Aston Villa winger Stewart Downing has called on the club's owners to make money available in January so that manager Gerard Houllier can sign a new striker.
The England international is concerned by the growing injury worries at Villa Park now that senior forwards John Carew and Emile Heskey are out of action.
With Gabriel Agbonlahor just back from injury himself and youngster Nathan Delfouneso their only other option, Downing believes action must be taken if Villa are to succeed in the Premier League this term.
"We've got one (experienced) striker at the moment in Gabby and he has just come back from injury," he said.
"It would be unfair to put a lot of pressure on young Nathan to manage right through the season. If you look at things, as they are at the moment, I would say we probably do need a striker.
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The UEFA Cup has generally lacked excitement and controversy, or at least it did until the 25th October 2007, the date when Tottenham Hotspur turned the sacking of Martin Jol into a Hollyoaks episode during the game against Getafe. The Dutchman found out before the game, the whole world and his dog knew by half time and come full time a red faced Daniel Levy had some explaining to do.
The Lilywhites faithful have maintained their ‘love’ for their former manager since his sacking and I think even Arsenal fans would find it hard to argue that Jol was a decent guy who was unfairly treated and embarrassed by the Tottenham hierarchy. Which is why it was a pleasure to hear this week that Jol will be returning to Premier League management with Tottenham’s London rivals Fulham. Does the former Ajax man return to the Queen’s homeland with a desire or even a need to prove himself?
The former West Brom player led Tottenham to consecutive fifth place finishes before being sacked after one win in the opening ten games of the next Premier League season. His replacement, Juande Ramos, did lead the Lilywhites to a League Cup success, but the former Sevilla manager’s start to the next season sealed his fate and left many Spurs’ fans wondering why Jol went in the first place (perhaps it was Jol openly stating he would be open to the Newcastle job in 2006).
Since his bitter departure from White Hart Lane, the Dutchman has had a fairly indifferent few seasons, but managed to achieve moderate success, first leading Hamburg to the semi-finals in both the German Cup and the UEFA Cup, then winning the Dutch Cup with Ajax and coming runners up in the league to Steve McClaren’s FC Twente, earning an incredible goal difference of +86 in the process.
Jol obviously feels extremely bitter in the manner of his departure, but by joining Fulham, a club very much on the up, the former Ajax man could have the last laugh. Fulham are a ‘sound’ club with solid foundations and a supportive chairman. With Europa League football guaranteed next season, Jol may have the platform to establish himself as a top quality manager and subsequently prove a few people wrong in N17.
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Relegation-threatened Borussia Moenchengladbach conceded a late goal in their 1-0 loss to Mainz in the Bundesliga on Friday.Lucien Favre’s men are two points from the relegation play-off spot, conceding an 87th minute goal at Mainz to deepen their troubles.
Andre Schuerrle struck from 25 yards past an outstretched Marc Andre ter Stegen to extend Mainz’s lead on fifth spot to five points.
It was the 20-year-old’s 13th goal of the season, equalling the best return for the club, which was set by Mohamed Zidan during the 2006/07 season.
The visitors’ task of getting anything out of the game was made difficult when striker Mike Hanke was sent off after picking up a second yellow card in the 53rd minute.
It was a disappointing result for Moenchengladbach after their 5-1 thrashing of Cologne last weekend.
The win ended a four-game winless run for Mainz and put them within five points of the Champions League qualification spot, although Hannover will have the chance to restore the buffer with a trip to Hamburg on Saturday.
League leaders Borussia Dortmund may blood Mitchell Langerak for their away trip to Bayern Munich on Saturday in the Bundesliga.Australian goalkeeper Langerak, 22, is in line for his German top flight debut after first-choice gloveman Roman Weidenfeller suffered a knee injury at training, with the club to make a decision on Friday on who will stand in goal at the Allianz Arena.The first-versus-third battle is deemed to be the final chance for Bayern to make inroads into Dortmund’s seemingly unstoppable surge towards the Bundesliga crown. The reigning champions, who trail Juergen Klopp’s side by 13 points in the league standings, will be keen to use the momentum from a midweek Champions League victory over Inter Milan to halt the Dortmund juggernaut.Borussia Monchengladbach have a chance to climb off the bottom of the standings when they travel to fellow strugglers Wolfsburg on Friday.Monchengladbach racked up a confidence-building 2-1 victory over mid-table Schalke over the weekend and take their battle for survival to the Volkswagen Arena.Wolfsburg are in freefall having lost their past four in the league to sit level on points with relegation-placed Kaiserslautern and just four above Monchengladbach.Caretaker manager Pierre Littbarski has overseen his side score once in the 180 minutes he has been in charge since former boss Steve McLaren’s sacking.Kaiserslautern welcome seventh-placed Hamburg on Saturday, the hosts desperate for points to hurl them to safety, while the visitors will be looking for a win to maintain their push for a European place.Mainz will be hoping to break a two-game losing streak when they travel to Hoffenheim, while Cologne host Freiburg at the Rhein Energie Stadion.St Pauli welcome fourth-placed Hannover on Saturday, while in-form Schalke 04, chasing a fifth straight league victory, host Nuremberg.On Sunday, Eintracht Frankfurt host fellow strugglers Stuttgart, and Werder Bremen look to shoot clear of the relegation zone when they welcome second-placed Bayer Leverkusen to the Weserstadion.
