After the heroics of English clubs in the Champions League this week, we reach the FA Cup 5th round weekend with Crawley attempting to pull off the greatest shock of all time at Old Trafford. You do sense that all the games are likely to go in favour of the Premier League sides as the draw has been extremely kind to them.
In the papers this morning there have been a mixed bag of stories that includes fan fury at Champions League prices; Joe Jordan refutes Gattuso claims, while Chelsea hit with fixture pile-up.
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Fans furious at price hike for Champions League final tickets – Guardian
Utd ace will stay for Evra more – Sun
Champions League is my No 1! Lamps would sacrifice title for Euro glory – Daily Mail
Newcastle’s Enrique flattered by Liverpool link – Mirror
FA Cup still tarnished by Premier League – Daily Telegraph
Jordan refutes Gattuso claims – Sky Sports
Fixture chaos hits Blues hopes – Sun
Wilshere sets his sights on Arsenal ending Barcelona’s European dream – Daily Mail
Fifa match-fixing probe – Daily Telegraph
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Adebayor urges Cesc to join him at Real Madrid – Mirror
Tottenham set to pip rivals Arsenal in race to land £15m-rated Wickham – Daily Mail
Leaders Lille host Claude Puel’s Lyon as first meets fourth in a Ligue 1 blockbuster on Sunday.Four points separate the title rivals, and Puel’s men will be aiming to capitalise on Lille’s unexpected 1-0 defeat to Montpellier last time out and cut their gap on Rudi Garcia’s side to one point.Puel claims his side are in their best shape yet to topple the leaders, having scored four goals in each of their past two league outings.”There’s some chemistry within the squad,” Puel said. “It shows the quality of our squad and its mindset. If we keep that mindset, we can do some very good things until the end of the season.”Lille boss Garcia admitted his side did not look like genuine championship contenders in the Montpellier defeat, a result which ended their 13-match unbeaten streak.”We were no longer used to not taking points,” Garcia said. “We’ll have to refocus and make sure everybody does more because we didn’t see a team leading the league, and doing anything to take points.”Fresh from securing a spot in the final 16 of the Europa League, Paris Saint-Germain can build more confidence with a home victory over Toulouse.Elsewhere, Nancy, who have lost five of their past six league clashes, must overcome another large hurdle in their relegation battle when they host third-placed Marseille.On Saturday, second-placed Stade Rennes host relegation-threatened Lens, Saint-Etienne and Nice go head-to-head with both sides looking to break two-game losing streaks, while Sochaux welcome Montpellier to the Stade Auguste Bonal.In other fixtures, Valenciennes take on Lorient, Bordeaux host Auxerre, Caen travel to Monaco and bottom side Arles face Brest.
Former Bologna manager Alberto Malesani has been appointed at the helm of Serie A rivals Genoa, the club confirmed on Monday.Malesani, 57, successfully kept Bologna in the top flight last season even as the Italian outfit plunged into financial crisis and failed to make player payments for months.
The wage backlog attracted a three-point deduction from Serie A, but in spite of it all Bologna finished 16th on the table under Malesani.
Having rejected the offer of a contract extension at the Stadio Renato Dall’Ara, Malesani will instead head east to take up the managerial position left vacant by Davide Ballardini.
He has signed a one-year deal at the Genovese club, with an option for a further season.
Malesani earned his stripes at Chievo Verona before stints at Fiorentina and Parma. He led the latter to the Coppa Italia and the UEFA Cup in 1999.
Since that time, the much-travelled manager has called the shots at Verona, Modena, Greek side Panathinaikos, Udinese, Empoli and Siena.
At the time of writing everyone connected with Oldham Athletic are tentative. If Robbie Simpson had missed a last-minute penalty on Saturday to dramatically rescue a point the feeling would be on the verge of panic.
Wycombe, Saturday’s opponents, have been kept at arm’s reach. Oldham are safe, so the majority of Athletic supporters sigh. However stranger things have happened. Only last week did Dean Saunders, the Doncaster Rovers manager, defiantly wander down memory lane – more in comfort than happily – as he reminisced about Bradford City’s sensational escape from relegation, owing to Wimbledon’s disastrous ten-match losing streak. As it happened, Portsmouth nailed the final nail into the Rovers’ coffin as they were relegated. But the point stands: stranger things have happened.
Oldham have three matches to rescue a season that has collapsed since Christmas. From Athletic’s point of view, it is by the saving grace of God that he has made it doubly hard for Gary Waddock’s men, as they face the daunting prospect of staging their amazing survival act on The Valley and Hillsborugh’s fine turf. It isn’t the turf that perhaps makes their task tilt in the direction of impossible, it is the fact they have lost four league games between them this season.
