Manchester City goalkeeper Shay Given would do well in Italy, according to Republic of Ireland coach Giovanni Trapattoni.
The 34-year-old shot-stopper seems certain to leave Eastlands in January after losing his place in Roberto Mancini's first team to Joe Hart.
A possible switch to Newcastle United has been ruled out by Magpies manager Chris Hughton, leaving Given to ponder his options.
Trapattoni claims a couple of Serie A sides are monitoring Given's position, telling the Irish Independent:"We have already, myself and Marco (Tardelli), spoken with some Italian teams.
"In Italy, he is kept in high regard by many. But the goalkeeper is a difficult position.
"There is interest in them, and we have one or two teams who have goalkeepers inferior to them.
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"But there are many situations in Italy, like in England. We can only inform them. We cannot force it.
"If he has the opportunity, maybe he will ask to leave City."Subscribe to Football FanCast News Headlines by Email
After finally giving up in the quest to capture Wesley Sneijder, Manchester United have turned their attentions to Keisuke Honda in a bid to strengthen their flagging midfield.
Rumours are circulating of a player-plus-cash deal for the CSKA Moscow playmaker with Dimitar Berbatov heading to Russia.
The 25-year-old shot to fame with Japan at the 2010 World Cup with the media labelling him the “Japanse Maradona” and Arsene Wenger calling him a “genius”.
He scored one of the tournament’s best goals with a stunning free-kick against Denmark and since then has continued to excel despite a string of injuries over the past year.
If the rumour becomes reality then it would add the creativity and flair where it is so desperately needed, with United short of quality players in the centre of the park and it would mean that Nani would no longer be allowed to waste a dangerous dead ball situation.
From watching him in the World Cup, last year’s Champions League and in Youtube videos, he has a left-foot that is both cultured and ferocious, coupled with a box of tricks that reminds me of Cristiano Ronaldo.
On top of his creativity he has a magnificent work ethic and will to win that will help him fit in seamlessly to the Premier League and Manchester United.
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However, while it would be an exciting arrival at Old Trafford and would add a spark to a currently lacklustre side, it seems Sir Alex Ferguson is looking for the wrong type of player. Honda has a good engine (pardon the pun) but he is not geared up (and again) to help support the defence and that’s where the real problem lies.
Unlike most big teams United do not use a natural defensive midfielder and when they employ Phil Jones there you can’t help but feel that the back four is weaker without him and with the current injury problems he is even more important in that area.
Apart from Jones the only other available option at present is Michael Carrick but it doesn’t seem to be a position that he impresses in. Although he comes under fire from fans, at the moment there is a place in the team for him, but not as a holding player.
With just under a fortnight left in the transfer window it seems that Sir Alex is forgetting to fill the glaring gap in his squad.
Bringing in the Japanese playmaker would add another attacking option to the team but they are already overloaded in that area with Rooney, Welbeck, Hernandez and for now, Berbatov up front, Nani, Ashley Young and Valencia on the wings and the likes of Anderson, Scholes, Park, Giggs and the returning Tom Cleverley that are all forward-thinking players.
Having been previously linked to Arsenal and Liverpool it would be a great move to bring him to Old Trafford where he would certainly thrive and he is a younger, cheaper alternative to Sneijder but it is unlikely that he would solve the midfield problem at the club and if that is still an issue when the transfer window closes, it may prove costly in the title race.
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Would you sign Keisuke Honda this month and would he solve United’s midfield problem? Tell me on Twitter @jrobbins1991.
After a fairytale season for Tottenham Hotspur in the Champions League this year following their triumphant assault on the ‘top four’ last year, many expected come the end of May for the Lilywhites to be there again, especially with a faltering season for Aston Villa and, once again, Liverpool, and with Manchester City still trying to find their best ‘World XI’. White Hart Lane, however, isn’t guaranteed European football of the highest order (or even at all) next season after having capitulated in recent months, the North London outfit dropping points against Wolves, West Brom and Blackpool; this is the same side that beat both San Siro giants, but why have Spurs struggled against the ‘lesser’ teams this season?
