infringement; the companies have denied the claims.)

Mr. Gates, who turns 70 this year, is looking back a lot these days. Next week he is publishing “Source Code: My Beginnings,” which examines his childhood. The first of three projected volumes of memoirs, the book has been in the works for at least a decade but arrives at an unusual moment, as the tech billionaires have been unleashed. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg — their success has given them power that they are enthusiastically, even gleefully, using in divisive ways.

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“Source Code: My Beginnings,” which examines Bill Gates’s childhood, is the first of three projected volumes of memoirs.

Thirty years ago, Mr. Gates created the model for the in-your-face tech billionaire. Microsoft in the 1990s supplied the operating system for the personal computers that were increasingly in every home and office, and the company had big plans for this new thing called the web. Mr. Gates and his company were perceived as powerful, ruthless and ubiquitous. Silicon Valley was terrified and even regulators were alarmed, suing Microsoft.

The anti-Microsoft sentiment in popular culture peaked with the 2001 movie “Antitrust,” about a tech chief executive who murders people in his quest for world domination. Reviewers underlined the allusions to Mr. Gates, although they largely panned the film.

The ire is long gone and Mr. Gates has no recollection of “Antitrust.” Among billionaires who generate strong emotions, he said with a hint of relief, “I’m not at the top of the list. The current tech titans would elicit a stronger negative reaction.”

He is a counterpoint to the moguls in the news. “We don’t have a club,” he said. “Nor do we have consensus. Reid Hoffman” — the co-founder of LinkedIn, a Microsoft board member and vocal supporter of former Vice President Kamala Harris — “is a billionaire. You can ask for his point of view. He’ll be glad to critique.”

Mr. Hoffman, who The Times reported in November was considering leaving the country after Ms. Harris’s election loss, did not respond to emails asking for his point of view. But plenty of others in Silicon Valley are watching the transformation of the billionaires into would-be overlords with a horrified fascination.

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“It’s a steady subject of dismal conversation around here,” said Paul Saffo, a longtime tech forecaster. “The consensus is that Bill Gates looks sainted compared to the awfulness afoot.”

When we talked a few weeks ago, Mr. Gates was sitting on the other side of an office table in a rented suite in Indian Wells, Calif., next to the resort town of Palm Springs. Why were we here? It was cold in Seattle, still Mr. Gates’s home when he is not on the move. That was reason enough.

Despite giving many billions of dollars to the Gates Foundation, his philanthropic juggernaut, Mr. Gates remains the 12th-richest person in the world, with personal wealth of over $100 billion, according to Forbes. But his physique isn’t jacked, he does not have his own rocket fleet, and he seems eager to point out that he does not have all the answers.

After we spoke, Mr. Gates was going to President Carter’s funeral. President Carter was an inspiration and a partner; Mr. Gates’s foundation became a big funder of the Carter Center.

In some respects, they resembled each other. Mr. Gates and Mr. Carter each had two distinct careers, both of which took place in the public eye over years. After Mr. Carter was president, he spent more than 40 years doing good works at home and abroad. That second act tended to be reviewed more favorably than the first.

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So too with Mr. Gates, although his divorce from Melinda French Gates in 2021 was a decided setback for his reputation. There was also an unseemly relationship with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

“In India, Japan, China, the American dream is a vaunted thing, of which I am sort of an example,” Mr. Gates said. “And then there’s people who think there shouldn’t be billionaires. There’s people who think I use vaccines to kill children. There’s quite a range of opinions.”

Mr. Gates is the opposite of the reclusive billionaire hidden away on his estate. He recently brought out his second Netflix series, “What’s Next? The Future With Bill Gates.”

The fourth of the five episodes, “Can You Be Too Rich?” had people, including Senator Bernie Sanders, the democratic socialist from Vermont, saying definitively yes. It was a mild but real form of self-criticism that few other billionaires would subject themselves to.

Working on the show didn’t change his mind, though. “Should we outlaw billionaires?” Mr. Gates asked. “My answer to that, and you can say I’m biased, is no.”

