Arsenal’s victory over Hull City last weekend appears to have been Mark Clattenburg’s last match as a Premier League official.
Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) released a statement Thursday confirming that Clattenburg is leaving his role to take up a position with the Saudi Arabian Football Federation.
“The PGMOL would like to wish Mark Clattenburg well as he prepares for his move to the Saudi Arabaian Football Federation,” the statement read.
“… We understand this is an exciting opportunity for Mark as well as further underlining what high esteem English match officials are held (in) throughout the world game.”
The statement did not specify a date for Clattenburg’s departure, but the Press Association suggests he will leave before Premier League matches resume Feb. 25.
It remains unclear if Clattenburg will continue to officiate football matches in his new job, or if he’ll take up a role similar to the one former Premier League official Howard Webb accepted in 2015 when he became the head of refereeing for the Saudi Arabian league.
Clattenburg, who officiated the 2016 European Championship final in France as well as the Champions League final in Milan, Italy, had previously expressed a desire to work abroad. He said he was intrigued by the thought of plying his trade in China after being linked with a move to the high-spending Chinese Super League.
“If an opportunity came along – I am contracted to the Premier League – but I have to look at my long-term strategy of my career,” Clattenburg told Rob Harris of the Associated Press in December. How long can I last as a referee? I have been in the Premier League 12 years. It’s been a wonderful 12 years.”
His last match, however, was far from wonderful – the English referee missed a blatant handball committed by Alexis Sanchez before the Arsenal star scored the go-ahead goal. According to Hull players and coaches, Clattenburg apologised for the mistake at halftime as Arsenal went on to claim a 2-0 win.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Watch the Tennessee Titans offense during a TV timeout and you’ll find 11 guys on the field close together, ready to huddle.
Eleven without a quarterback.
While Marcus Mariota visits with coaches on the sideline to sort out whatever needs sorting out, the Titans put the people on the field intending to complicate things for a defense.
“We have a mode during TV timeouts, we put 11 players in the huddle without Marcus,” coach Mike Mularkey said in a long chat with The Midday 180. “When you do that, you put 11 guys in the huddle, you’ve got three different personnel groupings. If you’re on defense and you know what the personnel is on the field and the down and distance, you could be at the coffee shop and call a game.
“It’s all legal,” coach Mike Mularkey said of the Titans’ diversionary huddle tactics. “It’s just another way for us to keep them working even when there is a TV timeout and there is nothing going on.” Christopher Hanewinckel/USA TODAY Sports
“That’s what the two key ingredients are for a defensive call, personnel and down and distance. So when you put all these guys in the huddle and they are asking, ‘What is the personnel?’, well, the personnel guy is saying, ‘We’ve got 21 [two running backs, a tight end and two receivers] in there, 12 [one back, two tight ends and two receivers], 11 [one back, one tight end, three receivers] are all in there.”
With the five linemen on the field, the Titans couldn’t have all those potential combinations ready to huddle. But they jump in and out to keep multiple options.
“We do some things, even while the TV timeout is going on, you’ll see players coming in and out, so we constantly keep changing the personnel groupings to where they don’t have a bead on us, which one is going in. It’s all legal. It’s just another way for us to keep them working even when there is a TV timeout and there is nothing going on.”
This is not a giant advantage, but it’s an advantage. A defense doesn’t get an early read on the personnel it needs to match on the play coming out of a timeout. It’s also an illustration of the type of small things Mularkey and his staff concern themselves with that can go unseen and might gain them an advantage at some point.
The play happened so quickly, the CBS broadcast was late switching from a sideline shot to the action.
Does the Titans defense see the same maneuver from offenses it’s trying to get a handle on?
“Nobody,” Mularkey said.
The idea came to him when he was offensive coordinator in Pittsburgh. Preparing for the draft, he was watching college tape. In college, players can come in from the sideline and go right to the line of scrimmage, and the offense isn’t stopped by the officials to allow the defense to match a late change.
Mularkey wondered how defenses had any idea what grouping was coming with a giant roster filling the opposing sideline and the ability to substitute late.
He decided to start putting 11 players on the field without a quarterback and to switch them up to make things more difficult on a defense.
How Arsene Wenger has transformed Arsenal since his 1996 arrival is remarkable. The lager was whittled out of the players’ diets at a club that bore a reputation of playing boring football, and in its place rose a supremely fit side showcasing some of the most beautiful patterned passing English football had seen. It was often played by leggy imports that changed the landscape of the country’s game.
The narrative has staled since “the Invincibles” romped to the Premier League title in 2003-04 though. Each season has bored into a more repetitive and sorry sequel, until Wednesday’s 5-1 humiliation at Bayern Munich showed a gulf in class that simply cannot be bridged under the watch of Wenger. Chelsea had done something similar earlier in February.
It’s been stasis at the Emirates Stadium for over a decade, and the supporters that want a divorce from Wenger reach far beyond the monosyllabic grunts and barks of Arsenal Fan TV. Plenty of blame for this inactivity will also be fairly apportioned to the boardroom; a hierarchy that has put ensuring the club is a marketable entity over making it a trophy-winning force.
The crowded French market
Wenger was a pioneer at the beginning, but perhaps it was partly because his outreach was unmatched. Patrick Vieira, Nicolas Anelka, and Emmanuel Petit soon joined his Highbury revolution as the long-coated tactician plucked players from France, his native land and where he guided AS Monaco to the 1987-88 Ligue 1 title.
