The word turncoat is described as ‘a person who shifts allegiance from one loyalty or ideal to another’ and in football, there’s plenty of them. They say there’s no such thing as loyalty in the game these days and certainly there’s some players or in fact managers out there who you couldn’t trust as far as you could throw them.
Some switch clubs as if they’re going out of fashion, or some jump ship at the first sign of trouble. There are also the wage mercenaries who would move to any club for the sake of an extra bob or two, and also those who play devil’s advocate with football’s fiercest rivalries. Crossing the divide between local enemies can often single you out as the target for vicious abuse from the opposition supporters, while your new home supporters may not take to you immediately either.
Considering the chaos that some of these moves can cause, there’s a surprisingly large number of footballing turncoats to choose from, highlighting just how money driven the modern game has become. Here’s 15 names who wouldn’t know recognise class or loyalty if it slapped them across the face.
Click on Nick Barmby to unveil the 15 biggest turncoats
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Stoke have made an offer of £4 million for Liverpool fringe midfielder Charlie Adam, according to The Daily Mail.
The Scotland international moved to Anfield last summer from Blackpool for £9 million, and featured under countryman Kenny Dalglish last term.
However, new Reds boss Brendan Rodgers does not have a place for the playmaker in his team, with a central midfield trio of Steven Gerrard, Lucas Leiva and new signing Nuri Sahin in the Northern Irish manager’s thoughts.
Rodgers will allow Adam to leave before the end of the transfer window, with Stoke launching a bid.
It has yet to be revealed whether the Merseysiders have accepted the offer from Tony Pulis’ men, who want the Scot to replace Wilson Palacios in the Britannia Stadium side.
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Fenerbahce have also been accredited with an interest in Adam, who looks likely to leave Liverpool over the next 48 hours.
Manchester United are set rival Arsenal in a move for Raheem Sterling, according to the Daily Mail.
Sterling has been offered a new contract at Anfield but is yet to put pen to paper and with just 18 months left on his youth deal a move may be on the cards.
Sir Alex Ferguson is an admirer of the 18-year-old but it would certainly be a shock if any player moved between the fierce rivals.
Sterling gained his first England cap against Sweden last month in a 4-2 defeat and has become a regular in the Liverpool first team under Brendan Rodgers.
Sterling arrived on Merseyside just two years ago from Queens Park Rangers and is capped at U16, U17, U19 and U21 as well as at senior level for England despite being born in Jamaica.
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A January move to United would be unexpected but with Nani seemingly on his way out of the club and with Ashley Young and Antonio Valencia yet to live up to last season’s form it could be the perfect time for Ferguson to sign a natural winger.
The pantomime season may have only recently just kicked into gear, but at the BBC’s Match of the Day headquarters, it seems to have been in full swing for what feels like, well, an eternity.
Indeed, while the shirt offerings on MOTD might have always had a touch of the Widow Twankey about them, for many supporters indulging in English football’s flagship highlights show, that mock panto feeling is beginning to apply to the punditry on offer, too.
While no medium of broadcasting is safe from critique – none more so than within the cutthroat opinions cultivated in the beautiful game – the grievances that supporters air in regards to Match of the Day feel a lot more toxic and a lot more frequent than simply a moody old groan.
Archaic, uninformative and out of touch are just three of the politer terms that are regularly wheeled out on Twitter and the like to depict the now 48-year-old highlights show. It’s the BBC’s finest sporting relic – yet it’s the other three relics sitting in the pundit’s chair every Saturday, which appear to be jeopardizing its place in supporters’ affections.
The Premier League has of course changed immeasurably since its formation in 1992 and perhaps none more so than within the last couple of years. The rise of social media has seen the likes of Michael Cox’s superb Zonal Marking site rise in prominence and supporters have access to a whole raft of analysis, dissection and opinion like never before.
Furthermore, Gary Neville’s meteoric ascent from recent retirement to the king of Sky Sports’ Monday Night Football format, has seen the ex-Manchester Untied defender become something of a media darling in punditry terms.
Richard Keys and Andy Gray often resembled a couple of Dads trying to put up flat packed furniture with a claw hammer when it came to using Sky’s cutting edge technology. Neville has utilized it to educate the viewer and the plaudits he’s currently receiving is testament to the respect that supporters place upon that.
So in light of the wealth of articulate opinion that’s currently out there for football supporters to soak up, it’s perhaps no surprise that Match of the Day currently finds itself in the firing line.
