According to reports in the Daily Mail, Tottenham Hotspur face a battle to keep manager Mauricio Pochettino with Real Madrid ready to step up their pursuit of the 45-year-old, and Spurs fans have been quick to have their say on the rumour.
The Daily Mail says the La Liga giants are weighing up a move to bring the Argentine boss to Spain at the end of the season with Zinedine Zidane’s men struggling this term – they are currently 19 points behind Barcelona in the Spanish top flight and were knocked out of the Copa del Rey by Leganes during the week.
The report adds that while Pochettino is tempted by the opportunity of working with Real, the north London outfit wouldn’t be willing to let him go easily – especially as he has no release clause in his contract.
Tottenham supporters took to social media to give their thoughts on the story, and while one simply said “he’ll go”, another said “this will test Poch’s loyalty”.
Wayne Rooney has signed a new contract with Manchester United worth a reported £300,000 a week. The club is happy, the great freckled one is happy, the Stretford End and everyone involved at Paul Stretford’s End are happy, even the jaded, snarking curmudgeons are happy, such are many plentiful examples the situation provides for their life force enhancing belief that modern football is at the root of everything rotten and evil on this ghastly forsaken burning rock of nothingness we fool ourselves into thinking a home. Everyone is happy.
And yet somehow the sneaking suspicion that we’ve all been had lingers like the bad aftertaste of a Casillero del Diablo.
So, in another life, what else could United have spent 300k a week and 14m a year on instead of Wayne Rooney’s inevitable second hair transplant?
1. Pay two people £150k a week to play in midfield
It may have escaped those without the finely tuned nose of a true detective, but I’ll let you in on a secret – United have a problem in midfield. Despite the fact Rooney often spends huge swaths of games in a sort of self created auxiliary holding left back role, he’s not midfielder. Yet. Whilst the ridiculous valuation of footballers may threaten to become an elaborate satirical performance piece on the housing crisis (or perhaps it’s vice versa?) 300k is still a huge amount. You can still pick up a top of the range playmaker (only two previous owners) for a cool £150k. Even in the trendy deluxe diminutive Spanish model, David Silva and Juan Mata both command in the region. Perhaps get them in a collectable set? Buy two and get a novelty Marouane Fellaini thrown in for free! Ilkay Gundogan is on a paltry, almost insulting mid level banker’s salary of £25k a week. Why not buy a whole team of him? Some of them can play in defense (which, don’t tell anyone, is also a problem.) Sheeeyyyt, United could’ve caved into Paul Pogba’s salary demands thirteen times and still had change for an Ilkay Way.
2. Expand Old Trafford to compete with City.
Manchester City are now the biggest club in Manchester. Manuel Pellegrini has spoken, and in every sense but the actual words he used and what they mean, he’s right. So how will United compete with City and their imposing haul of 3 league titles once their new 60,000 capacity expansion makes the Etihad the second largest club stadium in the country, behind only, erm, Manchester United? Well, by expanding their own stadium of course. Perhaps with an exclusive corporate helipad and a state of the art pitch level retracting jumbotron. One architect has already proposed cramming ticketless fans onto the roof! To ignore such genius would be folly.
3. Do a Bayern and give back to the fans.
With it’s increasingly rampant propensity for evil, PR is now very important to football. Few top clubs can escape the perception that their working class roots are being eroded in favor of big business by an army of invisible Tony Blairs all desperate to play head tennis with Kevin Keegan. Bayern Munich can certainly try though, with their cheap tickets, safe standing and wily initiative to shame not only our football, but also our exorbitant pricing by buying out Arsenal’s away allocation as a goodwill gesture to their fans. Gone are the days of xenophobic ‘bantz!’ and giggling at rude sounding names, these days any football fan worth their salt wants to be German. With this in mind, United could claw back some respectability for our feeble Unterliga by reimbursing 26,000 of their lowest tier season ticket holders as a show of good faith. Anyone who spends a whole season singing songs about David Moyes deserves some mercy.
