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.
Momentum is gathering behind calls for Arsenal to name Jack Wilshere as their captain in time for the start of next season, but would that simply be placing too much pressure on such a young and relatively inexperienced member of the first-team squad? Handing him the responsibility simply due to a lack of viable alternatives speaks volumes for the lack of leadership within the club as much as it does his readiness to assume the role and that’s the main issue to address here.
Wilshere recently pulled out of the England squad for their upcoming games against San Marino and Montenegro with yet another ankle injury, exposing the flawed logic in making him the team’s go-to leader in the future. Considering he is just 21-years-old, he possesses a maturity that defies his tender age, but he has still made just 90 appearances for the club across all competitions and just 26 in the last two years.
Even factoring in that he may be similar in style to England and Liverpool skipper Steven Gerrard, in that he leads by example rather than any vocal ability to rouse his troops like John Terry for instance, his absenteeism will not have gone unnoticed. When it comes to picking captains, in what many consider an increasingly obsolete and arbitrary role largely made for ceremonial duties than anything it brings to performance, it’s fair to say Arsene Wenger has something of a patchy record.
After inheriting Tony Adams, Wenger backed the club stalwart at a difficult time in his personal life and he responded brilliantly, with an old-school type of leadership, but since then, every decision has become more and more questionable. Wenger seems to have fallen into the trap of simply naming his best player as captain by and large in recent years, in an attempt to engender some sort of loyalty out of them when bigger clubs come calling, but Patrick Vieira left two years after being made skipper, Thierry Henry only took two years also while Cesc Fabregas left in the summer of 2011 three years after being handed the role, with Robin van Persie bringing up the rear so to speak with just a solitary campaign to his name.
Then you have the odd selections, such as handing it to William Gallas, a divisive, deeply childish and widely disliked by some, who lasted just 17 months as skipper from July 2007-November 2008, but spectacularly went off the wagon by choosing to publicly criticise many prominent members of the squad in the media, causing a dressing room split and by the time he left the club, him and Samir Nasri weren’t even on speaking terms.
[cat_link cat=”liverpool” type=”list”]
Moving on to the latest bizarre choice and Thomas Vermaelen looks set to have the position taken away from him simply because it was the only reason assuring him of his place in the side after a truly terrible season in terms of his own personal form. Wenger stated after he left him out of the starting eleven for the team’s game against Bayern Munich in the Champions League: “Who is a captain and a leader shouldn’t guarantee you a place in any team.
“In England it’s true … the captaincy is of massive importance.”But for purely sporting reasons, or tactical reasons in the game, when you don’t think it is the right selection, do you put the player in just as he is captain? That is disrespectful to the guy who doesn’t play. For sporting reasons, it is not completely justifiable.” His time is nigh.
So the spotlight has inevitably fallen to Wilshere, perhaps one of the only members of the first-team squad that has the requisite mental toughness for the role. Fabregas was given the role at the same age and Wilshere wore the armband for the first time in a game against West Ham in January of this year, with Vermaelen’s position set to come under the scope of an internal review at the end of the campaign.
Sure, naming Wilshere as captain would buy Wenger a degree of security from an increasingly bitter Arsenal faithful who have become more and more frustrated by the Frenchman in recent seasons, but that can’t and shouldn’t be the underlying principle behind the move. However, as the England cricket team has shown in the past with Kevin Pietersen, Andrew Flintoff and Ian Botham, the finest individual doesn’t always make the greatest captain.
There’s a certain sense of inevitability about it all; Wilshere will one day be Arsenal and England captain, that much is clear just as it was with Gerrard and Terry over a decade ago. He’s made of the right stuff but there’s a very real worry that they are building him up before he is truly ready to take over the mantle.
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Cast your eyes around the Arsenal changing room, and you will see Per Mertesacker (28 years old and with 86 Germany caps), Lukas Podolski (27-years-old and with 107 Germany caps), Tomas Rosicky (32 years old and with 89 Czech Republic caps) and Santi Cazorla (28-years-old and with 51 Spain caps). Is the biggest problem not that despite all of this experience at the top level, none of them are even considered candidates for the role? It speaks volumes for the sort of mentally fragile squad that Wenger has assembled. Would Mikel Arteta not be a safer bet for the time being with Wilshere stepping up into the vice-captaincy first? A gradual transition rather than a populist coronation is what’s needed most here.
