City let 2-1 lead slip against Real Madrid | Ratcliffe to cull more jobs at United | Gatland to waive Wales payoff
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Welcome to Back Pages, bringing you everything you need to know about the biggest sports stories making the headlines in the morning's newspapers. I'm Teddy Draper and joining me are the Daily Mail's football editor Ian Ladyman and Jason Burt, Chief Football Correspondent for the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Telegraph. Welcome to your boat. Let's go to the back page of the Sun.

Where England's Jude Bellingham is pictured there. Bellondor, the headline. Martin Blackburn reporting for them. Jude Bellingham won the Ballon d'Or war to clobber Manchester City's Champions League dream. How destroying was that for City, Jason? How disheartening?

It felt like a real blow to the gut, didn't it? I mean, obviously, they were 2-1 up when Haaland scored that penalty. You thought, well, hopefully this time they'll hang on and take that lead to the Bernabeu. Obviously, it looked like they needed to go to Madrid next week with an advantage and then to capitulate yet again. And that's the most shocking thing of all. It's the pattern of these games seem to follow.

in the Champions League in particular for Manchester City I think it's the third or fourth time they've been 1-0 up and not managed to win the game and obviously you saw a similar thing happen today I think you're watching the match and you're thinking the

they've withstood that storm at the start when it could have been two goals down. They've got themselves ahead. They've got themselves ahead again. And you think, well, surely this time they'll hang on. Obviously, they lost a number of players to injury, but they still have the experienced team out on the pitch. And it's not just that. It's the nature of the goals, isn't it? It's not the fact that they lost necessarily as well. It's the way they sort of threw it away. You know, Edison's

really to blame for certainly the second goal, maybe even the third goal and you saw the determination of Jude Bellingham to get on the end of that shot from Vinicius and then turn it into the net and we've seen this game so many times in the season from Manchester City where they, as I say, seem to be in a situation where they're going to win or they're going to get the result they need and then they just throw it away, you know, and I don't know if it's

become a mental thing almost now as a physical thing. They don't seem to be at the same levels obviously as they have been in recent seasons. We know that and Real Madrid have done this to them before even when Manchester City have been playing really, really well. But they've given themselves a heck of a task now in the second leg. I'm going out to Madrid for that. So I was slightly watching the game through my fingers tonight thinking I hope it's not all over when we go out there. But

It's going to be very, very difficult when we get through now, I think. They're going to have to win in the Bernabeu, which is going to be a very tough task and obviously without conceding any more goals. The way that Madrid cut through them at times tonight was very concerning and I think it's a really worrying situation for them. You can see that from

Pep Guardiola's reaction afterwards that he's obviously fearing the worst now. Yeah, you could perhaps have seen them a little bit unfortunate to be leading, couldn't you, after 85 minutes at 2-1 after Haaland's goals. Just wonder with that, Jason making his trip to Bernabeu, how much trepidation the City players will have after the raising of the ire of Real Madrid, I suppose. The banner, Stop Crying Your Heart Out, I guess it's a song as well by Oasis, which is, of course, associated with the band, with Manchester City. But,

Perhaps we'll have just, I guess, I don't know, motivated even more the 15-time champions, Ian?

Yeah, it was quite a bold thing to do, to pull the tail of a player like Vini Junior, pull the Tigers' tail, as it were. I don't think a team like Real Madrid need motivating. We know that. They are the most storied team in this competition. And I have to say, they deserve to win that game. I mean, Jason's absolutely right when he talks about psychological issues in City, the way they throw games away, the nature of the goals that they concede. It's happened so many times this season.

But to be honest, I watched that game tonight and there's something much more fundamental at play, which was City were the second-best team. Real Madrid had 20 shots in that game. 20 shots. Should have been ahead by the time Harden scored his penalty.

and ultimately deserve to win. And that, I think, will probably worry Pep Guardiola as much as anything, is that that's his team's fourth Champions League defeat this season. If I'm really, really honest, they don't deserve still to be in the competition. They're in it because of the way the new format works. They've lost to Sporting, they've lost to Juve, they've lost to PSG, now they've lost to Real Madrid.