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But he supports a tax system that is more progressive. Every year, he adds up the taxes he has paid over his lifetime. He figures he has paid $14 billion, “not counting sales tax.”

Under a better system, he calculates, he would have paid $40 billion. Released in September, “Can You Be Too Rich?” already seems from another era. The answer to Mr. Gates’s question, in an administration staffed by billionaires, is no.

Mr. Gates tries to be nonpolitical but he thought the consequences of the 2024 election were so significant he got involved financially for the first time. He gave $50 million to Future Forward, the principal outside fund-raising group supporting Ms. Harris, The Times reported in October. He didn’t talk publicly about it then and won’t now.

After our conversation, it came out that he had a three-hour dinner with the president-elect at the time, Donald J. Trump, about world health challenges like H.I.V. and polio. “He showed a lot of interest in the issues I brought up,” Mr. Gates told The Wall Street Journal.

This week the Trump administration created confusion over whether it would stop disbursing H.I.V. medications bought with U.S. aid. A spokeswoman for Mr. Gates declined to comment.

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“I will engage this administration just like I did the first Trump administration as best I can,” Mr. Gates said in our interview.

Writing an autobiography is another way Mr. Gates is different from his peers, few of whom seem so introspective. His childhood, in an upper-class enclave in Seattle in the 1960s and early 1970s, is not inherently dramatic.

“A lot of people have the story of what a tough childhood they had, and how that is partly why they’re so competitive,” he said. “I don’t have that.”

What he did have was his mother, Mary Gates. She was remarkably accomplished in an era when most upper-class women were encouraged by society to stay home. The first woman president of King County’s United Way, she later was on the board of the United Way of America; in 1983, she was the first woman to run it.

“She was almost too intense for me,” Mr. Gates said. His father, a lawyer, was more removed but was drawn into the battle of wills.

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There was a period when Bill — he was in sixth grade — was supremely difficult. “I could go days without speaking, emerging from my room only for meals and school,” he writes in “Source Code.” “Call me to dinner, I ignored you. Tell me to pick up my clothes, nope. Clear the table — nothing.”

“I was provoking them,” he said in our interview. “I didn’t think they had any logic for why I had to show respect for them. My mom was pretty pushy about ‘Eat this way,’ and ‘Have these manners,’ and ‘If you’re going to use the ketchup you have to put the ketchup in a bowl and have to put the bowl here.’ She thought of me as pretty sloppy. Because I was.”

It was not really about the ketchup, of course. “I didn’t have any negative feelings toward her but I could pretend to not care what she said in a way that definitely irritated her,” he said. “What was I trying to prove?”

Parents then could not keep tabs on their children if the children were determined. His sister Kristi, he remembers, “was wary of what might go wrong. Whereas I’m like, ‘Hey, what could go wrong?’” Bill spent much of his time programming, often sneaking away at night.

Then something did go wrong, at the end of his junior year in high school. His best friend, Kent, was mountain climbing, fell and died.

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“It was Kent being an independent thinker, pushing his limits,” Mr. Gates said. “His parents worried about him and he was not naturally coordinated. And yet he seemed to be enjoying it and they didn’t stand in his way.”

What Mr. Gates learned from the tragedy was that life can be unfairly bad as well as unfairly good. He was very lucky; Kent was very unlucky.

Mr. Gates said that if his teenage self were diagnosed now, he would probably be told he was on the spectrum. Maybe his mother intuitively understood what he needed. “I wanted to exceed her expectations,” he said. “She was pretty good at always raising the bar.”

Raising the bar is what he consistently did when he and his friend Paul Allen started a company in Albuquerque in 1975 to produce software for the Altair 8800, a rudimentary personal computer. Mr. Gates was barely out of his teens. He soon moved the fledgling operation to the Seattle area, closer to his mother.

