Beefy Bites 9th December 2024
Your Monday munchables from a weekend in the world of football
Welcome to Beefy Bites.
Read on for Manchester United being Manchester United, Hull City being Hull City, Walsall flying, Lawrence Shankland finding his shooting boots and Vissel Kobe retaining the title.
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Tricky Trees punish dopey defending at Old Trafford
It's been a hell of a weekend for Manchester United. The idea that INEOS and Jim Ratcliffe have any clue what they're doing has surely exploded. Dan Ashworth has gone and presumably has a few choice words to say about the people he's leaving behind. United are closer to the bottom of the Premier League than the top by every measure.
Perhaps worst of all, new manager Ruben Amorim has been handed the same abject squad as Erik ten Hag – including the dim signings of the summer that are at the root of the backroom collapse – and must endure the same weaknesses as a result.
Amorim’s first defeat smacked him in the chops on Saturday teatime. Nottingham Forest have a very fine team indeed but the individual errors that gifted them the goals must be irritating beyond belief for the new boss.
André Onana’s shocking goalkeeping for goal number two was bad enough. Lisandro Martínez stepping aside to watch Chris Wood's winner go by him was the sort of moment that defines a season of failure.
Sellés has a job on his hands at Hull
Hull City’s appointment of Rubén Sellés to replace Tim Walter as their manager after just a few months in charge dealt a huge blow to Reading. Against the odds, Sellés had given supporters of the listless League One Royals something to cheer about. The knee-jerk promotion of Noel Hunt offers an indication of where things are heading in Berkshire.
Sellés has jumped from the fire back into the frying pan but he’s still going to sense the sizzle of Hull’s own brand of bedlam.
He wasn’t in the dugout for the Tigers’ loss at home against Blackburn Rovers on Saturday, a result inflicted by Sean McLoughlin’s own goal, and he will take over a team that now sits bottom of the Championship – not the intended outcome of sacking Liam Rosenior, I’d bet.
Hull are in atrocious form. They haven’t won in eleven league games, losing the last six on the spin and scoring just twice in the process. They have five matches remaining before New Year’s Day, by which point they will be well adrift if Sellés can’t put things right immediately.
Sadler and Sadler’s Saddlers keep on saddlin’
One of Saturday’s early games in League Two was the biggest of them all. Port Vale and Walsall aren’t all that far apart geographically and they were separated by a single point in first and second respectively. The Saddlers visited Vale Park and came away with a hard-fought 1-0 win in the wind and rain of the Potteries under Darragh.
Jamille Matt scored the goal, somehow forcing the ball through the Vale goalkeeper from a corner while being fouled. Matt has been Mat Sadler’s chief scorer of timely goals in 2024/25 and a leading reason for them being top of the league in mid-December.
He’s almost twice as old as top scorer Nathan Lowe – a loanee from Vale’s local rivals Stoke City – but his contribution in his two years at the Bescot shouldn’t be underestimated.
He’s already matched his League Two goal tally from last season and is approaching both the total number of starts he made in 2023/24 and the count of minutes played. At 35 years of age, Matt is proving his worth and justifying his contract extension.
Shankland brace boosts broken Hearts
The top goal scorer in the Scottish Premiership last season was Lawrence Shankland, the captain of Heart of Midlothian, who found the net 24 times. Hearts finished third.
This season couldn’t have been more different. Hearts are nip and tuck at the bottom of the table with Edinburgh rivals Hibernian and their skipper, a talismanic and talented finisher who other supporters like to poke fun at but is undeniably dangerous at the Premiership level, has been unable to score for love nor money.
Shankland netted once in the first 14 league games of the season and has cut an increasingly forlorn figure in front of goal in recent weeks. But he’s also kept putting himself into positions to score, remaining mindful that goal droughts can happen to anyone and philosophical about the fact that they almost always come to an end.
On Saturday, he scored twice to beat Dundee at Tynecastle and lift his team off the bottom of the Premiership. He made it 1-0 with a well placed header to score his first goal in more than two months. His second was a case of being in the right place at the right time. It's the Shankland way.
Vissel Kobe tie up the title in Japan
In the end, it couldn’t have been much more serene.
Vissel Kobe went into the last day of the J1 League season in Japan as champions and with a lead to protect in a three-way title race. They’ve barely topped the table in 2024 but all three results went their way emphatically on Sunday – they won the league by four points.
Machida Zelvia were beaten 3-1 by Kashima Antlers having been 2-0 down after quarter of an hour. Sanfrecce Hiroshima also lost 3-1, scoring a stoppage-time consolation against Gamba Osaka. Kobe’s win over Shonan Bellmare made both of those results academic and it was a comfortable one.
Taisei Miyashiro’s tap-in made it 1-0 inside the first half an hour and an equally straightforward finish from Yoshinori Muto had the championship all but won by half time. Takahiro Ogihara added a third with his only goal of the season – a screamer, no less. Vissel Kobe claimed their second J.League title both consecutively and historically.
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