Premier League Report

Football World Stunned as FA Cup Game Abandoned After Collapse of Fabrice Muamba

2012-03-17T16:17:00.000-07:00

Bolton Wanderers midfielder, Fabrice Muamba, is fighting for his life after collapsing in the 41st minute of his teams FA Cup game against Tottenham Hotspur.

The match was abandoned after club doctors and paramedics tried to revive the 23-year-old star for ten minutes while lying on the pitch at a sold out White Hart Lane of 36,000 fans.

The 33 times capped English Under-21 is being treated by the Intensive Care Unit at the London Chest Hospital.

Muamba joined Wanderers for £5 million in 2008 after stints with Arsenal and Birmingham City.

Ian Dennis, of BBC 5Live, said spectators could see that a defibrillator was being used on the footballer.

"When the medical staff arrived his face was on the turf," he said.

"You could see them using a defibrillator and he was [electronically] charged on at least two occasions. Everyone could see Fabrice Muamba was fighting for his life.

"If he does pull through it will be down to the quick actions of the medics."
He added: “You had a situation which was very eerie. Obviously everybody could see that Fabrice Muamba was fighting for his life out on the pitch. Supporters of both sides were chanting his name.”

A statement confirming the incident was later released on the club website.

Bolton Wanderers can confirm that Fabrice Muamba has been admitted to the Heart Attack Centre at the London Chest Hospital where he is currently in a critically ill condition in intensive care.

No further information will be issued at this stage.

The club has requested the media to respect his family's privacy at this time.

Professional Footballers' Association chief executive Gordon Taylor said it was a "terrible thing to see for all the football family".

"This can happen on a pitch and [it is] one of the reasons why we insist all youngsters coming into the game have the ability to have heart screenings to avoid this happening," he said.

Premier League Chief Executive Richard Scudamore added: "The thoughts of the Premier League, its clubs and players are with Fabrice Muamba, his family and Bolton Wanderers.

"We would like to praise the players, match officials, coaching staff and medical teams of both clubs at White Hart Lane for their swift actions in attending Fabrice.

"The League would also like to commend the compassion shown by the fans of Bolton Wanderers and Tottenham Hotspur.

"We hope to hear positive news about Fabrice who is and has been a wonderful ambassador for the English game."

The incident will stun English soccer, it is the first such recorded incident at the highest level of the game on home soil. In 2003, Mark Vivian Foe collapsed and died on the pitch while playing for Cameroon in the Confederations Cup. The well liked midfielder was playing his club football for Manchester City at the time.

In 2007, 35-year-old Phil O'Donnell died after collapsing in a Scottish League match. Again in 2007, 22-year-old Antonio Puerta passed away after he too had suffered a heart attack whilst playing for Sevilla and in 2009 Daniel Jarque passed away after he too suffered a heart attack while in pre-season training with his club, Espanyol.

And over the last 10 years, the condition known as "Sudden Death Syndrome" has claimed the lives of professionals and amateurs alike.

There are many theories as to what causes the syndrome. Some experts feel that the players are being pushed to their limits as training techniques have evolved. Others feel that sports drinks have contributed also.

While many feel that players are now taking far too many supplements, and that their systems cannot handle the medication on top of the high intensity training.

A recent report on Sudden Death in Sport tells us;

Most sudden deaths in sport are caused by cardiovascular conditions. The cardiovascular benefits of exercise are well-established,and epidemiology studies suggest that long-term exercise programmes may reduce the risk of sudden death.

A few people are at risk of serious arrhythmia or sudden death with exercise. The cause of death varies with the age of participants; congenital structural abnormalities occur in younger age groups and coronary artery disease in older age groups. Identifying such abnormalities makes prevention possible.

Sudden death in sport remains uncommon, with an incidence of two cases per 100,000 subject years. Five in 100,000 athletes have a condition that might predispose them to serious cardiac problems, and of those at risk 10 percent (one in 200,000) may die suddenly or unexpectedly.

In 2005, FIFA commissioned an investigation into sudden death within sport. The report found that because young people play sport, the sudden death of one so young, often gains more media attention. It also found that 93 percent of deaths in athletic sport are associated with Sudden Death Syndrome.

It went on to say that these deaths are in most probability caused by a "silent cardiac problem" that the person was unaware of.

Then in 2011 football's governing body commissioned Colin Fuller of F-MARC (FIFA Medical Assessment and Research Centre) to come up with a risk management strategy to protect the health of footballers. There was no mention of making heart screening mandatory across the sport but it did recommend a flow chart to manage risk across the game.

There are several methods in preventing such tragedies, but the method used in Italy is the most favourable.

In 1971, the Italian Olympic Committee passed a decree that all professional sports athletes have to undergo a full medical every year. This was, however, mainly associated with health safeguards and making "doping" in sport a criminal offense.

They went on to do a study of over 33,000 athletes and found that professional athletes were twice as likely to suffer from cardiac arrest when compared to the normal populace. Most worrying, the average age of cardiac arrest death was calculated to just 23.

The Italian pre-participation screening involves almost 6 million athletes of all ages annually. This staggering figure accounts for roughly 10 percent of the entire Italian population.

Hence the preventative nature of the yearly medical which should pick up on such matters.

Recognizing that they would have to screen in much greater numbers, in 1996 the American Heart Association assembled a panel of respected experts in the field of heart failure with the view of developing a strategy towards the effective screening of athletes.

The panel recommended that all high school and college athletes should undergo a strict cardiovascular evaluation before athletic participation and that the test should be performed by a health care worker trained in the evaluation of cardiovascular disease and that theses screenings should be repeated every two years.

However, unlike Italy, there is no legal precedent to carry out these examinations.

The collapse of Fabrice Muamba is a sobering reminder of what is truly important in life and our thoughts and prayers go out to his family during this critical time.

Chelsea Were Right to Sack Andre Villa Boas, But...

2012-03-04T17:05:00.002-08:00

Andre Villas-Boas' short time as Chelsea manager has come to an end. Barely nine months after moving to the Blues amidst huge fanfare from Porto, the Portuguese has exited the club after Roman Abramovich terminated the young managers three-year contract.

In leaving, Villas-Boas has become eighth manager to part with the club since the Russian Billionaire, Abramovich, bought the club from Ken Bates in 2003 for £140 million.

The recriminations of the young manager's sacking have started almost immediately with Sir Alex Ferguson calling the removal "sad," Avram Grant telling Sky Sports News the move was somewhat expected after poor results and Robbie Savage telling BBC Sport that "the players and board" were to blame.

The truth, as ever, is somewhere in between.

Make no bones about it: Roman Abramovich and Chelsea moved mountains to bring Andre Villas-Boas to the club.

When all the compensation the Blues paid out is totted up, it comes to a cool £28 million. £15 million of that went to Porto for the 33-year-old's signature while the other £13 million went to Carlo Ancelotti and his back-room staff after their shameful sacking just one hour after the 2010-11 season ended.

Villas-Boas coming into the club was meant to signal a direction for a new-look Chelsea with the young coach coming in at the ground floor to build a project that would become the club's next great dynasty.

Many have pointed at Villas-Boas' youth and his relative coaching inexperience. This may be true at the highest levels of the game, where the Portuguese has only coached since 2009. However, the 33-year-old has always enjoyed a forensic love of football which can be traced back to his teens, where he was given a coaching role at Porto by Bobby Robson.

The then-16-year-old Villas-Boas was living in the same apartment block as the English coaching legend and initiated an exchange of letters with Robson after the youngster felt that the Englishman was not playing Domingos Paciencia enough.

Taking the letter in good heart, Robson asked the youth to back up his assertions which he duly did. He not only backed up his opinion but he also supplied a statistical dossier to further emphasize it so. So impressed was Robson that he immediately offered Villas-Boas a role coaching the youth teams at Porto.

From there, Villas-Boas' coaching career took off. At 17, he earned his full UEFA Coaching badges at Lilleshall. At 21, he was managing in international football, albeit with the British Virgin Islands, and by 22 he was coaching, scouting, analyzing and building dossiers for Jose Mourinho.

In short, Villas-Boas may only be 34, but he has been as immersed in football as the professionals he trains for almost the last 20 years.

His coaching credentials are not up for debate. Since moving into full-time management, he has guided a perennial relegation candidate away from the drop, Academica in 2009; and has won the Portuguese league, going the whole season unbeaten; the Portuguese Cup and the UEFA Cup all in one single season.

So when Roman Abramovich moved to sign the youngest ever coach to win a European trophy he did so full in the knowledge that he was buying a top-class coach.

There is, however, a huge difference between coaching and managing.
Chelsea as a club has been run on an extravagance by Roman Abramovich.

Since taking over in 2003, just nine years ago, he has spent over €1 billion in transfers of one kind or another. This kind of spend is obviously unsustainable and Andre Villas-Boas was brought in with a mandate to break that culture and bring in the new self-sustaining more expansive model.

Like the differences between coaching and managing, talking about and implementing change are two completely different animals.

