Nottingham Forest have plenty of work to do if they want to push for Premier League promotion this season.
For manager Aitor Karanka, the first task at hand is to recruit new players to kickstart the campaign.
It seems that the Reds will be replacing one right-back with another as Alan Hutton is believed to be a target, while Eric Lichaj could be heading out the exit door towards Hull City.
[brid autoplay=”true” video=”252976″ player=”12034″ title=”Watch 21 things that will definitely happen at the World Cup”]
As reported on Twitter by John Percy of The Telegraph, the Championship outfit have held talks with Hutton and are prepared to offer him a two-year contract.
The experienced defender will be out of contract next month, which means that he is eligible to join another club for free.
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Lichaj, who has been at the City Ground for five years, has been heavily linked with a switch to fellow Championship club Hull City.
With reports of Hutton’s transfer rumbling around, Forest fans have been tweeting their thoughts, and they have been fairly mixed.
Rangers’ fine start to 2018 continued on Sunday as they battled to a 2-1 victory away to Ross County in the Scottish Premiership.
Not only have the Light Blues won both of their matches since returning from the mid-season break, they’ve added a number of first team stars to Graeme Murty’s squad that are already making an impact.
Jason Cummings got his first goal for the club during the win in Dingwall, which proved to be a vital winner, while the likes of Sean Goss continue to impress in the heart of midfield.
The Queens Park Rangers loanee is fast becoming a hero with supporters after a couple of industrious ball-playing performances and they can’t wait to see how much more he can offer between now and the end of the season, with some even suggesting they want to make it permanent already.
The former Manchester United man appears to be enjoying the initial stages of his spell in Glasgow and if he can continue to impress then there’s little prospect of him not finding regular first team football.
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Supporters took to Twitter to share their thoughts on his Sunday showing…
After a rollercoaster season at White Hart Lane, it is time to start analysing the hiccups along the way.
Gareth Bale’s stunning performances defined last season and without him, Tottenham potentially would not have finished with their highest points tally in the Premier League. Therefore the work of Andre Villas-Boas was hypothetically not an integral part to their success.
The beginning of Spurs’ season would support this claim, with the eventual downfall of the Portuguese manager happening on the 16th December 2013 – highlighting that perhaps the Premier League just isn’t right for AVB.
Was there another Premier League manager that Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy could have approached?
With AVB secured as manager in 2012 (the same year as Brendan Rodgers at Liverpool), Roberto Martinez was still in his final year at Wigan Athletic, desperately plugging away in the bid to avoid relegation to the Championship, whilst at the same time, playing some stylish and classy football.
Tottenham’s appointment of Villas-Boas signified that the north Londoners were on the prowl for a youthful approach to management and the selection of the former Porto manager should have been carried with caution when considering his negative stint at London rivals, Chelsea.
Roberto Martinez always stated that it was his intention to keep Wigan in the top division, however after four years of the same tireless quest, would it have been best suited for his career to move to a club challenging at the higher level of the league with money to spend? Martinez was most likely the youthful reformist that Spurs were looking for.
Eventually, the Spaniard left Wigan after failing to avoid the drop. He managed to secure a move to replace David Moyes as the manager of Everton and career-wise, Everton was an intelligent move.
However, had Martinez have left a year previously, he would have ended his spell with the Latics as having successfully manoeuvred them to safety. Tottenham should have moved for Martinez instead of AVB, with the club’s tradition and heritage matching perfectly with the former’s footballing philosophy.
Tactically, Roberto Martinez and Tottenham would be an ideal fit. Martinez often adopts a 4-2-3-1 shape that relies on strong tacklers which, with Tottenham, would suit the likes of Sandro, Nabil Bentaleb, Etienne Capoue and Paulinho – with each player able to hold the midfield well and place a strong challenge should it be necessary – as was shown by Bentaleb’s show-stopping performance against Newcastle in Spurs’ 4-0 win last week.
The former Wigan boss also enjoys a team with skilful passers in the attacking third as is often exhibited by Steven Pienaar, Ross Barkley and Bryan Oviedo at Everton.
Should Martinez have been installed rather than AVB, Spurs could have potentially seen their former Dutch magician Rafael van der Vaart pulling the strings in the final third, if he had chosen to remain at White Hart Lane. With the existing squad, Martinez could see the likes of Paulinho, Christian Eriksen and Lewis Holtby implementing their skilful passing into this structure.
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Yet another trait that Martinez holds is his tactical flexibility, something Tottenham players were all too used to under AVB. At Wigan, Roberto successfully operated a 3-5-2 formation at times and with multiple players at the north London club able to rotate (such as Vertonghen and Capoue) Martinez would have a wealth of options at his disposal.
