It’s important to take note of the rise of Italian football since Juventus reclaimed the Serie A title last season in emphatic fashion. Sure, Italy’s league might not be as fashionable as it once was, with many outsiders looking to it as defend first, excite later. But you can’t hide from the rise in talent over recent years, with a great deal of players attracting attention from foreign clubs.
Both Arsenal and Tottenham will be in need of addressing a number of weaknesses in their squad, and the Italian league could prove to be a good hunting ground this summer. It’s the need to look to a market which can be exploited for one reason or another; Serie A may be experiencing a renaissance, but that doesn’t mean other clubs have to look on without taking action.
Juventus will prove to be the runaway club for the second consecutive year, and there is much to admire about the Champions League quarter-finalists. But they’re the tip of the iceberg, and there is plenty of talent to be found especially for teams like Arsenal and Tottenham.
Click on Marek Hamsik to see the full list of transfer targets
In his pre-match press conference Leeds United manager Paul Heckingbottom has defended striker Caleb Ekuban after another match in which he failed to score on Tuesday night.
Losing 2-0 away to Fulham, the striker missed a golden chance to hit the back of the net but failed to properly test Marcus Bettinelli.
The 24-year-old has scored just one goal in 15 English Championship appearances this season and fans are growing concerned he’ll never score on a consistent basis for the Elland Road side.
There’s also frustration he is currently getting a regular game ahead of Pierre-Michel Lasogga, who has netted 10 times this season.
Supporters are worried that Heckingbottom continues to rate the player, believing that if they go into next term with him leading the line that they are doomed to suffer another inadequate season.
Can he turn things round in the closing stages of the Championship, starting with Sunderland this weekend?
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Fans took to Twitter to share their thoughts on it all…
The summer of 2013 now seems like an eternity ago. Liverpool were very much a team in ‘transition’ and Diego Costa was a little heard of striker plying his trade for Atletico Madrid in the shadow of Radamel Falcao. Oh how, times change, while the following 18 months have seen the Reds go from title challengers back into the same state of limbo, Costa has blossomed, firing Atleti to the La Liga title and Champions League Final – which they came within minutes of winning – before securing a £30m+ move to Chelsea – which looks set to end with another title and another massive haul of goals. And the third part in this, Falcao, has slipped almost off the radar at Manchester United, via an injury ravaged spell at Monaco – but we can forget about him for now.Oh how different it could have been, though. Costa was heavily linked with Liverpool in that fateful summer, and now he’s revealed just how close he came switching to Anfield:“I was close to leaving Atletico,†he said when talking about his 2013 off-season.“Liverpool are a great team, but after fighting so hard and overcoming difficulties to get my place at Atletico, how could I leave?“I thought it was very important to keep growing with Atletico and to play there for many years.â€
Costa’s words prove how close the deal must have come to going through, and had Liverpool had Champions League football behind them instead of a seventh-placed finish, the Spain international may well have been lining up alongside Daniel Sturridge at Anfield against Blackburn yesterday rather than resting with his league-leading Chelsea team.
There are a lot of ifs and buts aligned with the whole saga, and maybe the best way to go about assessing the difference Costa could have made right now is to compare him to the man he would most like drop in for on Merseyside now: Mario Balotelli.
As the numbers show, unsurprisingly, the Brazilian-born hit-man walks all over his Italian counterpart, averaging more goals and assists, a better striker record, and even fewer yellow cards per 90 minutes. Quite a difference.
Last term the Reds did not miss the impact of such a player – Luis Suarez and Daniel Sturridge netted 51 league goals – but they may even have got over the line ahead of Manchester City with Costa heading up a front three with ‘SAS’ either side of him. We’ll never know.
However, the one thing we do know from the whole tale is that Liverpool seem unable to get deals over the line. In the same summer as Costa escaped their grasp, now Dortmund ace Henrikh Mkhitaryan proved unattainable, while the securing of Champions League football for this season as still not enough to lure Alexis Sanchez to the North West over the bright lights of London – and the video below shows just how costly that miss has been, too.
