Midfielder Adam Lallana claims Southampton are a better side since Mauricio Pochettino replaced Nigel Adkins at St Mary’s.
The decision of chairman Nicola Cortese to axe Adkins and replace him with the Argentinian coach in mid-January sparked outrage with the fans and certain sections of the media.
However, Pochettino has gradually won over his doubters and a run of three successive wins has lifted the Saints up to 11th to virtually guarantee a second season of Premier League football.
And Lallana, who scored the second goal in Saturday’s 2-0 win against Adkins’ new club Reading at the Madejski Stadium, feels the decision to make the change is now paying dividends.
“We’re sitting higher in the league, we’re scoring more goals and I think the table speaks for itself,” he said.
“We’ve got a different manager who’s got a different culture about him. He’s got different methods and he’s gradually getting them across to the players.”
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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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boss Andre Villas-Boas thinks a chat with flying winger Gareth Bale earlier this season was the catalyst for his subsequent stunning form.
Bale picked up the 2012-13 Footballer of the Year award at the Football Writers’ Association’s dinner in central London on Thursday evening after what has been an outstanding Premier League campaign for the Wales star.
Just 11 days before, the Tottenham forward became only the third man in history to win PFA Player of the Year and Young Player of the Year in the same season.
After a season which has seen him bag a total of 30 goals for club and country, it is hard to imagine Bale having experienced any doubt about his abilities this year, but Tottenham’s manager revealed last night that the player had sounded him out after a period where he felt he was not enjoying his football enough.
Speaking on stage at the Lancaster London hotel last night, Villas-Boas said: “I had Gareth knocking on my door once, not crying, but he was complaining a little bit. He said he wanted me to help him to enjoy his football a little more.
“We had a good conversation. Hopefully it turned out well for both of us. From that moment onwards his drive, his passion and his ambition towards the height of elite football has been immense and it shows through the great season he has had.”
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Liverpool have been heavily involved in the football rumours already this transfer window. After signing Manchester City defender Kolo Toure on a free transfer, Brendan Rodgers has been strongly linked with moves for Henrikh Mkitaryan and Simon Mignolet. The duo are expected to cost a total of £30million, as the Northern Irishman aims to get his business done as early as possible.
The Reds are keen to strengthen their squad this summer, after finishing 7th in the Premier League this season, just two points behind neighbours Everton. But with their £20million transfer kitty set to be overspent on the duo, Rodgers will not only need to sell some players, but will also need to find some bargains across Europe if he wants to continue adding to his squad.
With that in mind, here are 10 transfer bargains Rodgers should consider before the new season starts.
Click on Jermain Defoe to see 10 players Liverpool could pick up on the (relatively) cheap
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The start of the summer and the transfer period had Reading fans as excited as they had been for a long while with the arrivals of the Wayne Bridge, Danny Williams and Royston Drenthe.
With the promised addition of one more striker we were set for a promotion push with a decent amount of cover in all positions and according to a lot of fans probably a stronger squad than the one that had started the campaign the season before in the Premier League.
The season is now starting to get into full flow and while it is still early days, Reading have looked far from convincing in picking up two wins, two draws and a solitary defeat away at Blackpool. Not the worst start on paper but it is the nature of the unconvincing performances in the last couple of games had fans including myself convinced that we would see a couple of incomings throughout the last few days of the window, especially upfront where we looked light to say the least. Adam Le Fondre will always score goals, but as we have all seen he is best coming off the bench. Pavel Pogrebnyak has not looked interested this term while Nick Blackman has failed to convince fans in the first month.
Despite this, the first bits of business in the last week of the window were actually outgoings with Jimmy Kebe and Adrian Mariappa leaving for Crystal Palace for a combined total of £5m. Jimmy Kebe has always been a player who divided opinion, unstoppable on his day but most frustrating on others and perhaps after six years with the club it was the right time for him to move on. Adrian Mariappa, despite being many fans choice for player of the season last year has rarely featured in Nigel Adkins starting 11 and perhaps he felt £3m for a player not in his plans was too much to turn down.