Should Oldham survive, which is highly probable, has this season been a success? The initial mood of this article certainly suggests a resounding no. How has Paul Dickov, with the likes of Shefki Kuqi, Zander Diamond, Kieran Lee, Dean Furman, and Robbie Simpson, come so close to leading Oldham into England’s last professional division?
In truth, there are valid excuses. A calamitous injury curse struck throughout the season, meaning Dickov has been forced to turn to the loan market or call upon unrespecting youth players. The Scot has rarely been able to field his strongest eleven, but their sudden descent after Christmas alludes to Dickov’s weaknesses.
Is he a manager who can only work when he has his best squad available? It might sound a little silly to say such a thing. Of course managers should only be analysed after working with the best that they have. Or should they? In a league dominated by five or six large budgets, it has separated the best clubs the league has accommodated for years and the rest. The rest are more or less on equal footing, so why then have Oldham been unable to beat Scunthorpe, Yeovil, Leyton Orient and Wycombe in recent weeks? Or Exeter, Colchester, and Rochdale before that?
The injuries to key players, particularly Dean Furman, Oldham’s captain, and James Wesolowski, ripped the heart out of the midfield, that much must be acknowledged. However, what has frustrated sections on the crowd this season is the manner in which teams have beaten Athletic with relative ease. Teams have arrived at Boundary Park, been met with a home side with no confidence, and more worryingly no fight. When boys had an opportunity to become men, to grip games, to show character, they wilted and faded,
It hasn’t been a season littered with gloom, and there have been moments of sheer joy. Dickov battled on three fronts for the initial stages of the season, contesting the Johnstone Paint Trophy (JPT) and the FA Cup whilst attempting to guide his side up into the top half of League One. For much of this season (owing to another winter of postponements) Athletic have mirrored that of a Champions League side playing twice a week.
The players’ hard work was rewarded with a dream cup date at Anfield, in which Robbie Simpson scored a brilliant goal in front of a disbelieving Kop. Sadly, with the help of some bad luck, Latics were defeated 5-1, but it is a game few fans will be in a hurry to forget.
Then there was a run to the Northern Area Final of the JPT. After recording a ridiculous 44 shots over the course of the two-legged affair with John Sheridan’s Chesterfield, Dickov saw his side lose both legs and fail just a step before a trip to Wembley.
This leads onto two fundamental issues that have arisen from this bizarre season. How could a side have over forty attempts on an opposition’s goal and only score a single goal? Shefki Kuqi arrived at Boundary Park amidst genuine excitement, but after a purple patch the Finn’s goal scoring form has fizzled to a point where it is non-existent. The 36-year old last scored a goal inside the opposition’s box, that wasn’t a penalty, on 19th November.
During the second-leg against Chesterfield was an example of Oldham’s other woe this season. A calamitous mix-up between keeper Alex Cisak and defender Jean-Yves M’voto, Jack Lester was able to end the contest by scoring a 90th minute goal to stretch the Spireites aggregate lead to two goals.
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Oldham’s defending, overseen by assistant manager and former defender Gerry Taggart, has been error-strewn and at a standard that even the struggling sides in League One have not been made to fight for their goals, and so Paul Dickov’s task is difficult and could prove troublesome.
What is needed for next season? What must be done to improve on this season’s woes? That will all be in a future article.
Blaming rightly is as difficult as praising rightly in today’s media. We’re artisans in the field of praising easily and blaming all too swiftly but, invariably, it’s rash, emotional, vitriolic, overzealous, or short sighted. Fabio Capello had a starring role in the English pantomime abroad and I genuinely believe the only thing to surprise him about it all is the bewitching ability our media has to turn hope into hysteria and expectation into burden.
Not too long ago Gary Linekar presented Capello with the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Coach Award just for qualifying. And last week, after four terrible outings in South Africa by his players, there were emergency meetings held to decide whether he was even the right man to continue as manager. Several bad performances does not change the past and his past is a proven one: eight domestic titles spread over two countries (one now revoked after the infamous calciopoli scandal in 2006) and a Champions League success. Before we kill something, we should make sure we have something better to replace it with – who could the FA feasibly turn to?