Had Martinez taken over in 2012, the outcome of the season wouldn’t have panned out too differently to how it did under AVB. Spurs were fairly busy in the summer of 2012 securing acquisitions such as Jan Vertonghen, Emmanuel Adebayor (permanently) and Hugo Lloris.
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With Daniel Levy personally dipping into Tottenham’s transfer strategy, it’s possible to suggest that Spurs would have secured these players with any manager in charge, therefore whether it was AVB or Martinez wouldn’t have mattered; the squad for 2012/13 would have remained the same.
However, the season of last could be contributed to Gareth Bale’s constant player of the year performances and the ability of AVB is therefore debatable considering that the Welsh wizard was evidently the reason for their record points tally in the league. With Martinez in charge, Spurs could have gone on to even greater things, with a manager eager to prove himself in a position he could feasibly hold for many years.
Had Spurs appointed Martinez, we could be looking at a very different Tottenham side with a manager of equal ambition to match the forever attractive philosophy of playing ‘the Spurs way’.
We all think of footballers as well paid individuals and indeed they are. If a Premier League star invests his money correctly, then there’s a good chance he’d never have to work again for the rest of his life. However, a football career isn’t exactly a job for life, as you never know when injury or loss of form may strike that could result in your career plummeting to depths of horrendous lows.
It’s wise therefore, for players to have some sort of other interests outside of football, to keep them occupied off the field, but also to earn a living if things go wrong. The vast majority of players just invest their money into property or start life as a media pundit, but others take a more interesting route and immerse themselves in something a little different. We bring you 15 footballers with a different life outside the game that you should definitely know about.
Click on Stuart Pearce to unveil the 15
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Roma’s Brazilian international goalkeeper and Liverpool transfer target Alisson prefers Real Madrid as a destination this summer, according to Marca, via the Daily Mail.
What’s the story, then?
The report claims that Liverpool are prepared to pay £60m for the stopper but he wants to move to the Bernabeu instead of Anfield and the departure of Zinedine Zidane in the Spanish capital raises the prospect of the Brazilian moving there this summer to replace Keylor Navas, someone the Frenchman staunchly defended.
It goes on to say that Florentino Perez wants a new big-name goalkeeper to upgrade on Navas and make a statement of intent and that Alisson fits the bill after a stellar season with the Champions League semi-finalists.
They also report that Alisson is prepared to wait for the managerial situation at Real to settle down and become clear, which is also frustrating for Liverpool who wanted to get the deal done before the World Cup.
Attention must turn elsewhere
Liverpool have seen how South American players can be drawn in by the lustre of the two Spanish giants in the past and if they wait around for Alisson, they face being disappointed and slightly embarrassed.
Thankfully for them, two other top goalkeepers – Jan Oblak and Jasper Cillessen – do not have the arbitrary World Cup deadline looming over them, allowing a deal to be thrashed out on Liverpool’s terms.
A left-field shout would be Gigi Buffon, another man who doesn’t have the Russian showpiece to worry about; but if Alisson wants to stall, Liverpool should move on.
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In many ways Nathan Redmond has always been up against it since he signed for Southampton for a fee in the region of £10m from Norwich City in the summer of 2016.
During that transfer window, the south coast outfit had seen previous manager Ronald Koeman replaced by Claude Puel, while Sadio Mane, Graziano Pelle and Victor Wanyama were among the key first-team players that moved on to pastures new.
Replacing Mane, who scored 25 goals in 75 appearances in total for Saints and 15 in 43 in his final season at St Mary’s, was always going to be a tough task, and it was Sofiane Boufal that was probably brought into the club do this, rather than Redmond.
However, injury problems meant the talented Moroccan missed out on pre-season and wasn’t fit in the early stages of the campaign, which gave the former Canaries winger – who wasn’t even a regular for them as they were relegated in the 2015/16 campaign – a starting berth at the beginning of the season, and naturally the fans wanted him to try and have the same impact as Mane.
While Southampton’s success and three successive top-eight finishes had been built on a 4-2-3-1 formation, Puel decided that he wanted to play with a 4-4-2 diamond system at the start of the campaign, and Redmond was handed a striker’s spot by the Frenchman.
A goal on his full debut in the 1-1 draw against Watford certainly got his career with the south coast outfit off to a positive start, but comparisons to Thierry Henry by Puel the day before the season got underway certainly weren’t helpful for lowering expectations and instead put the pressure on him.
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The attacker failed to score in his next six Premier League appearances despite playing the full 90 minutes in each, and throughout the campaign Puel gradually reverted back to the 4-2-3-1 system when he realised that his preferred style wasn’t working.
Redmond seemed to alternate between starts on the left and the right, before settling on a regular spot on the left in the second-half of the campaign as Saints recorded an eighth-place finish.
The 23-year-old scored one goal and didn’t pick up a single assist in his final nine top flight appearances last season however, but it wasn’t all bad as he ended the season with seven top flight goals as well as netting in the 1-0 win against Liverpool in the first leg of their EFL Cup semi-final tie.