This would be brilliant, and is quite comfortably the least likely option on this list.
4. Hire thousands of teachers, nurses and soldiers.
Barely a contract renewal or transfer window goes by without some enlightened altruistic sole lamenting the plight of our underfunded public sector betters. “Just imagine how many teachers/nurses/soldiers you could pay with such and such’s salary” they say, curiously never implying we could up their wage substantially, but merely that we could hire more of them, at the same rate. To this end, United could hire thousands of nurses, soldiers and teachers, at the going rate, to aid the physios, guard the stadium and teach Rooney the many available alternatives in the English language to “obviously”
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5. Buy an MLS Franchise/Sponsor a Llama/Help pay off their debt.
You know, something daft like that. Lolz.
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Tottenham Hotspur defender Kyle Walker was forced to shut down his Twitter account after Spurs fans berated him over yesterday’s defeat to Chelsea, as reported by the Daily Mail.
@kyle28walker was bombarded with abusive tweets from his own fans after his mediocre performance in the London derby that saw rivals Chelsea come from 2-1 down to win 4-2 in the second half.
Walker was at fault for the final Chelsea goal in injury time and it seems that despite his full commitment to the club, some sections of online Spurs fans needed to vent their anger.
“Would love to know what I’m doing so different I give 100 per cent every game and still u (have) something to say I’m 22 and learning #embarrassing,” Walker wrote before deleting his account.
“If I said what I thought to these people I would get done humans make mistakes it was 90mins and I though(t it was) a foul end off (sic)!!!!”
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According to reports in The Irish Sun on May 24, Leeds United have been told that they will need to pay £6.5m if they want to sign Peterborough United striker Jack Marriott this summer, and their fans were quick to react to the rumour on Twitter, with one even mentioning Peter Ridsdale’s name.
The Irish Sun says that the Yorkshire outfit, along with Crystal Palace, Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest and Sheffield Wednesday, are keen on the 23-year-old attacker who scored 33 goals in 56 appearances in all competitions for the Posh this term.
It is certainly no surprise that the Whites could be looking for a goalscorer to finally replace Chris Wood with Pierre-Michel Lasogga set to return to Hamburg following an uninspiring loan spell, and 2017 summer arrivals Caleb Ekuban, Pawel Cibicki and Jay-Roy Grot all struggling to make an impression.
We asked Leeds fans to vote on our poll to see whether they would like to see their club spend £6.5m on Marriott this summer, and a huge 72% said they wouldn’t want Andrea Radrizzani to splash out on the League One marksman.
It seems certain that United will bring in at least one – and possibly two – new centre-forwards this summer with links to Marriott, Jerry Mbakogu and Abel Hernandez already happening in the last couple of weeks, and it will be interesting to see whether they are willing to bid big for the former.
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According to reports in Swiss media outlet Blick, Southampton and West Ham United have joined Tottenham Hotspur and Borussia Dortmund in the race to sign Basel centre-back Manuel Akanji, who is rated at €20m (approximately £17.7m) by his club, before the January transfer window slams shut at the end of the month.
What’s the word, then?
Well, Blick says that Dortmund are hoping to tie up a deal for the 22-year-old defender soon, although the player would have a decision to make as he will want to be playing regularly ahead of the World Cup in Russia next summer.
Blick says that the Bundesliga giants have already offered €15m (approximately £13.3m) but the Swiss club want more and know that there is interest from the Premier League.
The report adds that Saints and the Irons, along with Spurs, are also keeping tabs on the centre-half and have the financial muscle to potentially create a bidding war – something that would suit Basel.
How good has Akanji been this season?
He has been excellent.
The 22-year-old has quickly established himself as a key player at the back for Basel, helping them qualify for the knockout stages of the Champions League by playing every minutes in their group games, and he has become a regular fixture for Switzerland in recent months.
