Arsenal are set to give Jack Wilshere his first game of football in 14 months this Monday in an under-21 game against West Brom, The Daily Mail state.
The England international midfielder suffered a torrid 2011-12 season, missing the entire campaign due to injury, but has made a return to training recently.
Wilshere has been pictured in first-team training with the rest of the Arsenal squad, but Arsene Wenger is determined to nurse the star back to action slowly after he suffered a relapse of the initial injury last term.
Wenger and the rest of the Gunners’ backroom staff have been monitoring Wilshere’s progress in training, and are set to make a decision on whether he should feature in the under-21 game in the near future.
Wilshere’s return to the Arsenal senior side would represent a massive boost for the Emirates Stadium side, and boost the club’s options in the centre of the park after the summer sale of Alex Song.
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Tottenham goalkeeper Hugo Lloris has stated that he hopes he now gets a run in the Spurs team, and can become the club’s first choice between the sticks.
The France international moved to White Hart Lane in the summer from Lyon, but has had to bide his time as Brad Friedel has continued to impress for the north London side.
Lloris got his first Premier League start against Aston Villa in a 2-0 win on Sunday, and is now keen to be trusted by Andre Villas-Boas.
“I was used to playing every three days in Lyon,” he is quoted as saying in The Telegraph.
“Necessarily, to progress, to be effective, it’s better to play every week with his team. I hope to play more and more to be at my best. When you sign at the last minute, it’s never easy. I still need a few games to find the rhythm.
“Over the past month, I’ve played only three games. It takes a little more concentration, especially working at training. I try to compensate but what matters is the game at the weekend.
“It was an important game for me, an introduction to the Premier League after three to four weeks of waiting and working. Whether with Brad, goalkeeping coaches or even with the manager, everything has gone well,” he concluded.
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Lloris is currently on international duty with Les Bleus.
West Bromwich Albion manager Steve Clarke has expressed his delight at his side’s brilliant opening part of the season, emphasising that it was crucial to get off to a good start.
He also reiterated that it was important for him to prove that he was not just a number 2 and that he was more than capable of managing at the top level.
This is the Scot’s first managerial role after stints at Newcastle United, Chelsea, West Ham United and Liverpool on the coaching staff.
The Baggies boss has picked up 14 points from his first 8 Premier League games in charge, and is delighted with the way things have gone.
Speaking to Sky Sports ahead of a clash with one of his former clubs Newcastle this weekend, Clarke said: “The start was important.”
“As a group we put a lot of emphasis on starting the first week very well and we managed to do that. From there it gives you the confidence and the platform to build from.”
He also went onto speak about his own fortunes as a boss, explaining what it’s like to carry the burden of being seen as an assistant manager.
“I’m not daft and I think it was really important that I had a good start because there were a lot of people saying ‘Steve Clarke is the perennial No.2’.
“For me it was vital that we got off to a good start and it was good for the club because it showed that their appointment of me as a head coach wasn’t as crazy as it might have appeared to some people at the time,” the Scotsman added.
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Clarke will be looking to continue his promising start at St James’ Park at 15.00 on Sunday.
Back in 1994 Sir Alex Ferguson was the subject of heavy criticism after deciding to field some reserve players in a Manchester United team for a League Cup encounter with Port Vale.
Such was the controversy that engulfed his selection policy it was raised as an issue at the Houses of Parliament after a petition generated by Vale fans found its way to Westminster.
Included in Ferguson’s starting line-up on that brisk September evening were relative unknowns, David Beckham, Paul Scholes, Gary Neville and Nicky Butt. United went on to win the game 2-1 with Scholes scoring twice as the quartet played starring roles.
Just a few short years later they were on the path to becoming global superstars after becoming integral figures for club and country. Amidst all the commotion around and disapproval of Ferguson’s novel approach, the players themselves gave it justification.