Everton are reportedly set to extend manager David Moyes’ contract in the new year, as the Scottish coach looks to increase his time on Merseyside further.
Moyes will have been in charge at Goodison Park for ten years come March, and despite his current deal not expiring until 2013, the Toffees’ owners are keen to have their main man at the club for the foreseeable future, The Independent reports.
The Scot is currently the highest earner at the club, taking home £65,000 per week, and a similar figure is expected to be offered to keep Moyes from moving on.
Despite Everton’s obvious and well-documented financial problems, Moyes has made no suggestion of any desire to leave Goodison, and the Scot has built a close-knit squad over the last number of years.
The news comes following Everton’s 2-1 extra time time win over West Brom on Wednesday night, in which captain Phil Neville scored a 103rd minute winner.
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Everton now take on Manchester City at the Etihad Stadium on Saturday, as they look to build on their midweek win.
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It’s not a new debate nor is it one to do strictly with football, or money, but just why is it that English players, in large, refuse to travel abroad and make their home in other countries?
I thought about this whilst reading Ruud van Nistelrooy’s response to David Winner’s fascinating book about Dutch football, Brilliant Orange. Van Nistelrooy said:
“As a Dutchman reading it, it’s a kind of mirror. It shows you things about yourself you’ve never seen before.”
Although van Nistelrooy is one individual and not representative of the whole, the mere fact that a Dutch footballer has read a book outlining theories on why his nation may perform like they do on the pitch is a welcome break from the tabloid pages most invariably find themselves in.
Succumbing to a generalisation I think it is absolutely fair to say English players don’t exhibit the kind of cultural versatility that players from Europe certainly possess. Taking a loosely football related argument as an indicator of the chasm between the breadth of adaptability on show at this World Cup alone we can take Germany’s match against England. When the final whistle blew we can safely assume that it was the German players who approached the English, speaking English. I don’t see John Terry offering a conciliatory ‘guten tag’ to Bastian Schweinsteiger had the roles been reversed. And with some of the Dutch, Spanish, German and French players able to give press conferences in two, sometimes three, languages I’m left wondering why we can’t replicate a similar standard of diversity.
This isn’t to uniformly blame the current English players in our league; they are more products of a longstanding tradition that we don’t travel well. Why is this? The first reason is that English has been the desirable language of business for a long time (although that’s now being gradually challenged). Another reason is that in the past five or six years especially we’ve had a strong showing in Europe, which confirms to many (albeit in this country more than others) that the Premier League is the best league in Europe. These are strong reasons to remain in England but what about the years where English football was by far a distant second to Spain and Italy?
A persistent and undeniable inability to want a move onto new shores, elsewhere in Europe, is very much an English failing. Talented foreign players constantly flood into England and increase their chances of becoming better footballers, often ousting promising homegrown talent in the process, but this is hardly their fault. A distinct complacency (perhaps even a fundamental lack of curiosity or belief) certainly exists amongst our players, both established and promising. It’s always beneficial for a proportion of our players to attempt life outside the Premier League; it gives them a chance to hone their match intelligence and general adaptability (something evidently lacking at this World Cup), on the pitch, culturally and socially. We definitely understate just how difficult it is for young foreign players to make it in this country (there is a dangerous habit of viewing young players as adult footballers, which is completely unfair, in our media). If we take Alex Song’s experiences as an example; he was born in Cameroon, grew up in France and moved to Arsenal in his late teens:
“Coming to Arsenal at the age of 17 was more difficult than going to Corsica at 13. There, I had someone [François Ciccolini, a youth team coach from the Corsican club Bastia]; when I came here I didn’t have anybody, I didn’t understand the language, the food was very different and I had no confidence. I lived in a hotel and when training ended I would go to my room and spend all of my time on the phone. To leave everybody you know in France and come to a new country, that is not easy. But it got better because I realised I had the boss [Wenger]. He would speak to me all the time at training and that gave me motivation.”