The defender has scored two goals and provided two assists in 28 appearances in all competitions this term, and according to WhoScored.com he has won eight tackles, made 13 interceptions, 12 blocks and 31 clearances in Europe this term, as well as winning 15 of the 23 aerial duels he has faced.
He is known for his pace and his long passes, which could prove to be two useful traits if he does seal a move to the Premier League this month.
Would he be a good signing for Southampton or West Ham?
He certainly would be.
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Akanji has shown in the league and the Champions League for Basel the quality and potential he has, and if either club could pick him up for around £18m in the current market they would probably be delighted.
Saints may well be looking for a long-term replacement for Virgil van Dijk following his move to Liverpool, while David Moyes could try to add a younger centre-back to his squad with most of his options in that position either above 30 years of age or reaching that milestone this year.
Celtic are a club with a rich tradition of footballing success, but whose recent years have been undercut by financial restraint. The SPFL Champions have been the great underdogs of European football in recent times, consistently achieving more than they realistically should and maintaining their lofty reputation.
But the future is bleak for the club. Scottish football continues to be dwarfed year on year by its near neighbours and without that financial support the hope of competing against the best in Europe fast becomes the stuff of fantasy.
It therefore seems apt that the man to push forward a solution is the same person that saved the club from bankruptcy 20 years ago this week. Fergus McCann, the Scottish-Canadian entrepreneur, revealed that his last remaining dream for the club he loves is to see them merge with England into a redesigned English Premier League. He warned fans that it is ‘impossible’ to attract the best players without escaping a Scottish league set-up with ‘too many small clubs’ to generate serious cash. The club generated a revenue of £75.8m last year on the back of their run to the Champions League knock-out stages, a figure that still only compares with the likes of Norwich and Fulham in the Premier League. Celtic can surely do a lot better, and with supporters clamouring for success this is surely an enticing option?
McCann thinks so; and he believes market forces will inevitably dictate the move for Celtic to cross the border and become part of the English League:
“I think it could and should happen. It would triple the size of the club in financial terms, overnight.”
Explaining the necessity behind Celtic finding a way to escape the confines of a small domestic market, McCann added:
‘”The EPL now dwarfs Scottish football financially and makes Celtic’s progress a daunting challenge. Nowadays, supporters want the best, and that is impossible in Scotland generally, with too many small clubs. This is obvious. It is a real achievement for Celtic to play in the Champions League group stage. In the last two years they represented the smallest country.”
This will invariably be a notion that polarises opinion within the club, and one that is likely to be far from an easy decision when it comes down to it. Celtic wouldn’t lose their Scottish base but their relationship with the Scottish League is one that for many should cherished rather than abandoned.
McCann would see this as his ideal legacy; by pushing through the move he could guarantee a sustainable future for the club he adores.
Celtic are accused of lacking ambition, by selling their best players and bringing in cut-price also-rans there remains little hope for the club to continue its involvement in top-level European Football. For Lawwell though the situation is precarious, having to balance the books without the revenue streams of his continental rivals. It is worth remembering the fact that Celtic aren’t immune from the perils of financial collapse, and Lawwell’s prudence is what has been holding the club together of late. Selling the likes of Wanyama and Ledley without an adequate replacement may seem like an aberration, but for Celtic at the minute it is a necessary reality.
So how would McCann’s dream change all this?
To say that the move would treble Celtic’s revenue overnight isn’t an overstatement. Premier League prize money, TV deals and the potential for a new wealth of sponsors could transform Celtic’s fortunes and make them seriously competitive once again. This is without mentioning the power of Celtic as a brand, a club that has the international fan base to rival even the biggest Premier League clubs.
Whether the cost of success is too much to bear is another issue. Celtic’s heritage is built upon Scottish league football and for some a move would be almost inconceivable. The animosity falls both ways with English fans wary of the Scottish Champions moving across the border; it is fair to say the path forward will be a difficult one.
