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.
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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Gareth Bale has rejected claims that he dived to win a penalty for Wales against Scotland on Friday night.
The Tottenham winger scored two late goals to earn the hosts a 2-1 victory over Craig Levein’s men at the Liberty Stadium, with Shaun Maloney adjudged to have tripped Bale for a penalty in the deciding goal.
Despite the anger of the Tartan Army and criticism in the media, Bale has insisted that the award of a spot-kick was just.
“Somebody clipped me and I went over. He (Maloney) clipped my leg and I couldn’t stay on my feet,” Bale told Sky Sports.
“It was a simple penalty and it was nice to get up and slot it away.
“I’ve missed a few when I’ve taken them in the past, but I fancied it. I was confident and thankfully I did step up,” he commented.
Meanwhile, national boss Chris Coleman has praised Bale, and stated that the attacker will go down as one of the nation’s best-ever players if he continues on his current path.
“Gareth wouldn’t be fazed by moving to Real Madrid, Barcelona or any other top club in the world.
“It’s not easy moving to another country and culture, but he has the character to handle that. He’s young and has it all in front of him.
“In this country we talk about the great John Charles, Ryan Giggs, Ian Rush. Southall was the best goalkeeper in the world,” added Coleman.
“There’s no doubt in my mind Gareth will be up there with those guys.
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“He’s only 23. It’s not a case of ‘can he up there with those guys?’ He will be,” Coleman testified.
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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Liverpool striker Luis Suarez has confessed that he has an obsession with winning, but finds balance in life with his family, the Mirror reports.
The Uruguayan international said as a street-kid he had to fight his way out of poverty and that the rage still lurks deep inside him.
However Suarez disclosed that his wife has toned down his inner child at home, despite of his appetite to be the best at everything.
In a video on the Liverpool official website, the forward said he hates losing so much there were occasions when he made his three-year-old daughter cry.
“I can never lose. I don’t like that and sometimes I can see and my wife can see that Delfina is the same,” he said.
“She doesn’t like losing and when we play in the house and she loses she cries and Sofia says she’s like me on the pitch!
“When I was a child I never liked to lose. From seven years old I started to do competitions and things like that and I never liked to lose…and even now, when I go onto the pitch sometimes 100 per cent it’s from the street.”
The 26-year-old explained that the desire to win came from a life of poverty – when he had to steal food for his family – and that the trait has stuck with him.
His wife sees things differently, by banning him from bringing his attitudes on the pitch back into their home.
“I have worked very hard in my life to stay at this level and I can’t miss one ball, because I love football,” he explained.
“But now sometimes I’m another person because you try your best, you perform and you change. But it depends on the moment.
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“Sometimes you lose the game and you go back to the house and I see my wife and two children and I forget everything.
“And when I score four like in the Norwich game I come home and my wife tells me forget that you have scored four on the pitch because here you are my husband!”
Sunderland defender John O’ Shea believes that a consistent run of games will revitalise the club’s flair players.
The Black Cats rescued a draw in Sunday’s game with Newcastle thanks to Demba Ba’s late own goal, but the centre back is aware that this spells just one win in 15 games for his side.
The Republic of Ireland star feels that with the lengthy international breaks for this calendar year, the club’s attacking personnel will have time to gel, and find their form in front of goal.
O’Shea mentioned that it was important to get the likes of Stephane Sessegnon, James McLean and Adam Johnson to work on supplying quality service to their £14 million summer acquisition Steven Fletcher.
The versatile defender went on to tell Sky Sports “Now over the next few weeks, fingers crossed, with a few bodies coming back as well, we will be able to go on a stronger run than we have been doing.
We have not been losing games. Obviously, we lost against (Manchester) City, but we should have more wins on the board than what we have.”
A worry for Sunderland and Martin O’Neill is that opposing sides have managed to ensure that the club’s danger men are kept quiet in games.
However, the former Manchester United ace, O’Shea was quick to point out that all the players have confidence in the team’s ability.
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Next up is a tricky trip to the Britannia stadium for the Black Cats where they will be trying to secure a 3 points that could provide a real impetus to their campaign.
