According to FC Inter News, Tottenham Hotspur lead West Ham United in the race to sign Barcelona midfielder Rafinha in this summer’s transfer window.
What’s the story?
Rafinha ended the 2017-18 campaign on loan at Inter, having joined the Italian club on a short-term deal from Barcelona in the January transfer window.
Inter reportedly had the option to sign the midfielder on a permanent deal this summer, but according to FC Inter News, the Italian giants have pulled out of a move.
Both Tottenham and West Ham are believed to be interested in bringing the Brazilian to the Premier League, but FC Inter News have claimed that Spurs lead the race.
It would be a real coup if West Ham managed to bring Rafinha to the London Stadium, especially considering that Manuel Lanzini will miss a chunk of next season.
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The Hammers are certainly making moves in the transfer market this summer, but appear to be behind their bitter rivals Tottenham when it comes to this particular deal.
Would Rafinha fit in at Tottenham?
Rafinha might be surplus to requirements at Barcelona, but this is a player who has scored 11 times in 79 appearances for one of the best club teams in world football.
The midfielder will not turn 26 until next February, meanwhile, and there is absolutely no question that he has the qualities to be a success in the Premier League.
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The two-time Brazil international, who is valued at £25.2m by transfermarkt.co.uk, only managed two goals in 17 Serie A appearances for Inter in the second half of last season.
He is still working his way back to fitness following a long-term knee injury, however, and would be a fine addition to any Premier League club this summer.
Tottenham will not be able to match the likes of Manchester City and Manchester United on the spending front this summer, but they seemingly have the chance to secure the services of Rafinha for a very reasonable price.
Romelu Lukaku has told Sky Sports that he believes the reason he is seldom dropped or rested for Manchester United is because he is manager Jose Mourinho’s “sergeant on the pitch”.
What’s the story?
In an interview with Sky Sports pundit and his Belgian coach Thierry Henry, Manchester United striker Lukaku has said that he believes he is Mourinho’s “sergeant” when he plays and that he has a “soldier mentality”.
That is the reason he believes he has featured so heavily this season following his big-money switch to Old Trafford from Everton.
He said: “I think the manager… thinks that I’m like his sergeant on the pitch. He knows I have that soldier mentality. I will always put the team first.”
Lukaku has got it wrong
Yes, Lukaku – who is valued at £76.5m by transfermarkt.co.uk – has featured heavily this season but his comments about his attitude so not bear scrutiny.
The reason the Belgian plays so often is that Mourinho likes having that physical presence up front. It was the same with Zlatan Ibrahimovic last season.
Essentially, United still aren’t good enough on the ball to work the ball up the pitch often enough. That means they need the out ball that a taller, stronger striker like Lukaku is meant to offer.
Marcus Rashford and Anthony Martial do not fit the bill in the same way. They like running in behind but United’s play isn’t good or intricate to make the most of that on a regular basis.
Lukaku’s commitment to the cause has improved in recent weeks and he openly showed great commitment in his celebrations following the comeback wins over London pair Chelsea and Crystal Palace.
To point to his strong mentality and refer to himself as “soldier” misses the point, however. He is frequently out-muscled and beaten in the air without offering enough of a challenge.
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Earlier in the season, he only seemed to come to life to put the gloss on thrashings but did not offer anywhere enough while the game was in the balance.
Further, his meek surrenders in away matches against Liverpool and Chelsea – among others – do not hint at such an attitude. In contrast, Marcus Rashford was ill for last season’s FA Cup quarter-final against Chelsea but still played and worked tirelessly as a lone striker in a team that had ten men for over half the game.
Lukaku has grossly overstated his importance to the United team.
At just shy, bang on or a little bit more of £60million (it depends on what figure you want to believe), Manchester United forked out a British record transfer fee to bring the Real Madrid ace to Old Trafford.
You’d obviously expect an instant, and big, return on such a price and after opening the scoring today, combined with his overall performance, the Argentina international looks to be worth the astronomical cost.
Manchester United are back!
Okay, it has only been 90 minutes but what a 90 minutes it was for Louis van Gaal’s boys.