However, his disappointing form from last season has carried into the current campaign under new manager Mauricio Pochettino, where he has no goals and three assists in 21 matches.
Even though he often seems to make more of an impact on the right-hand side because of his pace, the one-capped England international usually starts on the left, and the fact that he is often forced to cut in on to his stronger right foot hardly helps his personal impact and slows the team’s attacking play down in general.
There has obviously been a huge dip in form and loss of confidence in the player – who needs to work on his decision-making – with the fans’ frustrations with him and Pellegrino beginning to boil over as he has continued to start games in recent weeks and months despite making little impact.
Southampton fans have been quick to get on his back when he has been named in the starting XI and has made a mistake – with some ironically cheering when he has been taken off.
Pellegrino has actually taken him out of the limelight and put him on the bench more often than not in recent times, but he has still been booed by some when he has been introduced.
Considering his poor form and the fact that he isn’t delivering on the pitch it isn’t a surprise, but it isn’t the only reason that Redmond isn’t popular among the St Mary’s faithful.
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One of the main problems with him is that he is quick to moan at his teammates when they don’t do something right, and he points at and blames others for his own mistakes.
It shows a real lack of maturity from the 23-year-old, and while it is clear that he simply wants to win, there are better ways to go about it on the pitch then often being seen visibly whingeing at the people on your team.
All of the factors mentioned in this piece combine tell the story of how Redmond’s Southampton career has never been a walk in the park, but the Saints fans would certainly have a lot more respect and empathy with him if he went about things the right way on the pitch too.
Save the moaning for in the dressing room at half-time or full-time, because fans who are seeing a lack of goals and poor results won’t take kindly to seeing a player constantly having a go at his teammates on the pitch – especially when the individual is making just as many mistakes himself.
Let’s get straight to the point: Racism in football will never go away.
Campaigns such as Kick It Out, Stand up Speak up and Show Racism the Red Card have done their best to drown out the culprits who ruin the beautiful game. However, the reality is that wearing wrist bands and t-shirts isn’t going to go stop racism, and this due to the shambolic way both UEFA and FIFA are run.
It’s amazing how someone like Sepp Blatter can run a huge organization like FIFA. Someone who has insulted nations and consistently declined the chance to update technology is running the biggest football organization in the world, and yet when it comes to racism, the Swiss turns a blind eye and acts like everything is normal, when he knows it’s far from it.
Racism is in every country, but some countries are worse than others. We have seen over the last few years (especially some countries in Eastern Europe) that racial discrimination can be a huge problem for players and fans when attending matches. For example: Why on earth would you give the World Cup, the biggest football tournament in the world to a country like a Russia that had one team’s supporters publicly say that they don’t want ‘any gay or black players in their team?’ Why? How can Blatter allow such despicable acts go unpunished? In a way, it’s like he is promoting it.
Look at Euro 2012 when it was in Poland and Ukraine – a few weeks before the tournament started, BBC watchdog programme Panorama investigated how some supporters would abuse their own players due to the colour of their skin. There were even secret anti-Semitic gang meetings as fans from certain clubs were angry at their manager’s decision to sign Jewish and Muslim players. How can UEFA and FIFA let countries have such racial hatred backgrounds host some of the most high profile tournaments in the world? Racism is a serious matter and needs to be taken into account.
We’ve seen in the past that if fans have been found guilty of racial remarks, the club they support either get a fine or a stadium ban where no fans are allowed to attend the match. If a player is found guilty, they are either fined or banned. This isn’t strong enough to punish racism, as racism is the cancer of football. The game that we all love is being tarnished by a disease which is effectively killing the sport, and the only way to stop the slow death of football is by making the punishments for the culprits as hard as possible.
The obvious punishment in my book will be moving the 2018 World Cup away from Russia, as that will teach the Russian football fans a hard and painful lesson, to stop racism.
Christopher Samba and Roberto Carlos were continuously abused by their own fans in 2012, as both players were heckled with bananas and verbal abuse. A year and a half on, Manchester City’s Yaya Toure was abused by CSKA Moscow fans as they made monkey chants to the midfielder. UEFA said they will ‘investigate the incident’. Why? What needs to be investigated? Everyone has got ears and heard that no chants like that were made to any other player until Toure got the ball, and then fans wonder why the majority of African players reject playing in countries like Russia, as they know they are going to get abused.
We are living in 2013, soon to be 2014 and players are still scared of moving to foreign countries due to the abuse that they could potentially receive from rival and maybe their own fans. This is terrible to see. Football is a sport where you have the opportunity to play in some of the most beautiful cities and stadiums across the world, but some players turn down this chance to save themselves from the mental painful they could suffer from disgusting fans.