It amazes me just how often Premier League chairmen opt for hiring a manager that directly contrasts in every manner to the one they’ve just swiftly relinquished from their respective dugouts.
Back in 2007, Roman Abramovich replaced anti-football extraordinare Jose Mourinho with Brazil boss Philippe Scolari. Just this summer, Roberto Mancini’s mafioso style and Italian tactics were swapped for La Liga’s coy in public yet adventurous in philosophy Manuel Pellegrini at Manchester City, and Everton chose free-footballing Roberto Martinez to carry the Goodison mantle from the Manchester United-bound David Moyes, a manager who has always favoured winning the ball high up the pitch rather than messing around with it in your own six yard box.
Some transitions are successful, others not, and now it’s time to examine Tottenham’s sudden overhaul, and whether new boss Tim Sherwood is taking the club in the right direction or pushing them towards tactical naivety.
The former Spurs midfielder, now in the dugout, a member of the old Villas-Boas regime but clearly one with some different ideas. A man who, unlike his predecessor, appears to actually enjoy communication and interaction with other human beings.
More than anything else, regardless of drubbings to Manchester City away and Liverpool at home, it was the Lilywhites’ inability to score goals under the Portuguese that proved to be his undoing.
Enter Sherwood’s philosophical backlash; since the ex-England man took the managerial helm, mercurial striker Emmanuel Adebayor has been reinstated for first team duties after his half-season in the development squad, 4-4-2 has been decisively favoured over a five-man midfield, and the North Londoners have netted nine times in four Premier League outings – that’s only six less than AVB managed in 16 games before being given the boot by Daniel Levy.
It’s traditional, it’s simple, it’s English, it’s direct, it’s ambitious, it’s attacking, it’s 4-4-2. It’s everything Sherwood’s predecessor would quietly shudder at whilst moving magnets around his vertical tactics board and trying to explain the importance of a double-pivot in deep midfield during a half-time team talk.
But it didn’t take long for Sherwood’s new bold and basic 4-4-2 philosophy to reveal its flaws.
Taking on a Manchester United side with one of the weakest midfields in the Premier League’s top half, and the Lilywhites ran riot on the break, able to bypass the middle of the park all together and make progress down the flanks.
Against Arsenal in the FA Cup however, a match which was never in Tottenham’s favour, and it took less than half hour for Spurs’ two flat banks of four to be decisively undone, leaving striking duo Emmanuel Adebayor and Roberto Soldado to stroll around aimlessly on the half-way line waiting for nothing to happen.
What was the issue? Not only are the Gunners the most in-form team in the country right now, topping the Premier League table and playing some very snazzy football to boot, but they’re also incredibly midfield-centric.
So much so that striker Olivier Giroud has almost as many assists as goals this season, with his job of laying off the ball to one of Arsenal’s venturing midfielders made incredibly easy by the lethality of Aaron Ramsey, Mesut Ozil, Santi Cazola and Theo Walcott.
And during Sunday’s ad hoc North London derby, it was even more imperative that Tottenham flooded the middle of the park rather than concern themselves with fluency and link-up play in the final third. With Giroud hit by the winter flu, Nicklas Bendtner out with an ankle knock and Lucas Podolski fit enough for the bench but not to start, the Gunners essentially opted for a false nine formation, with Theo Walcott heading the attack but by no means shackled to his front-man role.
Rather, transition was the name of the game. Gnarby popping up here, Rosicky breaking through there, and Santi Cazorla netting a sensational strike from a difficult angle after half an hour, with the full-backs doing all the work down the flanks.
If there’s ever an occasion to bore your opponents to death and utilise two holding midfielders, two of AVB’s many crimes as Spurs boss, it’s an FA Cup visit to the Emirates.
Sherwood has denied claims that it was his utilisation of 4-4-2 that eventually cost his side a place in the fourth round, responding to journalists after being quizzed on the issue post-match; “No. They outnumbered us in the middle of the park but we outnumbered them out wide. They can’t have it all ways. I think we were fine. We didn’t lose the game because we were outnumbered in the middle of the pitch.