After recouping £5m I amongst other Reading fans was convinced there would be at least two or three players coming in on the last couple of days of August. As mentioned earlier we looked light up front and with Mariappa leaving we are left with only three senior central defenders, obviously not enough at this level.
So we waited.
There were a few rumours knocking about here and there but nothing concrete and as the excitement of deadline day unfolded it was all worryingly quiet over at the Madejski. As the evening wore on and deals were being confirmed up and down the country Reading fans took to twitter to vent their frustration. Every fan agreed that at the very least a striker and a central defender was needed, so what was going on? Well, by the sound of it, not very much at all.
So what was it that resulted in the failure to secure any players? A lot of the anger on social media has been aimed at the Director of Football, Nicky Hammond. It was reported that two deals fell through on deadline day and perhaps therefore it does seem correct to lay the blame at Hammonds door. One fan has even gone to the lengths of creating a petition for his sacking which to me seems slightly extreme but it is easy to see why the fans are so frustrated.
When the new owner took over, it seemed the days of having to sell our best players to balance the books were gone. We would no longer need to ship out the Gylfi Sigurdssons and Shane Longs of this world whenever the first club came calling. We had the money to bring in players, such as Drenthe who would be paid big wages. It therefore seems strange that no players were bought in to strengthen areas that it is plain to see need it. I think we must look at Hammonds role and he must be made to answer questions as to what happened, especially with the reported 2 deals that fell through on deadline day.
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We will now see what happens in the next week or so in terms of any free transfers and loan deals but I would say that in my opinion it will be nigh on impossible to achieve the clubs ambition of getting promoted this season with the current squad. Time will tell.
The departure of Yohan Cabaye was always going to be a huge loss for Newcastle, but such is the talent and quality of the midfielder, it was always a case of when, not if.
The Newcastle board, those working above Alan Pardew, will have to strengthen this month if the club are to continue in their pursuit of European football. Mistakes have been made past windows, but losing an influential player of Cabaye’s calibre simply can’t be dealt with internally.
France has proven to be a good market for the club in the past and they may very well revisit the French league this month, with rumours suggesting a number of France-based midfielders are being lined up.
With only a few days left of the January window, these are six players who would be good replacements for Cabaye.
Click on the departing Frenchman to see the full list
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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.
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!”
Real Madrid forward Angel Di Maria has sensationally claimed that learning about a possible switch to Tottenham hurt him, according to the Independent.
The Argentina international was linked with a move to White Hart Lane after Real signed Spurs’ Gareth Bale for a world record £86million fee.
And the speculation surrounding a move away from the Bernabeu upset Di Maria, and he has hinted that he wouldn’t be interested in playing for Spurs.
He said: “It hurts when you’re always doing your best for your club and then you hear that you might be going to Tottenham.
“I spoke with the manager last summer. I wanted to stay and he wanted me to stay as well. He told me that he counted on me and it was up to me from then on.
“I have grown a lot under Ancelotti. He got the best out of me. Things have gone well and I made the right decision to stay.”
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Di Maria consequently enjoyed one of his best seasons for the La Liga giants last term, and played an important role in helping them win La Decima – their tenth European Cup – by beating rivals Atletico Madrid in the Champions League final last weekend.
But the 26-year-old may not be able to sit back and relax just yet, with more rumours of a move away from Spain expected to resurface following rumours of Real’s interest in Liverpool’s Luis Suarez.
“I am not going to lie, I know that there are clubs that want to sign me and can match Real Madrid’s demands,” he admitted.
“But that’s up to my representatives and the club. I will stay if the club wants me to stay.
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“I am not thinking about my future now. We will see what Madrid have in mind, whether they want me to stay or leave.
“I am happy at Madrid. I had a great season and always had everybody’s support. But sometimes you don’t have a choice, even when you want to stay yourself.”
Tottenham Hotspur have had a decent start to the new Premier League campaign, picking up two wins and one loss as they sit in sixth place.