They don't control games anymore. They don't get teams in a stranglehold anymore. That's difficult, of course, against a team like Real, but they don't really do it against anybody. They didn't really do it against Leighton or Inter at the weekend. They don't boss football matches at the moment. And that, I think, is as much of a worry as the fact that they keep giving away very, very strange goals. Can they turn it round next week?

Yes, of course they can. They've got star players in that team. They've got match winners in that team. But they can turn it around. I absolutely do not expect them to.

Don't expect them to. Let's get to the back page of the Guardian Sports Supplements. Interesting wording here, Jason. I think reality check. Bellingham strikes to leave City on the ropes. It's a boxing reference as opposed to perhaps an old fighter who you want to retire. The problem is City can't retire. How confident are you that at this stage that Pep Guardiola can somehow revitalise them, though? You mean for the Champions League tie or just in general? For this in general, more broadly. It's a broad issue, is it?

It is. You're absolutely right. I mean, I think obviously Pep signed that new contract. We thought, here we go. City are going to have another period of dominance. They've got a huge amount of money in the bank to spend on players, which you've seen them spend in the January window. We thought, OK, they've had a wobble. The wobble then turns into something much more

concerning and long-lasting and then they sort of have a little bit of an uptick you think okay fine they're going to sort themselves out and we've all seen this before they go on these crazy long runs of winning games but it's just not happening it's just absolutely not happening I think even people in football are looking at it and thinking what is going on here you know we didn't expect this to go on for such a long period of time the belief seems to have gone in the team we also we know for a fact obviously they left it

a year too late to renew some of the squad. That was, Guardiola said, that's partly his fault. They wanted to hang on one more year, give these players another year. And that's obviously come back to bite them quite badly. But even that doesn't explain everything that's going on there. And it's almost like they've forgotten how to win. That muscle memory is no longer there. They can't get over the line. The players look fragile.

You look at somebody like Kevin De Bruyne, he just does not look fit. He does not look the player he was. He seems to be half a yard too slow. Ruben Diaz doesn't look fit. Quite a few others, you know, Nathan Ake. And the number of times the players are coming off as well, the number of injuries they're suffering during games seems to be almost a physical but also psychological thing where the players just feel fragile. And I think, you know, there's going to be a huge...

summer of reflection ahead for Manchester City, you do start to reach a phase where you think, you know, does Guardiola look at himself and think, do I carry on? What I suspect will happen is if they do finish outside...

the Champions League places, if they do fall off the way they have, I think he will definitely feel that duty to stay. But I think if they sort of scramble into the top four, he might turn around and think, actually, you know, maybe I need to move on myself. I know it's quite a bold thing to say. It's not necessarily based on any conversations, but just look at the situation at the moment.

You know, he's probably, he's quite a self-reflecting character. He will blame himself for an awful lot that's going on. He will take an awful lot on his own shoulders. So I think when the moment comes, whenever it is, if it's this summer or next summer or the summer after that, when he does finally leave Manchester City, we all know it's going to be his decision.

So I think he will be reflecting on all of these things at the moment. He will be wondering if he's the problem rather than the solution. Kind of a very distressed figure, hasn't he, at times? We'll keep across Guardiola's situation with interest, of course. Let's just reflect on Bellingham with the help of the eye, though. Ian, Bellingham's brutal blow. How impressive was he tonight, Ian? How impressive has he been throughout, I suppose, a period of adjustment since Kylian Mbappe arrived? Played several positions, but now up to 11 goals for the season?

You know what? I thought he was absolutely fantastic tonight. It's very easy when we watch these games involving our big clubs, England's big clubs, to get kind of sucked into just watching almost one team, as it were. But it was absolutely impossible to not notice the way that Bellingham played tonight. Forget

kind of in a way that he scored the winning goal. There was a couple of layoffs. When he gets into those advanced positions, kind of almost in the number 10 position, and lays the ball off, he's so clever. His vision is extraordinary. There were two layoffs with his head, which I just thought were absolutely fantastic. I don't know how he knew that teammates were there, but

but they were. We know that he's got energy. We know that he will always keep going. We know that he has this incredible desire to win, which I personally think sometimes leads him into areas that he probably doesn't need to be in in terms of some of the things he says and does, especially to officials and opponents. But it also means that when his team need him...

