Ken Early

3 days ago | irishtimes.com | Ken Early

A few weeks ago Aurelién Tchouaméni gave an interview where he recalled the reaction of his Real Madrid team-mates to winning the 2024 Champions League final at Wembley. “You mentioned people at Madrid are used to winning. All of a sudden we’ve won the Champions League and I’m in the locker room, and I thought,” – and here Tchouaméni looked around with wide eyes and a bewildered shrug – “what’s happening? And that’s when you realise a lot of the guys had already won it three, four, five times.

1 week ago | irishtimes.com | Ken Early

Mohamed Salah’s first game after his new contract was confirmed was the season in miniature. It started exceptionally well. He bullied West Ham’s 19-year old wing back Oliver Scarles. He set up the opening goal for Luis Diaz with a beautifully-weighted outside-of-the-foot pass. In doing so he set a new record of 45 goal contributions in a 38-game Premier League season – with six matches still to play. After that: not so much. Salah had 43 touches in the first half, only five in the second.

2 weeks ago | irishtimes.com | Ken Early

A recommendation for all the Manchester United fans out there. For an analysis of where it’s all gone wrong for your club over the last 20 years, you should check out The Unaccountability Machine by Dan Davies. The book addresses the question of why so many contemporary systems and institutions are generating bad outcomes that nobody wants. It does not mention football at all, yet the spectre of Manchester United haunts every page. The book introduced me to the ideas of management cybernetics.

3 weeks ago | irishtimes.com | Ken Early

There were times earlier this season, as Bournemouth amassed a thrilling collection of victories against the likes of Arsenal, Manchester City, Manchester United, Nottingham Forest and Newcastle, when people were wondering if Andoni Iraola might be showing a possible way forward for the game in the post-Guardiola era. Now Iraola’s side are winless in six since mid-February. They’ve hit the familiar spring slump of all sides who spend the autumn and winter pressing like maniacs.

1 month ago | irishtimes.com | Ken Early

Ten minutes into the second half it looked as though Evan Ferguson was about to be hooked. Played in by Troy Parrott, who had hustled the Bulgarian defenders into giving it away at the back, Ferguson decided to try and side-foot the ball into the corner from way outside the box, rather than run a few more metres to reach a more dangerous shooting position.