West Brom defender Billy Jones believes fans of the club must back under-fire captain Chris Brunt.
The midfielder has been struggling form of late, and was the subject of ironic cheers as he was subbed during the Baggies’ recent defeat to Fulham.
Jones feels that his team-mate is getting undeserved treatment and urged supporters to get behind the 28-year-old:
“I don’t understand why they did that. You can tell that Brunty, the same as a lot of us, misplaced some passes, but the effort was still there.” He is quoted by The Mirror.
“He was challenging and working hard. It was one of those days for us -individually and as a team, we know that and we’ll learn from that.
“But Brunty’s a great player, he has been in the past and still is now. He’s a massive part of the starting 11 and the squad.”
West Brom were also booed off of the pitch during their defeat to the Cottagers and Jones feels that they are becoming victims of their early season success:
“The expectations we’ve put on ourselves, and the performances we’ve given in front of the home crowd, means they expect that.
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“We expect high standards from ourselves, but against Fulham it wasn’t a good performance.
“Yes, there were misplaced passes and mistimed tackles, but all the lads gave it a right good go.”
Tottenham transfer target Leandro Damiao has insisted he is happy to remain at Internacional but admitted to being flattered by the interest Spurs have shown in him.
The Brazilian international has been linked with a move to the Premier League over the past couple of years, with Tottenham favourites to win his signature.
Spurs’ latest attempt to try and land Damiao came on the final day of the January transfer window, but a £18m bid did not meet Internacional’s valuation of the striker, who has said he is happy to stay in Brazil.
“I certainly thank Tottenham for their interest,” the 23-year-old told Correio do Povo. “They are a big club in Europe, but my focus is on Inter.
“(Internacional’s) president Giovanni Luigi knows I always wanted to stay at Internacional, regardless of any offers that could come.
“I hope to help Inter for a long time, I have a long contract and I am very happy and focused.”
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Tottenham are now struggling for options up front after Jermain Defoe went off injured against West Brom on Sunday.
Manchester United winger Ashley Young is hopeful that he has finally put his injury woes behind him.
The Red Devils star has been restricted to just 17 Premier League appearances this term, with a succession of injuries hampering his chances of regular playing time.
But, the 27-year-old has finally recovered from his latest set-back and been granted permission to join up with England’s squad for their up-coming World Cup qualifiers against San Marino and Montenegro.
Young admitted tat it has been a difficult spell in his career and is hopeful that he can now get back to playing regularly for United:
“It’s been very frustrating as a player when you’re injured and seeing the other players training every day,” he is quoted by The Mirror.
“For me, the injuries have been very disappointing and I just wanted to get myself back fit.
“Fingers crossed, from now until the end of the season, I can stay injury-free and get a run in the team.”
Young enjoyed a successful debut season at Old Trafford last term, producing a number of fine displays.
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His impressive form allowed him to be a part of Roy Hodgson’s squad for EURO 2012, however the ex-Aston Villa man failed to replicate his club form in Poland and Ukraine.
Football Chiefs being jailed for ten-and-a-half years, referees accepting bribes, four national team players caught match fixing, teams going on strike and fans not wanting to watch any more. Can football in China really make a comeback?
Football in China hit rock bottom in 2012, in total over 50 officials and governing body members were sent to jail, 33 were banned for life. Incredibly, one of these was former Chief of Chinese football Xie Yalong and Vice-President Nan Yong, both were given ten-and-a-half year sentences and both were handed a fine of 200,000 Yuan (£20000). After being tortured and having his family threatened Xie confessed to accepting bribes of up to ¾ Million. These included Nike officials to secure a sponsorship deal with the Chinese Super League and Zhu Guanghu, in order to keep his place as National Team Coach. On the other hand Nan was guilty of accepting up to £140,000 in bribes. This is all kick started after a campaign to clean up Chinese football started in 2009. Unfortunately for the Super League this wasn’t the worst of it; four national team players were found guilty in accepting 8Million Yuan (£800,000) in bribes in order to fix domestic league matches. All were fined 500,000 Yuan and given up to 6 Year sentences.