After the best part of two decades uttering the word diabolical, it seems that Alan Hansen’s black book of defensive adjectives is running low. Alan Shearer’s credibility as a pundit all but went out the window after claiming that Hatem Ben Arfa, who’d long been regarded as one of European football’s brightest prodigies, was something of an unknown quantity before his move to Newcastle United.
If Mark Lawrenson could stop the perpetual moaning and actually explain what was going on, then maybe he’d be considered the best of a perceived bad bunch. As of yet, that’s not happened for several years now.
Yet while there will be many who have always held a lingering disdain for the aforementioned trio (as presenter, Gary Lineker is being left somewhat exempt from critique, for now) there certainly feels like there’s something of a bandwagon developing in terms of the anti-MOTD sentiment. The show’s never been critique-free, although it’s difficult to remember a time in its history it’s faced such a massive backlash from the general public.
The License Fee-shaped elephant in the room here, is of course the fact that Match of the Day is publicly funded and given the extortionate salaries that messrs Hansen et al are currently receiving, viewers undoubtedly entitled to demand the very pinnacle of punditry. Even after a pay cut this year, Alan Hansen still rakes in an estimated £1million per annum.
And on the balance of opinion we’re currently being offered, especially given the wealth of informative analysis available both online and with rival broadcasters, it’s hard to see how the public are really getting their money’s worth with the current set-up. But where as many are calling for a drastic overhaul, a new lick of paint could be a more fitting solution.
Even if Hansen and Lawrenson were continuing to churn out world class punditry, nothing lasts forever and after being in the job since 1992 and 1997 respectively, the BBC simply need a change of face as much as anything else. Everyone has a shelf life and even though Gary Neville may well be a superior pundit, if he’s still on our screens in 15 years time, it’s a safe bet he might not be quite as popular as he is today.
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The show needs some fresh perspective and something resembling a new outlook, but there has to be more thought put into it than simply cherry picking an ex-player in the assumption he’ll make a good pundit. The programme’s flirtations with Michael Owen in recent weeks would have given the neutrals some real cause for concern.
Ex-Milan coach Arrigo Sacchi famously once said, “I never realized that in order to become a jockey, you have to be a horse first,” and it couldn’t be truer in terms of punditry. The likes of Michael Cox and Guardian contributor Jonathan Wilson have proven you don’t have to have played the game to be able to understand it and explain it with both thought and clarity.
And that’s what the audience are crying out for – they want a pundit to dissect the events and tell them something they didn’t already know. Because more than anything, Match of the Day seems to offer little more to us at the moment than passing observations and tired clichés.
The glitzy iPad chic of Monday Night Football or the tactical theses of Zonal Marking won’t work for Match of the Day. It’s a publicly funded programme that will always have to cater to a far larger spectrum of tastes and overloading it with a 10 minute package on the false nine simply isn’t going to be viable. But all fans are asking for is a little more considered punditry and a bit of knowledgeable information. The current chummy old boys club falls some way short of that.
Liverpool’s owners and manager Brendan Rodgers are set to come to loggerheads again, after the club announced plans to form a “technical committee” in light of the Andy Carroll debacle. The Telegraph reports.
Supporters are still fuming at the decision to let £35million signing, Carroll leave with Luis Suarez and Fabio Borini as the only options upfront.
The Reds were interested in securing a deal for Daniel Sturridge to bolster their attacking options, but were only willing to bring him in on loan whereas Chelsea were keen on a permanent deal.
But the most high-profile failure came after the club could not meet the £6million valuation which Fulham set for Clint Dempsey, resulting in the USA international joining Tottenham instead.
This new proposed committee will be set up to avoid future situations like this, advising both Rodgers and owners John W Henry and Tom Werner about all aspects of the club, including transfer dealings.
It is likely to cause even more tension between owners and management, particularly as Rodgers made it clear he wants total control over all first-team matters, but the owners have since said this so-called British model is unsustainable and costly.
The American owners want to replicate a similar kind of model that is already in place at West Brom, where Dan Ashworth has the role of sporting and technical director and is now wanted by the Football Association.
Under this new model, Rodgers will have to discuss prospective transfer targets with members of the committee, who in turn will advise the manager on the best way forward.
Ian Ayre, the current managing director is likely to hold a key role in the new set-up, along with a chief scout and an experienced football administrator.
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Liverpool fans will hope this goes some way in improving the club’s fortunes, especially as they seem a long way off from competing at the top level in the near future.