But defeat leads to heightened scrutiny and everything came into question: why does he announce his team two hours before kickoff? Why doesn’t he change the formation? Why is Gerrard out on the left? Why, why, why? Naturally this all meant Gareth Southgate was forced to get philosophical on live TV and quote physicists, ‘Albert Einstein said insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.’ Whilst I don’t doubt the veracity of such a claim, perhaps its resonance for us – as an expectant public – should be more heavily contemplated; we have consistently failed to deliver anything resembling a crown-winning run at a major tournament over the past 12 years yet in the preamble to South Africa we toted ourselves as third favourites behind only Spain and Brazil. Don’t get me wrong, hope is a good thing. But hysteria isn’t.
The players are another gauge for a manager’s position and it was good to hear Jermain Defoe speak of Capello in a reasoned manner:
“If you speak to the rest of the players they will all say the same thing; he’s a great manager and his CV speaks for itself. He’s got great ideas and he was just a little bit unlucky I think. On record he is one of the best managers in the world and has been for a number of years so I can’t see why we would want to get rid of someone like that – it doesn’t make sense.”
And whilst the manager is culpable for tactical misjudgements what he cannot legislate for is injuries, individual errors and all-round uninspiring performances; Green’s opening game blunder and at least three indefensible mistakes against Germany were all compounded by Wayne Rooney looking unhappy throughout, Steven Gerrard being subdued, and Frank Lampard not resembling Frank Lampard. The team’s showing at the World Cup can be traced to a multitude of reasons – both short term (media scandal, injury to key players) and long term infrastructure (grassroots, the dearth of young veritable English talent coming through) – that Capello can do little, if anything, to control. Gary Neville shared an interesting point that many have been thinking in recent times:
“We have to question how good we truly are. Better than we performed in this World Cup, for sure, but have we over-estimated our strengths on the basis of our strong record in the Champions League? Possibly. The success of Manchester United and Chelsea cannot be a reliable guide to the merits of the England team, given the number of top-class players from overseas.”
This allows Capello to legitimately drop familiar faces from the ‘golden generation’ without as vociferous a media circus (the circus will always persist so long as there are papers to be sold and profits to be gained). The claim that his methods are too rigid and that he exhibited a lack of adaptability is unfounded because you simply cannot achieve his feats as a manager without being able to combine the players’ strengths (something that changes with every squad he’s ever worked with) with his own ideology – tactical and otherwise – of winning.
I think Neville’s sentiments go a long way in explaining one of the overarching, endemic problems this nation faces. And it is difficult to expect one manager, however good he is, to remedy a cultural failing. What we can judge him more fairly on is how he addresses the inevitable changes in personnel the World Cup exit begets.
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Click on image below to see the Dutch babes at the World Cup
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Fabio Capello will discuss his future with the Football Association in the wake of England's humbling World Cup exit.
Capello revealed after Sunday's 4-1 defeat to Germany in the last 16 that he was planning to hold talks with Club England chairman Sir David Richards to discover whether the FA still retained faith in him.
The 64-year-old Italian still has two years remaining on his £6million-a-year contract but has been left fighting for his future following England's dire performance in South Africa.
Asked if he was considering resigning in the aftermath of England's worst-ever World Cup finals defeat, he said:"Absolutely not.
"But I want to speak with the chairman and then decide my future and I need to know whether the FA have confidence in me or not."
Capello will hold a press conference on Monday lunchtime where he will face questions about England's disappointing campaign, which brought two draws and one win in the group stage before the last 16 debacle.
"We probably arrived a little bit tired at the end of the season," suggested Capello immediately after the defeat in Bloemfontein which included a disallowed goal for Frank Lampard when the ball had clearly crossed the line with the Three Lions trailing 2-1 at the time.
"But after the game that they played against Slovenia, we suffered from Germany's speed.
"But I say again, I am sure that a big mistake from the referee stopped us from going forward.
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"We scored. It is incredible. In this period of technology, in this period where we can have five referees, we cannot decide if that was a goal or not.
"We have to speak about this goal. We have to speak about a mistake from the linesman – and the referee because I could see it had gone in from the touchline. I saw the ball bounce and go over the line.
"I do not understand this mistake."Subscribe to Football FanCast News Headlines by Email
Manchester United have taken control of their Europa League last 32 tie with Ajax, as a 2-0 win in the away leg sees them set to qualify for the next stage barring any shocks in the return fixture.
Second half goals from Ashley Young and Javier Hernandez sealed a comfortable victory, as Sir Alex Ferguson fielded a strong team at the Amsterdam Arena.
The Scottish coach was pleased to record the win, but was not overly impressed by his side’s performance.
“I’m delighted by the scoreline, but I thought it was a very ordinary performance by us,” Ferguson told Channel Five.
“We didn’t reach any great heights in the game, but we did improve in the second half and we probably deserved to win it.
“I didn’t think we played well at all. There was no rhythm to our game.