Stewart Alsop covered Mr. Gates when he was the editor of InfoWorld, an influential tech magazine of the era. “Bill gave the privilege of having dinner with him solo in Seattle every six months; the price was always coming up with something he hadn’t thought of,” Mr. Alsop said. That was easy as “he had a hard time seeing the world outside of his life.”

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If Mr. Gates is on the spectrum, he now thinks it gave Microsoft an edge. “I didn’t believe in weekends; I didn’t believe in vacations,” he once said. He knew the license plate numbers of his employees so he could check if they tried to go home. It was a model for thousands of tech start-ups to come.

“Source Code” ends with the beginning of Microsoft. Spreadsheets, databases and word processing were primitive tools, but users got an edge in productivity. The future would be better. “We really didn’t see much downside,” Mr. Gates said.

He kept his optimism for a long time. In 2017, he reviewed the book “Homo Deus,” by the Israeli philosopher Yuval Noah Harari. Mr. Gates took issue with the author’s warning about a potential future where the elite upgrade themselves through tech and the masses are left to rot. “This future is not preordained,” Mr. Gates wrote.

Now he is reading Mr. Harari’s latest book. “Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to A.I.” is a critical analysis of our reliance on technology.

“Every smartphone contains more information than the ancient Library of Alexandria and enables its owner to instantaneously connect to billions of other people throughout the world,” Mr. Harari writes. “Yet with all this information circulating at breathtaking speeds, humanity is closer than ever to annihilating itself.”

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Mr. Gates took “Nexus” personally. Mr. Harari “makes fun of people like myself who saw more information as always a good thing,” Mr. Gates said. “I would basically say he’s right and I was wrong.”

(Mr. Harari was unavailable for comment because he was attending a meditation course.)

To be clear, Mr. Gates is not apologizing. He remains a believer in the power and goodness of tech. But for all he resisted them initially, his mother’s lessons are evidently still with him. Mind your manners. Try and do good. And try not to get carried away.

As a billionaire, other people invest you with huge powers, Mr. Gates said. Because you are successful in one sphere, he mused, “they think you’re good at lots of things you’re not good at.”

It almost sounded like a warning.

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Audio produced by Patricia Sulbarán.

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Why Manchester United signing a running coach makes sense – even if it wasn’t Amorim’s call

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Why Manchester United signing a running coach makes sense – even if it wasn’t Amorim’s call

As January transfer window signings go, a 78-year-old American track and field coach is unconventional. For Manchester United and Ruben Amorim, even if it wasn’t the head coach’s call, it actually makes a lot of sense. The appointment of Harry Marra, on a consultancy basis for a few weeks, is designed to improve United individually and collectively at covering ground efficiently and repeatedly.

Marra, who graduated from Syracuse University in 1974 with a master’s degree in physical education and exercise science, is best known for coaching USA decathlete Ashton Eaton to gold at the Olympics (London 2012, Rio 2016) and World Championships (Moscow 2013, Beijing in 2015, where he also got the world record, since beaten). Eaton still holds the world decathlon best over 400 metres (45.00 seconds), and in the top 25 decathlon performances of all time, his 10.23s 100m ranks second.

Marra’s relationship with Eaton dated back to the early 2010s when they worked together at the University of Oregon, where Marra also coached Brianne Theisen to NCAA titles and collegiate records. As a heptathlete, she went on to win an Olympic bronze (Rio 2016) and world silvers (Moscow 2013, Beijing 2015).

Marra also spent over 10 years working simultaneously with the San Francisco Giants baseball team and as USA Track & Field’s decathlon coach.

In 2018, Marra coached Indonesian sprinter Lalu Muhammad Zohri to gold at the World Athletics U20 Championships. With a personal best down to 10.03, Zohri is on the cusp of becoming only the 11th Asian man to break the 10-second barrier in the 100m.

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What’s this got to do with Manchester United? Quite a lot. It’s a sign of Marra’s coaching quality that, over 40 years he has had success with teams, groups and individuals of varying ages, backgrounds, starting levels and resources. If the critique is that his age makes him out of touch, consider the open-mindedness and adaptability he has needed to work with top athletes and teams for longer than Amorim has been alive.