Over 18 years later and clubs are now urged to use the Capital One Cup to offer younger players the opportunity to hone their crafts and prove their credentials as stars of the future.
Arsene Wenger is a manager who has embraced such a philosophy and, unlike Ferguson, was lauded for utilising the competition as an avenue to blood the club’s next generation. His methods became a benchmark for others to follow.
As has been proven by Beckham and others, the League Cup has become a successful breeding ground for young talent to induct themselves into the brutal environment that is professional football. That isn’t limited to the physical side of the game but also the mental aspects that can so easily prove the biggest obstacle preventing a player from fulfilling their potential.
Acquiring that level of experience and knowledge can only be done in a practical environment and managers are now conscious of the benefits of starting their youngsters out in the safe confines of the competition.
You only have to glance at some of the names that have cut their teeth in a similar manner and gone on to become highly recognised players around the world.
Steven Gerrard, Gerard Pique, Cesc Fabregas, Giuseppe Rossi, Robbie Fowler, Joe Hart and even Emile Heskey are just a handful who have used the League Cup to launch their glittering careers.
All of them have gone on to represent some of Europe’s top clubs, play regularly for their respective national teams and pick up an incalculable amount of silverware along the way.
Fabregas, for example, arrived at Arsenal in 2003 as a 16-year-old from hometown club Barcelona and was limited primarily to League Cup ties by Wenger during his development year in North London.
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It proved to be an essential learning curve for the Spaniard and by 2008 he had risen to become the Gunners captain and heartbeat of their midfield before returning to the Nou Camp in 2011 as one of the best players on the planet.
But where Ferguson failed to convince the masses that the League Cup served a significant purpose in the growth of young players, Wenger has succeeded in changing perceptions regarding the competition during the modern era.
So prevalent have their methods become that line-ups containing mostly senior players are a rare occurrence with the focus now firmly shifted to giving budding stars the opportunity to flourish.
Nearly two decades on from Ferguson’s controversial selection policy there must be a few Port Vale fans feeling rather bashful right now. His pioneering views are now widespread across the board aided by one of his greatest rivals.
Arsene Wenger has labelled the dismissal of Jack Wilshere for second bookable offence during his side’s 2-1 defeat to Manchester United on Saturday as a naive decision.
The midfielder, who has just returned from an season-long injury layoff, was booked early in the first half for a poor tackle on Tom Cleverley. He then was fortunate to be given a final warning by referee Mike Dean after going in late on former teammate Robin Van Persie.
His reprieve didn’t last long and he was eventually dismissed for catching Patrice Evra on the ankle.
However Wenger told talkSPORT that he believed that the United full-back had tricked the referee into sending off Wilshere.
“It was very harsh,” lamented the Arsenal boss. “I was surprised that [the referee] gave him a second yellow card. He went for the ball and Patrice Evra made the maximum of it.
“What is unbelievable is how naïve the referee can be, when he says in front of the other players, ‘the next foul and you are out’, of course the next foul the players dive like they have been killed and that’s what happened.”
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It completed another miserable day for the Gunners who were outplayed by United and their scant consolation was a late strike by Santi Carzola. Wenger knows his side must improve for the tricky Champions League encounter at Schalke 04 on Tuesday.
Andre Villas-Boas confessed that it was fears over Kyle Walker’s hamstring that prompted his substitution in Tottenham’s loss yesterday to Manchester City and Walker’s withdrawal from England’s friendly squad.
Walker left the pitch for Michael Dawson during Tottenham’s 2-1 defeat at City, and is now one of five people, the others being Wayne Rooney with an injury to his ankle, Jonjo Shelvey, Aaron Lennon and Theo Walcott, to have ruled themselves out of England’s friendly on Wednesday with Sweden. Others will also be missing due to injury.
The Tottenham manager felt they had to avoid the risk of Walker being sidelined for a lengthy spell after the Spurs man started to feel a tightening of the hamstring.