No matter where change is brought in, the major factor to consider is that people are people. Some will embrace the change while others will resist. This is guaranteed to happen in every environment—especially in a small, tight-knit group like a football club.

The Change Process is something that all major companies, organisations and sports clubs will have to consider at one time or another. In 1976, a way of thinking about the process was developed by Beckhard and Harris at M.I.T.
At its most basic, change comes in three parts:

The Future: Where we would like to be;
The Present: Where we are at the moment;
The Transition: What we have to go through to get from here to there.

It was at this first building block in change that Andre Villas-Boas' Chelsea dream came undone.

He would have agreed upon the future with Roman Abramovich, but his analysis of the "present state" and of the factors needed to bring change and of those that could cause problems was seriously misguided.

Before Villas-Boas took over, the Blues had played the same basic formation for the last eight seasons. This was for two huge reasons:

It was successful;
Chelsea had the players to suit the formation.

Previous managers had come to Chelsea with the hopes of expanding upon the Blues' physical approach to the game. However, each and every one reverted to the system that suited the players best.

The main reason for each manager having to revert back to this tried and trusted system of 4-5-1 is that the club, through their director of football and not the manager, have been in charge of all purchases at the club.

In short, the director of football, through bad management at senior level, was bringing in players that suited the old system the club and manager wanted to move away from.

This meant that when results went badly and players invariably became unhappy, the manager was forced to revert to the old system to keep his job.

Take this season for a perfect example.

Andre Villas-Boas wanted to move away from the Blues' 4-5-1 and move towards a vibrant 4-3-3. Chelsea then spent over £70 million in transfers on eight players. Of these, six were under 20 and were obviously for the future, while the other two, Mata and Meireles, did not fit the profile of the players the manager needed to implement his changes.

Instead of recognizing that he did not have the tools at his disposal to make wholesale change, Villas-Boas pushed ahead with his philosophical vision and tried to play square pegs in round holes.

The first rule of football is that it is a simple game. Play your best players in their best positions and things will usually work out, especially when you have a team like Chelsea at your disposal.

From there, Villas-Boas dropped players like Frank Lampard, Ashley Cole and Michael Essien and fell out with players like Alex and Nicholas Anelka. He found it impossible to get the best out of players like Fernando Torres.

The problem with Andre Villas-Boas pushing on with his vision for the future is that he did not communicate this to his players properly.

He should have started out with a meeting with the players, where he would have outlined his plan for the future and that how each and every one of them were a key part in setting up the next dynasty, thus ensuring key stakeholders with an interest in how the club develops.

These roles are normally filled by experienced staff that others look up to and should have been filled by key experienced players like Lampard, Terry, Cole, Drogba and Anelka. The next steps for change are communicating to every affected member and personalize the case for change.

From there, the key is to recognize which players need to be motivated and which need to feel valued and to deal with the conflicts through an open discussion.

Change is incredibly hard to implement when it is done properly, but even then there are always four stages:

Shock;
Defence;
Acceptance;
Action.

The first phase, shock, is hard to initially communicate because there are always vested interests in every organisation. In this current Chelsea team, or any other team with the same profile, it is the experienced players. 11 of the current crop have been with the club since Jose Mourinho's time and basically like the formation that suits their playing styles.

In this phase, managers have to deal with complaining, anger and withdrawal. To combat this one-on-one and group meetings are essential. Villas-Boas' first team meetings took place prior to the Napoli defeat in late February.

The next phase is defence, where errors occur and resistance to change grows greatest where past patterns of behaviour, formations and play (in this case) become overvalued and there is constant talk of the "good old days."

This is the most dangerous part of change for a manager, especially in the current media-driven climate. The best way to combat this resistance is to provide factual information, avoid speculation and to not let rumours of dressing-room dissent spread.

The problem with this phase for Villas-Boas is that he had already mishandled phase one and, perhaps petulantly, allowed players' criticisms to get to him and then dropped them in the face of the fact that they are better players than the ones he was choosing.

A quick and simple example of this was Lampard, Cole and Essien all being dropped for the Champions League game against Napoli with Meireles, Bosingwa and Malouda.

Unfortunately for Andre Villas-Boas, he never got the chance to move onto the last two phases, as he was relieved of his duties following Chelsea's 1-0 loss to West Brom.

If anything, had Andre Villas-Boas taken his own advice, he might have been all right. On joining the Blues on June 22 2011, he had this to say at his first press conference.

"Don't expect something from one man," he told the watching media.
"Expect us to create a group dynamic of everybody getting together, with the fans getting together, with people getting excited with the motivation that is in and around us. In the new way of communicating and the new leadership - this is the most important thing.
"It is not about my arrival. It is about the continuous success of this club.
"Let's reflect on the success of the past six years at this club and what we have achieved and now what we can achieve in the next six years again. There is no doubt that the challenge for me is to keep winning."

Indeed.

There is little doubt that Chelsea FC has handled this entire situation quite badly.

At no stage did it appear that Andre Villas-Boas was getting any kind of support from above, even though the club obviously dictated his transfer policy for him.

As the front-line manager, he should have never been put in the position where he was implementing change upon the culture of the club by himself. One wonders who was deciding upon the transfer targets and what their particular vision and philosophy was.

Even if you take into account that all the players were being bought for the future, you have to ask: for whose team?

In the end, Avram Grant, Robbie Savage and Sir Alex Ferguson are all right.

The players, the board and the manager are to blame for the current situation at Chelsea both on and off the pitch. Since Andre Villas-Boas is the one in most control, the buck eventually stops with him.

Great coach he may be—his "work at Porto cannot be ignored" as far as coaching is concerned—but his work at Chelsea is forgettable as far as management is concerned.

His sacking was harsh because he is a young manager with huge potential. If the world is just, he will have learned a great deal from his nine months at Chelsea, but there is little doubt that he mishandled this entire episode, just as Brian Clough mishandled the Leeds job in 1974.

And we all know how that turned out. Disaster it may have been, but it helped shape the man who guided Nottingham Forest to two European Cups in 1979 and 1980.

If Andre Villas-Boas has learned one half in nine months of what Brian Clough learned in 44 days at Leeds United, he'll be a very good manager indeed. All he has to do now is learn change.

Luis Suarez, Patrice Evra Racist Comment Ban: Timeline of the Entire Saga

2012-03-04T13:04:00.001-08:00

The Luis Suarez race comment saga looked like it was coming to its end on February 11 when Liverpool traveled to Old Trafford to take on Manchester United in the latest game of the two clubs' great rivalry. All Suarez had to do was shake Patrice Evra's hand. Instead he blanked the French star, and the whole affair looked like it was to begin anew.

Suarez's actions drew wide condemnation from all over the football world with Sir Alex Ferguson labeling the player a "disgrace" while others wondered how Liverpool FC could have let this happen.

The ugly affair began on October 15, 2011 when Manchester United traveled to Anfield to take on Liverpool in the latest chapter of one of English football's great rivalries...

From there, football took a back seat as United's left back and French international Patrice Evra alleged that Luis Suarez had made racist comments against him.

The FA decided to investigate, and on November 17 the governing body charged Suarez for racially abusing the player. One month later and five days before Christmas, the FA gave Suarez an eight-game ban and fined him £40,000 pending an appeal by the club.

With the saga looking like it's almost over following Liverpool FC's and Luis Suarez's apologies over the missed handshake, we look at the chronicle of events from the day Luis Suarez first racially insulted Patrice Evra on October 15 to the day the Liverpool striker refused to shake the United player's hand on February 11 and the immediate aftermath from the following incredible day.

To read the rest of this article, click here.

Shortsighted Celtic Fans Gloat as Rangers Edge Closer to Going Out of Business

2012-02-20T12:51:00.001-08:00

On St. Valentine’s Day, Glasgow Rangers FC entered administration with the once great club owing somewhere in the region of £75 million to £100 million. This weekend their Old Firm rivals, Celtic, were given their first real chance to revel in the demise of their greatest enemy. Sad to say, they did not disappoint.

Rangers capped off the worst week in the clubs 140 year history by losing 1-0 at home to Kilmarnock. The ignominy of such a desperate defeat really put the icing on the cake of what has been a trialling week to put it mildly.

As the Gers week was coming to an end, Celtic and their fans travelled to Edinburgh to take on, another of Scotland’s great clubs, Hibernian, full in the knowledge that three points would all but guarantee another SPL title now that Rangers have been docked 10 points for entering administration.

The Bhoys hammered Pat Fenlon’s relegation threatened side 5-0 to move Celtic 17 points clear at the top of the Scottish Premier League.

Celtic’s fans, perhaps, given their history together, understandably, took great glee in expressing some schadenfreude at Rangers expense.

Banners were hung from all corners of Easter Road celebrating the demise of Rangers title hunt this year and perhaps their demise altogether.

One banner, stretching across over 50 seats read “We’re having a party as R*NG£RS die,” while others were simply emblazoned with “HMRC” across Irish tricolours and as sponsors of fake Celtic jerseys that surfed the jubilant crowd.

