Aston Villa midfielder Jack Grealish has not given up hope on a move to Tottenham Hotspur, according to Sky Sports.
What’s the story?
Spurs have been linked with the ace all summer, but the move was seemingly put in jeopardy by Villa’s takeover bid which meant the club weren’t so desperate to raise funds.
The attacking midfielder scored three goals and assisted six in the Championship last season and he was the subject of a £25million bid from Mauricio Pochettino’s Tottenham which was rejected by Villa.
Now, according to the latest report, Grealish is said to be disappointed and disillusioned with Villa’s owners for refusing him his dream move after they had promised previously to let him leave this summer.
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Last minute panic
Tottenham are still yet to make a signing this summer while rivals have recruited heavily during the transfer window.
Never rule out a last minute move from Daniel Levy but with Grealish and Tottenham both keen for the transfer, it remains to be seen whether Villa’s new owners will accept any new bids.
It looks like it will have to be north of £30million if Villa rejected £25million and it may be worth Levy forking out the cash just to appease fans frustrated with the lack of movement this summer.
The Daily Star has reported that Aston Villa are keen on re-signing West Ham winger Robert Snodgrass, and Villa fans on Twitter have been getting excited by the rumour.
Snodgrass spent last season on loan at Villa Park and, despite coming on at half-time in the Hammers’ opening game against Liverpool, the Daily Star reports that the Scottish international may be allowed to leave the London Stadium following the signing of winger Andriy Yarmolenko over the summer.
The 30-year-old played 43 times in the Championship and playoffs last season for Steve Bruce’s side, scoring eight goals and providing an impressive 13 assists as Villa lost to Fulham in the playoff final, missing out on promotion to the Premier League at the final hurdle.
Without the riches of the Prem, Villa faced financial problems and the threat of a winding up order from HMRC over unpaid tax bills. However, with new majority owners now at the helm the club are back to being able to spend and the fans will be hoping a couple of players come in on loan to improve the squad.
Check out some of the best tweets regarding Snodgrass to Villa below.
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Aston Villa have started the season in excellent form with 3 wins to report from their opening 3 fixtures, but they should certainly not be tempted to rest on their laurels in the transfer market despite their promising start.
There’s plenty of reason for Steve Bruce to be optimistic for the future after watching his side begin the season in such promising form, but the club’s lack of firepower remains a problem which needs to be addressed before the loan window slams shut at the end of August.
And one players who Bruce should certainly be interested in bringing to Villa Park is Southampton’s Shane Long, as the level of competition at St Mary’s could well leave him surplus to requirements this season.
The Saints already had plenty of options available with Charlie Austin and Manolo Gabbiadini at the club, but the recent arrival of Danny Ings from Liverpool has added an extra layer of competition which will surely make Long redundant.
With that in mind, Villa should capitalise on the situation as Long possesses both the determination and poachers instinct to become a huge success at Villa Park.
At the spearhead of the attack Villa will be guaranteed relentless running in behind and hassling of opponents, as well as an ability to take aim from a variety of angles both in and around the penalty area.
Not only is Long stacked with Premier League experience, he also has plenty of Championship experience to his name with 123 career appearances in which he bagged 39 goals and provided 20 assists.
A goal every 192 minutes is extremely impressive for a player at any level of the game, and if Long was able to replicate that type of form at Villa there’s no doubt he could finish the season close to the 20-goal mark.
There are plenty of talented centre-forwards who Bruce would presumably like to bring to the club this summer, but Long’s situation at St Mary’s suggests that he will be both available and willing to leave before August 31st, so he should be at the top of his priority list during the final stages of the window.
Things went from bad to worse for Queens Park Rangers on Tuesday night when they suffered a 3-0 defeat at home to Bristol City in the Championship.
QPR have now lost to Preston North End, Sheffield United, West Bromwich Albion and Bristol City in their first four matches of the 2018-19 Championship season.
That rotten start has left them rooted to the bottom of the table, and has placed a huge amount of pressure on the team ahead of this weekend’s clash with Wigan Athletic.
The QPR fans are not just unhappy with head coach Steve McClaren, but the club as a whole.
It is shaping up to be a very difficult season for the London outfit, and it is going to be tough to get the supporters back on-side following the latest defeat at Loftus Road.