If anything, fans and players should be given criminal records or even prison sentences if found guilty of racial abuse. If you work in an office and you make racist remarks to a fellow colleague in an attacking manner, you could get arrested, lose your job and possibly face prison depending on how serious the offence is. Why isn’t that enforced in football? Yes, footballers are high profile celebrities, but their position in the social chain doesn’t give them the right to do what they want and think that they are above the law. If criminal records were dished out to both players and fans for racial abuse, then players and fans will think twice before opening their mouths.
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Football is an abusive game; shouting, swearing and rude gestures are part of the sport we love as tensions can run increasingly high. However, abusing fans, referees and players by insulting their ethnic race or religion is something which the majority of fans condemn.
The FA has also been guilty in not doing enough to stop the cancer which is racism. John Terry gets a four match ban and a £220,000 fine for racially abusing QPR’s Anton Ferdinand. For the same crime, Luis Suarez gets an eight game ban with a £40,000 fine. Where is the consistency in that? The FA should enforce a ten match suspension, and a £150,000 fine if any player is caught racially abusing someone, that way it is the same punishment for everyone who has committed the same crime. The authorities should then get involved and give criminal records to the players. A crackdown like this will benefit everyone involved in the sport.
When I hear that a player/fan has been racially abused, it makes my blood boil as it is a cowardly way to antagonize someone. UEFA and FIFA need to create stronger laws to stop this disease, otherwise, football WILL die.
Roberto Mancini refused to explain what caused him to shove Mario Balotelli down the tunnel, after yesterday’s frustrating 1-1 draw at home to Arsenal, The Daily Express reports.
The only indication is that Balotelli was reportedly angry at only being allowed five minutes of game time at the end of the match, causing him to gesture in the direction of his manager. Mancini then responded by pushing him into the tunnel.
City took the lead in the match through Joleon Lescott, but conceded an equaliser inside the final ten minutes as Laurent Koscielny fired the Gunners level.
The 22-year-old was then sent on by the home side in a desperate attempt to re-claim the lead, something which the player was clearly unhappy about.
Mancini said: “I don’t remember what happened but it is not important.
“We should have held on to our lead but this has been a problem for us lately.”
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Understandably, the City boss was more focused on the team’s collective errors that have underlined the reigning champions’ unconvincing start to the season- winning just two of their six matches in all competitions so far.
“We were too deep and invited trouble. Also, we don’t score when we have the chance to close the game,” he added.
After this Saturday’s Champions League final, Liverpool will turn their attention to the transfer window, and a new goalkeeper should be on the agenda.
Simon Mignolet has lost his position as number one at Anfield, being forced down the pecking order at the start of 2018.
Manager Jurgen Klopp decided to promote Loris Karius, but he has also shown shaky moments in between the sticks.
Despite this, the stopper could end up being crowned European champion this weekend if Liverpool overcome Real Madrid in the Champions League final in Kiev.
If the Merseyside outfit claim their sixth trophy in the competition, then their ability to land transfer targets will surely be boosted.
Gianluigi Buffon will be available this summer after ending a 17-year spell at Juventus, where he won 19 trophies, including nine Serie A titles.
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The 40-year-old is experienced at the top level, so could be a decent stop-gap for a season until Liverpool recruit a long-term option.
We asked you if the Premier League club should make a move, and the majority believe that Buffon is worth it.
According to the Guardian, Manchester United are preparing a £25million bid for Fulham’s teenage sensation, Ryan Sessegnon.
The 17-year-old has earned the plaudits following a series of sensational performances for Fulham, and his impressive displays are beginning to attract the interest of some of Europe’s most reputable clubs.
What’s the story?
The Red Devils are readying a £25m bid for Fulham’s Ryan Sessegnon, and it is believed that Manchester United manager, Jose Mourinho, is willing to sell Luke Shaw to fund their move for the starlet.
However, Fulham have suggested that they would require a bid of more than £30m to contemplate selling one of their star players.
Is he worth the money?
At the age of 17, the Englishman’s achievements in his professional career is astounding. Despite being very young, Sessegnon has amassed 53 first-team appearances for the Whites, and he has scored a terrific total of 11 goals.
One of the defender’s primary assets is his versatility. Despite typically operating as a left-back, Sessegnon can function as a winger too, and he’s highly regarded for his attacking qualities such as his capacity to dribble.
Do they need him?
Manchester United flaunt a proud and treasured history of youth development, and Fulham’s rising star has the potential to rival the talents of any United academy product. However, a move to United could prove to be premature at this stage of his career.
As Wilfried Zaha’s transfer to United testified, a young player requires consistent first-team involvement to continue their progression, and the Ivorian was deprived of that during his time at Old Trafford.
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If United are sincere about signing Sessegnon, they should ensure that he has an active role in their first-team, or they sign him now and loan him back to Fulham until he’s ready to assume a starting position in their team.