All of the events suggest that Liverpool are having trouble attracting the type of player needed to keep pace with Chelsea, both Manchester clubs and even Arsenal, which has contributed to the slid this term. Sturridge has impressed since his return, but the added goals and sheer presence of a player like Costa may have them in the title run-in now, instead of a desperate scrap for fourth – which they’re only involved in since Jesus appeared up at Anfield to hand Rodgers a Christmas miracle.
Simply put, Costa was the start of a worrying slide at Liverpool, and one that has signalled a changing of the times. Raheem Sterling and Jordan Henderson have both rejected new contract offers in recent times, while big names look away from Anfield In search of greater prospects and, probably, larger salaries. Fenway Sports Group may turn a profit, but look at the North East towards Newcastle and you’ll see the ill-feeling the shift towards making accountants smile has on supporters and football clubs.
Whomever the new Costa may be this summer, Liverpool should probably do a bit more to get him…
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The biggest transfer rumour doing the rounds at the moment is that Liverpool forward Luis Suarez is right at the top of incoming Bayern Munich manager Pep Guardiola’s summer shopping list and while at the moment that is merely conjecture, how the club deal with the issue could hold the key to its immediate future.
Fenway Sports Group (FSG) have by and large got plenty of big decisions wrong during their time in charge of the club so far, ranging from spending ludicrous amounts of money on relatively unproven players, to hiring a manager that had been out of the game for far too long to dithering hugely over the stadium issue. Even when they have tried to show leadership over certain matters, they have often chosen the wrong path and the business of football has been a completely alien environment to them with a steep learning curve to boot. The likes of John W. Henry and Tom Werner seem inherently cautious people when it comes to their dealings with the club, which is why the future of the Uruguayan striker is such a cause for concern.
There’s a very real worry that they will see the offer put on the table for Suarez, which would have to be in the region fo £40m for them to even consider selling, judge it a reasonable one and consent to his sale, which could have a potentially damaging impact on the team’s fortunes in the short-term and whether they will be capable of competing with the top four and slowing down the regression they have been guilty of in recent years.
As the old saying goes, ‘no one player is bigger than the club’, but it’s a cliche of little substance by ex-pros clearly clueless on how to deal in anything other than meaningless, empty platitudes. The 26-year-old has been absolutely key in the club even competing for a final league position inside the top eight this season, and without him it’s not even worth thinking about where they would be. His departure could hurt the club more than any single sale since the one that saw Xabi Alonso leave for Real Madrid.
Liverpool have a history when it comes to dreadful negotiation tactics; with Alonso, Rafa Benitez practically backed him into a corner with such a public pursuit of the clearly inferior Gareth Barry as his replacement, while Roy Hodgson couldn’t even get Javier Mascherano on the phone during the summer to address his future, leading to the player refusing to play just before a game away at Manchester City.
Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy is often a leading light when it comes to tough negotiating to the extent that it looks like he’s willing to walk away from the table at any given moment is certain deals aren’t met. This saw Real Madrid have to fork out north of £30m for Luka Modric in the summer and sign a landmark ‘commercial partnership’ package which has the potential to be worth just as much over the next few years in terms of sponsorship deals.
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Granted, the club could have sold Modric to Chelsea for £40m a window or two earlier, therefore strengthening a direct rival for a top four spot, but in biding their time and refusing to compromise below the £30m mark that Madrid deemed too high, they got a deal that allowed them the freedom in the transfer market to go out and sign Mousa Dembele, Hugo Lloris and Jan Vertonghen.
Sometimes there is an argument to be made that the amount gleaned from such a big deal outweighs the value of a player as it allows you to rebuild the side and strengthen more than two or three positions at once, but Liverpool have had enough of shopping around the bargain bin in the past and the transfer bracket of between £8-12m, with very little success. For once they have a player of genuine quality and he is more important than any single figure at the club at this moment in time.
It might not sound fantastic to be so beholden to a player and it takes a certain amount of pride to admit as much, but Liverpool are not in a position of strength at this moment in time, rather a period of transition and whether it be £40m or £50m, they need Suarez more than he needs them. From the player’s point of view, you can hardly argue with a desire to test himself on the highest stage of the Champions League on a consistent basis playing under a manager like Guardiola, particularly when Liverpool are clearly incapable of offering him a similar package for the foreseeable future. Demanding loyalty in a game where none exists is simply unrealistic.