Why Celtic fans would use an asterix instead of the ‘a’ in Rangers is beyond me, perhaps they could not bring themselves to write their rivals name.

However, given that the rivalry between the two teams is so entrenched in sectarian hatred towards each other it is somewhat ironic to see “Her Royal Majesty’s Revenue and Customs” written across Irish flags given the history shared by the clubs.

To say that there is hatred between the supporters of Celtic and Rangers would be something of an understatement in every meaning of the word. They don’t hate each other, they despise each other. While they are a great many rivalries in the world of sport it is hard to imagine so entrenched in venomous bile towards the other.

Since their formations, Rangers and Celtic, in 1872 and 1887 respectively, have battled for the hearts and minds of supporters both near and far from Glasgow. Rightly or wrongly both clubs have become symbols to their respective following. Rangers, the Gers, have come to represent the Protestant community while Celtic has come to represent the Roman-Catholic community.

Ironically, neither side is especially associated with Scotland as far as flags and banners are concerned as Celtic’s fans have taken to waving Irish flags of green, white and orange, a symbol of republicanism and the IRA during “the Troubles” in Northern Ireland while Rangers fans have taken to waving the Union Jack flag, which is also a symbol of Unionists and the diametric opposites of “republicans” in Northern Ireland.

There are, of course, historic reasons for the split between the two sets of fans and clubs.

Northern Irish Protestants of today are direct descendants of Scots who settled in Northern Ireland in the early 1600′s when King James VI organized the “Plantation of Ulster” whereby his Scottish supporters were rewarded with land in the province which had been taken from taken from Hugh O’Neill and Hugh O’Donnell. This action, in turn, led to the “Flight of the Earls” and another seminal moment in Irish history.

With, the previously uncontrolled land of Ulster now firmly in the hands of English and Scottish immigrants they set about creating farms and villages and trying to convert Gaelic speaking Catholics to Protestantism.

However, the gulf in language, as neither group spoke the others tongue, resulted in this conversion being an unmitigated disaster.

From there, it comes as no surprise to find that war broke out quite frequently during the mid 1600′s with both sides committing atrocities upon the other.

By 1653, following a rebellion known as “The War of the Three Kingdoms” there were no catholic land owners left in an Ulster where 80 percent of the population was indigenous Catholics.

In the late 1600′s Scotland suffered a famine whereby thousands of people then fled to Ulster. This mass migration lasted for over 25 years and by 1720 the catholic population of Ulster was now in the minority.

Relations between the two groups improved somewhat over the next 140 years with people now openly calling themselves Irish-Scots or vice versa and in general Ulster was quite prosperous when compared with the rest of Ireland.

All that was to change with the Irish Famine between 1845 and 1849.

The main crop in Ireland at the time, potato, failed and as blight, bad weather, impossible living conditions, landowners shipping good food out of the country and a Whig government that seemed indifferent to the suffering the population of the country was faced with two choices; stay and take your chances with dying or leave and take your chances with living.

People left the country in droves and settled right across the world. 500,000 travelled to Britain with huge communities sprouting up almost overnight in cities like Liverpool, Manchester, London, Birmingham and Glasgow. Over one million people fled to America alone with one in seven dying on the “coffin ships” on the voyage over. In the end, the famine accounted for an estimated 800,000 lives with another 1.5 million people emigrating alone. Thus, in the space of just four years, Ireland’s population dropped from an estimated eight million to 6.5 million and has been dropping ever since.

The problem with Britain, when the emigrants arrived was that it was just entering a period of recession and all of a sudden there was a mass of people who were literally willing to work for food alone never mind reduced wages.

As many Irish people took jobs all over the country, but especially in Glasgow where a distrust of the Irish populace existed from recent history in Ireland and in Scotland with the Reformation, there was an obvious division between the indigenous and the immigrants or the Protestants and the Catholics if you like.

40 years later and with the divide in Glasgow between the two groups visible Rangers and Celtic were born.

Celtic, created as a charitable organisation by Brother Waifrid to improve morale amongst Catholics, immediately became a way for Irish-Scot’s to express their Rashness whereas Rangers, under the stewardship of John Ure Primrose, in the early 1900′s, immediately became the voice for overt anti-Catholic institutions.

In short, the two clubs became important symbols to two very different sections of society that had been in one kind of conflict or another with each other for over 300 years.

Derek Johnstone, ex-Rangers player and Rangers commentator was slightly less subtle when describing the difference between the supporters.”It’s all about bigotry,” he said. “If you are a Roman Catholic then the only team to follow is Celtic and, of course, if you are a Protestant it is Rangers…”

To further emphasize this point, ex-Celtic player Peter Grant basically mirrored Johnstone’s controversial views when he said “there’s definitely Celtic areas and there’s Rangers areas. There’s pubs you’d go into and pubs you wouldn’t go into and that’s both as supporters and players. There’s definitely that divide and there’s an acceptance there.”

Most sports clubs are lucky if they have a rivalry that goes back 20, 50 or even 100 years but Celtic’s and Rangers differences go back almost 400.

Since the two clubs were formed in the last decade of the 1800′s they have played each other an amazing 397 times. They have become a cornerstone in the tourism industry, never mind the sporting world, where they have helped contribute almost £1 billion to the Scottish economy in the last 20 years alone.
The relationship shared by the two clubs is almost unique in world sport as not only are they are heavily reliant on each other but the entire Scottish footballing family is also supported by the big two.

Take the SPL for example, at present Rangers owe around £75 million to £100 million depending upon which report you read and Dunfermline AFC some £80,000.

£80,000 is not a small amount of money but when a club issues a statement saying they are worried they will not receive the said sum you have to stand up and take account of what an impact Rangers going out of business would have on the league as a whole.

This immediately makes you understand that the wider impact of Rangers ceasing to exist will have severe ramification for all in Scotland’s football family.

The SPL is, at the moment, a 12 team league with each team playing each other a possible four times. I say a possible four times because the SPL employs a strange fixture system whereby each team plays each other three times, resulting in 33 matches. The league is then split in two, a top six and bottom six, and the teams in each side play five games, one against each other, to bring the game total to 38.

The main reasoning, as far as I can see it, is so that each team from the remaining ten gets to play Rangers and Celtic at least six times a season and thus guarantee a sell out crowd each time.

Ground wise, the capacity of teams in the SPL ranges from 7,500 with Inverness to 22,000 at Aberdeen. Celtic guarantee 60,000 each week at Celtic Park with Rangers pulling in 50,000 at Ibrox. The two Glasgow teams are easily the giants of the domestic game with all other teams sharing a symbiotic relationship with them.

Their closest relationship, however, is with each other.
No, Celtic do not need Rangers to succeed as their Chief Executive recently said, but they do need their rivals, to survive, to push them to greater glories because without Rangers in the league there is simply no other team to compete with.

No one else can match Celtic in terms of wages, structure or support, only Rangers.

Without them the league is in dire straits. Celtic, who only recorded a profit of £180,000 last year, in a league with Rangers, has already gone on record to say they are financially sound but if their profits are so low one shudders at the rest of the SPL.

In a 2009/10 report by Price Waterhouse Cooper, only two teams in the SPL were operating on a positive financial footing, Falkirk and Hamilton.

This speaks volumes about the levels of debt in the SPL and how losing Rangers could be catastrophic. To further exemplify this recent revelations that the SPL TV may become null and void if Rangers are relegated have really thrown the cat amongst the pigeons.

This would have a double whammy effect on every team in the SPL, Celtic included, regardless of their statements that the club is on a financial sound footing. If Rangers are relegated, as some now expect, and are found guilty of “financial doping” then every team in the SPL will lose out on playing the giants three times a season and with it at least three full houses.

Then on top of that each club will lose out of television revenue which will also cause them to curtail further spending in a league that is already struggling to escape debt despite being one of the most watched in Europe.

Celtic’s fans may not like to hear this but they are joined at the hip with Rangers, and they both share an umbilical with the rest of the league.

Each clubs immediate survival is not in question but should Rangers cease to exist or cease to offer competition then every clubs footballing future comes under scrutiny, Celtic’s included.

Without their rival, Celtic will never compete at the highest level in Europe again and they will drift further off the pace as far as European competition is concerned. Without Rangers, Celtic will canter to almost every SPL title without fail and they won’t even need to sign top class players to do so. Without Rangers, Celtic will have no derbies and Glasgow will have no football tourism worth speaking about.

They will be able to achieve this by marginally spending more than their chief rivals who could turn out to be Hearts or the last team to win a Scottish League title, other than Rangers or Celtic, Aberdeen. The Dons were the last club to challenge the elite in Scotland when they won the title in 1985. Since then every title has gone to Glasgow without a challenge such is the gulf in finances between them and the rest.

The time has come for Celtic and Rangers rivalry to begin anew. One based of football rather than sectarianism.