The Red Devils performance was full of energy, pace, creativity and goals; four things we were accustomed to during the days of Sir Alex Ferguson.
LvG now has a platform to build upon as the Dutchman looks to get United back into the Champions League.
Robin van Persie is no longer the main man
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Before Louis van Gaal announced his starting line-up for the game today, a lot of the talk surrounded whether it would Wayne Rooney or Juan Mata to lose their place to Falcao.
LvG surprised us all, though, when he started the Colombian on the bench. However, it won’t be long before the man on loan from AS Monaco will be commanding a starting place and, on today’s performance, Robin van Persie may well be the fall guy.
Everton manager David Moyes has declared that Republic of Ireland midfielder Darron Gibson will be back in the first team in the coming weeks.
The midfielder has been out for three months and made his comeback in an under-21’s match up against Reading, which he managed to play 63 minutes.
Everton are short in midfield with captain Phil Neville out injured and Marouane Fellaini missing due to injury, so Gibson’s return would be a welcome boost to the depleted midfield ranks.
“Preparations have been ok. We’ve got a few injuries but everyone looks fine and we are getting ready for the game,” Moyes told EvertonTV.
“Darron Gibson is starting to make some recovery and he’s going in the right direction. That’s positive and we hope he won’t be too far away.
“Someone will have to come in because unfortunately Fellaini is suspended, but it was always going to happen sometime”.
Despite several injury concerns, Everton are in fifth place in the Premier League and welcome Norwich at the weekend who are unbeaten in their last five games keeping four clean sheets.
Gibson’s international career is still up for debate after withdrawing from the squad in September following a disappointing Euro campaign.
If Gibson is to cement a regular place in the centre of Everton’s midfield and help challenge at the top of the Premier League, then he will draw the attention of Giovanni Trapattoni once again.
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Marco Silva will be seeking some serious reinforcements at Everton this summer, so should he swoop for Croatia’s versatile star in the making?
There have been plenty of impressive performances already at this summer’s World Cup, but one player that has flown slightly under the radar is Ante Rebic.
The 24 year-old Croatian was wonderful down the left flank in their 2-0 win over Nigeria, and would be an excellent addition for Silva and Everton.
Links to the likes of Richarlison and Hirving Lozano suggest the Portuguese tactician is after a left sided winger this summer, and Rebic’s versatility would make him a really smart signing if bigger clubs swoop in for the likes of Lozano.
Able to play anywhere down the left flank or as a secondary striker, the young attacker scored nine times and added two assists for Eintracht Frankfurt last season, where he was on loan from parent club Fiorentina.
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The German club are expected to make the move permanent this summer when his contract with Fiorentina runs out, but it seems hard to believe he wouldn’t dump that move if a Premier League club came calling with a bigger offer.
Averaging one key pass, 1.5 dribbles, 1.8 shots and 1.5 tackles per game last season, the 17-cap attacker can do a little bit of everything, and he showed that in the win over Nigeria.
With four crosses, Rebic was the main supply line to the towering Croatian front men, and completing two dribbles and one key pass in such a cagey affair shows his ability to make something out of nothing.
Silva will expect whoever plays on that left hand side to work incredibly hard as well, and Rebic’s five aerial wins, two interceptions and five fouls show he’s certainly not afraid to get stuck in.
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Rebic would bring pace, creativity and a bit of steel to Everton’s attack, and picking him up for free when his contract runs out would be one hell of a coup. The Toffees should absolutely try to hijack Frankfurt’s move for the £9m-rated attacker.
So, Everton fans, would you take a gamble on Rebic this summer? Let us know your thoughts by voting in the poll below…
Aside from Arsene Wenger, the next biggest target for the ever-increasing ire of Arsenal target was Olivier Giroud.
That was until he upped sticks and moved to London rivals Chelsea in January, where he is already establishing himself with an assist in his first proper run-out.
A solid hold-up player, but not necessarily a prolific goalscorer, Giroud managed only four goals this season prior to his departure to west London and many Arsenal fans blamed the Frenchman for Arsenal’s struggle to stay in the top four over the last few seasi
Giroud has now revealed that inconsistent playing time was the sole reason behind his exit from the Emirates.