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It’s not only his goals this season that have stood out, Suarez’s leadership when things aren’t going the team’s way has seen him become alongside captain Steven Gerrard the one player that everyone else looks to, while his versatility and ability to create chances from open play mark him out as a much more complete player than they even had with the world-class Fernando Torres during his superb spell on Merseyside.
Just as Robin van Persie leaving Arsenal in the summer for Manchester United was widely seen as a statement of intent from Old Trafford as much as it was a signal that the Gunners lacked ambition, should FSG refuse to keep hold of Suarez due to the lure of money, even putting aside the substantive damage, the symbolic gesture alone could crush a fragile regime built on soft foundations.
United States youngster Indiana Vassilev has been tipped to make an impact at Aston Villa after finally joining the Championship club on a permanent contract.
The 17-year-old had been on trial with Villa since November 2016, but has now been handed a professional contract by the English outfit.
Vassilev’s former coach at the IMG Academy is Kevin Hartman, and the American has claimed that the future ‘is boundless’ for the teenager.
The Birmingham Mail quotes Hartman as saying:
“He understands what’s going on around him and it allows him to not only be better himself, but it makes the players around him better.
“He’s got great leadership qualities and he’s got an undying desire to win every time he plays. That competitiveness is an attribute that I think every coach is going to be looking for and it really drives development.
“His future is boundless. He has all the physical capabilities of a top level player. The attributes and the characteristics that he has within are the ones that will drive his development. I don’t see a limit to what he can achieve.”
The Birmingham Mail has described Vassilev as ‘a technically sound player who is comfortable across midfield and even in attack’.
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Villa boss Steve Bruce has not been afraid to hand first-team minutes to youngsters this season, and Vassilev will be eyeing a future role at Villa Park.
Villa, whose supporters have recently been commenting on the future of John Terry, have lost their last two Championship matches, but they are still comfortably inside the playoff positions in fourth spot, and will be looking to return to winning ways when they travel to Hull City after the international break on March 31.
Manchester City midfielder Samir Nasri has revealed he rejected the chance to join Manchester United before opting to sign for their rivals Man City from Arsenal.
Nasri completed a controversial £24million from the Emirates to the Etihad Stadium, a move that Arsenal fans have struggled to forgive him for, but, speaking to BeIn Sports, Nasri revealed it could’ve been Old Trafford if he had gone along with Sir Alex Ferguson’s request:
“We met with Sir Alex in Paris, in a hidden place, out of sight, so as not to fuel the rumours.
“But there was one thing that was a problem; I was asked to go to war with Arsenal to be able to join. I could not see myself doing it, especially with Arsene Wenger.
“After Man City showed their interest. Mancini called me every day during the holidays. I then decided that they really wanted me.”
“Manchester City was the first club to show interest.
“I had some doubts about the evolution of the club. Then I thought they really wanted me. They were about to sign [Sergio] Aguero and there was already [David] Silva, [Mario] Balotelli, [Carlos] Tevez.
“I had a discussion with my agents. They asked me if I wanted to make history or be a player like any other at United.
“I said “Go ahead”. I won the title in my first season, so my choice was the right one.”
Nasri, who joined Arsenal from Ligue 1 outfit Marseille in the summer of 2008, has made 109 Premier League appearances for Man City bagging 14 goals and 27 assists during that time.
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The Frenchman will face his former manager and employers this Sunday when Arsenal make the trip to the Etihad Stadium to face Manuel Pellegrini’s side in the late Sunday kick-off – a win for Nasri and his team-mates would see Man City extend their lead of Arsenal to 14 points.
On May 14 2012, the entire country was battered with gale-force winds after every Aston Villa supporter let out a collective sigh of relief. The news that the much-loathed figure of Alex McLeish had departed was met with rapturous applause, especially when Paul Lambert was announced as his replacement, having just guided a mediocre Norwich City to unimaginable heights.