As Rangers future hangs in the balance, each set of fans and members of each club must ask themselves; would we have achieved as much without our rivals?

Would Celtic have won the European Cup in 1967 without Rangers pushing them all the way to the league title?

Would Rangers celebrate the “nine in a row” without Celtic?

Would either team be able to enjoy the pleasures one can only understand after a derby win over your greatest rival without them?

It is here and now that fans have to recognise that what happened in the past is gone. Time has moved on. Life, through a strange particular quirk of faith, has given them the opportunity to support a team with a back history that would make for epic reading never mind viewing.

To put it simply, Celtic need Rangers as much as Rangers need Celtic.
But when all that is said and done the fans of each support eleven men who chase a bag of air around a field.

Life is too short to take sport too seriously. It can be a valuable symbol. It can inspire whole nations, but it is not worth fighting over.

Man United 2-1 Liverpool: Kenny Dalglish's Full Interview With Sky Sports Geoff Shreeves

2012-02-11T09:24:00.000-08:00

Kenny Dalglish in his after match interview with Geoff Shreeves from Sky Sports said his team deserved credit after giving United a 2-0 lead. He said, "I thought that, obviously, with the two goals coming as close as they did that it made it really difficult for us to get anything from the game.

"To the boys credit they got one back when Luis knocked one over the line from a free kick and then De Gea has a good save. Overall, I think they were the better side but you'd expect that with them at home.

"Five minutes, two goals. It gave us a mountain to climb."

Shreeves then asked, "Did you have a view on the incident just before half time when Luis Suarez was through and Rio Ferdinand got there, Who got the first touch on the ball, we still can't decide?

The Liverpool boss replied in good humour, "well if ye have 24 cameras here and 34 repeats and you can't decide then there's no chance for me to have a valid opinion."

He then added, "I thought maybe he nudged the first one, but I don't know if Ferdinand played the ball first or not."

The conversation then moved onto Dalglish's substitutions with the interviewer saying "they had a terrific effect" and asking"what were you trying to change?"

"We were trying to get back into the game," he replied, "and everybody just needed a wee change and sometimes they work and sometimes it doesn't. We scored a goal but still lost the game.

"We left ourselves with a mountain to climb and we couldn't get over it."

With all the questions on the match all but answered, Shreeves moved to the obvious one and asked "As you know the football won't dominate the headlines tomorrow. Firstly, your reaction to Luis Suarez refusing to shake Patrice Evra's hand and did you have an inkling that he was going to do that?

"I never knew he never shook his hand," Dalglish answered.

"He refused to take his hand," Shreeves probed.

Dalglish, beginning to get unhappy with the line of questioning replied, "I'll take your word for it. But I don't know. I wasn't there. I never saw it. That is contrary to what I was told."

"But now that I have told you that he did do it Kenny, your reaction to that?" said Shreeves still looking for his answer.

"Well, we'll ask him and we'll take it from there.

"Do you think you have to take a serious look at his refusal to shake his hand and the way it subsequently set the tone for elements of what happened here today?

"I think you're very severe," he told Shreeves before adding, "and I think you're bang out of order for blaming Luis Suarez for anything that happened here today. "I think predominately both sets of fans behaved really well. They had a bit of banter between each other - no problem. Right, how many bookings was there?" he said turning the question on the interviewer.

Shreeves coolly answered, "Kenny, I'm not not talking about the fans. I wasn't asking about that, I was..." before Dalglish cut him off repeatedly asking "how many bookings was there?

"Kenny, I'm not talking about the fans," the interviewer answered.

"How many was there?" the Liverpool boss demanded.

"A couple of bookings Kenny," answered Shreeves. "Right okay, you know you know Manchester United Liverpool games,that's not bad."

"Yes, but Kenny," Shreeves pushed, "you also know about the controversy in the tunnel. The police were called and the stewards were called before and after the game because of the tension during the game and a lot of that was down to the fact that they didn't shake hands."

"You know something else? asked Dalglish. "You see when we had the game, the FA Cup tie, right, because there was no 24 hour news channel in the build up to the game nothing like this happened."

"So now, you're blaming the news channel? retorted Shreeves.

"No, said Dalglish growing more and more unhappy as the interview progressed, "I'm just saying that it was a bit tight getting through there [the tunnel] but I didn't see anything. I was here. Right. So if you want to know what happened in there ask somebody else who was there because I wasn't. Okay."

The conversation ended with Shreeves thanking Dalglish for the interview.

Arsenal 7-1 Blackburn: 7 Things We Learned from the Gunners' Win

2012-02-04T02:38:00.000-08:00

Arsenal have moved back into Champions League contention after a stunning seven-goal haul against a very poor Blackburn Rovers squad at the Emirates.

Robin van Persie claimed a hat-trick, young starlet Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain bagged a brace with Mikel Arteta and Thierry Henry scoring one each as a rampant Gunners took full advantage over a 10-man Blackburn Rovers team.

The game, played at 13:00 to help Arsenal fans with traffic congestion as the Victoria Tube Line was closed, started off frantically with Robin van Persie scoring after just 90 seconds. Blackburn equalized through a barnstorming free kick from Morten Gamst Pederson, his 10th free kick since August 2005, but after Gael Givet was sent away, there was only ever going to be one winner.

Here we look at seven things we learned from the mauling...

1. Robin van Persie is Simply Brilliant

While Robin van Persie may have looked like he had one in the oven as he carried the match-winning ball up his jersey after the game, the only pregnant thing about the Dutch striker are the pauses between his goals.

With this hat trick, he only became the fourth Arsenal player to score 20-plus goals in a single Premier League season.

He may have only scored in 14 of 24 Premier League games so far, but Van Persie has scored a stunning 22 goals and contributed a healthy eight assists.
To put that in Fantasy Football terms, he has given an amazing 180 points to your team, if you had him...

His form over the last 13 months has simply been phenomenal and it is no surprise to see many now rating the Arsenal striker as the third-best player in Europe behind Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.

Will he sign that new shiny contract though?

2. Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain: 2012, The Year of the Ox?

Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, the 18-year-old kid from Portsmouth, is already an Arsenal favourite.

The youngster, signed in August for a staggering £12 million, has perhaps been forced into first-team action rather more quickly than many at Arsenal had planned. However, in his 12 appearances so far, he has shown such an incredible level of maturity and good decision-making that the team almost miss him when he is not playing.

Gunners fans reacted angrily when Arsene Wenger took the youth off early against Manchester United after yet another good performance. He is fast becoming one of the only shining lights of this stop-start season for Arsenal.
So far he has played just 12 games, but he has scored four goals, including his double today.

Definitely one for the future, but we've all heard that before about almost every kid ever to make the breakthrough at Arsenal.

Will the Ox be any different?

3. Paul Robinson Does Not Like Playing Against Arsenal

If you could look past Robin van Persie's and Theo Walcott's healthy showing of man love as they celebrated the Dutchman's hat-rick of goals and the Englishman's hat-rick of assists you could see Paul Robinson on his knees pleading with his defence.

This is a position that has become second nature to Robinson when playing against Arsenal.

If there is any goalkeeper and any team who are the perfect fodder for Arsenal to play against, it is Robinson and Blackburn.

The stats back it up...

Paul Robinson has conceded an amazing 53 goals against Arsenal whilst playing in the Premier League. More than any other keeper.

The 7-1 mauling was the 11th time that Robinson has conceded more than three goals in a single match against the Gunners.

Most withering of all, despite scoring seven goals, Arsenal only had eight shots on goal.

4. Despite a 7-1 Win, the Gunners Haven't Turned the Corner Just Yet...

There are so many positives for Arsenal fans to take out of this game that it is almost too easy to get carried away.

When all is said and done, the Gunners won 7-1 against one of the worst Premier League teams of all time.

The positives are good and should be taken for what they are—a very good day at the office.

However, at 1-0 and at 1-1, Arsenal's midfield and defence looked quite shaky and while they may never have actually been on the ropes, the nervous tension in the air could have been cut with a knife.

This current incarnation of Arsene Wenger's philosophy are very much a work in progress but they are severely imbalanced at the back and need strengthening across midfield if they are to move back into being considered title contenders.

For the moment, they are where they should be—on the cusp of a Europa
League position, but as push comes to shove, Chelsea, Spurs and Liverpool may just have too much for this team to handle.

5. When Will Gunners' Fans Protest Again?

As attendances continue to fall, certain supporter groups at Arsenal had decided to show their outrage with the management by staging a black bag protest at the Emirates today.

The protest was to highlight two issues:
1) falling attendances caused by poor team displays;
2) to try and pressurise the board into spending more money to strengthen the team.

Last year the Gunners made profits of over £50 million but a distinct failure to invest intelligently has seen the team drop from the Champions League, projecting them to potentially miss out on Europe altogether.

Missing out on Europe would also come with missing out on the massive finances and riches the Champions League offers, a potential £30 million plus.
The protest never really got the chance to happen today as Robin van Persie fired the Gunners ahead after just over one minute and then Arsenal went on the rampage and scored another six.