Tottenham boast a squad that doesn’t have the greatest Champions League experience, so when playing in European venues like the Bernabeu and the San Siro, then re-accommodating yourself with places such as Molineux and Bloomfield Road, no matter who you are it is a huge ‘come down’. I’m not saying this is the case, but Tottenham’s players may have the mentality that these games pale into insignificance alongside such epic European nights. Not only is this a grave disrespect to these ‘smaller clubs’, whether intended or not, but it is also suicide in footballing form.
Tottenham have this bizarre trait in which it appears that they only really get going once they concede; thriving on pressure is what can make the good clubs great. However when the lesser teams of the league come to the ‘big boys’, they tend to try for a point, so if they do nick a goal, they then play a 10-0-0 formation (otherwise known as ‘the bus’), not even an intricate flick for Van Der Vaart can unlock such a compact and determined defence on their day.
Harry Redknapp isn’t famous for being the greatest tactician, more of a man motivator, and his ‘lack’ of tactical awareness has probably been the key to Spurs’ European heroics. In Europe, the Spurs manager plays a more fluid system, allowing the likes of Lennon and Bale to switch flanks and Van Der Vaart to drift, but this isn’t the case in the League for Spurs and ‘Arry knows this. Having to play a rigid formation doesn’t suit spurs, but it is the Premier League way, so playing Van Der Vaart as a winger doesn’t get the best of the Dutch midfielder as it doesn’t allow him to be at his most attacking. It is this apparent preference for personnel over team play that seems to be hindering spurs against the lower teams, who tend to play fast counter-attacking football. No doubt this con-tributes largely to spurs’ defensive lapses against these teams
If the form book is anything to go by then Tottenham will more than likely become accustomed to Channel Five Thursday nights again next season and will be cursing such scenarios as Stephen Fletcher’s 87th minute equaliser for Wolves back on 6th March.
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Listen to the third episode of our brand new podcast – The Football FanCast. – Featuring Razor Ruddock, Gary O’Reilly and singer/songwriter Alistair Griffin, who performs a live version of his cult tribute to Mark Viduka, with Razor on backing vocals!
Liverpool managing director Christian Purslow has insisted that the club is not in danger of going bust if the current ownership issues surrounding Liverpool are not resolved. Liverpool’s American owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett currently owe the Royal Bank of Scotland £237 million in loan repayments with the deadline for repayment or refinancing their loan set for mid-October.
It is reported that Tom Hicks is looking into avenues that would allow him to restructure his loans and also buy out his co-owner George Gillett. However, Purslow has said that the board would dismiss any such deal that would use the club’s assets as security.
Liverpool has been up for sale since April and Purslow and club chairman Martin Broughton have been given the task of finding new investors for the club but have so far failed to find a suitable party.
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With the mid-October deadline fast-approaching, there is chance that the club will be taken over by the bank and be placed into administration but Purslow has moved to reassure fans that this would not be the case.
So in the past few years, we’ve had allegations of bungs, bribes, match fixing, false advertising in the case of Torres and Carroll – strikers? Well they certainly do not do what it says on the tin, and now the latest storm for football to weather is that of tax perks.
It was reported over the weekend that HMRC are more than a little curious about the ‘secret perks’ that footballers are enjoying at the courtesy of clubs and their owners. It is not just holidays or even cars that are interesting HRMC, oh no – they are even asking about health benefits and intimating tax could be paid on these.
Basically it is anything that are ‘benefits in kind’ so it is not wages obviously, which footballers in the UK get absolutely crucified on already, especially in comparison to other countries, but the ‘perks’ they are receiving, and the ever greedy HMRC state that they would not enter into such investigations if they did not feel a great deal of money could be reaped from it.