Matt Taylor and Andreas Weimann scored the goals for Bristol City, and McClaren will now be feeling a serious amount of pressure with his position extremely uncertain.
A selection of the Twitter reaction from the upset QPR fans can be seen below:
It’s hard to remember quite when it started, and in a sense it has probably always been there.
Ever since Paul Pogba returned to Old Trafford for a world-record transfer fee in summer 2016, the debate over whether the Frenchman should be showing the consistency and discipline Jose Mourinho’s philosophy demands of him, or whether the Manchester United boss should be creating a platform that better allows the midfielder’s more impulsive style to thrive, has continuously rumbled on. Everybody from Paul Scholes to Chris Sutton, Graeme Souness to Mino Raiola, has had their say somewhere down the line.
But the Pogba-Mourinho narrative has now reached unprecedented territory in what feels like its closing chapters. Developments along the way – Mourinho repeatedly hauling off Pogba, often for Marouane Fellaini in a substitution that symbolises his preference for substance over style, the Frenchman helping drive his country to World Cup glory, the allegations of Raiola offering United’s most recognised entity to Manchester City and Barcelona – have somehow generated the current climax, where the manager and his match-day captain seem to have almost equal power within the United structure.
Indeed, for every Mourinho statement, Pogba is now given the chance to retort in public, as if he represents the Leader of the Opposition and the British media are suddenly devout to the ideals of impartiality. Perhaps that’s an indictment on the way journalism has devolved; sticking a quote under someone’s nose in the hope of getting an outraged response and subsequently an irresistible headline is becoming a disappointingly overused dirty trick.
Soccer Football – Premier League – Tottenham Hotspur vs Manchester United – Wembley Stadium, London, Britain – January 31, 2018 Manchester United’s Paul Pogba receives instructions from manager Jose Mourinho Action Images via Reuters/Andrew Couldridge EDITORIAL USE ONLY. No use with unauthorized audio, video, data, fixture lists, club/league logos or “live” services. Online in-match use limited to 75 images, no video emulation. No use in betting, games or single club/league/player publ
But even so, the case with Mourinho and Pogba is a particularly extreme one and creates the perception that there are at least two clear divisions within the club. Whereas Mourinho represents the official authority, Pogba vocalises the true underlying power – the many supporters disillusioned by style of play that want the team to move in a more ambitious direction, the board and owners who continue to reap the benefits of his commercial impact.
That’s how it’s subconsciously been billed anyway, and in some senses Mourinho only has himself to blame. Making Pogba matchday captain has further encouraged the press to interview him at every opportunity, and created an environment where he’s asked to respond to everything Mourinho’s said publicly and vice versa. The comment about being fined was certainly ill-advised, but perhaps that was the United gaffer’s thinking all along – give the 25-year-old enough rope and eventually he’ll hang himself, talk his way into Mourinho having justifications for dropping him.
But that logic only highlights the real danger of this increasingly destructive narrative – that it can have no happy conclusion, no compromise which allows both player and manager to settle their differences. It feels like the point of no return happened some time ago and the collision is now inevitable, like a self-destruct sequence that can’t be overridden. It’s just a case of when, rather than if, that moment comes to set the bomb off and shoot debris into every direction, probably causing a healthy supply of collateral damage in the process.
Soccer Football – Premier League – Brighton & Hove Albion v Manchester United – The American Express Community Stadium, Brighton, Britain – August 19, 2018 Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho speaks with Paul Pogba REUTERS/David Klein EDITORIAL USE ONLY. No use with unauthorized audio, video, data, fixture lists, club/league logos or “live” services. Online in-match use limited to 75 images, no video emulation. No use in betting, games or single club/league/player publications.
And that’s much worse news for Mourinho than Pogba, because the France international is becoming the much greater force in the United power structure. It’s rather incredible to think Sir Alex Ferguson once dispensed of David Beckham because he had grown into a greater commercial than footballing entity, such has been the dramatic transformation of the landscape of English football.
In a business sense, Pogba is worth far more to United than Mourinho – he’s the glamorous face of the brand, the social media influencer, the personality that convinces young children to demand United merchandise from their parents at Christmas – and the value of players in the transfer market has reached such a point that it’s so much easier and cheaper to replace the man in the dugout than the players who won’t listen to him, even if that man is indeed one of the best managers of his generation.