He said: “For a year and a half, it went from bad to worse. I could no longer continue like that.
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“I could not bring myself to spend another year at Arsenal and remain a reserve, even a second reserve. The future looked gloomy with the arrival of a new striker.”
Arsenal fans are clearly empathetic to the forward’s plight, but agree with the forward that it was simply time for him to go…
There were plenty of winners and losers at Brazil 2014. German football, Brazilian football, James Rodriguez, Luis Suarez, Louis van Gaal, spray-can technology, all left the World Cup with their reputations either greater or lesser than before.
But one undoubted victor of the tournament in Brazil that has thus far slipped under the radar is the re-emergence of 3-5-2. The formation saw Chile annihilate Spain, aided Costa Rica’s against-the-odds march to the quarter-finals and even facilitated for a rather ordinary Netherlands side to reach and win the third-place play-off. Does that make Hull City’s Steve Bruce one of international football’s leading contemporaries? Maybe not.
Former Oranje gaffer Louis van Gaal now wants to bring 3-5-2 to Manchester United – a system which actively defies every philosophical tradition at Old Trafford, most notably the exclusion of natural wingers. He’s used the formation during both of the Red Devils’ pre-season fixtures against La Galaxy and Roma, and has subsequently suggested the club’s recruitment this summer will be done baring it in mind.
In turn, the question must be asked; can 3-5-2 succeed at Manchester United?
Opinions on the system remain fairly divided in England. 3-5-2 is often seen as a foreign formation, particularly taking root in Serie A, with Steve Bruce and Glenn Hoddle amongst the few top flight managers who have championed the system in recent times. Even amid the utmost injury crises, most Premier League managers will resort to deploying midfielders as full-backs before they even consider the notion of constructing a three-man defence.
The last major club to attempt to adopt it was Manchester City during their infamously poor 2012/13 title defence campaign, a season which eventually cost Roberto Mancini his job. Following a 3-1 defeat to Ajax in the Champions League, Micah Richards summarised the opinions of the players; “We’re used to a straight four and it’s twice we’ve gone to a back five and conceded, The players just want to play. It’s a hard system because we’re not used to it.”
Gary Neville soon followed by declaring 3-5-2 ‘alien’ in the Sky Sports studio, citing his own experiences that adapting from a conventional, typically English system to a considerably more continental one with completely different individual roles, especially in defence, was the biggest challenge. For a club that that has implemented back fours and two widemen at every age group throughout Sir Alex Ferguson’s reign and yonder, adaption will be Manchester United’s ultimate obstacle too.
But Louis van Gaal’s ability to implement his ideas on the training pitch is renowned throughout world football. Endorsements such as Raymond Verheijen’s – “He’s an extremely good team builder, a good technical teacher. If a club wants to start from scratch and build a new team then he’s the perfect candidate,” the Holland coach recently told BBC World Service – are not hard to find.
And van Gaal has already undergone a practice run of training a squad around the values of 3-5-2 with Oranje. Before the 2014 World Cup, his Netherlands side had never used the system before but by the end of the tournament they were its leading champions, with the 62 year-old even converting Arjen Robben into an out-and-out centre-forward and Dirk Kuyt into a wing-back. Clearly he has a strong understanding of how 3-5-2 must be taught and the players who suit it best.
Furthermore, as van Gaal has argued himself, United find themselves venturing into the realms of 3-5-2 through necessity rather than design. The Red Devils squad is tremendously unbalanced, or in the 62 year-old’s own words, ‘broken’ – they have four strikers all capable of holding down starting roles, five No.10s and despite United’s enormous heritage otherwise, no wingers that can claim to be amongst the European elite.
Rather, 3-5-2 allows for Robin van Persie, Wayne Rooney and Juan Mata to be on the pitch at the same time – a disturbing conundrum that both David Moyes and Ryan Giggs failed to find a solution to last season – whilst also accommodating for the natural strengths of Luke Shaw and Antonio Valencia, who has become far more defender than midfielder over the course of the last few seasons.