Villas-Boas explained: “It was an injury situation as he felt his hamstring was tight. We didn’t want to risk losing him for three or four weeks. We held on for a couple of minutes when he gave us the sign but we took him off.”
Villas-Boas has admitted how Spurs found it difficult yesterday. He said to Sky Sports: “The plan before the game was to try and hold onto the ball a bit more, to have more possession and try to connect up and link the wingers. It was difficult because Manchester City’s line was very high and they pushed us very well, so it was difficult to make that second pass in the link up play.”
Tottenham lost yesterday despite going 1-0 up, with Manchester City managing to equalise with a Sergio Aguero goal, before Edin Dzeko scored the winning goal for the home team.
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In the world of modern football, managers are sacked willy-nilly (there’s no need to be immature), and alot of the time the decision to releave a coach of his post is viewed as being harsh, reactionary and rather unjust.
But sometimes, getting rid of a gaffer who hasn’t been getting the right results is a good call, as it becomes increasingly obvious that they don’t quite have what it takes to run a Premier League club.
This Top Ten is a list of the Premiership’s worst ever managers with full details of their terrible tenures in the top flight.
Some were put in charge of a sinking ship but have unfortunately come away with some shocking statistics to judge their performance by, for others it just didn’t work out as planned, and a few were quite simply way out of their depth.
So read on and check out the ten worst ever Premier League managers.
Click on Sammy Lee to unveil the top 10
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If Michael Dawson’s Tottenham Hotspur career was supposed to be dead and buried, then he’s certainly got a funny way of showing it.
As the 29-year old fan favourite skippered the Lilywhites to a well-earned 1-1 draw against Manchester United during the weekend, it did in fact represent his 17th appearance for the club in all competitions this season. Which isn’t too bad at all, considering he was deemed surplus to requirements last July.
Indeed, Dawson’s return to the fold at White Hart Lane marks an incredible turn around in fortunes for a player ominously told earlier in the season by Andre Villas-Boas, that he “couldn’t guarantee him games.” The Portuguese may have earned a reputation for overindulging in footballing techno-speak since he first arrived in this country, but there was nothing sugar coated about the way in which he stated his intentions to Dawson.
Yet as the season has progressed and the ex-Nottingham Forest man has fought his way back in from the cold at Hotspur Way, Dawson’s change in fortunes arguably tell us as much about the manager as they do about the player.
Working out Dawson’s response to Villas-Boas’ doubts hardly involved required the musings of an amateur psychologist. As soon as it became strikingly apparent that the defender had no intentions on making a proposed switch to Queens Park Rangers stick, supporters knew exactly what to expect; unrelenting commitment, the upmost professionalism and not a peep of discontent aired in public.
That’s the measure of the man that fans have come to know, love and most poignantly, expect. No one was ever in any doubt of how Dawson was likely to react to the news that he wasn’t likely to feature in Villas-Boas’ plans. But where as the player’s reaction wasn’t ever in any doubt, the same couldn’t necessarily be said about the manager.
For all Villas-Boas’ coaching credentials, the feats that he’d achieved in his short career and the tactical intricacies of the football he was looking to implement, the question marks surrounding his man management skills were hardly without foundation.
While his difficulties with the egos and personas that irreparably damaged his time at Chelsea were endlessly documented, even the most ardent of Villas-Boas’ proponents amongst the White Hart Lane faithful would have had concerns about whether the Portuguese had learned from his mistakes. His decision to sanction a sale to QPR just weeks after naming Dawson as the club’s captain for the season, certainly made for some concerning logic at best.
Yet while Villas-Boas’ masterminding of Spurs’ current top-four position is rightfully drawing all the plaudits, it’s the way in which he’s handled the Dawson situation that has been a wonderful testament to his evolution in English football.