That alone illustrates not only how serious they feel about this issue – why wouldn’t they, a further chance to fill their chest with gold – but also how successful they feel they have the potential to be. If you rack your brains, it is not hard to think of which ever club you support, your favourite player and a benefit he has received from the club – it may not be a holiday or a car, perhaps it is just accommodation for a few nights on arriving in England, whatever it is, there are more than enough examples, and the HMRC have cottoned on to this.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am not sitting here asking you to cry into what is left of the beer from New Year for the footballers who have so much in comparison to the rest of us, and I am fully aware that it is not just footballers who pay a huge amount of their earnings to the HMRC, not to mention the fact that we are also expected to pay tax and national insurance on the ‘benefits’ we get – but before this turns into a rant about the government and our tax system, I am simply highlighting the fact that it is not even just football in which the taxation differs massively in the UK to other countries.
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Rafael Nadal for example has chosen to forgo playing at his usual Wimbledon warm-up tournament of the last few years at Queen’s in London, in favour of Halle in Germany for the next three years due to the difference in tax on the payment and winnings – England take half the appearance fee and also a substantial proportion of their world wide endorsements – determined on how much time they spend competing in the UK.
Is this right for Rafa to do– no it is not, and when I read this a few months back I was disappointed in Rafa for prioritising the money over anything else, but at the end of the day, it is a vital factor for sportsmen these days, and do we really want to isolate the UK even further by attempting to seize more of the wages the footballers earn?
Eventually, they will become like Rafa Nadal and chose to play their trade in La Liga or elsewhere – it is hardly like England can compete with the weather, the winter break, the women – I could go on, and as a country we do not want the best talent to go elsewhere – we want it here.
Do I feel good attempting to defend footballers over their astronomical salary – no I do not, and this is not what I am trying to get across here, but at the end of the day, if you have the choice between playing abroad paying less tax on firstly your wages and then your ‘benefits’ or in the UK where you are heavily taxed on all of these, which would you go for?
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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.”
West Brom chairman Jeremy Peace has vowed not to make any more mistakes in the transfer market after admitting that the acquistion of Luke Moore has been a financial disaster for the club.
The Baggies paid Aston Villa £3.5million for the striker in January 2008 since when he has managed to find the net just five times in 65 appearances.
Peace has admitted that Moore is free to leave The Hawthorns for another side, possibly on loan, and is disappointed with the whole affair after the striker was omitted from Albion's 25-man Premier League squad.
He told the Express and Star:"We've had Luke who came in for £3.5million, Leon Barnett who came in for £2.9million, although to be fair they were a few years ago.
"People make mistakes but I'm sure we'll be fine from now. There will always be mistakes in the transfer market but hopefully we can cut down on them. It's part of the club moving on and getting stronger.
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"Perhaps it's because of what we paid for Luke that this is one of the reasons we're not paying big transfer fees, but now looking at paying more on wages."Subscribe to Football FanCast News Headlines by Email
Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger has admitted that his side are out of the running to win the Premier League title, after The Gunners were beaten 1-0 by Manchester City on Sunday.
A solitary second half David Silva goal sealed the win for the home side at the Etihad Stadium, and means that City move to 12 points clear of the North London outfit.
Wenger conceded that Arsenal needed to win to be in the hunt for top spot, and feels the gap to the frontrunners is too much to claw back.
“Unfortunately for us it was a game that we couldn’t afford to lose because it puts us too much [behind City],” he told the club’s official website.
“If we had won the game we would have come back to six points and with players coming back like our full-backs and [Jack] Wilshere and [Abou] Diaby – we will have a better squad in the second half of the season.
“At the moment we are too far behind.
“I think it was a game that could have gone both ways. It was very intense with both teams going for it and I feel as well that we were a bit unlucky.
“Their goalkeeper had a good game and we were a bit unlucky with the fact that we had to reshuffle completely at the back in a position where we are already short – we paid too much for that.
“Overall I did feel at half-time that we would win the game if we stayed stable at the back.