Likewise, a three-man centre-back set-up would hide the inadequacies of what has now become United’s weakest department following the bosman exits of Nemanja Vidic and Rio Ferdinand. As the Dutch demonstrated in Brazil, when quality is in doubt, strength in numbers becomes the safest policy. Furthermore, capable of playing at centre-back, full-back or even midfield, Phil Jones and Chris Smalling should transition to a 3-5-2 well.
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But the most prevailing benefit will be that it gives United a clear direction and sense of identity – something they tellingly lacked under David Moyes. Whether it’s the best system for the Red Devils is open to debate, but more important is the fact 3-5-2 creates a separation between United and their past, and a strong, fresh philosophy that the players can believe in.
Of course, the ultimate test will be whether the system can work in England, with a top flight more ferocious, instinctive and competitive than any other and a footballing culture firmly entrenched in variations of 4-4-2. 3-5-2 is by no means incompatible with the Premier League – it took Hull City to an FA Cup final and a 16th place finish last season, despite the Tigers being widely tipped to go back down. But we are yet to witness a club at the top end of the Premiership adopt the system successfully. That uniqueness could prove to be the Red Devils’ defining blessing, or equally their intrinsic curse.
In the history of the Premier League, we have seen some truly terrific players to grace our shores; which has considerably raised fans’ expectations of other players. These fine men on the list represent those who have been put under unnecessary pressure to deliver, with undue criticism occurring as a consequence. These are players with varying abilities, but ones who have either felt like scapegoats or not given enough time to succeed.
Some of these players are undoubtedly talented, but have been portrayed as villains and attracted some unwarranted criticism from some football fans. This has sometimes been caused by making a wrong career move or a few negative headlines appearing off the pitch. Other players on the list have simply been unable to impress at our country’s biggest clubs; and have now forged careers for themselves at smaller teams. As always, the list is purely subjective, likely to cause many of you to scream at your laptops in frustration. But anyway, here is my list of the top 15 players who have attracted unwarranted stick and criticism in their careers during the Premier League era.
Click on Robbie Savage to see the full list
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Before Arsenal’s 5-2 victory over Tottenham in the North London derby two weekends ago, Arsene Wenger announced that his minimum requirement would be a top four finish in order to qualify for the Champions League.
The Gunners have been inconsistent to say the least this season, producing convincing victories over Spurs, West Ham and Liverpool, but have come up short against Norwich and Fulham, as well as Premier League big boys Chelsea and Manchester United. Currently, the North Londoners sit in sixth place, ten points off league leaders Manchester City, suggesting they wont be launching a title bid any time soon – even if Arsene Wenger breaks the habit of a lifetime and buys big in January.
But considering the performances of Everton and West Brom, in fifth and third place respectively, not to mention competition from old rivals Tottenham and high-flying West Ham, would finishing in the top four prove to be a successful season for the Gunners?
It’s certainly very close in the mini-league between fourth and eighth place. West Brom are currently third but it would take a brave man to bet they will finish there at the end of the season and will most likely drop down at least one position in the coming weeks as Chelsea, City and United reassert their dominance over the Premier League.
Steve Clarke has tweaked his inherited team to make them even more efficient as they rack up the points. Their game against Chelsea on November 17th was very much the prequel to that famous 3-0 Champions League defeat to Juventus that cost Roberto Di Matteo his job, and the Baggies have made light work of lower table opposition this season. But whether Steve Clarke can maintain his team’s good form will depend on crucial six pointers against those surrounding West Brom in the league, including when they face Arsenal in two weekends time.
Everton too are considerable rivals to getting into fourth spot. Bucking the trend, the Toffees have started well for once, but have perhaps missed out on achievable points since their fantastic form at the beginning of the season. But the mood has somewhat changed at Goodison Park. Usually, Champions League qualification is somewhat of an idealist fantasy, the kind of half-joke you make around this time of the year to your mother about getting you a PS3 and a HDTV to play it on for Christmas.