Marra with Eaton in 2016 (Andy Lyons/Getty Images)

More importantly, running more and better is something Amorim wants United to do. “If you want to win the Premier League, you have to run like mad dogs,” he said in December, before a 3-2 defeat against Nottingham Forest, his fifth match in charge. “If not, we are not going to do it (win), that is clear. It’s impossible to win the Premier League without a team that, every moment, runs back, runs forward. Even with the best starting XI, without running, they will not win anything”.

The sports science-led revolution of the late 2000s catalysed a transformation of the Premier League into Europe’s most athletic league, and it’s still increasing in intensity. One study of Premier League games between 2006 and 2013 showed 30 and 35 per cent increases in high-intensity and sprint distances. Another paper found rises of 12 and 15 per cent in the same metrics from 2014-15 to 2018-19. Data from SkillCorner shows the rise has continued. This season, high-intensity distance match averages are 16 per cent up on the 2018-19 campaign. Sprint frequencies have risen by a fifth and sprint distance over 23 per cent.

“It was not me, it was the club,” said Amorim of the appointment of Marra. “We are always trying to bring experienced people to share knowledge with the staff, to understand the body, to understand how you can improve our players. It was not me, it was not something new. He’s not there to coach the team, he’s there to coach the staff about everything about the running, et cetera. It’s a simple thing that we are used to doing to improve as a club.”

Amorim wanting to build a team on intensity and physicality is not new. Tottenham Hotspur, Liverpool and Bournemouth all had or have identities underpinned by pressing and aggressive running. His predecessor, Erik ten Hag, wanted United to be “the best transition team in the world”. He also turned to specialist coaching, appointing Benni McCarthy as a striker coach before Marcus Rashford produced his most prolific season in 2022-23 (30 goals in all competitions).

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Importantly, any specialist sprinting coach is not going to make players significantly faster. Acceleration, power and top speed can be refined but not taught. Those attributes owe so much to a player’s physiological predisposition. That is shown by the career trajectory of elite sprinters, whose talent is obvious in childhood and before deliberate training, and they reach world-class or peak status much earlier than other sports.

Instead, a specialist coach should help identify and minimise issues in mechanics that might lead to injury. Last season, United had the most time-loss injuries in the league and struggled to name a consistent back four. Harry Maguire and Mason Mount, who were injured multiple times, are examples of “problem cases” and “repeat rehabbers”, terms used by Jonas Dodoo, a performance consultant with Brighton & Hove Albion and Newcastle United who specialises in movement and sprint coaching and analysis.

Dodoo, whose background in sprint coaching came in rugby and then athletics, first worked as a performance consultant in football in 2016 with Derby County. He cites Theo Walcott and Tariq Lamptey — two players with notable pace — among the players he has helped rehabilitate. He describes the coaching model he uses as: “Brake, plant, separate. That’s what they need to be able to do.”


Marra coaching Eaton and Theisen in Eugene, Oregon in 2013 (Doug Pensinger/Getty Images)

“They need to be able to brake aggressively and efficiently so that they can plant effectively and separate from their opponents, and run fast,” says Dodoo. “You need to be conditioned to create the types of forces needed, but also need efficiency, and to do that repeatedly — 40, 60 times in the game you might have to accelerate, and the forces are even more stressful in a body in a deceleration.”

Completely altering a player’s mechanics would take the kind of time, training and resources that football rarely offers, but there are still gains to be had when coaching sprinting. “You want to make sure that they can get into the positions and postures needed to decelerate, accelerate and to change direction well,” says Dodoo. “That’s the premise you start (coaching) around. In terms of sprint ability, you can make very quick and effective changes to the first three steps that make sure that they know how to create the forces in the right direction.

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“If you can accelerate very well on your first three steps and if you know how to stop aggressively in your first three steps of deceleration, then that can have a fundamental effect on your physical qualities and performance.”