like they did in the latter stages of that game, he's absolutely there for them. You mentioned Kylian Mbappe, I know he got the goal off his shin or his knee or whichever part of his leg it went in off. I mean, Bellingham's performance was five times that of...

of his teammates tonight. He was absolutely terrific. It was fascinating to see how Thomas Tuchel deployed him for England because he wants to play 10 potentially, but so many options there for England. Let's talk Manchester United, Jason. Come to your paper. It does have in the sports supplement there in the Telegraph, Jude Bellingham pictured kiss of death, blowing a kiss there it seems. But to the right-hand side, Tom Morgan, your sports news correspondent, reported that Ratcliffe is to cull 100 more United jobs. What can you tell us, Jason?

Yeah, I mean, I think, in fairness, this is a story that was broken by the Mail and by The Athletic earlier on, which we've obviously looked at as well. And yes, there are going to be more redundancies at Manchester United. There's been obviously a huge number already.

To start with, if you talk to other clubs, the headcount at Manchester United is quite high. OK, fine. But actually the cull now is becoming quite deep into that. And obviously there are big issues around why they're doing that, but also the effect it will have on the staff. Ratcliffe and Ineos have gone into Manchester United. There is a financial crisis looming there, if they're not careful, with obviously right up against it in terms of

PSR and the spending at the club and they've looked at the situation and thought they've got to try and make some cuts to try and save some money, try and get the finances back into a better state. And while we understand that, that undoubtedly has a huge effect on everyone working there. And when it becomes this deep,

and the cuts are so vast and they're affecting long-serving staff, and we all know that people who work at football clubs primarily work at the clubs because they love working at those football clubs, not for the money, then it becomes an issue. And the other question with that is, of course, the spending that's been taking place under INEOS at Manchester United. They had a huge summer last year of spending vast amounts of money, and has any of that really been spent very, very well? £200 million in the transfer market on what, really, in terms of a return?

extending the contract to Eric Ten Haag and then sacking him a few months later, bringing Rumin Amir in and paying the compensation there, Dan Ashworth being there only a matter of months. So all those issues as well are creating an atmosphere around the club of,

A bit of resentment, I think, towards Ineos and what they're trying to do. While people understand that the club perhaps needed sorting out, we all talked about that, and there's a wider picture of the new stadium and everything else that needs done, the upgrading of the training ground, I think things like this undoubtedly affect morale quite badly.

And, OK, Ineos can't control when the story comes out, but it's taken place on the day that Dennis Law was at the funeral of Dennis Law. So I think that, again, will affect the atmosphere around the club. And it doesn't really cut a happy place on and off the pitch at the moment. I think Ineos are in an increasingly unpopular and difficult situation themselves with the way they're running Manchester United.

Indeed, you mentioned the morale situation there. Ian, come to you with the back page of The Times, who zero in on one member of staff in particular. They say that Manchester United staff have been left

stunned by the brutal dismissal of the club's long-serving head of team operations as part of the restructuring of INEOS at Old Trafford. Jackie Kaye leaving after almost 30 years at the club. It's the sort of news that will provide concern for fans as well as, of course, the staff, Ian. Are they too big to fail, United? How deep are the problems financially?

I think one of the things that's become clear in the year or so that INEOS have been in charge at Manchester United, despite the fact that they remain kind of minority shareholders, is that they're utterly ruthless and they make these decisions absolutely without emotion. Jim Ratcliffe...