Others followed in the ensuing years, like Juventus flop Thierry Henry, Sylvain Wiltord, and the wing musketeer Robert Pires, but it has since dried up. Laurent Koscielny and Olivier Giroud pose the only successful arrivals hailing from that region in the last nine seasons. Maybe the important numbers in Wenger’s address book lost influence or contact, or maybe it’s just the Gallic market is now saturated with scouts. Newcastle United’s chief talent spotter Graham Carr has ravaged it in the past, and Steve Walsh plucked N’Golo Kante and Riyad Mahrez from there for Leicester City – the kind of players that would’ve likely fallen onto the lap of Wenger 15 or so years ago.
Like with the diets and training methods at Arsenal, the scouting is vastly improved across the Premier League. The old flat-capped blokes who scribbled notes on the back of cigarette packets are figures of a bygone era; players are analysed on a laptop by studious people with sensible haircuts. Manchester City, a team that used to pick up aged rejects from the likes of Arsenal and Liverpool, now has its fingers in North America, Asia, Australasia.
Top four and no more
There’s another point of contention that rang the death knells long before the recent withering and wimpering of Wenger’s regime: Arsenal, a sports behemoth with a 60,000-capacity ground and merchandise worn in all corners of the globe, refuses to flex its muscles in the same manner as its compatriots and other sides that habitually compete in the late rounds of the Champions League.
True, setting up something akin to the City Football Group may be a stretch – there are deep resources at Manchester City’s Etihad Campus – but the cosy relationship between the elusive owner Stan Kroenke and Wenger has anchored the club in comfortable routine. It’s perhaps no coincidence that Kroenke, a shrewd businessman who’s involved with well-run yet not particularly successful sports franchises, and a qualified economist in Wenger are overseeing an operation run purely for a handsome bottom line rather than silverware.
There’s no doubting Wenger wants to win trophies, but the need to remain in the black is paramount. Mesut Ozil and Alexis Sanchez were acquired for vast sums, but under immense pressure from the support – it was the same situation with the late summer signings of Shkodran Mustafi and Lucas Perez this season – while other dearths in the squad (the need to sign a top quality striker or, most importantly, for a defensive midfielder of bite and intelligence) haven’t been addressed. The club is rich, so this lack of investment is merely a miserly practice that denotes a distinct lack of ambition.
Kroenke isn’t guilty for the other aspect, though. Wenger hasn’t adapted to the new frantic world of reactive tactics, and continually plays favourites in his team selections.
Time to go
At Bayern Munich, there were no new ideas. There was no game plan deployed to stymie a better team. Paris Saint-Germain’s tactical clinic in besting Barcelona by a 4-0 scoreline a day earlier was encouraging for the Gunners’ support, but they were instead given the same drivel.
Arsenal’s players don’t look drilled in a system, or disciplined in the slightest. Ozil, someone who should’ve been under consideration for the axe in a fresh approach, was listless and resembled a skulking child, and Francis Coquelin and Gabriel Paulista again showed that they are not good enough for a side with title aspirations. Yet they hang around, and the Emirates Stadium coffers remain full.
Wenger has to go, but with all he did for the club in the first half of his stay in north London it has to end amicably. Let him know his tenure is reaching its end, and include him in the recruitment process for the next manager.
Sir Alex Ferguson’s recommendation of David Moyes didn’t work particularly well at Manchester United, but the wily Scot had left his successor with an aging squad. There is no such caveat at Arsenal, and it could take a while for the new boss’ ideas to take hold, but a change needs to happen so the club isn’t left behind. And for the sanity of its support.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The Jaguars did not pick up the four-year option in Kelvin Beachum’s contract on Wednesday, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he won’t be the team’s starting left tackle in September.
Beachum is not a free agent until March 9, so the two sides have plenty of time to agree on a contract. By not picking up the option, however, the Jaguars run the risk that Beachum will decide to test the free-agent market and sign elsewhere.
Without Beachum, the Jaguars would have to find a new offensive tackle through free agency — Matt Kalil and Riley Reiff are the top options — or in the draft to protect quarterback Blake Bortles’ blind side.
Left tackles don’t become available often in free agency, and top-tier ones never do. While Kalil and Reiff, who moved to right tackle with the Detroit Lions in 2016, aren’t elite, there will be several teams competing for their services, and the Jaguars may have to pay more than they’d like to land either one of them. Possibly more than the $9 million per-year average in Beachum’s option.
The Jaguars did not pick up their option on 2016 starting left tackle Kelvin Beachum. They have until March 9 to negotiate a new contract with Beachum before he becomes a free agent. AP Photo/John Raoux
The two best offensive tackles in the draft are Garett Bolles and Cam Robinson. Both are projected to be taken in the 20s in Mel Kiper Jr.’s latest mock draft, so selecting one at No. 4 would be a reach.
Beachum returned from a torn left ACL suffered in October 2015 and started 15 games last season, missing only one game because of a concussion. He was a key part of an offensive line that gave up only 34 sacks, the fewest allowed by the Jaguars since 2007 (31).
The 27-year-old Beachum dealt with soreness and slight swelling in his knee throughout the season, but that was expected as he returned to the field less than a year removed from the surgery and linemen put considerable strain on the joint.
The Jaguars were pleased with the way Beachum played in pass protection but wanted to see improvement in the run game.
Beachum signed a one-year deal with a four-year option with the Jaguars in March and earned $5 million in 2016. Had the Jaguars picked up the option, Beachum would have had his $7.5 million base salary in 2017 and $5.5 million of his $8.5 million base salary in 2018 guaranteed.