One thing is for sure, though: The protests may have been muted today, but they have not gone away.

6. More Than Ever, Steve Kean Looks Doomed

You can make excuses that Blackburn were unlucky, that they hit the post, missed sitters, scored goals that weren't offside, conceded goals that were offside and so on and so on, but a seven-goal mauling rips right through the heart of any excuse.

Quite frankly, there is nowhere left to hide for Steve Kean.
The biggest criticism of Steve Kean this season is not just Blackburn's lowly position in the English Premier League; it is the very fact that Rovers have not managed to keep one clean sheet all season.

Now, Kean faces the potential of the rest of the season without his captain and best defender, Christopher Samba, but this week he also OK'd the cancellation of Ryan Nelsen's contact.

The 34-year-old defender was immediately swapped his relegation battle with Rovers for a title chase with Tottenham Hotspur.

While Nelsen's best days may be behind him, there is little doubt that the New Zealander was the most influential voice at Ewood Park. It is worth noting that the last time Blackburn kept consecutive clean sheets, Nelsen was captaining the team.

Losing one player of such influence is bad enough. Losing two is nothing less than sinful.

For a perfect example, all Steve Kean had to do was look across at Arsene Wenger as the Gunners boss lost both Samir Nasri and Cesc Fabregas this summer full in the knowledge that neither player will ever fully be replaced.

7. Arsenal FC: Seven Games to Define a Season

The Gunners next seven fixtures read as...

Sat 11 Feb - Sunderland v Arsenal (EPL)

Wed 15 Feb - AC Milan v Arsenal (UCL)

Sat 18 Feb - Sund/Midd v Arsenal (FAC)

Sun 26 Feb - Arsenal v Tottenham (EPL)

Sat 3 Mar - Liverpool v Arsenal (EPL)

Tues 6 Mar - Arsenal v AC Milan (UCL)

Mon 12 Mar - Arsenal v Newcastle (EPL)

There are no two ways around it; Arsenal's next seven fixtures are about as tough as they could get, yet there is always optimism.

Sunderland are the form team in the EPL and have taken more points (7-2-2 record) than every other team since Martin O'Neill took over in December. AC Milan are perennial Champions League contenders while Spurs, Liverpool and Newcastle are all battling it out with the Gunners for the European spaces.

Looking ahead, it is very conceivable that Arsenal could easily pass Milan to the quarterfinals of the UCL, but taking full points from the four EPL games during this period will be an almost impossible task, especially given current form.

The best I can predict is a possible five to eight points from the 12 points available, which may not be enough come the end of the season with progress in the Champions League and the FA Cup, unless Middlesbrough beat Sunderland this Wednesday.

When all is said and done, the 7-1 win was very much needed, but it might only paper over the cracks before the real nitty-gritty starts next week...

2011 January Transfer Window: Day by Day Guide to Every Single Transfer

2012-02-01T09:19:00.000-08:00

While the 2011 January Transfer Window may have been no where near as compelling, exciting or as interesting as the summer transfer window. It is undoubtedly one of the most important parts of the season.

Struggling teams are given a second chance to put records straight. While clubs with ambitions of winning trophies can really make a huge statement by either taking key players from rivals or by signing that one player who may turn out to be the one who gets them over the finishing line.

Here we take a quick look at every single transfer and offer some analysis on what could be the key moves this winter, or indeed this season.

Click here to read more.

Frank Lampard Has No Future at Chelsea Under the Misfiring Andre Villa Boas

2012-01-08T15:58:00.000-08:00

Frank Lampard's future at Chelsea under Andre Villa Boas has been up for debate since the start of the season. As his manager puts his own personal stamp on the club and shifts the shape of the team in favour of his own footballing philosophies it looks like the England international will be surplus to requirements at Stamford Bridge.

The soon to be 34-year-old midfielder has seemingly struggled in his 34-year-old managers 4-3-3 system this term, and if rumours are to be believed the club legend is now available for transfer.

It has been an amazing fall from grace for Lampard. Since joining the Blues from West Ham for £11 million in 2001 he has been never less than brilliant, every single season.

He had made breaking from deep an artform and his goal scoring exploits are such that he has a better strike rate than many strikers operating in the game today. Indeed, if you look at his stats you can see that he has scored 123 goals in 361 games and contributed 90 assists in the Premier League over the last ten years, a quite remarkable rate for a midfielder. Across all competitions he has scored 179 goals in 534 games with 114 assists.

While his goal scoring prowess is remarkable it is probably his physical prowess that is at the centre of all that is good about Lampard.

If you take a look at Robin van Persie's statistics you see that the Arsenal striker has only averaged around 24 games a season for Arsenal, up until this last year, since 2004. Whereas a quick glance at Lampard reveals that the player has only twice played less than 35 games in a Premier League season of 38 and even then he managed to play 24 games, equal to the Arsenal striker.

However, Lampard's statistics become all the more amazing when you add in cup and Champions League matches. Here the player averages 51 games a season, this includes an amazing 63 game haul in the 2006/07 season when Chelsea finished 2nd to Manchester United in the Premier League and won both the League and FA Cups. Add in nine internationals for England and you have the player playing a phenomenal 72 games in one season.

Having established that Lampard is a player with a goal scoring knack that few other midfielders or strikers can compare with and that he is a physical freak regarding injury and fitness we can now look at him as a player.

He boasts a very good first touch, has a great engine, and reads the game remarkably well - especially going forward. Each and every Chelsea manager since 2001 has built his team around the strengths of his key midfielder be they Claudio Ranieri, Jose Mourinho, Luis Felipe Scolari or Carlo Ancelotti.

Each manager has used similar systems and shape to get the very best out of the now 33-year-old where the pro's of his game have been taken advantage of to a huge degree while the cons of his game have been covered by other players.

The best examples of this are Jose Mourinho's preferred 4-2-3-1 formation or Carlo Ancelotti's 4-4-2-Diamond formation where Lampard was utilised just behind the main strikers in a role where he could break into the box with aplomb.

These formations allowed Lampard the ability to merge with the attack while the team were going forward and also afforded the team the full knowledge that the England international would drop deep to help his team out when they needed it most.

It is a highly disciplined role which requires huge tactical knowledge and awareness of the shape of his team mates at all times because a wrong run forwards or backwards could end up with either section of the team becoming outnumbered quite easily. When you look at how many times this has happened to the Blues since 2001 and how much success they have enjoyed you realise that Lampard is far more than just a goal scorer.

As a central midfielder Lampard does not fit the bill of an old-fashioned player in that particular position. He cannot dictate the ebb and flow of a game at the highest level through passing and positioning. It must also be said though that in Lampard's ten years at Chelsea, the Blues have never had a player of that type at the club and they have built a system that has surrounded the strengths of all of their players.

Andre Villa Boas, upon joining the club in June for a world record fee of £15 million for a manager, quickly established that he wanted to change the shape and system at the club by moving for Tottenham Hotspur's Luka Modric.

Modric is exactly the kind of player to dictate games. The main problem here is that it now seems that Andre Villa Boas has decided that Frank Lampard cannot play beside such a player and that he is now being pigeon holed as "just" a goal scoring midfielder.

There is so much more to Lampard as a player than just goals and he is one of the most disciplined midfielders playing in the EPL today in terms of positioning, work rate and following orders.

Earlier this season Villa Boas experimented with Lampard at the base of his preferred 4-3-3, he then moved the player further forward and replaced him with Meireles at the base. In each position the player put in excellent performances.

The major turning point in the Lampard's relationship with Villa Boas seems to have happened in the 3-1 defeat to Manchester United in September where the player was unceremoniously substituted at half time with his team trailing 3-1.

Chelsea using Villa Boas' 4-3-3 formation were out run through midfield and bypassed on the wings as United exposed their defensive frailties. Lampard paid the price for his manager setting the team up wrong and in the second half Villa Boas utilised a 4-2-3-1 formation with Nicolas Anelka replacing the England midfielder.

It was a huge statement of intent by the new Chelsea boss as not only did he take off his talismanic midfielder, after getting his tactics wrong, he then used the formation that perhaps utilises his midfielders strengths to their best, with him off the pitch.

Lampard was then dropped the following week against Swansea before returning with a hat trick against Bolton in a 5-1 win in October.

From there the relationship seems to have soured somewhat as the before ever present Lampard has now only played the full 90 minutes twice in Chelsea's last eight games and those were against relegation candidates Wolves and Wigan.

While you can read a number of things from Lampard being dropped from the first XI over the last eight games, only one thing can be taken from Andre Villa Boas' comments after Lampard's late winner against Wolves on January 2.
When asked by Match of the Day what he thought of Lampard's winning contribution the manager tellingly avoided naming Lampard in person and referred to the strength of mind of the squad instead.

MOTD; "Frank Lampard did what Frank Lampard has been doing for the last decade and popped up with a valuable goal. [Is he] still a valuable member of your squad?"

AVB; "Yeah, well it's always been like that.