“Ajax can make it difficult with the way they play when they close their midfield up. They pressed the ball really well.
“We didn’t get any tempo to our game at all in the first half. In the second half, we did improve a lot, we missed some good chances.
“Not a brilliant performance in the second half, but good enough I think,” the trainer concluded.
The only downside to the victory is an injury to in-form winger Antonio Valencia, who has picked up a hamstring knock and will be out of action for up to a month.
“He has a hamstring injury unfortunately. It will be four weeks. It is a bad blow for us,” Ferguson concluded.
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United don’t play this weekend, with their next game the return fixture against Ajax at Old Trafford next Thursday.
Two-goal Jon Walters described Stoke City’s 5-0 FA Cup semi-final triumph as the “pinnacle of his career” on Sunday.The Republic of Ireland international curled home two finishes to put the icing on a five-star performance which swept aside his former club Bolton.
It continued what has been a remarkable story for Walters since he made a 2.75 million pounds move from Championship club Ipswich Town at the start of the season.
“To score two goals at Wembley and crown a win like that is the stuff that dreams are made of and it is certainly the pinnacle of my career,” he commented.
“I just want to keep this run going now and score a few more goals because it has been a remarkable few weeks for the club and we can now finish the season off in style.”
“To start the game like we did and get three goals in the first half hour was absolutely fantastic for us and that really settled any nerves we had.
“We expected Bolton to come at us in the second half because they had nothing to lose so to get the fourth goal really killed off any hope of them coming back.”
While the focus will now be on the May 14 final against Manchester City, Walters stressed that City have to keep their feet firmly on the floor because there is still important work to be done to ensure a fourth season in the Barclays Premier League.
“We have two massive games in the League coming up against Aston Villa and Wolves, so we need to focus on them,” said the striker who now has 11 goals this season.
“We were aware of the history in the cup and obviously we wanted to change that and reach a first FA Cup Final, and thankfully we did that.”
“It was a fantastic day for the fans too. As ever, they were magnificent and you could see what it meant to all of them. They had a great day out.”
“There is still a long way to go but we are confident. It’s the best chance this club has had of winning this trophy and we want make the most of that.”
Every season the Arsenal defence is barracked for being diabolical and costing the club every trophy under the sun. Regular comments that come from the terraces at the Emirates single out the need for a world class goalkeeper and central defender to replace the so-called imbeciles currently taking the shirts.
And in some cases it is true. The 2011 League Cup is the most glaring example, when an embarrassing mix-up between Szczesny and Koscielny gifted Birmingham the win and this can be seen as the point that ruined a season where Arsene Wenger’s side were fighting on four different fronts.
But it could also be argued that Arsenal are losing just as many games because of problems much higher up the pitch. Take the same game for instance. In the League Cup final, they had umpteen chances to close out that match, with Ben Foster making some top drawer saves to keep out Bendtner and Arshavin, as well as denying Nasri on three separate occasions. If a third of the chances Arsenal had in the game had gone in then that blunder would have meant nothing to the result.
The same thing has shown itself this season. They wasted far too many goalscoring opportunities on the opening day against Newcastle and failed to score again when Liverpool visited the Emirates, while only scoring one against Swansea who were still finding their Premier League feet at that point and it is just as problematic as the back line for the Gunners.
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Yes, Robin van Persie is fit and on fire recently which means that goals are almost guaranteed. If it wasn’t for him, the win against Stoke on Sunday would have been a draw, the victory over Sunderland a defeat and many more of Arsenal’s 13 points would be relinquished without him. But where do they go when he can’t play? And what can the Dutchman and his fellow strikers do if things start to go wrong? The answer, it seems, is nothing.
When Emmanuel Adebayor left for moneybags Manchester City in 2009, Arsenal lost their plan B attacking style. Not to say that the Togolese striker was only good for an alternative style of play because he had great feet but his height and strength meant that if things weren’t going well there was a target man to aim a long ball to.
Since then there has been no plan B at the Emirates and if Arsenal are going to seriously challenge for titles they need to be able to switch systems when their backs are against the walls in big games.
Take the humiliation they suffered at Old Trafford (the home of hammerings this season) and Arsenal were still trying to play passing, attacking football when they were being torn apart. There was no long ball tactic or striker that could hold the ball up so the waves of red shirts kept coming back at them relentlessly.
The team has been crying out for a no-nonsense centre-forward to come in and make that position their own. Van Persie is a brilliant forward but he is better suited to collecting the ball, having it at his feet and doing something special rather than being confined to an aerial battle and that is the predicament Wenger has with all of his striking options.