“We lacked a bit of accuracy with our final ball in the final third as well because we had a few opportunities where we didn’t pass the ball well.
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“But overall we had a very positive performance, great spirit, quality, but we lacked a little bit of what is vital in the big games,” he stated.
Watching the US Masters as an occasional break from my constant diet of football, it became clear that no matter how much people knock him and all his personal problems you just cannot keep Tiger Woods down.
Woods hasn’t won the tournament by a long stretch but only three shots off the lead has left many of his detractors dumbfounded. The sports biggest star being written off and criticised for personal problems only to put it all behind him and show the world he’s still one of the best.
Sound familiar? The correlation between the recent career or Woods and a certain Scouse Striker cannot be ignored. This got me thinking which other Masters contenders are the most like certain United strikers here’s a brief list which you may or may not agree with.
Tiger Woods/Wayne Rooney
The similarities are obvious. Prodigious talents, that at one point seemed almost freakish in their excellence at such an early age. Won every major honour there is to win and still hungry for more. A fondness for the ladies which has caused a little bit of embarrassment but regardless of the press crucifixion who would bet against this year being another massively successful one?
Phil Mickelson/Michael Owen
One of the most gifted golfers of the modern era and one of the best footballers, yet for all their successes there’s still a small feeling that they haven’t quite achieved what they could have. With four major championship wins and almost 40 event wins, you can hardly call Mickelson’s career anything other than a triumph. Owen on the other hand has won every domestic trophy there is bar the league, has won the UEFA cup and been named European footballer of the year.
Yet for both men, there ‘great’ could have been ‘greatest’ Mickelson at one point looked like the man who was actually going to usurp the all powerful Woods as the world’s best golfer but never quite managed to become the world’s number one, despite some amazing victories. Owen was once the most talked about striker in the world but has never quite reached the success of a Rooney or a Thierry Henry despite his obvious abilities.
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Lee Westwood/Dimitar Berbatov
People may have knocked both Westwood and Berbatov over the years and claimed they hadn’t achieved all they could, yet both of them are still proving critics wrong and who’s to say there isn’t more to come this year. Berbatov may have been found wanting at times last year when United needed someone to step into Wayne Rooney’s boots- although almost every Red denies ever saying that now, yet he’s shown this season he’s one of the world’s best.
Westwood may still be searching for that elusive major but how many players out there can say they’ve been world number one? Both are a tad unappreciated
Rory McIlroy/Chicharito
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A year or so ago you could be forgiven for not knowing who McIlroy was yet following his successes in 2010 and this year he’s now established as one the world’s top golfers at the age of just 21. Chicharito is the same, having come from seemingly nowhere to now be regarded as one of the most exciting attackers in the world.
What’s the betting that the United striker goes on to become one of the world’s top strikers- he’s on his way already- as for McIlroy, call me optimistic but there’s every chance we could be seeing the dawn of a new era in golf- much may depend on how The Masters pans out to see whether now is truly the Northern Irishman’s time.
Why not have a flutter on The Masters before it’s too late?
Read more of Justin’s articles at the excellent Red Flag Flying High
Newcastle United boss Chris Hughton has urged injury-hit defender Steven Taylor not to be too downhearted at missing the start of the new season.
The 24-year-old centre-back faces around three months on the sidelines due to a shoulder problem, but Hughton is confident that Taylor will return to be a key player later on in the campaign.
He told The Gazette:“It’s something everybody experiences. What you want to do is come back fitter and mentally stronger from it.
“Steven’s got absolutely everything in front of him – he’ll miss the first period of the season, but there’s plenty more football to play.
“It’s a hurdle to overcome. It’s part and parcel of a footballer’s life.
“What he has to do is take out of his mind the games that he’ll miss and very much put into his mind the games he’ll be available for.
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“It’s a big blow for us because it’s an important position, but there’s a massive chunk of the season he’ll be available for. He’s got to get his mindset now on getting back from this injury.”
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