the new era

by Omkar Rege Always felt that an athlete's want for change is justified. As ultimately, they are humans and if a person is not happy in a certain environment, he would long for a turnover. Yet there's something that feels awfully wrong about Laurent Koscielny's behavior yesterday. The Arsenal captain's refusal to join the club's pre-season tour to the US raised many eyebrows and hit all gooners 'in the feels'. Which in itself says a lot of Koscielny as a man. Someone who is always smiling and in a lot of ways represented the values of Arsenal football club. Him going rogue like that is really shocking and embarrassing for Arsenal. Plucked from obscurity by former manager Arsene Wenger way back in 2010, Koscielny was an integral member of Arsenal's FA cup winning spells in 2014, 2015 and 2017 and was also a solid backbone of the 2015-2016 season when he formed a formidable defensive partnership with former Arsenal captain Per Mertesacker as the gunn...

by Omkar Rege Been thinking a lot about Liverpool lately, their renaissance from a top 4, top 6 club to a side pushing a champion Man City team to a fantastic title challenge dragged on to the final day of the league spell, cherried with a champions league winners medal this past season surely is up there with football's greatest stories. People always tend to cite star trio of Mane, Salah and Firmino as the reason why Liverpool are so good. Yes those guys are world class but on one fine night at Anfield, Liverpool showed the world that they can function without their franchise players and that they aren't a one dimensional team. Being 3 down at the Nou Camp, no one gave the reds a toss as they looked to fight back a battle that many thought they had already lost. From the start Milner and Henderson held their positions higher up the pitch with Fabinho staying behind to help his centrebacks. This led to Busquets and Rakitic dropping deeper leaving Messi and Suarez upfront...