Everton look unstoppable but face competition from the two Manchester clubs – meanwhile, West Ham need to be tougher
Everton keep on soaringI don’t know what Everton are feeding their players at their Finch Farm training base, but it is working. Like the men’s team, the
Women have a 100% record and are flying, with Aston Villa the latest to feel the impact in a 6-0 home defeat. The new signings are coming good: Valerie Gauvin, who joined from Montpellier in the summer, came off the bench to score; Hayley Raso joined in January and has become an important part of the team. When I saw them beat Birmingham last week Nicoline Sørensen, another summer arrival, was also brilliant. They are in the FA Cup final, and it is a pleasure to see my old club back vying for trophies. Willie Kirk, the coach, and his club share a vision, which is to turn the club into one capable of winning the
Champions League, and we’re seeing the real impact of their vision now.
City start to purr after scratchy startManchester City started the season unconvincingly, losing the Community Shield against
Chelsea, edging Aston Villa and drawing at home against Brighton. But I’ve seen them play twice in the last week and they have certainly moved on. Last Thursday they knocked
Arsenal out of the FA Cup and the way they rolled over their opponents showed me they had found their groove, with the performance against
Tottenham on Sunday confirmation of that. There were so many changes in the close season – a manager moving on after six years with a very settled squad, bringing and bedding in Rose Levelle and Sam Mewis, and then getting Alex Greenwood and Lucy Bronze; it was always going to take them some time to settle. This is a different team to the one I watched in the Community Shield. For Spurs the signs were more worrying: they have conceded four in each of their last two games, first against Arsenal in the FA Cup when it was goalless in the 73ed minute, then against City when it was 1-0 after 50 minutes and 4-0 after 70. Top teams keep the pedal down; Spurs seem to switch off, and they need to stop these capitulations from becoming a habit.