Few in N17 brought into the seeming media agenda that some quarters of Fleet Street seemed to bestow upon Villas-Boas and as the months have gone on this season, more of the urban myths that reared their head during his time at Chelsea appear to have been debunked. But for as much of a hard time as he appeared to receive from the Stamford Bridge dressing room, unceremoniously dumping a couple of respected dressing room faces in Alex and Nicolas Anelka into the reserves, hardly reeked of great man management.
The biggest fear emanating from Spurs supporters was that Villas-Boas hadn’t learned his lessons. But it’s his galvanization from his time at Chelsea that’s been perhaps his most impressive feature.
Where as he refused to stray at times from his staunch tactical philosophies at Stamford Bridge, Villas-Boas has adapted his squad to fit the needs of the players available to him. When – in no doubt catalyzed by a couple of transfer market failings – the side floundered within a 4-2-3-1 formation, there was no stubborn refusal to stray from his ways as we saw at Chelsea. Instead, he’s appeared proactive and adaptive in his approach, switching to more of a 4-4-2 like set-up in recent weeks.
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Similarly with the media, where as at Chelsea we saw Villas-Boas adopt a cold and sometimes spiky approach at press conferences, this season we’ve seen an open, positive and even jovial AVB interact with the press. Which seems all the more incredible considering some of the column inches that have carried his name over the last six months.
But it’s in the return of Michael Dawson that Villas-Boas has really shown both his class and improvement as a manager within this league. It would have been all too easy for him to let vanity cloud judgment in refusing Dawson entry back into first team. Yet if anything, he’s seemed almost proactive in letting the defender prove him wrong for looking to let him go last August. And it’s won him both the trust and the respect of the players at his disposal.
You only need to look at the raft of quotes that have emanated from the Spurs squad since he took over last summer to gauge his standing with the players. Jermain Defoe quipped, “All the lads love him [AVB].” Kyle Walker has spoke glowingly about how he’s helped him with his game. Steven Caulker has praised his lack of so-called ‘favourites’ in the squad. And to top it all off, the man he once doubted in Michael Dawson said: “He speaks to me on a regular basis, and when I wasn’t playing, it was the same. He’s been great.”
Quite how stubborn Andre Villas-Boas may or may not have once been at Chelsea is perhaps open for debate. But what’s not open for discussion is the level of respect that this Tottenham Hotspur squad affords their manager. Michael Dawson’s return to the side only serves to smear his doubters further.
After Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger confessed that he still holds hope that former playmaker-in-chief and resident Barcelona schemer Cesc Fabregas may one day return to the club in the future, what sort of reception would he likely get at the Emirates if this long shot deal were ever to come to fruition?
The 63-year-old boss has clearly been left deeply hurt by the departures of the likes of Fabregas, Samir Nasri and Robin van Persie over the course of the past few years, breaking up what at one point looked the basis of a title-challenging side. Alas, the seven-year trophy drought has continued, though, while each of the three aforementioned players looks likely to enjoy or has done already, title success since leaving the Emirates.
Wenger told reporters last week: “Fabregas was an exception, a world-class player. I’m not convinced that he will not one day come back here, because he is a real Arsenal man. He loves Arsenal, he watches every Arsenal game. But of course, Barcelona was his home town and you had to accept that that would come into it, especially with their club having the best team in the world at that time. In the next two to three years certainly not – but maybe later.”
The manner in which a player leaves a club is important these days, with former players often routinely, often puzzlingly, booed by the terraces upon their return to an old stomping ground. The viral video of the past few days carried out just prior to the Arsenal-Manchester City game at the weekend, where a handful of moronic, cretinous fans hassled Nasri and Marouane Chamakh on their way to the stadium speaks volumes for the hatred that is felt for the Frenchman.