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For Celtic though change is a must. The current trajectory is towards further decline and without drastic changes we are unlikely to see much of a change from the current worrying trend.
Will this be a case of having to swallow their pride for Celtic?
Queens Park Rangers striker Rob Hulse has completed a move to Charlton Athletic on loan.
The R’s frontman failed to make Ranger’s 25 man Premier League squad and will now join up with the London outfit on a three month temporary deal.
QPR.co.uk confirmed the 32 year old is on his way, he made 25 appearances at Loftus Road, netting just twice since a 2010 move from Derby County.
Hulse will be hoping to be involved in the Addicks mid-week fixture against Watford at the Valley.
Charlton are the lowest scorers in England’s second-tier and are perilously close to the Championship drop-zone.
Chris Powell’s striking options recently took a hit with frontman Ricardo Fuller missing their draw with Blackburn Rovers due to a virus.
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Powell told Charlton’s official website: “I’m really pleased to have Rob on board and look forward to working with him.
“With the squad we have we do have one or two players that have played at this level before and a couple that have played Premier League, but you need that Championship know-how week in, week out and I think Rob will give us that.”
Newcastle fans are mercilessly bashing Sunderland’s takeover, after it was announced the club was purchased for £40million.
Sunderland fans will all be breathing a massive sigh of relief now that Ellis Short is out of their club, but that isn’t stopping Newcastle fans from giving them some stick.
The Black Cats were relegated to League One in their first season in the Championship, just a year after belittling Newcastle for being promoted as champions of the division.
A consortium led by Stuart Donald has purchased the club, and the man himself reported the fee as just £40m.
Donald said: “We have given Ellis £40million. That’s the deal price. His debt, he’s now tied it up – and that’s now gone from the football club, and it’s not been ported to us. The reality is Sunderland is debt-free.
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“League One transfer fees aren’t too high – so the budget for Sunderland is going to be pretty hefty. It’s going to be a lot more than many of the other teams have got.”
While Sunderland’s size and budget could very well get them out of League One at the first attempt, that isn’t stopping Newcastle fans from enjoying the moment.
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The Toon Army have been hilariously mocking the price of the takeover, most notably because it’s only 25 per cent more than the £30m Newcastle received for the sale of Moussa Sissoko.
Some of the best Twitter reactions can be found below…
Sometime over last summer I was speaking off-the-record with a Manchester City employee about the ongoing Alexis Sanchez transfer story. This is not me claiming to be an in-the-know incidentally; let’s make that clear off the bat. It’s just that by writing about City on a regular basis for various publications it occasionally affords me such an opportunity.
What I was told directly tallied with the narrative that was prevalent in the media namely that the player desperately wanted to come to the club – and was willing to turn down offers from elsewhere to achieve that aim – but there was a big disparity between what City were prepared to pay per week and Sanchez’s wage demands. As for Arsenal, they were playing hardball, procrastinating and putting up roadblocks, but it was clear they had reluctantly ceded to the inevitable. Regardless, they would absolutely not countenance letting their star talent go before a suitable replacement was secured.
That was last August and I’d love it if somebody could tell me what has changed up this this week’s developments bar the minutiae of each aspect. The answer, give or take the odd inconsequential detail here and there, is nothing.
Now for a follow-up query. Since September 1st when the high-profile switch fell through – or more accurately was postponed – how many articles have been written on the subject? How many slightly adjusted figures have been posted and rehashed variations on the same simple tale passed off as fresh and new before being regurgitated ad nauseum on one-man sites by those slightly strange folk who want strangers to think they have access to immensely private information. A thousand? Two thousand? What is certain is that virtually every day since (134 and counting) it is impossible to scroll down your Twitter timeline without encountering another luke-warm take or Wenger quote or a Chilean journalist being sought for his insider scoop (because he’s from the same country and they all know each other really well over there). All designed to get us to click, all telling us fundamentally nothing new.