Not only were players and governing members mixed up in all the corruption, it appeared officials had played a part too. Ex-Referee Lun Ju, who had previously refereed at the World Cup in 2002 and the Olympics in 2000, was put behind bars for five-and-a-half years. It was reported he accepted 790,000 Yuan to fix seven Super League matches. Ju’s imprisonment caused quite a storm showing a sharp decline in his fortunes since his impressive career achievements. One of the clubs he had said to have officiated and altered the outcome of were Shanghai Shenhua.
Shanghai Shenhua have been one of the biggest teams in terms of wealth and performance in the Super League. However the team was cast a bad image when it was found guilty of involvement in bribery. Chinese Media reported Shenhua offered bribes to officials to secure a 4-1 victory against Shanxi Guoli. In addition to being fined, the club were given a six-point penalty and were stripped of their 2003 title in what was formally known as the Chinese Jia-A League. In total 12 clubs were given financial or point-based penalties. Shenhua must have thought they turned a corner when they signed Nicolas Anelka and then Didier Drogba. Two big name players which arose plenty of excitement as these were some of the first globally named players to participate in the Super League. With Drogba on the back of winning a Champions League winners medal, Shenhua had hoped this would bring good publicity to not only the club but the Super League itself. Both were paid handsomely, Anelka’s salary was $12million annually and Drogba was on £200,000 a week. However both left only after one season, those saying money is everything were proved wrong. Anelka left to train with PSG with no real statement as to why he left. Drogba departed on more controversial grounds as he joined Galatasaray immediately after returning from the African Cup of Nations. Shenhua claim that Drogba is still their player and are ‘deeply shocked’ after taking on the Ivorian for a two-and-a-half year deal. It is very clear that something is very wrong to send both Drogba (11 games, 8 goals) and Anelka (22 games, 3 goals) running in the opposite direction only after one season.
It is clear to see with the evidence shown that football in China is in a terrible state, it got to the point at when fans were being interviewed they said the didn’t want to watch the game anymore. It was all fake. Something big needs to happen to grab Chinese football by the scruff of the neck and bring it back into the light. That ray of light has somehow appeared to be David Beckham, international superstar. With having previous experience in being an ambassador for the Olympic and World Cup 2018 bid, and not to mention his world loved reputation, this could be China’s man. David Beckham has taken up the role as ambassador for Chinese football, and with the new league only having just started, it seems like this is a new era for the Super League. Although many Chinese journalists feel there is no way back, even just the sheer presence of Beckham should create an impact big enough to start the change of Chinese footballs reputations. Beckham will take on a tour round China in a bid to promote a better side of football, one which should invoke passion. Make the youth of China fall back in love with the sport which has been ridden by treachery.
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It will take time before we see an impact, if any from ‘Little Becks‘ as he is known in China. But it will take years before football can be returned to a normal state of affairs and all is forgotten. Football in China is in too deep, it needs serious help, Beckham is a start, however China needs something more. If they can lure big name players and create a league that has all of a sudden become very attractable, only then will the past be forgotten.
Manchester United boss David Moyes will have to rival Real Madrid in order to sign target Arturo Vidal, as reported by talkSPORT.
Madrid launched a massive £36million bid for the Juventus midfielder last night and are now heavy favourites to snap up the Chilean who has impressed in Serie A over the past two seasons.
United are desperate to add reinforcements to their midfielder after missing out on Barcelona youngster Thiago who appears to be close to joining Pep Guardiola at Bayern Munich.
United are not willing to match the ambitious big money offer made by Real Madrid and so may once again have to look elsewhere after suffering transfer disappointment.
The likes of Tom Cleverley, Shinji Kagawa and Anderson have failed to stake their claim to partner Michael Carrick in the middle of the park for United which is the key area to strengthen now Paul Scholes has retired.
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I’m absolutely certain I’m missing something here: strive all season to land a top four place; talk up the importance of the Champions League and all its benefits; target Ashley Williams from Swansea as one of your prime summer signings.