Alas, six months later, the club is still wallowing at the wrong end of the table after securing just four Premier League victories all season while boasting the worst goal difference in the division. A demoralising festive period saw the Villans concede a startling 15 goals during three consecutive defeats in which they also failed to score. A potentially season-defining set of fixtures remain in January, but can Lambert’s young side finally fulfil their potential?
A number of underachieving clubs have already flexed their financial muscle during the transfer window, in an attempt to reverse their ailing fortunes. Unfortunately Villa cannot afford this luxury, with Lambert revealing he can only bring in ‘on or two’ players this month. A burning desire for loan signings has also been extinguished, with chairman Randy Lerner refusing to substitute the wages of any temporary solutions.
Lambert can have no cause for complaint after frittering away his transfer budget during the summer. Of the eight new faces he drafted in for a combined figure of nearly £20m, only man-mountain Christian Benteke can be considered a success. Having spent well over £200m in six years, it’s no surprise Lerner seems reluctant to dig further into his pocket.
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Two years ago, Lerner caved into the demands of former manager Gerard Houllier and funded the £18m+ purchase of Darren Bent. The move effectively helped steer this sinking ship away from the drop but there will be no repeat performance this time round, with supporters and staff both in agreement that the club cannot risk their financial future.
In truth, the accounts have slipped further into the red ever since the ‘successful’ reign of Martin O’Neill. The club did achieve three successive sixth-placed finishes, but never managed to qualify for the Champions League or win a trophy and was therefore unable to sustain its expensive pursuit for glory.
O’Neill is often credited with the profitable signings of Ashley Young, James Milner and Stewart Downing, but few remember the £8.5m dumped on Nigel Reo-Coker or the £10m on ‘future England defender’ Curtis Davies. The club’s wage bill has been slashed but still carries the likes of Alan Hutton and Stephen Warnock, while fellow detrimental signings Charles N’Zogbia and Stephen Ireland have hindered rather than helped proceedings.
There is further bad news in the money-saving quest to find a buyer for Darren Bent, especially since Harry Redknapp finally lured Loic Remy to London. If a suitable destination fails to materialise he has to be allowed back into the first-team. Villa have scored just 17 goals this term – the joint lowest in the league – and even though Bent’s immobile presence goes against everything Paul Lambert is trying to implement in his new side, his name will still regularly dress the scoresheet.
With Villa unable to buy their way out of trouble, Lambert must revive his squad of adolescent starlets struggling to cope with the pressures of the Premier League. Unfortunately his inexperienced defence, which had an average age of just 22 in the defeat to Southampton, is in desperate need of experience. Never did I think the likes of Richard Dunne or Ron Vlaar retuning from injury would be deemed so important for a top-flight club.
Lambert’s insistence on gifting opportunities to lower league players proved fruitful with the Canaries but his team lacks the grit and cohesion of a side that has battled its way up through the Championship. While the likes of Anthony Pilkington continue to play above and beyond all expectation, I can’t think of a single Villa player that is currently playing at the top of their game.
In a recent poll, 53% of voters were convinced Villa would be relegated, a split-decision that serves to embody people’s perception of the club. There is undeniable potential within the squad, which rose to the surface in the memorable 3-0 victory at Anfield but their inability to find consistency will inevitably end in disaster.
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The prolonged absence of captain Stiliyan Petrov is a painful reminder of past glories but the distinct lack of fight displayed by the current group of players is arguably more painful. The supporters are subdued yet restless as the club drifts somewhat aimlessly from one match to the next and the current stale atmosphere is in stark contrast to the air of optimism that exists among every other relegation candidate in the league.
The upcoming fixture against West Brom is rather daunting considering the pair’s contrasting league positions and while the cup games offer a nice distraction, the prospect of overturning the scoreline against Bradford and a trip to the New Den will be anything but a reprieve. At present, the club are the only side still competing in every competition they’ve entered but fans will only be satisfied if they are still in the Premier League come May.
Newcastle fans are getting fed up with Islam Slimani after Algeria’s assistant coach said the striker needs more rest.
According to Algeria’s assistant coach Djamel Menad, Islam Slimani’s injury is “not too serious” but he will not feature in Algeria’s friendly with Iran on Tuesday.
