“Strange,” said Gabriel Jesus. It was 12 days ago and the scorer of Manchester City’s equaliser against Liverpool was reflecting on a league table that showed his side in the bottom half.
A couple of hours later, Arsenal’s goal difference had been dented sufficiently that City were back in the upper section, but a strange look persists.
It feels incongruous that Tottenham Hotspur have almost twice as many goals as City and are eight places higher, an inversion of expectations, given one manager has a reputation for pragmatism and the other for purism.
Jose Mourinho against Pep Guardiola represents one of the great rivalries of opposites, but it has felt a one-sided duel. Spurs beat City in February – albeit against the run of play to such an extent that the winners had an expected goals of 0.42 and the losers one of 3.25 – and Mourinho's Manchester United delayed their coronation as champions with a derby win in 2018, but he has only triumphed in the battles, not the wars.
In the time they managed the two Manchester clubs, Guardiola took 46 points more. After Mourinho’s appointment by Tottenham last season, the Catalan claimed 11 more. The last time Mourinho finished ahead of Guardiola was when his Real Madrid displaced Barcelona as champions of Spain in 2012.
Until this season? Perhaps. Tottenham’s start has raised the possibility that Mourinho is in the kind of late career revival that may have appeared beyond him. Perhaps a strange season will end with the serial winner back on top.
Rewind three months and relatively few were tipping Tottenham for a top-four finish. Now, amid a mass of entertainingly flawed candidates, there is a school of thought they are potential champions.
Perhaps Saturday represents a first real test of those credentials. Spurs walloped United 6-1, but they were in self-destructive mode. A scintillating second half earned them a 5-2 win over Southampton, but Ralph Hasenhuttl's team were similarly culpable in their demise.
Perhaps that is affording Tottenham too little credit for brilliant incision, but the most accomplished performance against them brought Everton a 1-0 win. Spurs were mediocre.
Thereafter, subsequent scorelines were explosive but the fixture list allowed them to ease their way into the season. This feels the start of a defining period. Three successive weekends pit them against City, Chelsea and Arsenal. They face Liverpool and Leicester within four days in December. After Boxing Day, when Spurs visit Wolves, it will be easier to say if they are title contenders.
If so, rendering Tottenham champions for the first time since Bill Nicholson’s team won the double in 1961 would be Mourinho’s greatest feat since Inter Milan’s 2010 treble, which was accomplished in part because of a famous Champions League semi-final defeat of Guardiola’s Barcelona.
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Top 10 Premier League goalscorers of the season and of all-time
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That is some way off but Saturday could be a twist on a familiar theme. Guardiola against Mourinho has often been attack against defence. The Portuguese would sometimes line Real up with three defensive midfielders. His Inter had just 24 per cent of possession at the Camp Nou. When his United were runners-up to Guardiola’s City, it was with 38 fewer goals.
Now the differential can be explained by City's striking injuries – though Sergio Aguero may be fit to return – along with a tougher fixture list and the fact they have a game in hand. Spurs have been more restrained of late, with only four goals in their last three games, but Son Heung-min is still the division's joint top scorer and Harry Kane the runaway leader for assists.
Meanwhile, one of the season’s peculiarities is that City have conceded the joint fewest goals despite leaking a quintet to Leicester in the first and only time a Guardiola side has been breached five times.
Neither Ruben Dias nor Aymeric Laporte played then. City have only conceded twice in their four games as a duo and only four in nine matches since the nightmare against Leicester. Guardiola might field two deep-lying midfielders on Saturday, even if defensive feels a misnomer for Ilkay Gundogan, whose deficiencies off the ball have been exposed by Son before.
But the bigger questions revolve around Mourinho. Does he abandon his usual safety-first blueprint against Guardiola? Since Real Madrid lost 5-0 to Barcelona, an inferiority complex has been apparent in his tactics, no matter how expensive his players.
These managers have always been on different sides of an ideological divide, with Mourinho forever thinking about how to nullify and neuter, but this is an examination of his belief in his players. Is he confident enough to adopt a more attacking approach?
Top tips
Create and maintain a strong bond between yourself and your child, through sensitivity, responsiveness, touch, talk and play. “The bond you have with your kids is the blueprint for the relationships they will have later on in life,” says Dr Sarah Rasmi, a psychologist.
Set a good example. Practise what you preach, so if you want to raise kind children, they need to see you being kind and hear you explaining to them what kindness is. So, “narrate your behaviour”.
Praise the positive rather than focusing on the negative. Catch them when they’re being good and acknowledge it.
Show empathy towards your child’s needs as well as your own. Take care of yourself so that you can be calm, loving and respectful, rather than angry and frustrated.
Be open to communication, goal-setting and problem-solving, says Dr Thoraiya Kanafani. “It is important to recognise that there is a fine line between positive parenting and becoming parents who overanalyse their children and provide more emotional context than what is in the child’s emotional development to understand.”
