How a Belgian ‘ugly duckling’ became a swan for Louis van Gaal’s Manchester United.
As his second season at the club is drawing to a close, Manchter United, now seem to have worked out how to make Marouane Fellaini a star.
It’s surely one of the greatest unofficial accolades that the game has to offer. No-one votes for it, not the press, not other players, not even the fans. Someone somewhere suggests it, and off it trots merrily making its way through the highways and byways of ‘football talk’. Eventually, it’s travelled the length and breadth of the football community, by common assent it becomes accepted as part of the lexicon of football. I’m talking about having an element of the game named after you. There’s the Panenka penalty, the Cruyff turn, the Makelele role and even Fergie time, to name but a few of the uncontentious – well, fairy uncontentious anyway – ones. Now, another nom de guerre may be seeking to elbow its way into the language of football. At the moment, there’s only the merest whisper of it being circulated. Isn’t that how it always begins though? Continue reading →
McClaren for Newcastle if Derby miss out on promotion? Place your bets!
If Derby County misso ut on promotion this season, will McClaren be pointing the way out of the iPro and up to St James Park?
Back at the turn of the year, SkyBet rated Derby County head coach and former England boss, Steve McClaren, at 16/1 to take over at Newcastle United this summer. When Alan Pardew decamped to Crystal Palace to be the South London club’s second coming of Tony Pulis, it left a gap at St James Park that John Carver, for all his earnest endevours, never looked likely to fill in the long term. Other betting sites had MacClaren as far out as 22/1 to become the Magpies’ boss. If you took those odds you may well be sitting in the pound seats now, as currently, some bookies make the former Wembley umbrella salesman as short as 4/6. Continue reading →
Is frustrated Wenger really lowering his sights to the Europa League?
Was it merely the effect of losing to Monaco, or would Arsene Wenger really prefer a run at the Europa League?
Nobody likes losing and, as with banging your head against a brick wall, the best thing you can say about it, is that it’s nice when it stops. Like some love-lorn teenage boy returning yet again from the bright lights of the coolest disco in town without having landed a dance with the best-looking girls, Arsene Wenger now appears to be lowering his sights from the Champions League, to the Europa League, the school disco of European club football. Perhaps Arsenal could be belle of the ball there. Some may call it a realistic assessment, Arsenal fans may well have a different description for it. Continue reading →
‘Old School’ graduate Tony Pulis, performing his party piece again at West Bromwich Albion
Pulis has transformed fortunes at The Hawthorns.
If last Saturday’s FA Cup clash between Tony Pulis’s West Bromwich Albion and Sam Allardyce’s West Ham United represented a ‘set to’ between two of the more traditional managers in the British game, the 4-0 result was a pretty clear victory for the Welshman. Allardyce, ironically born in Dudley, a few miles deeper into the Black Country from the Hawthorns, was left well beaten, and with the rancour of fans that had travelled from the East End to West Bromwich bemoaning his team’s display. For Allardyce, it must have been a frustrating experience. His club sit in a comfortable and probably over-performing eighth place in the league, having even flirted with the prospect of a European dalliance for the next season. Shorn of talismanic striker Andy Carroll however, a defeat to Pulis’s newly-invigorated Baggies is no disgrace. Two things were clear from the game. Firstly, fans have short memories, and secondly, Tony Pulis certainly knows how to organise a team. Continue reading →
And then, suddenly, nothing happened!
The Togolese striker may have been pointing the way to West Ham, but Daniel levy had other ideas.
Probably much to the annoyance of SkySports Jim White, and despite many claims that there were “lots of things happening” transfer deadline was more dead duck than dead exciting. For Tottenham’s Togolese striker, Emmanuel Adebayor however, it must have been more frustrating than for even the hyped-up, yellow-tied, Mr White. Continue reading →
After seeing off Gerrard, the pressure is really on for Brendan Rodgers.
With Steven Gerrard off to the MLS in the summer, Rodgers will be under pressure to prove he was right to let the talismanic captain leave Liverpool
In the modern game, the term ‘player power’ has come to be used to describe a process wherein a player’s wish to leave a club can be made real, even if his employers may not want to lose him. Any reference to a contract of course is purely incidental. Once a player’s head is turned, by the lure of loads more lucre or the tantalising glitter of silverware, club’s faced with the alternatives of keeping a dissatisfied player or cashing in, usually take the latter as the least bad option.
There is another element to this however, where player power manifests itself in a battle of wills between the manager and a particular player nominally under his charge. Some have painted such a picture with regard to the relationship between Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers and talismanic skipper Steven Gerrard. Continue reading →
Dark days in Lombardy as Milan clubs decline together.
The imposing San Siro, home to both AC Milan and Internazionale. As with the stadium however, the fortunes of both clubs are starting to look a little the worse for wear.
Not only has the city of Milan been dominated by a succession of empires, with the Romans, Spanish and French all having claimed dominion over the capital of Lombardy, powerful families have also held sway there. The Viscontis were deemed ‘lords of Milan’ from the late thirteenth century through to the middle fifteenth, and the Sforza family later took up this control around the Renaissance period. Nothing is for ever though. Empires crumble and families wither, and a similar fate appears to have befallen the city’s two football clubs. Once dominant in Serie A with an imperial strut to their performances, both AC Milan and Internazionale appear to be in decline, and the Berlusconi and Moratti families whose respective ownership of the Milanese clubs has identified them over recent years, appear to be following a following a similar pattern. Continue reading →
Diamonds may be for ever, but Jewell only lasts a week at The Hawthorns.
Pulis and Jewell in tandem at The Hawthorns. Blink and you’d have missed it though!
When West Bromwich Albion dispensed with the services of Alan Irvine, just before the turn of the year, they wasted precious little time in appointing Tony Pulis as their new manager. The former Stoke City and Crystal Palace boss was bound to be in demand about this time of the season as chairmen of struggling sides sought salvation with the man who transformed Palace’s fortunes last season. If, after two successive victories under Pulis however, Baggies fans thought that all would be sweetness and light under the new regime, the rapid exit of Paul Jewell from Pulis’s entourage will have quickly disavowed them of such a belief.
Don’t Look Back in Anger.
Villas-Boas clearly feels he was treated less than fairly during his time at Tottenham.
It’s looking increasingly likely that the name of Daniel levy did not feature on the Andre Villas-Boas Christmas card list this year. The Portuguese manager was dismissed from Spurs just over a year ago, but recent reports suggest that Villas-Boas, now plying his trade in Russia with Zenit St Petersburg, still harbours bitterness about how things turned out in north London. Continue reading →
Gary Thacker 