Promoting Wilshere as captain before his time would seem a deeply rash move and partly done for selfish reasons to buy himself some credit back with a disillusioned following. Making some a designated leader because there’s nobody else that fits the criteria is part of a wider problem. It’s a flaw with the club’s transfer policy that’s been widely pointed out for some time now and placing so much pressure on a 21-year-old still finding his feet and battling with his fitness is just the latest consequence of Wenger making mistake after mistake back down the line.
It’s not often in football journalism you hear a good story about a fan, nor a good story about a manager who has done something nice for a fan. The reason for this is because this type of news is usually known to be mundane, not outlandish, it doesn’t cross the border of ‘against the norm’. There is the usual cliché saying that ‘no news is good news’, however in this instance, the journey of Abel Rodriguez is a heart warming story that really should be broadcasted.
Cleaner, Abel Rodriguez is a 41-year-old Mexican-American who waxes floors for Los Angeles Metro Transportation. For the past 7 years, every summer Rodriguez would take 2 weeks vacation to do voluntary support work at Real Madrid’s Pre-Season training camp in L.A. Everyday for those two weeks Rodriguez would wake up at 5am, leave his house in Fontana to prepare the training camp and help Mourinho with anything he and his staff would need. Rodriguez would then arrive back to his home at 11pm, where he would sleep and do it all over again the next day. Why? Quite simply because of his love for the game and of course he is a big Real Madrid and Jose Mourinho fan. Rodriguez had a dream, although he had never ventured into Europe he wanted to watch El Clasico in person at the Bernabau. With Mourinho looking likely to exit in the summer, Rodriguez realised that his last chance would be on 2nd March. However, it seemed inevitable that with a wife and 3 kids, the holiday fund Rodriguez had been saving wouldn’t be going towards this. That was until his wife and his eldest daughter told him to go, they knew how much this would mean to him. So he went, no tickets, no hotels but he managed to buy his flights and arrived in Madrid on the 28th February. Not really knowing where to go Rodriguez headed to Madrid’s training complex and was of course turned down and refused entry. With nothing else to do Rodriguez sat on a snow cover path and waited, he waited for 5 hours for nothing, as far as he knew. That was until Mourinho came driving past in the passenger seat of his assistant Rui Faria’s car
‘It was a miracle that I saw him, I saw Abel seated on the side of the road outside the training ground’ Said Mourinho ‘ I told Rui, stop! It’s the guy from the Los Angeles’
When Rodriguez explained the situation, Mourinho couldn’t believe it. Immediately he sorted Rodriguez out with a room in the teams hotel, superb tickets for the game and dinner with all the coaching staff the next night. Rodriguez witnessed Mardid beat Barcelona 2-1 and went to the dressing room after where he had his picture taken with Cristiano Ronaldo and Argentina legend Diego Maradona. About to say his final farewells, Mourinho did not stop there. He hired Rodriguez on as kit staff and flew him to Manchester for the last 16 Champions league against United. Rodriguez at this point was not only crying with joy but was regarded as a lucky charm for the team. On the 5th March, Rodriguez walked out onto Old Trafford and represented Real Madrid as one of the team. Even his family and friends back home in L.A saw him walking off the pitch after the game had finished.
After the game he spoke to a variety of United and Madrid players and was at one with the team. The next day he flew back to Madrid and ever the hard worker, stayed behind to unload the kit.
Rodriguez still hasn’t managed to say thank you to Mourinho and this story being told is more than a way of doing that. What both Rodriguez and Mourinho showed here is a side of football that doesn’t get seen. This journey has not actually transformed a player or a manager’s life but a fan’s life. Not only that because as this story is told millions of fans across the world are touched and brought together by why football can be so rewarding. Even if you are not a fan of Mourinho you can’t help but immensely respect what he did for this man. Stories like this may happen all the time but just don’t get shared. It is important that we share and keep stories like this in our lives and football, because there is a lot more to it than just money.
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Morale boosting stories such as this one can have a massive effect on footballers themselves. To know you play in a sport which can change someone’s life is hugely rewarding. Underlying this if you played for a manager who you knew did that your respect for him would go through the roof. If your respect for your manager isn’t already that is.
The reputation of football is one of greed and lack of effort, ‘a gentleman’s sport played by thugs’ some say. Only stories such as these can give off an impression that football really is much more than 90 minutes on a pitch. If stories like this are to be forever told, football’s light will shed a much more positive one. This could reflect massively among the youth. As role models footballers and managers alike should aptly demonstrate behaviours of correctness and times of magic only they might be able to make possible. Setting an example like Jose Mourinho will do wonders for the game and its reputation.