Aside from the very personal and individual struggles that Song overcame to make a success of his talents his story is indicative of the kind of hardship foreign players can endure, though far from easy, for the sake of what they love doing; which is playing football. That Song has potentially taken the place of a less able, less willing, less determined homegrown player should not be an issue for us, which is why merely citing foreign influence as the major contributing factor of the English failing is a parochial stance – it does not paint the whole picture.
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I can’t explain what keeps our players caught in their home countries for all their playing careers, even to the detriment of their progression as professionals. Even the successes (Paul Lambert, Chris Waddle, David Beckham, Steve McManaman) are more exceptions that prove the rule. It’s a cultural and educational problem too, not simply footballing; sport merely reflects, not causes, the endemic issues within our culture.
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Liverpool’s new signing Luis Suarez marked his debut with a goal as the Reds beat a well-organised Stoke side 2-0 at Anfield.
Raul Meireles opened the scoring before the Uruguayan came off the bench to seal all three points for Kenny Dalglish’s side, making it three wins from as many games for the Merseysiders.
The home crowd thought they had taken the lead within the first ten minutes after Reds defender Sotirios Kyrgiakos’s glancing header from a corner looked to be heading in, however Salif Diao was on hand to hook the ball off the line.
Stoke goalkeeper Asmir Begovic pulled off a wonder save moments later to keep the visitors on level terms as he clawed Glen Johnson’s header to safety from Martin Kelly’s cross.
But while there was plenty of pressure applied on the Stoke goal, a combination of poor finishing and the inspired form of Begovic kept the visitors in the game as the first half came to a close.
Liverpool’s persistence paid off as soon as the second half kicked off.
Steven Gerrard’s deflected shot caused panic in the Stoke area as their backline failed to clear the ball, and midfielder Meireles made the most of the scramble by slamming the ball into the net from 12 yards for his second goal in three Premier League games.
The goal seemed to spring Stoke into life, and they almost drew level after John Carew’s shot flew inches wide of Pepe Reina’s upright.
Liverpool were looking to kill the game off, and with Andy Carroll’s thigh injury preventing him from making his debut, it was left to Suarez, Dalglish’s other new multi-million pound signing, to make his bow.
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The forward, signed last week from Ajax for 23 million pounds, was greeted by rapturous applause as he made his way onto the pitch after 63 minutes in place of Fabio Aurelio, and marked his debut with a goal.
It took only sixteen minutes for the striker to make his mark, calmly rounding Begovic and slotting home after a neat through ball by Dirk Kuyt.
Jon Walters’s snap-shot was well saved by Reina in the dying moments as Stoke looked for a consolation, but Liverpool’s resurgence continued with a well-deserved win.
The mere mention of the words ‘football agents’ usually makes the blood of most football fans around the country boil. The not universally liked characters are often at the centre of football news, which is especially the case around the recent transfer deadline day.
Last week it was revealed that Football League clubs spent a total of over £16 million on agents’ fees last season, an increase of £4 million on the previous year. This is an incredible stat considering the effect the economic crisis is having on the beautiful game.
With the pressure for teams across the leagues to break even or even survive, the money paid out to agents is often a large expenditure that many fans would like to see change. Whilst it is unrealistic to think that over the foreseeable future no clubs will ever pay out an agent fee again, the fees being shelled out are a major point of concern for many clubs.
But it is not only the money side of agents that is often criticised for having a detrimental effect on the game. How often do we hear ‘reports’ from agents that other teams are interested in their players or their star players are looking to leave? For a short time last season Manchester United faced the incredible prospect of losing star striker Wayne Rooney. Reports surfaced that Rooney wanted to leave Old Trafford but with the help of his agent Paul Stretford he made a shock u-turn and instead signed a lucrative new deal. Questioning the legitimacy of Stretford’s intentions (and Rooney himself, with players not completely blameless in the football agent mess) is not a hard task.
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One answer to the continuing problem of agents and specifically the money involved is caps. The Guardian revealed late last year Fifa’s plans to implement a 3% of the total fee cap for agents, with an overall limit of £1.25 million. This move would present a shift in the pattern for clubs shelling out a lot of money to often greedy agents, with suggestions it could save clubs nearly £60 million. However, it is still unclear whether any such practices will be put into place in the near future.