There are transfers and then there are transfer sagas and though the latter directly focuses on the former it is necessary to separate these two things and view them as individual entities. The first propagates speculation, rumour and reportage. They’re quire fun in the main. Sagas however are an industry in their own right that takes a perfectly ordinary transfer, wrenches it from its moorings and repeatedly batters us about the head with it until we’re too jaded and dazed to realise that it is no different to the other numerous business transactions taking place throughout each and every window. Put another way, it is a storyteller with only one story and we listen over and over again just in case the phrasing is a little bit changed from the last time.
This is nothing new. There was Bale and Fabregas and John Stones – all three sapping our will to live before eventually concluding exactly how they were always going to – and that’s before we get to the drawn-out affairs that only waste our time such as the repeated suggestion that Ronaldo might return to Old Trafford.
It is a storyteller with only one story and we listen over and over again just in case the phrasing is a little bit changed from the last time.
Speaking of United, they too have now reportedly joined the chase for the Gunners’ chunky-thighed attacker and even as a City fan I am delighted at this turn of events. After all, a change is as good as a rest and this welcome twist momentarily recharged a modicum of interest in a straightforward plot that has now been recounted more times than a Top Gear special on Dave.
Ultimately it doesn’t matter, of course – I still firmly believe that by this summer at the latest Alexis Sanchez will be a Manchester City player – but yesterday’s alternative headline was, to us all, a brightly feathered bird landing on our prison cell windowsill.
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By far the most frustrating aspect of transfer sagas is that the solution to ease our prolonged pain lies not in actually doing something but in doing less. Basic market forces dictate that the fewer clicks sagas receive the fewer articles will be written, and maybe then the countless other potential transfers that have intrigue and interest attached might get a look in too. It would be win-win for all concerned and should we ever reach a place and time where transfer news is not solely dominated by a singular player the media would be full of brightly feathered birds, so many that our eyes will widen with curiosity. And we would finally be free.
Sir Alex Ferguson’s book launch, an autobiography detailing the Scot’s 27-year reign as Manchester United manager and giving an insight into his personal views on leadership, has triggered a wave of controversy in England.
The retired Red Devil has revealed in his new publishing his true feelings on a number of former players, such as David Beckham, Roy Keane, Wayne Rooney and Mark Bosnic, and his opinions have hardly been flattering considering the vital contributions they’ve made to Ferguson’s managerial achievements over the years.
Perhaps most surprisingly however, Ferguson has also shared his views on several players that he’s never actually worked with, including Liverpool starlet Jordan Henderson, citing the midfielder’s gait and tendency to ‘run from his knees’, as well as long-serving Reds skipper Steven Gerrard.
According to the United icon, Gerrard is not, and was never a ‘top, top player’, which in modern terms, triggers the age old debate of what does and doesn’t qualify as world-class.
Certainly a controversial point of view, in fact, it’s hard to imagine a more controversial point of view in the current climate considering the 32 year-old is currently serving as England captain and still revelling in the glory of an incredibly strong World Cup qualification campaign from the Liverpool midfielder.
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So it’s time to ask – is Ferguson simply trying to sell books? Dishing out little nuggets of hullabaloo to entice potential readers into handing over their cash to read the Scot’s ultimate statement on his illustrious career? It’s already sold 115,547 to date, making it the UK’s biggest first week sale for a non-fiction title since official records began 15 years ago.
Or does he have a valid point regarding Gerrard’s actual quality, that shouldn’t be overlooked and misinterpreted as simply an exercise in promotion advertising?
Many have come out since the book launch to speak against Ferguson’s harsh critique of the Liverpool skipper, including Kenny Dalglish, Brendan Rodgers and Zinedine Zidane. Their opinions are valued and valid, regardless of their Liverpudlian bias, but there is some weight behind the Scot’s argument too, that should not be frosted over as part of the famous Anfield-Old Trafford rivalry.