What was also shocking, though, was that Chamakh is technically still an Arsenal player after only sealing a loan deal to West Ham until the end of the season, so to be publicly abused in such a manner is bizarre and a sad indictment of the times. Every club has its lunatic fringes, but the lack of tangible progress and silverware in recent times has led a whole generation mollycoddled on ‘The Invincibles’ to take on a vile, bitter and increasingly hysterical tone. More than any other club in the top flight, the embarrassing minority appear to target a scapegoat for their ire – Emmanuel Eboue, Nasri, Andrei Arshavin, Andre Santos and van Persie have all been targeted to varying degrees in the past and Aaron Ramsey threatens to be the latest victim. It’s a potentially poisonous envrionment for players.
The fickleness of these attacks brings into question whether they would turn on Fabregas, by all accounts a player that had returned to his ‘spiritual home’ at Barcelona. It also helped that the Catalan giants were comfortably seen as the biggest and best footballing club in the world at the time of his departure, just as they were when Thierry Henry left for the same side back in 2007, yet the cries of ‘mercenary’ levelled at van Persie and Nasri were in short supply. Perception is everything and how you conduct yourself and talk about the club after your departure will always have an impact on your legacy and the esteem in which you are held.
Nasri’s interview with The Sun before the game seemed to have little effect on his standing with the club’s fans when he painted Wenger in glowing terms, though: “If I’m here today it’s because of him. I’ll never forget what he did for me. I owe him a lot. He gave me confidence not just as a player but as a man as well. That is why I really respect him and really like him because he cared about the men, not just about the players.
“For some managers they want you to be on the pitch and that is it. For him he wants to talk to you, to know a little more about you to give you the confidence, it was like a second love for me. I played fantastic football for three years and I learned how to play at a high level with a lot of Champions League and I was always in the race for the title. And I played with great players, a great manager and it was a great experience.”
The departure of the key trio have seen Arsenal labelled a ‘selling club’, a new tag which appears to conveniently ignore that they have always carried out a similar policy right back to letting Nicolas Anelka leave for Real Madrid for £23m back in 1999. Words like ‘mercenary’ and ‘money-grabber’ are thrown at them, but Nasri has been vindicated entirely with his decision so far, winning the league last term while van Persie will likely win it this time around.
That is not to say the the France international has covered himself in glory since his departure and to an extent, he appears to revel in his pantomime-villain status amongst Arsenal fans, but there’s a degree to which disliking someone steps over the mark. Fabregas has benefited from the context that everyone always assumed that he would one day return to Barcelona having left his boyhood club in 2003 to live in England for eight years. That’s a lengthy service by any estimation, but the timing of his move saw him leave a sinking ship rather than stick around to try and steady it for a couple of more seasons. History has been kind to him in that Nasri and to a lesser extent van Persie have both copped much of the flak for very similar decisions.
Would Alex Song, for instance, be booed if he came back to the Emirates with another club? Recent history dictates yes, but only as some sort of reflex action as opposed to any pain the fans feel over his exit, with the only difference being that he wasn’t valued as highly, therefore he’s not seen as worth wasting their breath on. It just all comes across as so very bitter and Arsenal are not alone in this very modern of diseases taking root in the English game. This is not Schadenfreude, this is remorseless bullying.
There was no real need due to the inevitable nature of the move for Fabregas to leave when he was just 23, yet he did hoping to make an impression back in La Liga and secure a regular role in the Spanish national team at the same time. The 25-year-old is now a pivotal part of Tito Vilanova’s side after a ropey start to the campaign and he does still seem to retain a genuine interest in how his former club gets on, obviously helped by the ease of his exit.
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The migration back to Catalunya was always forgiven as Barcelona was proudly proclaimed as his rightful home, with the narrative leaving little room to discuss the undoubted cynical motivations behind the timing of the switch. Fabregas is still held in high regard on the terraces at the Emirates and would be welcomed back with open arms by a tired and weary fan-base, but is that not more a sign of the times rather than a fair reflection of history?
It’s taken a while for Tottenham Hotspur to warm to Uefa’s Europa League competition, but since the arrival of Andre Villas-Boas at the club, it’s fair to say that most connected with the club view the cup in a far more positive light than within previous years.