Based on their displays, it looks as though Mauricio Pochettino has managed to build a strong team, but it is still known that he will be searching for a midfield general and a striker once the club is allowed to buy players again.
With that in mind, here are SIX possible transfer targets Spurs could snap up in the upcoming January transfer window.
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CLICK ON MORGAN SCHNEIDERLIN TO SEE THE FULL LIST
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Fredy Guarin
//www.youtube.com/embed/k5MFw5Lj-g0
Name: Freddy Guarin
Age: 28
Position: Midfield (Centre, Right)
Nationality: Colombia
Club: Inter Milan
Price: ?
Tottenham Hotspur had placed a formal bid of £10million plus Roberto Soldado to try and sign Fredy Guarin from Inter Milan, but saw the offer rejected over the summer. Yet they could now be preparing a new and improved deal.
Last season he provided nine assist and scored four goals from 31 appearances and is seen as one of the priority targets Mauricio Pochettino is said to want at White Hart Lane once the January transfer window opens.
Jay Rodriguez
//www.youtube.com/embed/e3adfleiWiE
Name: Jay Rodriguez
Age: 25
Position: Left Wing / Striker
Nationality: England
Club: Southampton
Price: £10 – £15 million
Jay Rodriguez is currently sidelined with a knee injury, but could be set for a return very soon as he may need to slowly work his way back into the new-look Southampton side.
Prior to his lengthy spell away from the Saints’ XI, he was in remarkable form notching 15 goals from 33 appearances, a display which tipped him to be part of Roy Hodgson’s World Cup squad in Brazil.
Memphis Depay
//www.youtube.com/embed/MiRW90BBv_o
Name: Memphis Depay
Age: 20
Position: Left Wing
Nationality: Netherlands
Club: PSV Eindhoven
Price: £10 – £15 million
Memphis Depay was edging towards a summer move to White Hart Lane, but instead decided to sign a contract extension up until 2018, quashing any talk of an earlier switch.
However, even though he has penned a new deal, there is still the possibility of Tottenham move if they can conjure up a mouth-watering deal to PSV to force a move. Depay is also being tracked by Manchester United, so if they find out Spurs are making a move, Louis van Gaal may want to be reunited with the Dutch winger.
Morgan Schneiderlin
//www.youtube.com/embed/BD_ksXiqyMs
Name: Morgan Schneiderlin
Age: 24
Position: Defensive Midfield
Nationality: France
Club: Southampton
Price: £14 – £18 million
The Morgan Schneiderlin transfer story was a big saga during the summer window as Southampton and Tottenham Hotspur were refusing to sell players to each other despite the fact that both sides had targets in mind.
Recent reports suggest that Schneiderlin may once again look to force a move away from St. Mary’s and Spurs will need to be prepared to battle it out with Arsenal, who are also interested in the services of the French star.
Wilfried Bony
//www.youtube.com/embed/tD3sxqpEfoQ
Name: Wilfried Bony
Age: 25
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Position: Striker
Nationality: Ivory Coast
Club: Swansea
Price: £15 – £20 million
The fact that Tottenham Hotspur is in need of another striker puts Wilfried Bony’s name on the list as he was one of the players opting for a move to join a bigger club.
With Spurs having access to Europa League football, Bony may still be in the crosshairs of Mauricio Pochettino, who is seeing goals come from his defenders and midfielders rather than the usual forward players.
Bernard
//www.youtube.com/embed/i15aC9yXuZY
Name: Bernard
Age: 22
Position: Left Wing
Nationality: Brazil
Club: Shakhtar Donetsk
Price: £18 – £23 million
The recent political crisis in Ukraine has seen Bernard tipped to leave his club, but due to Tottenham not offering an acceptable sum to Shakhtar, a move didn’t happen.
His club announced that despite the problems in the country, they would only let their star winger leave for a reasonable price. Spurs will once again have to battle it out with Arsenal if they are to secure a big money move for the talented winger.