With the season about to enter its tenth round of fixtures, we are a quarter of the way through the league campaign, which while it may not be enough to judge either fully or accurately how the season will eventually turn out, is enough time to make an opinion on which players have done well since signing for their new clubs.
While Manchester City and Newcastle have predominantly relied on those players who helped them so much last season, most clubs have sought to bring in fresh first-team bodies. They don’t always have to be the most expensive acquisitions, but the way you can tell whether they’ve been a success or not at this stage is if their presence is already missed from the starting eleven.
Click on Arouna Kone to unveil the top 10
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Liverpool have agreed a deal in principle with Anzhi Makhachkala striker Lacina Traore, according to reports from Izvestia.
Scouts from the Premier League club are believed to have been watching the 6ft. 8” forward for some time and were impressed with his match winning display during clubs’ Europa League clash last week.
The Ivorian has been in good form for the Dagestan-based outfit this term and is reportedly open to a move despite only signing for them during the summer from domestic rivals FC Kuban.
His agent Dmitry Selyuk hinted to the the Russian newspaper that his client could be on his way to England with a deal close to being agreed:
“Aside from Liverpool, Udinese are another on the list of clubs to have made contact about the purchase of Traore,
“I’m afraid the Italian side won’t be able to meet the player’s valuation.”
He also stated that his client will not be rushed into a decision:
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“At the moment Lacina is happy with his situation at Anzhi. Not long ago he signed a contract until June 2016. There’s no reason for Traore to rush.”
With his current employers having shelled out just under £15m for his services not long ago it’s likely that they would be looking to make a profit, which would go against Liverpool’s current transfer ethos.
Arsenal have revealed that the club made a pre-tax profit of £36.6 million for the financial year.
The results, which span from June 2011 to May 2012, show that the north London club are operating without huge debts, which comes as a source of pleasure for chief executive Ivan Gazidis.
“Clubs, fans and other stakeholders in the game are demanding a more rational financial approach and this reinforces our conviction that our club is strongly placed to succeed over the long term,” a statement, published in The Guardian, reads.
“We have qualified for the Champions League for the 15th season in a row whilst off the pitch we have a business strategy and infrastructure that is helping us to grow our revenues.
“This revenue growth will provide sustainable funds for future investment in the team whilst keeping within the Uefa Financial Fair Play requirements. We can and will forge our own path to success.”
The sale of both Samir Nasri and Cesc Fabregas last summer did much to balance the books.
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Andre Villas-Boas is ready to bring summer target Joao Moutinho to Tottenham from Porto with a new £24million bid while Zenit tell Hulk he can leave, reports the Mirror.
Portugese international Moutinho has been on Tottenham’s radar since the last transfer window but they failed to complete a club record deal before the deadline.
AVB, formally the Porto boss went to watch his old club and Moutinho in action in their 2-1 Champions League defeat at PSG, and is said to be ready to finally land the player who could be seen as a replacement for the departed Luka Modric, now at Real Madrid.
The Spurs chief also expressed how he still follows Porto’s progress whenever he can saying, “Whenever Porto are close to the place where I am, I go see them.”
Meanwhile, former Spurs and Chelsea target Hulk has been told he can leave Zenit St Petersburg after an incredible fallout on Tuesday.
The £39.5million striker was furious when coach Luciano Spalletti took him off 10 minutes before the end of Zenits Champions League win over AC Milan and refused to shake his hand.
“If the situation with the coach does not resolve itself I may leave the club in the January transfer window.” He said.
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Fifa regulations however prevent a player representing three clubs in one season, meaning Hulk, 26, would have to wait till the summer if he was to move.
If he does become available it will be interesting to see if the likes of Tottenham and Chelsea would still be interested in signing him following his disruptive behaviour.
Wayne Rooney has poured cold water on rumours that he could leave Manchester United.
The England international has been decidedly off the boil recently, both in Euro 2012 and in the Red Devils’ opening games to the 2012-13 season.
With Sir Alex Ferguson bolstering his attacking options with the signatures of Robin van Persie and Shinji Kagawa this summer, the British tabloids have speculated whether the Old Trafford outfit were getting ready to cash-in on Rooney.
However, the attacker has dismissed this as nonsense and stated he wants to stay with United.
“Read the nonsense in the papers and heard what people have to say it is absolute rubbish. #heretostay,” he told his Twitter followers.
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Rooney suffered a nasty gash on his leg in the 3-2 win over Fulham at the weekend, with the extent of the injury meaning the striker could be out for as long as two months.