The on-loan striker has not kicked a ball for Newcastle since his loan move from Leicester because of an ongoing thigh injury, but reports last week suggested he could make his debut in the clash with Huddersfield this weekend.
“Brahimi and Slimani? I do not think they will be attacking but we’ll see by Tuesday,” Menad said.
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“Brahimi’s injury is not serious, but it requires rest. Same thing for Slimani but we will see what will happen. For changes, I do not know, we will see with the staff during training.”
Fans on Tyneside have been infuriated by the club’s transfer business on plenty of occasions, but the loan deal for Slimani is turning into one of the worst moves yet.
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If Slimani can come back into the fold for the final months of the season, it could be win for all parties, with the player hoping to revive his Premier League career and Newcastle in desperate need of some firepower up front.
Fans don’t seem particularly optimistic about that happening though, and some of the best Twitter reactions can be found below…
Ayoze Perez arrived at Newcastle United in June as somewhat of an unknown entity. But after an excellent start to life at St James’ Park, the Spaniard has already proved to be one of the bargain buys of the summer.
Perez rocked up on Tyneside from Tenerife in a deal believed to be around £1.5m, and to say the 21-year-old has hit the ground running in the Premier League would be an understatement. Perez has taken to life in England like a duck takes to water, and has already turned himself into Newcastle’s most potent attacking force.
The young Spaniard scored his first ever Premier League goal – the winner in the Magpies’ 2-1 win over Tottenham Hotspur in late October – and hasn’t looked back since. He has gone onto score another four times, three of which have ended in Newcastle wins – over Liverpool, West Bromwich Albion and Everton. Perez’s other strike was the only Newcastle goal in a 4-1 away defeat to Arsenal in mid-December.
Perez has been a revelation on Tyneside this term. The Spanish under-21 international gives the Magpies a different dimension up front, with a very apparent low centre of gravity and an eye for goal. The starlet shone once again in Newcastle’s in 3-2 win over Everton on Sunday – he proved to be a constant threat to the Toffees’ defence, and he could have easily had more than just the one goal to show for his efforts.
After the Magpies’ 3-1 defeat to Manchester United on Boxing Day, former United boss Sir Alex Ferguson praised Perez’s performance in the loss. Alan Pardew also lauded his new star, as he told the MailOnline; “I have been fortunate to work with some really good strikers. I think of Carlos Tevez, Teddy Sheringham, Dean Ashton, and he has got faster feet than all three of them. And the work ethic he has put in for the team as well, if he progresses like he is, we don’t know where he’ll end up. He really is surprising us with how good he is and his performance on a big stage, he relished it, like all top players.”
Perez was named player of the year in Spain’s second tier last term, and Pardew was not all that surprised with his instant success; “He won player of the year last season in the league below La Liga (Spanish second division), so it’s not a complete mystery. But we worked hard on his signature and worked hard on his family to just give him the platform and that we would give him an opportunity. We have done that and we have kept our side of the bargain.”
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Perez is still very young, very raw and has a lot of developing to do, but it will be very interesting to see just how good a player Ayoze Perez can develop into. The Spaniard has all the tools to become a Premier League great – but it’s up to Newcastle United to nurture him and make him become an even better player. If they can do that, the Magpies may well have found themselves an absolute gem.
A common feature of Brendan Rodgers’ short spell in charge of Liverpool FC so far has been a strong emphasis on the word ‘hunger’, whether it be applied to the young players snapping at the heels of their more established first-team counterparts or used as a negotiating tool, but when it comes to the January transfer window, it seems that the club may not be bullied in the pursuit of a fair deal for the first time in a long while.
The move to bring Chelsea forward Daniel Sturridge to Merseyside has stalled according to reports not down to any footballing concerns that either party has, but due to the player’s representatives after the club appeared to come to some reasonable middle ground in terms of his £60,000 per-week wage.
The 39-year-old boss has been made keenly aware of the need to balance the wage budget the longer the club stay out of the promised land of the Champions League, which has seen Andy Carroll leave on loan, with West Ham paying all of his wages, Charlie Adam sold to Stoke and Craig Bellamy, Maxi Rodriguez and Dirk Kuyt all allowed to leave in the summer.