has decided to run Manchester United like he would run any kind of business. Now, you could argue that football is an almost unique business in the way you have to run your football clubs. He doesn't see it that way. He thinks that United are fleshy in terms of the numbers of staff, and so he's cut staff. It's the way that he sees it. If he was emotional about it, if he cared deeply about the optics and the way it looked,

then he wouldn't have done so many of the things that he's done, the previous redundancies, issues over season tickets, issues over disabled parking, issues over Christmas parties, issues over how many staff are allowed to go to an FA Cup final and how their travel is supplemented or isn't supplemented. It's clear that Jim Ratcliffe looks at balance sheets. He doesn't look at people, or he doesn't appear to. I'm not saying he doesn't care, but he seems to care

greatly about the way the balance sheet looks and he would argue that that is what he is there for however if you are going to be as brutal and as clinical and as cold as Ineos have been so far there is only one thing that will get you out of the car when it comes to the way that your supporters look at you and that is by winning on the football field

and they are miles away from winning on the football field. So at the moment, INEOS, in terms of their popularity, they're standing inside and outside that football club, are on shaky ground. Results may or may not save them over time. Your thoughts on INEOS, Jason, as well? News that they're in a dispute with New Zealand rugby. How concerning is that, their financial picture? INEOS reporting that the chemicals picture in Europe isn't particularly lucrative for them.

Yeah, it's a great story. My colleague Jeremy Wilson broke that yesterday and obviously it's been developing through the course of the day. INEOS finally putting out a statement themselves talking about the deindustrialisation of Europe, which is a phrase they've used before and it's quite a puzzling one when you're talking about a multi-billion pound petrochemical business and talking about a sponsorship of the All Blacks, which is a few million pounds in comparison.

And also, when they announced this sponsorship a while ago, a few years ago, obviously, it was seen as like there was going to be this performance partner and it was all part of the strategy in terms of sport across the board. But what we've seen is a rationalisation of INEOS's involvement in sport. Obviously, a few weeks ago, we had the...

the severing of the ties with Sir Ben Ainslie. There are now question marks over other involvement in sport with obviously with cycling, Formula One to a degree. Maybe it means they're putting more and more of their resources into football and maybe that's where Jim Ratcliffe sees the future of his investment in sports. But it's a far cry from the sort of creation of this kind of Ineos sports portfolio that was going to

cross-fertilise different sports and help each other and be the best in class of everything. And then there's that bigger question of whether or not actually his involvement in sport has been a success anyway. I mean, if you look at all the different sports he's been involved with, it's not been a huge amount of success. Obviously, sailing, he did quite well in. F1's doing OK. But football in particular, look, his investment in Switzerland and also in France with Nice, it hasn't been particularly successful.

And so far, that's been the same at Manchester United. But it is a fascinating development. And part of probably what Ian was talking about before in terms of looking at things in terms of the value is, is it worth him carrying on? And again, he's not really worried about the bad publicity or the optics of it. And obviously, New Zealand Rugby are taking legal action now against him. And he doesn't seem to be worried about that either.

Let's go to the Telegraph. Jason, come to you with the big rugby story today. Warren Gatland stepping down from his duties as Wales head coach. But Gatland waves Wales payoff is the headline here. Head coach makes shock exit without six-figure settlement. I suppose, Jason, it's a nice touch at what's a very sad time for Wales rugby.

It is. And I think when the news broke this morning, I think everyone was not surprised that he's gone, but surprised at the timing of him leaving. And then the questions were asked as to how did that happen? And now it's transpired, obviously, that it's been his decision that he feels he's taking Wales away.

as far as he can take them. And he's done a very honourable thing and very helpful thing in terms of finding a replacement for him financially by waiving a very, very big settlement that he would have been due if he'd been sacked. I think his contract goes up to 2027. So he has done the honourable thing. He's obviously put the best interests of Wales rugby and his family, I think, as well, to the forefront. I think he...

took it upon himself to initiate this discussion. And clearly it's left Wales Rugby in a state of shock, but it obviously feels like it's probably the right thing to do as well. I think sometimes with coaches in any sport, you reach a situation where the only thing that can happen is the coach has to change because you've got to relieve the pressure. I think it's 14 straight defeats is just...

you know, unacceptable, whatever the team. So I think it was inevitable that he went, but he's obviously done the honourable thing to go. And it's a remarkable fall away, considering this is a coach who led them to three grand slams in his first spell in charge and then was obviously the coach of the British Lions. To fall away in this manner is extraordinary, but I think he's done the right thing, both for himself and for his family, but also for Wales rugby by stepping aside.