I’m a firm believer that silverware will always remain a strong indicator, if not a deciding factor, of a player’s ability, and due to Gerrard’s devout loyalty to his boyhood club, the England midfielder’s personal trophy cabinet is rather limited. A UEFA Cup, a Champions League title, two FA Cups and three League Cups is hardly a shabby haul, but compare that to his counterparts at Manchester United and Chelsea, and the Liverpool icon is some way behind. Of course, the obvious absentee is the Premier League title.
That being said, he’s arguably the greatest player to have plied his trade in the Premiership without winning the English crown, and silverware certainly isn’t the be all and end all of a player’s quality – John O’Shea has lifted five PL titles and a Champions League, but there’s a reason he’s seeing out his twilight years at Sunderland whilst Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic are still at Old Trafford.
At the same time, Gerrard has claimed several individual honours and achieved countless personal accomplishments that should not be forgotten. The 32 year-old has already claimed the B’allon D’or Bronze award (2005), the FWA Footballer of the Year award (2009), the PFA Players’ Player of the Year award (2009), the PFA Fans’ Player of the Year award twice (2001 and 2009) and the England Player of the Year award twice (2007 and 2012), as well as being named in the PFA Team of the Year seven times out of 16 senior campaigns to date and picking up the Man of the Match award for both the 2005 Champions League final and the 2006 FA Cup final.
In addition to his material honours, the Liverpool veteran has also featured 107 times for England, captained for club and country on a permanent basis and claimed 100 Premier League goals – an astonishing achievement for a central midfielder. Chelsea fans will be quick to point out Frank Lampard has trumped his goal tally by some way, being the Premier League’s top goalscoring midfielder to date with 166. But his Anfield rival has made over 100 top flight appearances less than the Blues veteran.
But trophies and accomplishments aside, I still have my reservations about where Gerrard should be ranked in the hierarchy of football’s and England’s greatest talents. It’s his swash-buckling, action-packed, aggressively emotive yet illogical style of play that concerns me most. The tough-tackles, 70 yard passes and 30 yard goals are certainly entertaining, but his direct, physical and almost primordial manner of play has come to symbolise everything that’s wrong with the English brand of football. You certainly wouldn’t see that kind of thing at Barcelona, whom I will always uphold play the beautiful game in its purest and most demanding sense.
Compare that to the playmaking maestro styles of Paul Scholes, who has countless testimonies of his greatness from the Catalan camp, including from Xavi, who has dubbed the retired United icon as the greatest midfielder of the last twenty years, and I’m sure you’ll understand what I’m getting at.
And whilst the ginger pass-master, in addition to England rival Frank Lampard, have only matured with age, the former modifying his game into a deeper midfield role to play until he was 38, and the latter silencing his critics from the early years by reaching double figures for an incredible tenth season in a row, Gerrard’s on-pitch escapades have never exceeded those of his younger years.
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Admittedly, Liverpool’s recent decline has certainly had a role to play, but whilst Scholes and Lampard were vital cogs in the machine at Manchester United and Chelsea, Gerrard has been the focal point of the first team at Anfield, with entire starting XI’s forged around his abilities, for over a decade.
My personal opinion is that perhaps Ferguson has a point – the Liverpool midfielder falls short by my estimations when he’s compared to his closest counterparts, especially in terms of silverware.
But the Telegraph’s Henry Winter has a slightly different story that shares some light on the retired United gaffer’s rather grumpy analysis of the Reds skipper. In 2006, Gerrard claimed that he’d once turned down the opportunity to sign for Manchester United as a 14 year-old, instead using Ferguson’s contract offer as leverage for his own YTS contract at Anfield.
Seeing as we’re all aware of the Scot’s firey temper and often vengeful wrath, containing an almost Mafioso ‘never forget’ twang, the notion of Fergie’s indictment containing an element of hard-feeling due to Gerrard’s rejection all those years ago is hardly absurd.