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Once again, Pogba is one of the most extreme cases of this, but that only makes the dangers more extreme as well. Even in the modern era, it’s hard to think of any instance where a single player has appeared to have as much power as the manager at a Premier League club and it’s hard to think of any instance where journalists have subsequently pitted captain against manager so easily, both seemingly willing to follow the script on the most-part.
It has become impossible to envisage a peaceful outcome that benefits both parties – this isn’t so much a case of underlying tensions, rather reality-tv-style vox pop spats – and the real concern isn’t who eventually wins this civil war (although the smart money’s on Pogba) but how much damage is done to United in the process.
Neither Pogba nor Mourinho will be able to wipe their hands clean of that once the dust finally settles.
Even though a four-at-the-back system yielded a brilliant 3-0 win and clean sheet against Manchester United just six days earlier, Tottenham Hotspur manager Mauricio Pochettino switched to a three-man defence for the trip to Watford on Sunday, and it ultimately backfired.
Spurs were looking to maintain their 100% start to the campaign when they made the short journey to Vicarage Road, and despite taking the lead through an Abdoulaye Doucoure own goal, two goals in seven second-half minutes from Troy Deeney and then Craig Cathcart condemned to defeat as the Manchester City and Liverpool bandwagons rolled on.
Toby Alderweireld and Jan Vertonghen started at the heart of the back four at Old Trafford and impressed, and despite the former looking as though throughout the summer that he wouldn’t be a Tottenham player by the end of the transfer window – even being linked with a move to link up with Jose Mourinho – he is and he looks set to be a key player for the north London outfit.
Given he was often preferred to the Belgian in the big games in the second-half of the 2017/18 campaign and after a fine 2018 World Cup for Colombia, Sanchez may well feel hard done by to find himself excluded, and perhaps that was one of the reasons why Pochettino decided to play three centre-backs against the Hornets.
The Argentine boss may well have a different mindset now though however with the 6ft 2in Sanchez struggling against Deeney, and you would feel that he will favour four at the back when league leaders Liverpool visit Wembley a week on Saturday, even if they have to deal with the fearsome trio of Sadio Mane, Roberto Firmino and Mo Salah.
So, Tottenham fans, what do you think your team’s best centre-back partnership is? Let us know by voting below…
Darren Moore was given the West Brom manager’s job permanently this summer after an impressive end to the Premier League season, although he was never likely to save the club from relegation to the Championship.
The Baggies have seemingly prepared for life in England’s second tier well and made eight acquisitions in total ahead of their return to possibly the most demanding league in world football.
With goalkeeper Ben Foster moving back to the Prem with Watford, Moore addressed the situation quickly and moved for Sam Johnstone in what turned out to be the most expensive signing of the summer for the West Midlands side at £6.5m, as well as Jonathan Bond on a free transfer from Reading.
Defenders Kyle Bartley, Conor Townsend and Tyrone Mears also came in on permanent deals to reinforce the squad.
Moore also used the loan market brilliantly, securing exciting youngsters Harvey Barnes from Leicester and Tosin Adarabioyo for the season. Finally, the 44-year-old boss secured surely his deal of the summer by convincing Newcastle to send Dwight Gayle, rated at £9m by Transfermarkt, to the Hawthorns on loan in return for Salomon Rondon going the other way.
So, West Brom fans, who do you think will turn out to be Moore’s signing of the summer? Have your say by voting in our poll below.
Steven Gerrard’s arrival at Rangers was seen as a good thing for Scottish football, as well as the Gers themselves. A big name in the game, the world would certainly be keen to monitor the former England captain in his first senior managerial role at Ibrox.
That, probably has been the case when talking about Scottish football on the whole, though his mere appointment in Glasgow is far from a quick-fix for the Light Blues. Now, that’s not to say that the Liverpool legend hasn’t had a positive impact on the club – he clearly has – and the importance of a return to the Europa League cannot be understated.
However, as was obvious against Celtic (though even games against Aberdeen and Motherwell), Rangers are still a work in progress. Now, that’s a logical conclusion (whether you agree with it or not) but the nature of the situation and pressure that’s on Rangers this season mean that recent comments from Kyle Lafferty are far from helpful.