“A lot is made of systems – 4-4-2, 4-3-3 or whatever you want to call it… It’s about passing the ball to your own team and keeping hold of it because when you lose the ball you are always going to be out of shape – otherwise you are going to be a rigid, boring team.”
You can certainly see his point – failing to take attacking risks was Tottenham’s biggest flaw under AVB – and there were lots of other elements at work on Sunday evening. Namely a string of injuries leading to a debut for the unblooded Nabil Bentaleb, caused by a hectic schedule of six games in 17 days, the fact Arsenal are at the top of the Premier League table for legitimate footballing reasons, and defensive muck-ups from the nowhere-to-be-found Kyle Walker and the caught-in-possession Danny Rose.
But amid all the recent praise of how Sherwood has spawned a goal frenzy at a club that had averaged less than one per game prior to him taking the Spurs hotseat, you have to wonder whether his tactical naivety will cost Tottenham on more occasions this season than a solitary FA Cup master-class from their local rivals.
Some would label it brave to field a 4-4-2 against a club of Arsenal’s technical prowess and midfield dominance. Others would call it stupid.
So the question remains whether Sherwood’s feel-good 4-4-2 is here for the long-haul or simply a flash in the pan; a shock doctrine that prevails in the short-term but leaves intrinsic flaws and poor results as its legacy – especially if the Spurs boss is allowed to bring in a new choice of striker in January, who will quickly become redundant if the Lilywhites revert back to a one-up-front policy.
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The Arsenal performance certainly counts as a forebearer but it’s by no means the ultimate test. That will come against the likes of Everton, Swansea, Manchester City and Liverpool; teams designed to hold onto the ball and pull apart flat midfields. They’re also the calibre of opposition Spurs were expected to be effectively competing with at the start of the season.
With a few more games under his belt and a better understanding of the role at hand, Sherwood needs to demonstrate that the tactical vulnerability he showed against Arsenal won’t become a repeat occurrence, even if it does mean reverting back to the pragmatic, boring football of the old regime. Otherwise, his bold 4-4-2 will quickly be judged as decisively daft.
West Ham winger Matt Jarvis is looking ahead to finishing the season on a high and hopes that might get him back in the England fold.
The current campaign has been a mixed bag for the former Wolves man, who was signed for a record fee last summer but whose goal on Saturday was just his second of the season.
The 26-year-old stood out as West Ham ran out 2-0 winners over Wigan but said afterwards he is not focusing on trying to add to the one England cap he received in 2011.
“I can only do what I do on a Saturday for West Ham,” he said. “As long as I continue performing at a high standard consistently we will have to see what happens, but I’m just concentrating on making sure I play well for West Ham week in, week out.
“If I keep performing as I do hopefully they will be watching Andy (Carroll) and I can get in on the act as well.
“I think I’m playing as well and as consistently as I was and I keep playing well and creating chances and get a few goals myself.”
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Leeds United owners, GHF Capital, have confirmed they have rejected a takeover bid for the Championship club from an undisclosed third party.
Although the bidder remains unknown, it has been reported it is a Yorkshire based consortium that made an offer for a 51% of the shares with aim to secure a phased buy-out, The Guardian reports.
The Dubai-based investment bank confirmed the news via the club’s web page in a statement to the Leeds fans: “We are aware of growing speculation regarding new investment at Leeds United”.
“As can be expected with a club as fantastic as Leeds United, since our acquisition we have received several offers to invest in the club alongside us”, the club’s proprietors assured.
The statement reflects that an offer for a majority stake “has not been accepted”, and clarifies that a takeover bid is not the kind of investment the club is looking for.
“Although we continue to seek strategic investors, we will only bring on board those who we feel can make a positive contribution to the sustainable success of Leeds United”, GHF guaranteed.
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Former Hull City chairman Adam Pearson said this week he would like to return to football, mentioning Leeds United as an example of a club he would be interested in, although it remains uncertain if he could have been involved in the bid.
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