Arsenal will probably suggest that there is method to the madness, but I can’t see it. I can’t see the sense in swapping out a very good defender in Thomas Vermaelen – a full international, a player with plenty of experience in the Champions League and one who is in the prime of his career – for Ashley Williams. Some may want to argue that Vermaelen is not a “very good defender,” but I simply won’t listen. I’ve mentioned it many times in the past and will continue to do so here: it just equates to short-term memory in football fans.
It’s a matter of progress. Sure, Williams looked good in the Swansea team. Hey, Wigan have a whole squad-worth of players who are FA Cup winners, why don’t Arsenal go ahead and pick a few of them up, too? Again, I’m probably missing the point here.
Doesn’t football have a lot to do with image and the one you create for yourself and then in turn how the rest of the football world looks at you? What I’m taking from this is that Arsenal are once again preparing to sell their captain and key player – because Vermaelen can still be a key player in a season consisting of 50-plus games – and then bringing in a player with two years’ worth of experience in the Premier League, not to mention the complete lack of evidence as to whether he’s capable of the step up to a Champions League team and one with aspirations of league titles.
The other side of the argument is that this could be an ideal signing for Arsenal provided other elements of this summer fall into place. This isn’t solely to campaign that Vermaelen should remain at Arsenal – although I do think he should – but rather one that highlights the regressive nature of possibly swapping one for the other. If Williams comes in as the team’s fourth choice centre-back and offers backup alongside Vermaelen, then it can be chalked up as a good summer signing.
I also don’t want to hear the absolute absurdity of an argument that suggests Williams will become anxious, unsettled or complacent without regular first-team football. What makes him better than Laurent Koscielny or Per Mertesacker? The League Cup is a no-go in that debate. The truth is he isn’t better. If there were problems with either of the first-choice pairing at Arsenal, you’d hope the club would have some sense to target someone other than the Swansea centre-back. But he can be a good squad member, relieving others when injuries or fixtures pile up – and it will happen. Barcelona, and Arsenal in previous years, are good examples of the need for depth. Williams can serve a purpose, yet only as an addition and not a replacement.
Furthermore, I wouldn’t want to insinuate that Williams is a poor signing because he doesn’t have that big-name-player tag. That really shouldn’t matter on the whole. Yes, this summer does need to be one that appeases the fans and marks a transition from one era into another, but it can still be a notable summer with low-profile names coming in. The biggest point to take from any of this is whether the signings are good enough. How do they match up when compared with teams who should be on equal footing around Europe? Are they going to take the club to the next level?
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There will be a better understanding of this potential signing come September, as well as his status in the squad. The concern, however, is that Arsenal are moving backwards instead of forwards, or sideways at best. Last summer and the year before and so on, it was about the club replacing rather than supplementing. You can see where ‘squad’ players can come in and offer more than what’s currently available in the team, but based on what can be made from stories heading into this summer, the signing of Ashley Williams could be another move that offers little to the club in the bigger picture.
One of the few saving graces for Arsenal in this absolute mess of a transfer window/preseason is that Olivier Giroud is scoring for fun, albeit against inferior opposition. The Frenchman looks sharp, lively and well past that “period of acclimatisation” to English football. It’s still early doors, but it is a somewhat uplifting fallback for the club and its supporters.
The problem is it would be very Arsenal to look to the short term and the tunnel vision of having a fit and firing striker in Giroud. Arsene Wenger has a knack for falling in love with his players all over again and neglecting the obvious need for strengthening. Giroud, as good as he has been and could be this season, is not the primary answer for the question of challenging for the Premier League title. Money still absolutely needs to be spent.
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Here’s an interesting statistic: Olivier Giroud arrived in England from France at the age of 25 and scored 17 in all competitions. Didier Drogba transferred from Marseille to Chelsea at the age of 26 and scored one less in his debut season. Now I’m not going to fully suggest that Giroud is on the path to replicating the form of Drogba in English football, but I also don’t want to dismiss the possibility. The size, potential power and scoring prowess is very similar between both players. Giroud, after all, is only 26 and can still do great things in the Premier League for Arsenal. His shooting accuracy came into question last season as he wasted many good opportunities over the course of the campaign. But let’s not forget that Luis Suarez also had a similarly frustrating time in front of goal two seasons ago.