The nature of football and its game phases (with so much settled possession, set pieces and 22 players on a 105m x 68m pitch) means players very rarely hit their actual top speeds in matches. It is the reason, at PSV’s academy, their benchmark for first-team level performance in a 30m sprint test also includes a threshold for how fast players need to cover the first 10m.

Faster and more efficient accelerations and decelerations buy players time and space (or reduce it for opponents). “If your gear one is really aggressive, then actually the rest of it can be done scanning and preparing for the next action,” says Dodoo.

United’s academy — in Rashford, Alejandro Garnacho, Amad and Anthony Elanga (sold to Nottingham Forest in July 2023) — has developed some of the best straight-line runners and accelerators in the division. “Elanga is the model,” says Dodoo, who co-owns Speedworks Training, a sprint coaching business that developed a database of athletes “across football, NFL, elite and international rugby. We’ve got 5,000 runs for 3,000 players. What we consider as being very efficient and effective is what he (Elanga) produces in his running”.

In the first two months of this season, Rashford, Garnacho and Elanga all made the list for the top 10 highest speeds in a Premier League game — because players rarely hit top speed, calling them the ‘fastest’ would be a misnomer. That Amad did not might be because of his gait. He stands out for taking a lot of short steps with low heel lift (and has a choppy arm style reminiscent of fellow Ivorian and 100m sprinter Marie-Josee Ta Lou) whereas Garnacho takes big strides.

That difference in mechanics may explain their difference as dribblers too. As senior United players, Amad has completed 46.7 per cent of his Premier League dribbles, compared to just 32.5 per cent for Garnacho. “He’s (Amad) closer to the ground and having a high stride rate means he can make adjustments very quickly,” says Dodoo.

Amad (22 years old) and Garnacho (20) are two members of a relatively young United squad. Midfielders Toby Collyer (20), Manuel Ugarte (23), and Kobbie Mainoo (19), plus centre-back Leny Yoro (19) and striker Rasmus Hojlund (21) were either playing academy football in England or have made moves to United from other European leagues in the past two seasons.

Those inside the club feel that the hardest part of stepping up to the senior, Premier League level is the physical demands (more than the technical/tactical ones) and subsequent injury risks.

Dodoo says teams need “a smart rotation system with those young players. Especially, the more of a forward and the more of a speed merchant that player is, even more reason to have some way of keeping them loaded but not overloaded”.

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Sprinting coaches are not new within football. Former Team GB sprinter Darren Campbell worked at MK Dons and with Andriy Shevchenko when he was at Chelsea. Similarly, Leon Reid, another former international sprinter, has worked on the running technique of Brighton players. Three NFL sides — the Jacksonville Jaguars, Tennessee Titans and Houston Texans — have all employed ‘directors of speed development’, though there is a more natural fit for a mechanics/sprinting coach there, given the NFL’s combine and 40-yard dash.


Garnacho has demonstrated his sprint ability this season (Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images)

The Premier League is into its era of specialist coaches: hybrid coach-analysts, set-piece coaches and position-specific coaches. The return on investment of a coach who can keep players fitter (and possibly make them move better) has the potential to be huge.

Internally, Amorim has been critical of fitness levels, and United’s high-intensity numbers have dropped off compared to last season.

Running more (and harder) is not automatically a good thing, and requires the context of tactics, game state, opposition style and quality, but as Dodoo points out, “the manager’s model is real high intensity, and the players need to be conditioned for that. If you get conditioned to that way of training with one manager, the next manager bringing a more intensive model (means) the conditioning of the team needs to go up”.

It is not quite the same approach that Ten Hag took when he had his players running many kilometres after an away defeat to Brentford in August 2023 (to show them how much they were ‘outran’ by). Availability, though, is the best ability, and United must improve there if they are to implement the style Amorim wants, let alone turn their season around.

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(Top photo: Manchester United training this month; by Zohaib Alam/MUFC/Manchester United via Getty Images)

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