This season however, the players and the manager appear much more focused on making it a reality. Marouane Fellaini – the man running the high-flying Everton team and who could soon be on his way to Chelsea – has told the press he wants to get his club into the Champions League before he moves on, and similarly David Moyes has put pressure on himself by resisting the urge to sign a new contract until he has a better idea of whether Everton can make it into Europe’s top competition. At the start of the season, Tim Howard commented on how the current Toffees squad was the best he had seen in terms of first team quality and depth since signing from Manchester United in 2006.
Arsenal’s closest rivals Tottenham have tended to be their main competitors for fourth spot, and last season missed out on Champions League qualification to the Gunners by a single point. Despite the traditional local and league rivalry, Everton and West Brom could prove to be a bigger stumbling block than Spurs this season.
The new boss at White Hart Lane has failed to take the club forward, as Tottenham continue to struggle to take points against top four teams and it seems the chances of Spurs breaking into the top four are about as likely as they have ever been, despite being level on points with Wenger’s side. A £20 million January kitty could change all that however as Andre Villas-Boas drafts a shortlist of Europe’s rising stars to turn around Tottenham’s fortunes – Christian Eriksen, Joao Moutinho and Willian to name a few – and the Portuguese coach will soon have Moussa Dembele back at his disposal.
Arsenal themselves have had to forge a team out of the ruins of the old one, losing Robin van Persie and Alex Song in the same transfer window. Then again, claiming Arsenal are in a transition season seems to be an all too repetitive analysis since the club last lifted the Premier League trophy. In my opinion, Wenger has bought well; Santi Cazorla, Lukas Podolski and Olivier Giroud have all proved to be decent signings, but then again, the latter two are yet to perhaps live up to the hype initially surrounding their transfers in the summer. Both men contribute well but have also been found lacking in certain fixtures, whereas Santi Cazorla along with Mikel Arteta and Jack Wilshere are a formidable midfield three that are as capable as any other in the Premier League.
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Arsenal’s problem is clearly depth. When the surface is scratched away, the Gunners are left with a string of consistent under-performers in Andrey Arshavin, Marouane Chamakh, Sebastien Squillaci and Andre Santos. Despite Wenger’s money-clutching ways, I believe the Frenchman will try to bolster his squad in January, especially if Theo Walcott continues his refusal to sign a new contract.
So all things considered, Arsenal fans should not turn their noses up at a fourth spot finish, even if it is one place backwards from last season. The stars have gone, and their replacements are decent but are by no means world beaters. Furthermore, until the board splash the cash on some top level quality, it would be wrong to assume the squad can naturally improve.
In the league, Arsenal face truly stiff competition from Everton and West Brom, and although the latter club’s form may fall away, beating both to fourth spot and batting away Tottenham, despite being Wenger’s minimum requirement, will be no easy feat.
According to reports in The Sun on Sunday on June 10, Chelsea midfielder Ruben Loftus-Cheek refused to commit his future to the club while on 2018 World Cup duty with England, and we at Football FanCast suggested that Manchester United should snap him up if he decides his future lies away from Stamford Bridge.
The 22-year-old has just returned to the west London outfit following a relatively successful season-long loan spell with Crystal Palace, where he played as an attacking midfielder and on the left-hand side as he was given the regular minutes on the pitch that he didn’t get under Blues boss Antonio Conte during the 2016/17 campaign.
The 6ft 3in midfield powerhouse isn’t going to make a decision on his future until after the World Cup has finished, which could suggests that he waits to see if the club are going to replace the Italian manager following a miserable defence of their 2017 Premier League title before he makes his decision.
Meanwhile, United chief Jose Mourinho has already been busy in the transfer market after completing deals for Fred and Diogo Dalot, but the Portuguese boss may be tempted to add another body in midfield – especially if Marouane Fellaini leaves.
We asked Red Devils fans to vote on our poll to see whether they would want their club to sign Loftus-Cheek, and they were largely split with 49% saying they didn’t want him at Old Trafford.
That is certainly understandable seeing as the main positions that Loftus-Cheek would fill would likely be Paul Pogba’s and Alexis Sanchez’s, but if he is available in a few weeks’ time Mourinho could well be tempted to swoop for the promising England man.
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