"I always keep saying the team unity and team spirit is fantastic and it is much more important than individual spirit and I think it's important for the team to continue to produce for each other no matter who scores."

This short exchange of less than 80 words speaks volumes of where Villa Boas sees Lampard both as a player and more importantly as a person. His frank refusal, no pun intended, to acknowledge the midfielders contribution shows that their has been a breakdown in communication and that Andre Villa Boas would probably be happier with Lampard out of Stamford Bridge than within it.
As it stands, Lampard has 18-months left on his contract of around £150,000 per week.

From the outside it seems that Andre Villa Boas is blaming the veteran players at the club for Chelsea's poor form this season. Nicolas Anelka was unceremoniously dumped out to pasture in China with Shanghai Shenhua which came as a major surprise as the player was arguably one of the Blues better performers under Carlo Ancelotti last season.

As Andre Villa Boas imposes his preferred 4-3-3 system upon a squad that do not seem capable of playing it at the highest level it appears that the player are taking the blame for its failure rather than a manager who is using square pegs in round holes.

Two of the main reasons Chelsea have been potent in attack this season have been Daniel Sturridge and Juan Mata. Both have been excellent going forward and have really given the team a wide outlet on either flank.

However, their lack of defensive work has seen both full backs exposed badly which in turn has seen the centre halves exposed though long balls into the space created by moving the full backs out of position.

This has also had the domino effect of neutralizing the midfield trio, whoever they may be, as they are locked in a central position and are quite easily bypassed out wide.

This allowance to let both Mata and Sturridge shirk their duties looks like it has caused a split as Villa Boas has dropped other players to shore up the holes left by this duo.

If you can think back to the early days of Jose Mourinho where he employed two out and out wingers in Arjen Robben and Damien Duff and the defensive workload he insisted upon you can see why some Chelsea players might possibly be angry. Especially if they perceive that the manager is blaming them for poor results and letting others get away with it.

This allowance and constant use of a system that does not suit this current Chelsea squad shows that Andre Villa Boas is a manager who does not recognise his own mistakes and that given that the Blues have played some 30 games this season it looks like the manager is incapable of realising he has made more than one mistake in his selections.

There is no arguing that Frank Lampard at 33, John Terry at 31, Nicolas Anelka at 32 and Didier Drogba at 33 all need replacing soon. However, it is also quite obvious that each and every player is capable of playing at the highest level for another couple of years at least and that the early signings made by Villa Boas of Raul Meireles, Romelu Lukaku, Oriel Romeau and Ulises Davila have all flattered to deceive thus far.

Even at 33, Lampard would be a remarkable signing for virtually every single team in the Premier League. His track record, professionalism and injury record guarantee interest from all of the top managers so it will be very interesting to see what happens next regarding this situation.

Manchester United could use a player of his calibre but the recent return from retirement of Paul Scholes would seem to have poured cold water on that particular move.

He would not fit in at Liverpool where Steven Gerrard has just returned from a long term injury and with Luis Suarez in the mix Kenny Dalglish is unlikely to want another player running into the same channels as his two best players.

That leaves Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal. City are unlikely to be interested in such a player although their is no doubting that the Citizens could do with a few more goals from midfield if they are to push on towards the next level and at 33 Lampard is just too old to interest Roberto Mancini for this role.

Leaving Spurs and Arsenal as the favourites to capture his signature.

Again his age may become a factor, especially where Arsene Wenger is concerned. However, Lampard is nothing if not a leader and one thing the Gunners do not have too many of is leaders. He may interest Wenger with the fact that he would bring a superb professional attitude with him on top of the fact that he could streamline quite easily with Alex Song, Mikel Arteta, Jack Wilshire and Aaron Ramsey. Add in the fact that the player may be interested in helping the next generation develop and his signing for Wenger could become a very real possibility.

When all is said and done though, Spurs remain the most realistic option for Lampard if he is to stay in the Premier League.

His uncle, Harry Redknapp, knows all about the player and what a fantastic attitude he has and would surely love to bring the player to White Hart Lane. However, Lampard joining Spurs may come at a price as Luka Modric would almost be sure to go in the opposite direction.

Given Spurs' position in the table it would be more than reasonable of the White Hart Lane outfit to demand players like Lampard, the misfiring Fernando Torres, Josh McEacheran or Oriel Romeau in return for the Croatian's signature.

Whatever the outcome, one thing is clear; Frank Lampard's days at Chelsea seem to be coming to an end.

Hold the BackPage – Team of the Year 2011

2012-01-06T15:59:00.000-08:00

Hold the BackPage - Team of the Year 2011 by bpfootball

It’s the first Hold the BackPage of 2012 and Neil Sherwin is joined by Ger McCarthy and Willie Gannon to sift through the festive period’s Premier League action, while the lads also pick their Team of the Year for 2011.

The first part of this week podcast looks back at the Premier League action of the past week or so. Neil is understandably relieved that Manchester United slipped up following City’s defeat to Sunderland, something that Ger took great pleasure in. There’s a look at all the big talking points on the field including Stephen Ireland’s return to form against Chelsea and the continuing great form of Spurs, while Sir Alex Ferguson’s reluctance to delve into the transfer market also provokes some discussion.

In the second half of the show, the lads discuss the best Premier League players of 2011 following Willie’s article on the website this week. There’s some surprise inclusions, not least one Spurs player, while some decisions were easy and unanimous. This week’s FA Cup Third Round also gets a preview with the potential for a couple of shocks on the cards.

In our best of 2011 news, the BPF Top 50 series is coming back and you can have your say on who were the best players in the world for the last 12 months. Simply click here to get all the details for how to vote!

Don’t forget, you can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or RSS!

Also if there is anything you would like to hear on the show in future simply drop us an email, tweet or comment on Facebook.

The first part of this week podcast looks back at the Premier League action of the past week or so. Neil is understandably relieved that Manchester United slipped up following City’s defeat to Sunderland, something that Ger took great pleasure in. There’s a look at all the big talking points on the field including Stephen Ireland’s return to form against Chelsea and the continuing great form of Spurs, while Sir Alex Ferguson’s reluctance to delve into the transfer market also provokes some discussion.

In the second half of the show, the lads discuss the best Premier League players of 2011 following Willie’s article on the website this week. There’s some surprise inclusions, not least one Spurs player, while some decisions were easy and unanimous. This week’s FA Cup Third Round also gets a preview with the potential for a couple of shocks on the cards.

In our best of 2011 news, the BPF Top 50 series is coming back and you can have your say on who were the best players in the world for the last 12 months. Simply click here to get all the details for how to vote!

Don’t forget, you can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or RSS!

Also if there is anything you would like to hear on the show in future simply drop us an email, tweet or comment on Facebook.

The first part of this week podcast looks back at the Premier League action of the past week or so. Neil is understandably relieved that Manchester United slipped up following City’s defeat to Sunderland, something that Ger took great pleasure in. There’s a look at all the big talking points on the field including Stephen Ireland’s return to form against Chelsea and the continuing great form of Spurs, while Sir Alex Ferguson’s reluctance to delve into the transfer market also provokes some discussion.

In the second half of the show, the lads discuss the best Premier League players of 2011 following Willie’s article on the website this week.

There’s some surprise inclusions, not least one Spurs player, while some decisions were easy and unanimous.

This week’s FA Cup Third Round also gets a preview with the potential for a couple of shocks on the cards.

In our best of 2011 news, the BPF Top 50 series is coming back and you can have your say on who were the best players in the world for the last 12 months. Simply click here to get all the details for how to vote!

Don’t forget, you can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or RSS!

Also if there is anything you would like to hear on the show in future simply drop us an email, tweet or comment on Facebook.

English Premier League: Team of the Year 2011

2012-01-01T16:41:00.000-08:00

Who have been the best players in the English Premier League during 2011?

We all know there have been a number of outstanding individual displays over the past year ranging from Wayne Rooney's wonderful performance against Manchester City last February to Yakubu's four goal haul for Blackburn against Swansea in December to any number of performances by Newcastle's goalkeeper extraordinaire Tim Krul, who has been outstanding since the beginning of the current season.

However, when all is said and done the cream always rises to the top although picking a Premiership XI is no easy task. There are numerous factors to consider when putting together any list, particularly one as divisive a best team of the year, so in gathering together my XI I have considered consistency, general all around play, whether the player has improved over the last 12 months significantly and last but not least their skill level.

So without further adieu, the EPL 2011 Team of the Year...

Goalkeeper: Joe Hart (Manchester City)

No other 'keeper has impressed as much as Manchester City's net-minder Joe Hart over the past 12 months. Since City made him first choice ahead of Shay Given, a move many pundits questioned the wisdom of, he has grown into being the definitive England No.1 as well as being the most consistently brilliant shot stopper in the Premier League.

Given, no pun intended, the level of maturity in Hart's performances over the past 12 months it is hard to believe that the youngster is still only 24 and that he yet to hit his peak and that realistically he still has another 10 to 12 years left at the highest level.