But as I wrote earlier in the summer, I don’t believe Arsenal need to spend big on a striker, though a good player is still a must; the club need to do better than, say, Bafe Gomis. Let’s not totally put it past Wenger to pull something out of the hat. The Eduardo signing happened with absolutely no media coverage or sparks of obvious interest. The player clearly caught Wenger’s eye the prior season when Arsenal met Dinamo Zagreb in the Champions League qualifier, and also impressed against England. Had it not been for that injury, the £7.5 million investment could have turned out to be a phenomenal piece of business. And as Wenger said last week, the club are looking for “quality,” and obviously that isn’t always represented accurately in the price of the transfer.
The hope among Arsenal supporters is that Giroud follows in the footsteps of his close friend Laurent Koscielny, making the switch from Ligue 1 to the Premier League and carving out a reputation as one of the league’s finest in his position. It’s not beyond the forward. He’s an international who has a league title under his belt; there is something impressive about lowly Montpellier forcing one final uprising against the spending power of France’s dominant forces.
For now though, the club simply can’t rest on what they have. Doesn’t competition force an upturn in performances as well as morale? There’s no doubt that Gonzalo Higuain could have been an incredible boon for the club, but efforts have to be focused elsewhere, especially with the latest reports of Suarez looking to remain at Liverpool “for now.”
Big money doesn’t have to be spent, and even though the club have backed themselves into a corner by suggesting that big fees and big wages can be spent this summer, a striker with a reputation and a history of scoring is of greater priority than the fee his club commands.
Will Giroud’s form this pre-season save Arsenal millions in the transfer market?
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When Mick McCarthy joined Ipswich he made sure he took Terry Connor with him and I believe we are starting to fully understand why.
It is widely known that Connor specialises as a finishing coach and throughout this season you can tell his hard work with the players is paying off.
First of all, the statistics don’t lie and Ipswich have consistently been one of the top scorers in the division, right now they are only three other teams in the division that have scored more goals than Town. The Tractor Boys have scored 28 goals so far, eight more than QPR and two less than league leaders Leicester.
Secondly, you only have to ask any Ipswich player about Terry Connor to realise how highly regarded he is. David McGoldrick announced earlier in the season that Connor was one of the best he has ever worked with and has spoken about the effort that the assistant manager puts into his shooting drills.
McCarthy himself has also paid tribute to his second in command on a number of occasions and recognises that he owes at least some of his success to Connor.
Additionally, the Suffolk side are now impressing other managers with the amount of shots they are getting on target every game and it is a clear improvement on last season when they were the divisions lowest scoring team.
Whilst the Ipswich manager has made a lot of changes in personnel to improve the side, therefore naturally increasing their goal scoring potential, I still believe that the assistant manager has had an equal part to play in this improvement.
We have already established that the team are scoring more frequently as a unit, but if you also look at two of the clubs first team strikers then Connor’s impact becomes even more prominent.
Daryl Murphy has always somewhat struggled for goals throughout his whole career; before this season he had scored 17 goals in 90 league games for Ipswich.
Admittedly he did play some of those games as a wide man, but the fact that he already has five goals this season when he hasn’t played every game goes to show he has improved in front of goal.
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Frank Nouble is another player who may well be starting to improve due to Connor’s hard work on the training field. Nouble has failed to make much of an impression in the early days of his Ipswich career. However, there are signs that he could be turning into more of a goal threat as he has now hit the back of the net twice in his last four appearances, three of which were as a substitute.
It also is great to see that the fans appreciate the importance of the current assistant manager too. It appears that Connor’s name is chanted just as much as McCarthy’s at Portman Road and deservedly so.
It is usually difficult to analyse the coaching staff’s influence on a team, but all of the above provides strong evidence that Terry Connor has been made a huge difference to the team since joining Ipswich.
Galatasaray striker Didier Drogba has said it was a ‘special game’ after playing out a 1-1 draw against his former club Chelsea in the last-16 of the Champions League last night.
This was the Ivorian’s first game against Chelsea after leaving them in 2012, with his last contribution helping the Blues beat Bayern Munich in the 2012 Champions League final.
The Blues coped well with his attacking threat during the tie, but still came close when his header was volleyed against the post by Selcuk Inan.