But do agents just have a part to play in modern football? With the often chaotic nature of the transfer window (and deadline day especially) agents provide the source to bring in that one new player a club has been craving or they present a club’s best chance of getting rid of that overpaid player that they desperately need to shift off their books. Only eight clubs across the Football League didn’t pay agents fees during last season, a stat that shows football’s reliance on the good or bad service agents provide.
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There is a clear need for transparency when it comes to agents, their practices and the fees being played to them. A cap on agents’ fees would be an obvious solution to the growing problem that agents are having in the beautiful game and whilst it may not yet have got as far as them ruining the game, football agents are likely to continue to be a hated but unfortunately commonplace feature of modern football.
Do you think football’s hierarchy should implement agent fee caps? If you want to read more of my bite size, 140 character views and thoughts follow me on Twitter @jennyk5
After waking up to the news of the crippling weather conditions and all but two Premier league games being called off over Saturday and Sunday, nobody could have been too pumped up for Sunderland versus Bolton. To be fair, the game was decent, but Craig Gordon’s save from Zat Knight was truly unbelievable. It was an instinctive save, requiring razor sharp reflexes which defied the normal laws of physics. It was a save that young goalkeepers dream of making. Craig Gordon’s save will be remembered for years to come, but what about some other great saves? It is impossible to say one save is better than another – games are different, circumstances differ in games. We have found five truly great saves, made by goalkeepers playing in the Premier League. Watch, admire and if you so wish, practice in the snow.
Click on gloves below to see 5 great saves
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Like what you read? Follow me on twitter for some more outstanding saves.
Liverpool’s £20 million Xabi Alonso replacement, Alberto Aquilani, started nine Premier League games in his first season at Anfield, was loaned back to Serie A with Juventus for the current campaign and his limp performances when called upon reflected the rapid transition Liverpool were experiencing from title challengers to Europa League drop-outs. Aquilani’s impact at Anfield is generally considered minimal, but imagine how severe an appraisal of him would be if his delayed debut was postponed a total of 15 months, he headed his first goal in front on the Kop against his own goalkeeper and was sent-off for two bookings just after the hour before embarking on a further lengthy injury absence.
That fateful scenario describes Jonathan Woodgate’s first appearance for Real Madrid following a move to Spain that initially seemed to vindicate the maturing career of one of England’s finest defenders. Although Aquilani could soon be returning to Merseyside, principally due to his parent club’s intention to recoup a healthy amount of the Italian’s original fee and a subsequent lack of willing suitors, his once promising career presently hangs in the balance. Woodgate, however, was able to complement his devastating debut with a standing ovation from the Bernabeu crowd at the time of his dismissal. The Middlesbrough born centre-back’s deteriorating physical condition then provoked a return to his home-town club in an effort to rebuild his faltering reputation and he quickly sealed a further move to Tottenham, scoring the decisive goal in a man-of-the-match winning performance against Chelsea in the League Cup Final a month after his arrival.
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Woodgate actually recorded 113 appearances overall between his return to England in 2006 and the culmination of the 2008/2009 season but has featured on just three occasions in the League since, during a period in which Spurs have transformed in to a Champions League outfit. Although he was employed as a late substitute in Spurs’ recent away trip to the San Siro, the former Leeds and Newcastle player’s latest injury setback must surely indicate an impending conclusion to his time at White Hart Lane and encourage him to seriously contemplate retirement, a consideration Harry Redknapp suggested during pre-season.
His wages are believed to be in the region of £3 million a year so a departure would signify a considerable easing of Tottenham’s accounts. What’s more, Spurs have recently strengthened their defence with the January signing of Bongani Khumalo and although the Lilywhites have been unfortunate with injuries this term, they can still boast an expansive, experienced and reliable assemblage of defenders when fit. Ledley King’s frailties are well known, but Harry Redknapp retains the services of William Gallas, Sebastien Bassong, Younes Kaboul, Vedran Corluka and Michael Dawson who each represent a more dependable short, medium and long-term option than Woodgate.
The 8 times capped former England International has been fortunate that the ability he demonstrated at the dawn of his career and his personable attitude have got him this far. The Madrid fans’ encouraging reaction to Woodgate’s debut over five years ago mirrors the support he has received from each manager he has worked under. It is unlikely that Woodgate’s next move will intimate anything other than the overdue acceptance of his career’s twilight, the alternative being the acceptance of his career’s termination. His footballing archive describes a depressing series of events peppered with momentous highlights, but now is a good time for Tottenham to release the player whose days in football are numbered.
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