Real Madrid had an insider at Tottenham doing a lot of the necessary dirty work last summer. Luka Modric played a key role in forcing through his sale to Real Madrid, using all the modern tricks in the book to undermine Tottenham and Daniel Levy’s position, even if on paper they held a strong hand. This time around, Real Madrid are continuing to use similar tactics that has won over previous stars of the Premier League, proving that the Spanish giants are not prepared to learn from previous ventures.
But in honesty, who can really tell clubs like Real Madrid or Barcelona to keep their distance? It’s the Bayern Munich story on a Europe-wide scale. Whatever they want they eventually get. Tottenham and certain corners of the English football community – those who would unconditionally back the underdog – simply don’t have the power to forge a counter attack; at the very least the feeble defence barrier holds well enough for an extra 12 months. But the wider story here is that none of these clubs, especially those with the current standing of Tottenham (relative to Real Madrid), can do much to intimidate those who persistently come knocking.
These are underhanded tactics that will never truly be eradicated from football. Sure, they wind up Tottenham, Arsenal, Manchester United, and any other unfortunate English club whose star player pops up on La Liga clubs’ radar, but it’s become the norm of the transfer circus. And they simply won’t take no for an answer.
It was reported earlier in the month that Real Madrid had notified Tottenham that they would not launch a bid for Gareth Bale this summer, in an act that can only be described as a ‘gentleman’s agreement,’ yet one with devilish undertones. Are we really supposed to believe that? They’ll get what they want, even if they have to force Bale to push the transfer from his end.
On this occasion it’s slightly different. In the past, Cesc Fabregas wanted to return ‘home,’ Cristiano Ronaldo had apparently always dreamt of playing for Real Madrid, and Luka Modric became one of those players who simply couldn’t say no to the Spanish Giants. Our footballers in Britain, on the other hand, look up to clubs like Manchester United and hold them as the truest and highest point of the game. Ironically, United could arguably fall into that category of getting exactly what they want, too. But the significance here is that Bale’s British nationality may not force the kind of rise that the utterance of the words ‘Real Madrid’ would in European or South American players.
But in the grander scheme of things, that doesn’t really matter. Zinedine Zidane has been out talking up Gareth Bale as one of the best players in the world, topped only by Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. In Florentino Perez’s eyes, Bale was “born to play for Real Madrid.” It’s getting messy for Tottenham (again), but it’s something that simply can’t be escaped. There are no lessons to be learnt here. Madrid’s aim is the Champions League. They want to become the undisputed dominant force in Spanish football. They understand the importance of toppling the powers from Germany. If Tottenham are in the firing line, so what?
And Real Madrid will continue to chip away at Tottenham’s credibility in all this. Daniel Levy wants something in the region of £80 million? Well that’s not happening. Selling club’s generally don’t dictate how much a player goes for. The market and, in this case, Real Madrid, hold the upper hand. It’s all part of the process. Why spend that much on a player when he can be had for much, much less if the selling club have little choice in the matter? It creates the image of player power, but that’s not really the case. Just like Financial Fair Play, these tactics are there to be exploited in order to keep the rich at the top and the poor well away.
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Even with his steely determination, something which should be admired, Daniel Levy is close to powerless to stop Madrid from getting what they want. Those defence shields may come up and the celebrations of victory in battle will arise, but they will be short lived. Clubs like Real Madrid always win the war, even if it means postponing their final and decisive assault by 12 months.
New Everton boss Roberto Martinez is keen to make a summer move for Chelsea winger Victor Moses, according to reports from the Sunday People.
The now Goodison Park chief coached the Nigerian international at Wigan, and is believed to be keen to reunite with his former star after being named Toffees manager.
Moses is thought to be facing a tough fight for first-team football next term, with Jose Mourinho already being linked with a number of big name stars.
The likes of Eden Hazard, Juan Mata and Oscar are already ahead of the 22-year-old in the pecking order, and speculation suggests that the ‘Special One’ could make moves for a number of established stars in the coming months.
Martinez is keen to take advantage of this, and is confident that he can tempt Chelsea to allow the man they signed for £9m last summer move on.
Moses himself could be keen on a switch, after watching his career stagnate since his arrival at Stamford Bridge.
Martinez may also make moves for a number of his former Wigan players, with Callum McManaman, Shaun Maloney and Ivan Ramis all on his wish list.
James McCarthy remains one of the Spaniard’s top targets, but he will face competition from Arsenal and Wigan for the midfielder.
Should Victor Moses leave Chelsea? And would he be the ideal man for Everton?
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