It says much that at this very moment he is probably the most under rated player at the Eastlands. Admittedly, he does play behind one of the leagues best defences and is the beneficiary of having the outstanding Vincent Kompany organise his back four but Hart never shirks his duty and has developed into his country's best 'keeper since David Seaman...

Runner-Up: Ali Al-Habsi (Wigan Athletic)

Right Back: Kyle Walker (Tottenham Hotspur)

Kyle Walker, Tottenham Hotspur's 21-year-old flying fullback, seems to have come from nowhere during the last 12 months. At the moment he is rightly regarded as one of Fabio Capello's best options for the vacant right full position when England travel to Ukraine for Euro 2012 next June.

The youngster was initially signed for Spurs as part of a double deal for £10 million involving Kyle Naughton in July 2009 but was immediately sent back on loan to Sheffield United in the Championship. The following season he went back to the Championship again but this time it was to promotion chasing QPR where he quickly established himself as one of the best players in England's second tier.

Such were the phenomenal level of his performances that as soon as the QPR deal ended Aston Villa took him on loan for the rest of last season and it is here that he really began to make people take notice. Walker's impact at Villa Park was immediate as he offered attacking penetration and defensive positioning to such a high degree that he was called into the England squad in February and March to face Wales and Ghana respectively although he never made it onto the pitch.

This term his form has gone up another notch again and he has been instrumental in helping turn Spurs into outside bet title challengers. Harry Redknapp has brought the best out of Walker and has improved upon his player’s defensive duties to such an extent that Walker has played in England's last two internationals against Spain and Sweden. Incidentally England won both games 1-0.

Runner-Up: Micah Richards (Manchester City)

Centre Half: Nemanja Vidic (Manchester United)

If there is any player, other than Wayne Rooney, that is an automatic choice for Sir Alex Ferguson at Old Trafford it is his captain Nemanja Vidic.

Vidic signed for United for just £7 million in 2006 and will surely go down as one of Ferguson's best ever buys when the Scot does eventually retire. The giant Serbian defender has been the defensive rock that has provided all the foundations Manchester United have needed in recent years where they have won the Premier League four times, the FA Cup three times and have appeared in the Champions League final three times taking the trophy with the big ears home in 2008.

To say that Vidic is a great defender is to do the centre half a huge disservice. Since joining United he has featured in the EPL Team of the Season every year and has been named EPL Player of the Season twice.

Like Kompany, Vidic is a superb man marker, is brilliant in the air, reads the game beautifully and is also incredibly strong in the tackle. However, in terms of greatness, Vidic is a notch or two above his Manchester City counterpart when all is said and done.

Tragedy struck in Manchester United's shock Champions League defeat to Basle in December when Vidic basically ruptured every ligament possible in his knee. He recently underwent an operation to repair the injury but he is expected to be sidelined until the start of next season at the earliest.

His absence in Ferguson's defence will be a huge factor in where the title goes this season as not only is Vidic an incredible defender he also has an uncanny ability at bringing the very best out of his fellow defenders.
He will be badly missed...

Runner-Up: John Terry (Chelsea)

Centre Half: Vincent Kompany (Manchester City)

It is no exaggeration to say that Kompany is now probably the best defender plying his trade in the Premier League today.

Initially signed as a central midfielder in 2008 from Hamburg, Kompany has really developed into a top class defender over the last three years.

He is powerfully built, reads the game superbly, is a fantastic man marker and has become the leader that Manchester City needs as they look to become a super power of European football. Last season was without doubt Kompany's best and him play 50 games in all competitions including 37 appearances in the Premier League and win his first trophy with City as they claimed the FA Cup in May with a 1-0 win over Stoke City.

He was then named in the PFA Team of the Season and was also named Manchester City's Player of the Season.

This year he has started up where he left off in terms of level of performance with one significant difference. He is now club captain after Roberto Mancini stripped Carlos Tevez of the honour.

The Belgian international has become ultra important to the title chasing Citizens and marshal's their defence brilliantly and is the true leader in the City team.

Runner-Up: Phil Jones (Manchester United)

Left Back: Benoit Assou-Ekotto (Tottenham Hotspur)

Benoit Assou-Ekotto is without doubt the most interesting professional footballer plying his trade in the Premier League today. The candid left sided defender may not actually be the left sided defender in the EPL today but in terms of consistency and improvement over the last year no one comes near.

When Harry Redknapp took over Spurs in October 2008 the two players in most danger of being shipped out of White Hart Lane were Assou-Ekotto and Gareth Bale. Today, both are automatic choices for 'Arry and have improved in leaps and bounds almost every single season since 2008.

Defensively, the Cameroonian international still has some way to go if he is to be regarded as one of the best defenders in his position. He is still prone to the odd lapse in concentration but where those lapses used to happen in every single game they now only happen in fits and bursts and he has gone from being regarded as a Premier League level player to a top six player such is his constant improvement.

Going forward, Assou-Ekotto offers an out ball every single time for his defensive colleagues and provides added width and back up that Gareth Bale welcomes every single week. If he can keep growing Spurs will have the two best full backs in the Premier League and in a game where fullbacks are more important than ever this will be of huge advantage to the Lilywhites.

Runner-Up: Jose Enrique (Liverpool)

Centre Midfield: Scott Parker (Tottenham Hotspur)

To say that Scott Parker has been a revelation for Spurs this season is something of an understatement.

The all-action midfielder is a throwback to the days of old where players in his position were expected to be jacks-of-all-trades and in the last 12 months he has shown an incredible level of performance and maturity that few other players are capable of.

The Football Writers Player of the Year last season was languishing in the Championship with West Ham following their relegation with no apparent suitors interested in obtaining his signature. In came Spurs with a miserly £5 million bid and all of a sudden Harry Redknapp had signed the most influential central midfielder in the country for a song.

This term Parker has been simply incredible but his greatest influence is probably seen off the pitch rather than on it. In every respect Parker is Spurs' captain. He sets the tone on and off the field of play. He cajoles players in training, demands nothing but the very best in every situation, sets the tone with his high level of training and performances and has helped instil a healthy fear of defeat that has seen Spurs come from nowhere to being title challengers.

Runner-Up: Yaya Toure (Manchester City)

Centre Midfield: David Silva (Manchester City)

The little Spanish maestro is the epicentre of all that is good about Manchester City. He dictates Roberto Mancini's style of play from defence to attack and shows up in virtually every single sector of the pitch to dictate the ebb and flow of virtually every single game he plays in.

Always a creative player with incredible vision, Silva's game has gone up a level in the last year and it is no mere coincidence that the rise in his game has seen City go from top four contenders to title chasers in just on season.
Comfortable in virtually any position across midfield Silva has the uncanny ability to bring the very best out of his fellow players but most importantly he is unselfish in that he doesn't mind them looking better than him.

While Silva may not score too many goals nor claim that many assists, his initial pass is usually the one that either starts off the move or that sets up the assist. He is now incredibly important for Roberto Mancini and it speaks volumes of how his game has improved that a superb player and international of the class of Samir Nasri has been reduced to little more than cover for the Spanish star this term.

Runner-Up: Charlie Adam (Liverpool)

Centre Midfield: Luka Modric (Tottenham Hotspur)

To put it simply, the little Croatian genius from Zadar is one of the best players in his position in the world today. He would grace any midfield from Barcelona to Real Madrid to Manchester United to Chelsea but for the moment Tottenham Hotspur's fans are enjoying his every move.

As far as the Premier League is concerned Modric is unparallelled in terms of passing, vision, control and dictating a game. When he releases the ball it is always to a player in space and when he takes the ball in it is always with the confidence of a man who knows exactly where it is going to next. He is never afraid to take on responsibility in tight situations and as a result every single Spurs player knows he has an out-ball to Modric regardless of pressure.

Again, like many of his contemporaries in the final XI, Modric's game has improved upon yet again. This despite interest, that upset Spurs preparations, from Chelsea at the start of the season. It says much about the man and the player that Modric has helped propel Spurs to such high levels this year.

The problems may come in the Summer though when Modric is expected to leave. With no shortage of suitors Spurs may be in a position to get themselves a trade which could elevate the club even higher.

Runner-Up: Clint Dempsey (Fulham)

Left Midfield: Gareth Bale (Tottenham Hotspur)

The flying Welshman has been one of the Premier Leagues most outstanding players over the past 24 months.

The converted left back has enjoyed being pushed into left midfield and with his incredible athleticism he has gone on to terrorise right backs right across Europe.

Without doubt, Bale is easily the best left sided player in the Premier League today. Physically and athletically he is virtually perfect and playing wise he is improving with every single game. So far this season he has even eclipsed Cristiano Ronaldo in terms of creating chances and with goals starting to come his way Spurs possess the most exciting 22-year-old in the Premier League today.

Runner-Up: Matthew Etherington (Stoke City)

Right Midfield: Luis Nani (Manchester United)

Many expected Luis Nani to fade into the shadows and move on from Old Trafford following Cristiano Ronaldo's £80 million transfer to Real Madrid. But if anything, he has gone from strength to strength without his Portuguese compatriot.