Of course, this isn’t to say that all in N17 necessarily agreed with Harry Redknapp’s tendency to write off the competition as little more than an unwanted distraction to Premier League progress, but nonetheless, the general public opinion towards the Europa League on these shores is one of disdain.
Given Villas-Boas’ previous success in the competition with Porto and their 2011 success in Dublin, it was generally perceived as a given that the Portuguese manager would be looking to replicate that success in North London. And true to form, the former-Chelsea boss has done just that, with his series of persistently strong team selections firing the club into a last-16 encounter with Internazionale.
Although despite fans’ newfound enthusiasm for a shot at Europa League glory and a big night out in Amsterdam on May 15th, the competition isn’t heralded as much of a winner in terms of the club’s off-field ambitions.
Tottenham know only too well the sort of colossal money that comes with participation at the finest European table of all in the Uefa Champions League and with the 2012-13 estimated gross commercial revenue for the competition hitting a staggering €1.34billion, the winner can expect to receive a minimum windfall of some €37.4million.
It’s a truly staggering figure and when you factor in the rest of the ‘market pool’ payments – a share of extra broadcasting revenue proportioned primarily by the size of your country’s respective television market – the prize money tends to bloat out even further. Indeed, Chelsea were estimated to have raked in around €54million all in, following their triumph in last season’s competition.
Now you don’t need an economics degree to figure out that the Europa League doesn’t offer clubs anything near the sort of money it’s more lucrative, bigger brother does.
But while winning the competition isn’t going to bring in the sort of gargantuan figures this season’s Champions League victors are going to receive, should Spurs be victorious in the Netherlands in two-and-a-half months time, it’s still set to land them just short of an eight-figure sum.
Following their dramatic round-of-32 second-leg against Lyon last week, the Lilywhites have already secured themselves another €350,000 just for making the last-16. Following their participation in the group stages and bonuses for their two wins and four draws, Spurs have currently made about €2.85million from the Europa League – a figure which isn’t likely to go particularly far in this day and age.
But looking ahead in the competition, Spurs have still got another €6.45million still to play for. The vast majority of that sum (€5million) may well be gained by lifting the trophy, but the fact of the matter is that when all is said and done, the club could be looking at taking away €9.3million from lifting this season’s Europa League; a figure that would most probably rise to above €10million when you factor in the market pool money.
Whichever way you look at that,, while it’s potentially barely a fifth of the total the victors of the Champions League are likely to take away from lifting the trophy, it’s hardly a number worth turning your nose up at.
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Given the £60million of television money Spurs will receive by simply turning up to play in the Premier League next season, securing just under €10million for lifting the Europa League certainly doesn’t seem like a lot of money. But although Daniel Levy will be able to hand Andre Villas-Boas a sizeable transfer warchest, it’s worth noting that the way in which the league distribute that money, hardy makes it much in the way of a tangible advantage.
Furthermore, given the trend of wage increases that usually adjoin the inflation of clubs’ revenues within the English top tier, fans shouldn’t expect all of that money to instantly be invested in transfers. Similarly with Champions League qualification, given the fact Spurs’ wage bill jumped over £20million last time they qualified for the competition, while you wouldn’t expect quite as massive an increase should they qualify this time around, the likelihood is that wages will still rise up yet another notch.
Winning the Europa League is likely to see the club pay out a small share to both players and staff, but with the club rumoured to be haggling to the tune of only £2.5million with Internacional for the signature of Leandro Damiao, lifting the trophy in the Amsterdam Arena could prove a big boost to Tottenham’s transfer plans during the summer.
Given the fact Villas-Boas’ side are some way off making that dream a reality, it’s perhaps tempting fate to discuss the financial benefits that winning the competition may bring. Although should they be successful in lifting their first European Trophy since 1984, it could well be the difference between signing a good striker and a top quality one this summer.