Ken Early: Football devoid of those laughable errors is nothingDefending used to be about getting your body between the ball and goal. Not anymore; now coaches have a new tactical wheezeMon Oct 09 2023 - 06:00
Ken Early: We don’t have to persist with this nonsense - get rid of VARThe use of a video assistant referee has accomplished exactly the opposite of what it was supposed to achieve. And it’s making this column increasingly boringMon Oct 02 2023 - 06:00
Ken Early: London derby draw exposes Arsenal’s shortcomings in front of goalArsenal’s furious press initially disrupted Spurs’ patient build-up play, but feeling gaining traction Harry Kane sold at exactly the right timeMon Sept 25 2023 - 06:00
Ken Early: Manchester United boss Erik ten Hag looks devoid of skills to manage star playersHome defeat to Brighton a stark reminder of still absent Ajax style and worrying development of feuding with the expensive talentMon Sept 18 2023 - 06:00
Ken Early: The bare facts look ugly for Stephen Kenny as Ireland’s qualification campaign is all but overWhen the most common arguments for you include “Who else could do better with this squad?”, things are not looking goodSun Sept 10 2023 - 22:57
Ken Early: Ireland’s young players will deliver eventually, if they can endure and matureOn Sunday we must beat the Netherlands to keep our slim Euro 2024 hopes alive, but this Dutch side will be confident of victorySat Sept 09 2023 - 05:00
Ken Early: Euro 2024 long shot now a distant dream as France take aim at BazunuDefeat in Paris could have been much worse had hosts not been so genial in second halfFri Sept 08 2023 - 05:00
Ken Early: Loss of key men feels like a bad punchline for Ireland and KennyFrance v Ireland: With so many absentees, it’s hard to see how the team can get anything tonight against formidable opponents in ParisThu Sept 07 2023 - 05:00
Ken Early: Salah could be playing in the Saudi league next seasonLIV Golf has already shown us the power of money in sport and entry to Uefa’s top club competitions would be a game changer for the ambitious Saudi Pro LeagueMon Sept 04 2023 - 04:30
Ken Early: Eddie Howe’s caution backfires as Darwin Nuñez volcano eruptsNewcastle manager’s misreading of the mood enable Liverpool to prevail in grudge matchMon Aug 28 2023 - 05:00
Ken Early: Victory for the gifted Spanish due to their national coaching system – not the coachThe work of thousands of youth coaches is evident now in the textbook technique the Spanish have turned into a national styleMon Aug 21 2023 - 06:00
Ken Early: Low-quality clash shows how far Chelsea and Liverpool have to goA scuffling, scrappy 1-1 draw at Stamford Bridge saw all the considerable flaws of both teams laid bareMon Aug 14 2023 - 05:00
Ken Early: Moises Caicedo transfer a case study in Premier League hysteriaMaybe the transfer window continues to dominate football’s headspace because it’s hard to imagine anyone other than Manchester City winning the leagueSat Aug 12 2023 - 05:00
Ken Early on Greece vs Ireland: A night to forget, just terrible Team selection that misfired, supposed stalwarts crumbling under pressure, striker failure and red mist descendsFri Jun 16 2023 - 22:21
Ken Early: Ireland’s woes must end in GreeceIt is time for Stephen Kenny’s team to deliver: that does not necessarily mean winning in Athens, but it does entail playing well and not losingThu Jun 15 2023 - 23:30
Ken Early: Manchester City’s supremacy has made the rest of football seem smallCosts that are daunting for a mere football club are insignificant when you are backed by the resources of an authoritarian oil stateMon Jun 12 2023 - 05:00
Ken Early: Manchester City win treble as football comes home to the Persian GulfRomelu Lukaku came on the pitch seeking salvation, only to plunge back into purgatorySat Jun 10 2023 - 23:31
Ken Early: Manchester City can confirm football’s new era of elite wealth and soft-power playsAn exceptional team usually wins people over. Why hasn’t this happened with City?Fri Jun 09 2023 - 19:35
Ken Early: Man City’s win made sense but won’t ease fans’ suspicious mindsJosé Mourinho has contributed to a toxic culture but there are also other reasons why refereeing mistakes are increasingly hard to acceptMon Jun 05 2023 - 06:00
Ken Early: Everton’s survival is mainly due to the incompetence of Leicester and LeedsLeeds relegation is the culmination of a sequence in which they abandoned first their manager, then their principles, and finally their marblesMon May 29 2023 - 05:00
Ken Early: Relentless Manchester City have made winning the league title feel routineCommentators credit Guardiola with using charges around breaches of financial rules to foster an ‘us-against-the-world’ siege mentality in the squadMon May 22 2023 - 05:00
Ken Early: Football may be many things to many people, but it’s not escapismSimon Jordan’s passionate plea to keep politics out of football seems a tad naive at a time when football and politics are practically the same thingMon May 15 2023 - 05:00
Ken Early: Boastful Sam Allardyce leaves Man City less sure of themselves before moment of truth Pep Guardiola’s team showed the limits of the Leeds manager’s tactics, yet their confidence has been dented as they go into Tuesday’s Champions League showdown with Real MadridMon May 08 2023 - 05:00
Ken Early: Ridiculous game at Anfield leaves everyone looking foolish‘Accusing a referee of having a personal agenda against your team is the kind of comment that usually results in an FA charge’Mon May 01 2023 - 05:00