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Marouane Chamakh is the person closest to filling that gap but his heading ability is poor. Like Van Persie, deliver the ball into the Moroccan along the floor and his quick feet and pace will cause defenders problems. However, he hasn’t hit the height expected of him when he brought his fantastic Ligue 1 scoring record across the Channel. With players around him showing similar skills but scoring goals while he struggles to adapt he cannot be given a role of leading the line and the rumours of a move back to France may well spell the end of his time at the Emirates.
Another French import is summer signing Gervinho, who has fared better since his move. Although only scoring two goals so far he has fitted into the side quickly and had his best game for the Gunners on Sunday, scoring one and setting up both Van Persie goals in the 3-1 win. He is also a more physical prospect than Chamakh as was proven by him slapping Joey Barton on his Premier League debut. But again he is still a player best suited to football on the ground and has been wasteful of chances which at the highest level can be very expensive.
Fellow new signing Chu Young Park will not be able to fill the glaring hole at Arsenal either. Signed for £3.4 million, the 26-year-old has been dubbed ‘not ready’ for the first team by Arsene Wenger, a worrying admission by a man usually so frugal with money. He averaged one goal every four games for Monaco which is not a bad record, but like many of Wenger’s French imports the pace and brutality of English football see them fall from grace. The player has all the attributes for a top striker but is once again in this mould of player that wants the ball to his feet and will struggle to fight for it.
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And finally there’s the talisman, Robin Van Persie. A prolific goalscorer but all too often injured. He has scored 24 goals in 26 appearances in 2011 and the only player that impressed for the Gunners after the League Cup final debacle. But his injury record speaks for itself. In 2007 Van Persie broke his metatarsal celebrating a goal against Man United, meaning he missed the Carling Cup final which his side subsequently lost 2-1, the following year he was top scorer at the club despite missing most of the season with a knee injury as Arsenal finished just four points off the lead and again last season, missing the first half of the campaign then getting injured again in the infamous final.
While he is on the pitch he is a star, but when he’s injured the cupboard is bare for Arsene Wenger and he needs to change it soon. He has Theo Walcott asking to play up front but his goalscoring record is hardly a shining CV and again he brings nothing to the table that the club doesn’t already have. So who outside the club could they take?
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Although not a likely option, Chelsea’s Didier Drogba fits the bill perfectly. Physical, good in the air and a fantastic finisher, he would be the saviour if he were to arrive at the Emirates. But more realistically, a man such as Roque Santa Cruz, currently not wanted by Manchester City and on loan at Real Betis would be a good addition to lead the line alongside van Persie, or even consistent defender breaker and goal finder Kevin Davies to give Arsenal a dimension so dramatically lacking from their play.
Now for any Gunners fans tearing their hair out at the mention of big bruiser Kevin Davies being the man to save their stylish, sophisticated football club, think of this.
Apart from Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea team, many of the best clubs in the world have had defensive troubles. The famous treble winning Manchester United team weren’t the strongest at the back. They were held together by Peter Schmeichel and maintained the philosophy of scoring one more than their opponents. It is the same with the successful Real Madrid sides at the turn of the century and the Barcelona team of now, there weaknesses are their defence but they score so freely that no-one cares. Even the Newcastle team that nearly made it big had that theory. It’s time Arsene Wenger and Arsenal fans stopped bemoaning their defence and asked the strikers around Robin van Persie to do their job.
To talk about anything football, follow me on Twitter @jrobbins1991.
Brendan Rodgers has deflected criticism aimed at his ‘keeper Pepe Reina after the Spaniard’s error almost cost Liverpool a place in the Europa League group stages.
The Reds drew 1-1 with Hearts on the night, going through 2-1 on aggregate, but it could have been a very different story had Luis Suarez not scored the decisive equaliser two minutes from time.
Hearts’ David Templeton gave the visitors the lead after launching a seemingly routine shot at goal from just outside the area, but Reina somehow spooned the shot into the net.
Despite the error, Rodgers remains confident in his shot-stopper’s ability: “Pepe has been brilliant since I’ve been here. He’s been a pivotal part of how we work. He’s been excellent off the field, a real good guy who understands the ideology of what we’re trying to do.
“Unfortunately for goalkeepers it’s part and parcel of the game. There’s no blame attached – unfortunately for goalkeepers they make a mistake and sometimes it leads to a goal.”
It sums up an unconvincing two-legged victory for Liverpool, who needed an own goal from Andy Webster in the first leg to take a lead back to Anfield.
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Rodgers’ side will now play Udinese, Young Boys and Anzhi in the group stages following lunchtime’s draw.
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