Yeah, amazing. He got into a couple of World Cup semi-finals, didn't he, in his first stint in there. No payoff is the back page of the Times referenced that as well. Head coach Gatlin leaves Wales with no payoff. Ian, it's refreshing, isn't it? Not something we see in football, I suppose, where payoffs often are kind of part of the deal when you sign up. But also, how much does this just reflect the quality of players? We lord coaches in our business, don't we? But oftentimes, is it about those players?

Well, it's about both. Obviously, it's about both. I mean, we see the way that football teams particularly can sometimes bounce when that pressure that Jason was talking about is kind of released and everybody somehow relaxes and finds a little bit more of their true selves again. I mean, nobody wants to get rid of a coach. Nobody wants to part ways with a coach in the middle of the Six Nations. It's almost like a football team losing a coach in the middle of a World Cup or a middle of a European Championship. Nobody wants that to happen. But sometimes in sports,

But it just has to happen. Sometimes there's no other way out. It gets to a point where you have to essentially say goodbye to each other, no matter who initiates it. That's what has happened here. I've been racking my brains to try and think of someone who's walked away without a payoff. I think Gordon Strachan once did it. I think he was once sacked by Middlesbrough and turned down the

pay-off because he just accepted that he'd done such a poor job he couldn't look himself in the mirror and say that he deserved a pay-off so I think there are other examples but fair play to Gatland on this point I mean Jason made the point I mean number one in the world World Cup semi-finalists Grand Slam winners in his first spell and all of a sudden 14 consecutive defeats a defeat against England

Italy, even I know enough about Rugby Union to know that that doesn't happen very often. And I think when that happens again, to quote Jason, the pressure valve at some point has got to be released. And it clearly had to be today. Tough time for Gatland and Wales Rugby. Hope both go well in the future. Let's come back to you, Ian, with a big football story from Sammy Mockbell in your paper. Hamstrung Havertz adds to Arsenal injury misery. How concerned should Arsenal fans be, Ian?

I think in some ways, Arsenal fans, I'm sure that Coach Mikel Arteta will be thinking, this is a little bit typical of the way the season has gone for Arsenal in terms of their attacking options. They're out of the FA Cup. So they go to, while everybody else is slogging it away, slogging it around on a Saturday and a Sunday in the FA Cup, in the cold weather, and resting players, trying to keep players fresh for games. They're in Dubai, resting up.

and they've still got another injury. So that's now... Sami believes it's a hamstring. Sez in the piece is not sure yet of the severity of the injury, but how many people get a hamstring injury that isn't relatively important. It's going to be two or three weeks. They always are. At least add that to Martinelli, add it to Gabriel Jesus, add it to Bakayasaka. And, of course, the conversation turns around again to why they went into the season without a centre-forward, why they...

didn't make a more concerted effort to get one in January. That's all in the past. I think the one person in the footballing community who will have looked at that story today and raised his eyebrow is probably Liverpool manager Arne Slott. Into the final minute or so of the programme, Jason, your take on the situation. Again, it looks like a glaring omission, doesn't it, not signing a striker?

I agree with that. I mean, I've been banging that drum for a couple of years and I was told that it didn't matter because Arsenal were scoring loads of goals, but actually they weren't scoring. I mean, for example, this year they're talking about being the second highest scorers after Liverpool. Well, that's why they're second and not first, because Liverpool are first because of the highest scorers. I think it's been a big failure of Arsenal not to address this before. Obviously, they tried last summer with Benjamin Sesko, but didn't try for anyone else.

And I think also Arteta's unfortunately attempted fate because he talked about the physical robustness of Havertz a couple of days ago and then he breaks down and it sods Lord to a degree, but it also is an issue of fairly poor planning in my mind that they should have actually got a number nine. And actually, to be fair to Havertz, he wasn't even seen as a number nine. He was bought as a midfield player, not as an attacker. He's been playing up there and slightly out of position in his own mind this season anyway. So I think it's been a really bad sort of bit of management by Arsenal around.

Final thought on that note, Jason, five seconds. Do you think it's all over then if Liverpool win in the final Merseyside derby at Goodison? Blimey, that's a big question. Not quite, but almost.