Speaking to Northern Ireland radio station Cool FM (via the Daily Record), the Gers forward has insisted the club are fully focused on bringing home the 55 and that everyone in the Ibrox dressing room believes this will be the year Rangers win the Scottish Premiership title.
Clearly, Lafferty’s comments are well-intentioned and speak to the ambition coursing through the corridors in Glasgow, though put an unnecessary pressure on the club.
Winning the league title is a nigh-on impossible for Rangers this season. Though the problems behind the scenes at Celtic may put a dent in their armour, it’s clear that a side going through as much of a transition as Rangers are will take time to properly settle.
If Gerrard really is suggesting they can win the league, he’s buying into the pressure-cooker atmosphere at Rangers, one that has previously proven detrimental. Ambition is one thing sure, but adding that sort of burden could prove problematic, especially if Rangers’ pretty poor defensive record continues to cost them precious points.
Rangers are on a journey and an exciting one so looking for the finishing now seems somewhat overblown.
Leicester City supporters have been pretty downbeat in recent times after seeing their side suffer defeat in their final match prior to the international break.
Claude Puel’s men went into their clash with early pace-setters Liverpool last time out off the back of successive victories over Wolves and Southampton, and thus full of confidence heading into their meeting with the Merseyside giants. Yet first half goals from Sadio Mane and Roberto Firmino set the visitors on their way to all three points, and while Rachid Ghezzal got one back for the Foxes after the break, it wasn’t enough to inspire a Leicester comeback at the King Power Stadium.
As such, there have been many quiet Foxes fans up and down the country in recent times, several of whom are wondering what changes, if any, Puel should seek to make for their side’s trip to Bournemouth this afternoon.
And having served a three-match suspension following his red card against Wolves, the Frenchman absolutely must bring £18 million-rated striker Jamie Vardy (as per Transfermarkt) back into the starting eleven.
The 31-year-old netted the Foxes’ first goal of the new season in their 2-1 defeat at Manchester United, but more significantly he carried the goal-scoring threat at Old Trafford that night when he came off the substitute’s bench – they were a different side going forward when he led the line.
And while they managed to net twice against Southampton without Vardy a few weeks ago, they again struggled to create too many clear-cut opportunities against Liverpool last time out – this all despite having much of the ball and getting into some good positions.
Thus, it’s clear that they have been missing the instinct and presence of Vardy upfront, as although Kelechi Iheanacho is clearly a very talented striker, he doesn’t cause as many problems as his Leicester teammate, be it tenacity in chasing down lost causes, or indeed pace to help stretch backlines.
And against a Bournemouth side that haven’t always convinced defensively during their time in the Premier League, the former England international could flourish – in fact, he has netted three times against the Cherries in eight appearances so far in his career.
As such, despite playing well against Liverpool, the Foxes looked blunt in the final third and simply didn’t convert their territorial advantage into meaningful opportunities – they clearly missed Vardy.
And that is why, with the 31-year-old back from suspension, Puel simply must throw him straight back into the side to get the three points at the Vitality Stadium this afternoon.
Loads of Celtic fans have been reacting to some comments from Brendan Rodgers, and it’s fair to say they’re still behind the boss.
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Celtic fans have been incredibly frustrated by their start to the season, as the cracks in the squad were glaringly obvious during the transfer window, yet hardly anything was done to fix them.
The Hoops are desperate for a real commanding centre back, and the injury to loan signing Filip Benkovic on Sunday meant fans could only watch on in horror as the much-maligned Jack Hendry struggled once again in the defeat to Kilmarnock.
While there are plenty of concerns about the squad, fans aren’t giving up on Rodgers, and they’re loving his pre-St Johnstone comments.
“My message is I am privileged to be here. I love my work here. I love my challenges here. I’m looking forward to the next stage of the season to show our fighting qualities,” the former Liverpool boss said.
The 45 year-old has won the domestic treble twice since arriving at Celtic Park, and fans are not ready to give up on him yet.
Progression to the semi-final of the League Cup followed by a good result against Aberdeen this weekend would certainly lift everyone’s spirits, and the reactions to Rodgers’ comments have been overwhelmingly positive.
You can find some of the best Twitter reactions down below…