A signal of this shift in direction from a club which seemed quite unfathomably incapable of striking a fair deal for itself to one which is more reluctant to part with its hard earned cash is a welcome one given the litany of transfer failings and deadwood that Anfield has been treated to in the past few years.
When Rodgers hauled Joe Cole off at half-time during the club’s loss against Swansea in the Capital One Cup at home earlier in the season, he chose to highlight the midfielder’s wages and compare them against his failed Liverpool experience: “The club have invested an astronomical amount of money on a talented player and Joe had the opportunity. He has been back fit a couple of weeks and his opportunities have been limited but you have to see. I thought it was difficult for him, it was too slow and it wasn’t what I would expect from a team I tried to set up to be dynamic.” This kick up the backside has prompted Cole to perform better in recent weeks whenever he’s been granted a starting berth to impress.
A recent report released showed that Liverpool spent the second most, behind moneybags and reigning champions Manchester City, on agents’ fees between October 2011-September 2012, to the embarrassing sum of £8.6m, which has seen Rodgers adopt a more hard-line approach in trying to head off the greedy demands of Sturridge’s agents this time around. That amount is £5m more than Manchester United, £2.1m more than Tottenham and £3.1 more than Arsenal. Given the quality of players, the lack of competition for their signatures and the fact that they all wanted to move to Liverpool, it’s literally unforgivable that the club paid so much under the Kenny Dalglish and Damien Comolli era in particular.
Now, the England forward’s entourage want to receive a percentage of any future transfer fee if he leaves the club in order to rubber stamp the move and precisely because Liverpool have paid more than £31m in fees to agents since October 2008, a change in approach is long overdue and they shouldn’t have to kowtow and bow down to players in such an obvious fashion.
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There is a time and place to be prudent, though and to curb an engrained reckless approach to expenditure and when principal owner John W. Henry wrote an open letter to the club’s fans back at the start of the season, he stated: “We will build and grow from within, buy prudently and cleverly and never again waste resources on inflated transfer fees and unrealistic wages. We have no fear of spending and competing with the very best, but we will not overpay for players. We will never place this club in the precarious position that we found it in when we took over at Anfield. This club should never again run up debts that threaten its existence.”
Quite how this translated into believing that paying anything above £3.5m for Clint Dempsey was excessive is yet another baffling move in a string of odd decisions by Fenway Sports Group since coming to power at the club. Picking your battles is fine, but getting it so wrong on such a consistent basis is troubling, even if their tough stance now looks to be the correct one.
Rodgers stated in the aftermath of Raheem Sterling agreeing a new £35,000-a-week deal after months of haggling with his representatives: “They will get a good contract coming here but if they want to argue over money, and other things that go around it, I don’t want them here. In my experience those players will eventually let you down anyway. So, for us, it is about getting players in who are hungry to succeed and to pull on the shirt.
“That’s the simple message for any player coming here – you can’t take the money and run. You have to earn the right to play for this club and to help us succeed. The club are really on board with me on that. It is part of what we need to be successful again. You trace back over many years at this football club and they have brought hungry players in. They were also good players, but they were all hungry.
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“I’ve seen it at Chelsea, you pay a fortune for top players and it doesn’t always work when you spent £30 million or £20 million, it doesn’t guarantee you anything. You could bring a boy in here on a free transfer or bring him from the Championship, all of these big players weren’t dropped out of heaven, they have to come from somewhere and the most important thing when you get that type in is that they’re hungry to succeed.
“Football is a unique business. It’s one of very few sports and industries where you can get paid very good money on potential. People will tell you what they’re going to do. I would rather reward people for what they do and then there’s no drama.”
The reference to Chelsea is clearly aimed at Sturridge, and it seems for once that the club actually has a plan B should they have to pull the plug on the deal, despite the medical being seemingly done and dusted, with PSG’s Kevin Gameiro lined up for a short-term loan switch.
Liverpool have been a laughing stock in the sport for years now when it comes to their powers of negotiation, both in terms of inflated fees and needlessly high wages, but it seems as if the tide is finally turning in that respect now under Rodgers guidance, which with Financial Fair Play on the horizon, is the only logical approach to take.