Ken Early: Brighton under Roberto De Zerbi are changing English footballCoaches from Pep Guardiola to Stephen Kenny admire Brighton’s manager, despite Graeme Souness’ reservationMon Apr 24 2023 - 05:00
Ken Early: Nervy Arsenal playing like they have everything to loseWatching Manchester City destroy Bayern last week, it appeared the Treble is not just realistic - it’s likelyMon Apr 17 2023 - 06:00
Ken Early: Coaches are not as important as they once wereNothing in Frank Lampard’s coaching career to date suggests he will help ChelseaMon Apr 10 2023 - 07:12
Ken Early: ‘FSG Out’ is Liverpool’s cry of surrenderLiverpool’s problems are manifold but spending money on the wrong players is one of their biggest mistakesMon Apr 03 2023 - 05:00
Ireland 0-1 France: Frustration the overriding feeling as Kenny’s men shoot themselves in the foot againRepublic of Ireland vs France report: Whether we are angry, sad, proud or defiant, none of it will matter unless we quit our doomed love affair with the sideways passMon Mar 27 2023 - 22:33
Ken Early: Kenny looks unwilling to deviate from his principles as Ireland meet France At the World Cup, Argentina coach Scaloni showed the merit of having the flexibility to change his side’s tactics as the occasion demandedMon Mar 27 2023 - 05:00
Ken Early: Evan Ferguson sends a lot of people home feeling excited about great nights to comeHow lucky are we to spend our idle moments daydreaming about how much better the young striker might getWed Mar 22 2023 - 22:23
Ken Early: Not even El Clásico win over Real Madrid can soothe the air of dread at BarcelonaEpic off-field scandal - El Caso Negreira - threatens to engulf the Catalan clubMon Mar 20 2023 - 06:52
Ken Early: Gary Lineker affair shows impartiality is yesterday’s newsSaga underlines how Britain’s fake populist government has once again failed to read the (dressing) roomMon Mar 13 2023 - 05:00
Ken Early: Liverpool 7 Manchester United 0? Imagine trying to understand this nonsense for a livingInstead of trying to frustrate Liverpool, United should have gone looking for the glass jawMon Mar 06 2023 - 05:00
Ken Early: Having success bought by a trillionaire sugar daddy is antithetical to what Manchester United is supposed to beA takeover by Qatar would would rob the club’s subsequent achievements of any real meaningMon Feb 27 2023 - 05:00
Ken Early: Liverpool need Darwin Nunez if they are to keep Real Madrid guessingJurgen Klopp's Liverpool can hit back at Real Madrid in Anfield after Carlo Ancelotti's Champions League final comments in ParisMon Feb 20 2023 - 05:00
Ken Early: Pep Guardiola shows he’s no Julius Caesar For Julius Caesar suspicion was intolerable, but Pep, it turns out, can live with plenty of itMon Feb 13 2023 - 06:00
Ken Early: Even in the crazy world of football, Chelsea’s spending spree seems absurdKen Early: Chelsea have for the time being transformed themselves into one of the most compelling spectacles in all of sportMon Feb 06 2023 - 05:00
Ken Early: Evan Ferguson the victim of an inept refereeing culturePrimary duty to protect players being forgotten as referees (and VAR) seem more concerned about ‘letting the game flow’Mon Jan 30 2023 - 06:00
Pep Guardiola may live to regret selling the brilliant Zinchenko to ArsenalTechnical and intelligent, the Ukrainian left-back masterminded the victory over Manchester UnitedMon Jan 23 2023 - 06:00
Ken Early: Man City look to be struggling with some of the same problems as burnt-out LiverpoolThere were more significant changes at the top of the Premier League in 2022 than any year since 2013Mon Jan 16 2023 - 05:00
Ken Early: Graham Potter on shaky ground as Chelsea faithful grow restlessThere’s really no rational case for the club to sack the manager but football is not a rational businessMon Jan 09 2023 - 05:00
Ken Early: Football is different in today’s generation, not betterPlayers such as Pelé and Lionel Messi have stood out by defying the norms of their different timesMon Jan 02 2023 - 05:00
Ken Early: 2022 was the year I impressed myself with how frequently my predictions were wrongMy failure rate was far worse than random chance; it was as though some instinct was leading me unerringly to the exact opposite of the truthMon Dec 26 2022 - 06:00
Final will go down as one of the greatest in World Cup historyFrance suddenly sprang into life in the second-half to create an extraordinary contestSun Dec 18 2022 - 22:11
Ken Early: You couldn’t make up the madness of this World Cup final and Messi’s Hollywood ending Final for the ages is crowning glory that puts Messi on a par with Maradona’s effort in 1986Sun Dec 18 2022 - 21:42
Ken Early: Messi’s vindication leaves Ronaldo fans praying for Mbappé intervention And Gianni Infantino must have been reading some strange stuff before the World CupSat Dec 17 2022 - 06:00
Ken Early in Doha: This simulation of a city is a place produced when money and lives are no objectIn this gleaming setting for a one-city World Cup, an unsettling air of fakeness pervades everythingFri Dec 16 2022 - 05:00
Ken Early: Superstars Mbappé and Messi will align as magic finally runs out for MoroccoInjuries caught up with the brave African side - the worry is that a virus might now have a similar effect on FranceWed Dec 14 2022 - 21:44
Ken Early: Messi shows that there is more to speed than physique as Argentina roll onNot happy just to have scored a penalty the Argentina captain went on a stunning run in the 69th minuteTue Dec 13 2022 - 22:05