Islamophobia definition
A widely accepted definition was made by the All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims in 2019: “Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.” It further defines it as “inciting hatred or violence against Muslims”.
It
Director: Andres Muschietti
Starring: Bill Skarsgard, Jaeden Lieberher, Sophia Lillis, Chosen Jacobs, Jeremy Ray Taylor
Three stars
List of alleged parties
May 15 2020: PM and Carrie attend 'work meeting' with at
least 17 staff members
May 20 2020: PM and Carrie attend 'bring your own booze'
party
Nov 27 2020: PM gives speech at leaving do for his staff
Dec 10 2020: Staff party held by then-education secretary
Gavin Williamson
Dec 13 2020: PM and Carrie throw a flat party
Dec 14 2020: London mayor candidate Shaun Bailey holds staff party at Conservative
Party headquarters
Dec 15 2020: PM takes part in a staff quiz
Dec 18 2020: Downing Street Christmas party
The Details
Article 15
Produced by: Carnival Cinemas, Zee Studios
Directed by: Anubhav Sinha
Starring: Ayushmann Khurrana, Kumud Mishra, Manoj Pahwa, Sayani Gupta, Zeeshan Ayyub
Our rating: 4/5
Groom and Two Brides
Director: Elie Semaan
Starring: Abdullah Boushehri, Laila Abdallah, Lulwa Almulla
Rating: 3/5
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Profile
Company: Libra Project
Based: Masdar City, ADGM, London and Delaware
Launch year: 2017
Size: A team of 12 with six employed full-time
Sector: Renewable energy
Funding: $500,000 in Series A funding from family and friends in 2018. A Series B round looking to raise $1.5m is now live.
Company Fact Box
Company name/date started: Abwaab Technologies / September 2019
Founders: Hamdi Tabbaa, co-founder and CEO. Hussein Alsarabi, co-founder and CTO
Based: Amman, Jordan
Sector: Education Technology
Size (employees/revenue): Total team size: 65. Full-time employees: 25. Revenue undisclosed
Stage: early-stage startup
Investors: Adam Tech Ventures, Endure Capital, Equitrust, the World Bank-backed Innovative Startups SMEs Fund, a London investment fund, a number of former and current executives from Uber and Netflix, among others.
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Maestro
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MATCH INFO
Uefa Champions League quarter-final second leg:
Juventus 1 Ajax 2
Ajax advance 3-2 on aggregate
Living in...
This article is part of a guide on where to live in the UAE. Our reporters will profile some of the country’s most desirable districts, provide an estimate of rental prices and introduce you to some of the residents who call each area home.
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Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
Results
3pm: Maiden Dh165,000 (Dirt) 1,400m, Winner: Lancienegaboulevard, Adrie de Vries (jockey), Fawzi Nass (trainer).
3.35pm: Maiden Dh165,000 (Turf) 1,600m, Winner: Al Mukhtar Star, Adrie de Vries, Fawzi Nass.
4.10pm: Handicap Dh165,000 (D) 2,000m, Winner: Gundogdu, Xavier Ziani, Salem bin Ghadayer.
4.45pm: Handicap Dh185,000 (T) 1,200m, Winner: Speedy Move, Sean Kirrane, Satish Seemar.
5.20pm: Handicap Dh185,000 (D) 1,600m, Winner: Moqarrar, Dane O’Neill, Erwan Charpy.
5.55pm: Handicap Dh175,000 (T) 1,800m, Winner: Dolman, Richard Mullen, Satish Seemar.
ITU Abu Dhabi World Triathlon
Why your domicile status is important
Your UK residence status is assessed using the statutory residence test. While your residence status – ie where you live - is assessed every year, your domicile status is assessed over your lifetime.
Your domicile of origin generally comes from your parents and if your parents were not married, then it is decided by your father. Your domicile is generally the country your father considered his permanent home when you were born.
UK residents who have their permanent home ("domicile") outside the UK may not have to pay UK tax on foreign income. For example, they do not pay tax on foreign income or gains if they are less than £2,000 in the tax year and do not transfer that gain to a UK bank account.
A UK-domiciled person, however, is liable for UK tax on their worldwide income and gains when they are resident in the UK.
Real estate tokenisation project
Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.
The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.
Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
MATCH INFO
Manchester City 1 Chelsea 0
De Bruyne (70')
Man of the Match: Kevin de Bruyne (Manchester City)
MATCH INFO
Liverpool 2 (Van Dijk 18', 24')
Brighton 1 (Dunk 79')
Red card: Alisson (Liverpool)
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Wicked
Director: Jon M Chu
Stars: Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jonathan Bailey
Qosty Byogaani
Starring: Hani Razmzi, Maya Nasir and Hassan Hosny
Four stars