And Drogba is looking forward to the second leg back at Stamford Bridge, where he believes his side can still make it into the quarter-finals after an impressive second half display.
“It was a special game, to play against my old team-mates,” he told Sky Sports.
“I didn’t get a lot of chances but the header was perfect – well, not perfect because I didn’t score, but it was a great cross, I wish I could have scored this one but there is another game.
“It was a great game and I think it is a good result.
“Chelsea are the better team on paper but second half we showed we can create them some problems. Now we have to go out and do it at Stamford Bridge.”
“They played on the counter-attack and we were a bit naive two or three times. We know they are dangerous, we have to work on that and solve these problems.
“If we manage to score a goal there, it’s a different game. One-one is a good result.”
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Torres scored early in the first half to give Chelsea an important away goal, but Aurelien Chedjou equalized in the second period to even out the tie.
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Arsenal had a good thing in their grip and they let it slip.
There was a feeling around the Emirates that they could do better than Gonzalo Higuain, that the player just wasn’t quite ideal. But Arsenal were in need of a top striker and Higuain was the only one on the market. Perhaps Arsene Wenger would have done well to remember that the perfect is the enemy of the good.
If there was anyone to forget this, you wouldn’t have suspected it to be Wenger. The Arsenal manager has long had to do with the good alone, and often a lot less than this. The constrained finances at the club meant that Arsene Wenger always had to settle for a slightly lower category of player than their rivals.
But last summer the chains had finally been lifted, and Arsenal were in the market for quality.
As early as May last year, there were stories suggesting that Higuain had agreed to join Arsenal. The Argentine was deemed surplus at the Bernabeu and all of Europe’s elite clubs were made aware of this. Arsenal’s priority for the summer was to bring in a striker, and in Higuain, the club had the opportunity to conclude their business uncharacteristically early in the window. But still they waited.
By July 27th, Napoli would have successfully hijacked the deal and signed Higuain on a contract for the next five years. By August 3rd, the Argentine would be playing against Arsenal at the Emirates for his new club. No one knew quite knew how it had happened. The Arsenal fans booed Higuain for choosing Naples over London. But in truth, it’s the club that they should have been aiming their frustrations at.
If Arsenal really wanted to sign the Argentine, they could have. Instead, the club dithered as they waited for something better to come along. And while they waited, their something good went elsewhere.
Higuain’s quality has been evident in Italy. The striker has managed 17 goals in his 27 Serie A starts thus far, and created another seven for his teammates. Higuain scored four goals for Napoli in his five Champions League games this season, including one against Arsenal. The Argentine’s form has been such as to all but guarantee his club Champions League football for next season, something that Arsenal are yet to achieve.
But Champions League qualification was no longer where the club were aiming their sights. Finally, they allowed themselves to look higher. For the first time since agreeing to build a new stadium in 2002, the club were in a financial position to compete with Europe’s elite clubs in the transfer market. They’d had their years of settling, and they were fine. But now they could buy who they wanted, and they only wanted the best.
And Arsenal got one of the best. The 42.4m paid for Mesut Ozil very much represented a new era for Arsenal in the transfer market. But the club would have done well to remember how they’d so consistently overachieved in the past.
Arsenal were right to try and buy the best players they could, but wrong to only attempt to recruit on the basis of quality alone. Mesut Ozil is a very good attacking midfielder, but the club already had several good attacking midfielders. Gonzalo Higuain may not be the best striker in the game, but he is a good one, and Arsenal didn’t have any of those.
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But Arsenal couldn’t sign Higuain because they were unable to accept that the Argenetine was the best striker that they were going to get last summer. Excited by the newly earned wad in their wallet, the club starting looking around the room for something better to bring home. They flirted with Luis Suarez, but it turned out to be nothing more than a tease. And with their eye off the prize, their Argentinian stallion bolted.
Arsene Wenger’s desire to finally bring the best to Arsenal was admirable, but ultimately foolish. The manager would have been wise to learn from the barren years that sometimes you just have to settle.
Sadly, in Arsenal’s search for perfection, they’ve ended up falling short of the good.