Last season was Nani's best ever in a red shirt. He waded in with nine goals and 18 assists and was many peoples Player of the Year ahead of Scott Parker. He was the one creative spark in a United midfield that has continued to struggle this term and has continued the same high level of performances so far.

He has pace to burn and is comfortable with the ball on either foot and his delivery from wide positions is improving all the time, but he really needs help from a static midfield.

With half the season gone he has scored a healthy six goals and has contributed with eight assists but he will never reach the levels he is capable of unless Sir Alex Ferguson adds a central midfielder of the highest calibre.

Runner-Up: Rafael van der Vaart (Tottenham Hotspur)

Centre Forward: Robin Van Persie (Arsenal)

As far as centre forward is concerned there can be only one and that is none other than Arsenal's Robin van Persie.

The Arsenal hit-man has been in the form of his life over the past 12 months and has firmly established himself as the best striker in Britain today.
As a player, van Persie is technically superb, deceptively fast, positionally brilliant and has vision that most midfielders would die for. He has single-highhandedly guided Arsenal into the top four last season and into top four contention this season and without him one can only wonder at how far down the Gunners would finish.

Over the last year Robin van Persie has scored 44 goals in 54 matches across all competitions for club and country. With his injury problems of old seemingly behind him his game has shot to another level completely and comparisons with Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo are not without merit.

The problem that Arsene Wenger faces with his mesmeric Dutchman is that he is out of contract next summer and has refused to enter negotiations with Arsenal until then...

Runner-Up: Demba Ba (Newcastle United)

Hold the Back Page PODCAST: EPL Winners and Losers of 2011

2011-12-28T11:54:00.000-08:00

Hold the BackPage - The year that was... by bpfootball

In the final Hold the BackPage podcast for the year, Neil Sherwin, Ger McCarthy and Willie Gannon look back at 2011 in the world of football, while the latest Premier League action also gets dissected.

The podcast begins talk of Christmas presents before the lads move onto a round up of the festive Premier League matches. (2:30) Ger McCarthy and Willie Gannon share their thoughts on Tottenham Hotspur's rich vein on form but Neil isn't too convinced that Harry's side can maintain their current good run.

Will wax's lyrical about the latest Gareth Bale show and wonders about the lack of media pressure on Harry Redknapp's team being a major factor in their current form.

(6:30) The Pod also question why nobody took a chance on Scott Parker during the summer leaving the door open for Redknapp to sign the English international.

(7:45) Neil Sherwin continues with to complain about teams rolling over against Manchester United, while there’s a look at the other big talking points from the Christmas fixtures including some shocking refereeing decisions. However, Willie and Ger disagree with Neil to some degree...

(11:00) Ger doesn't like Wigan or Roberto Martinez though and absolutely slaughters them for their lack of effort at Old Trafford last weekend.
Just to prove his point though, Neil predicts Blackburn Rovers rolling over at Old Trafford this coming weekend.

(18:45) The pod then turn their attention towards the current situation at Liverpool and Kenny Dalglish with the general consensus being that the Reds have stood still this term after spending a lot of money with Andy Carroll's future at the club being questioned on all levels. Willie then goes on to make a bold prediction that pressure will heap upon Dalglish and the club if they don't improve significantly towards the end of the season.

(24:00) Ger feels that while the Reds have handled the Suarez debacle terribly he can see the skeleton of a very good top four side but that they'll need a number of top class players to do it. He doesn't feel Dalglish will be the man to bring the great days back to the club though...

(27:30) With referees being under the spotlight yet again the pod rehash the age old debate about the future of the men in the middle with Ger and Willie agreeing on video referees while Neil would prefer corporal punishment to improve their decisions!

Part two of the pod is all about reviewing 2011 and the lads sift their way through ten different categories to discuss the high points and lowlights of the past 12 months.

The catagories being...

1- Manager of the Year (31:30)
2- Team of the Year (34:00)
3- Player of the Year (37:30)
4- Surprise of the Year... (39:00)
5- Big Winner of the Year (41:30)
6- Big Loser of the Year (43:00)
7- Moments of the Year (44:50)
8- Matches of the Year (47:45)
9- Pundit of the Year (50:30)
10- Best Movie of the Year! (54:00)
11- Best Goal (54:00)

Some bold predictions for 2012... (61.00)

Don’t forget, you can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or RSS!
Also if there is anything you would like to hear on the show in future simply drop us an email, tweet or comment on Facebook.

You can listen to the Pod here.

Hold the Back Page - Remembering Gary Speed - Man City / Liverpool / Luis Suarez / Rio Ferdinand / Euro 2012 Draw / Steve Bruce / Sunderland

2011-12-02T12:01:00.000-08:00

Hold the BackPage returns for another edition with Willie Gannon back on board to join Neil Sherwin and Ger McCarthy in assessing the game’s recent talking points including the tragic passing of Gary Speed, the antics of Luis Suarez, Rio Ferdinand and Steve Bruce's sacking at Sunderland and, of course, no pod would be complete without a mention of the one and only Mario Balotelli...

It’s a rather sombre opening to this week’s podcast as the lads discuss the tragic passing of Gary Speed and share their memories of a fantastic player who has excelled for both club and country during a career which spanned more than two decades.

Hold the BackPage - Remembering Gary Speed by bpfootball

Attentions then turn to the midweek League Cup action where Manchester United were unceremoniously dumped out at the quarter final stage by Crystal Palace. Liverpool suffered a blow with Lucas Leiva sustaining a season ending ACL injury in their win over Chelsea, while Manchester City and Cardiff City make up the other semi final sides.

After jumping the gun in part one, Ger gets his chance to have a weekly rant about Mario Balotelli to kick off the second half of the podcast. There’s also some much deserved criticism for Liverpool striker Luis Suarez before Willie fires out all sorts of facts about Steve Bruce’s tenure as Sunderland boss which came to an end this week.

To round off the lads look at Giovanni Trapattoni’s contract meaning Neil can look forward to another scintillating qualifying campaign for Ireland.

Don’t forget, you can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or RSS!

Also if there is anything you would like to hear on the show in future simply drop us an email, tweet or comment on Facebook.

Gary Speed 1969-2011: Football Legend Dies at 42

2011-11-27T18:15:00.000-08:00

Manchester City's great run in the Premier League and poor run in the Champions League, Robin van Persie's unbelievable form, and Lionel Messi's and Cristiano Ronaldo's domination of the game we all love was all put into perspective yesterday after Gary Speed passed away at just 42-years-of-age.

The former Leeds, Everton, Newcastle, Bolton and Sheffield United player and current manager of the Welsh international team was found dead at his home in Huntington, Cheshire, by Police at 07:08 GMT. They said there were no suspicious circumstances in the death.

Sources have said that Speed had been found hanged.

Gary Speed is survived by his wife and his two children.

In terms of trophies, Speed's career was not as successful as many of his peers in the game. However, few have ever or, will ever rival him in terms of discipline, professionalism and determination.

In a career that lasted over 23 years as a player, coach and a manager, Speed played over 800 matches as a professional with some 535 of those coming as a Premier League player at the elite level of the English football.

Speed signed professional terms with Leeds United on a Monday morning on June 13 1988. The addition of the youth was one of Billy Bremner's last acts at the club before the Leeds playing legend was sacked the following October with the team languishing in the relegation zone of Division 2.

The footballing world was a very different one before the advent of the Premier League and few took notice of the signing other than well wishers and Leeds fans hoping for the next big thing to walk through their doors.
He made his debut for Leeds within a couple of months of his signing but Howard Wilkinson, the Leeds manager at the time, who was also new to the job at Elland Road, decided to leave the left sided player with the youths and reserves for the rest of the season before gradually introducing him to the first XI the following season.

Wilkinson initially became aware of the left sided player while he was playing left back for the youth's but seeing that Speed had superior technique and stamina he recommended that the Welsh starlet be pushed into midfield.

Speed's notable rise as a force to be reckoned with also meant that he was fast tracked into the Wales team by Terry Yorath where he made his debut against Costa Rica in a 1-0 in May 1990.

Few would have thought back then that the Leeds youngster would go on to become his country's record caps holder of all time with 85.

However, Kevin Ratcliffe, the Wales captain at the time and friend of Speed, remembers talking with the youngster as they traveled home together with Speed telling him that he could go on to become the record holder if he was lucky with injuries and treated his body right.

Within two seasons, Speed was an essential part of one of the best midfield's in the old First Division with Gordan Strachan, Gary McAllister and David Batty.

The quartet were perfectly balanced with Strachan out on the right showing incredible industry, Speed out on the left offering penetration and pace, while McAllister pulled the strings as Batty provided the iron and defensive qualities needed for any top midfield.

Even by today's standards the Leeds midfield of the '91-'92 season fits the template perfectly of how a balanced side should look with each and every player being an expert at their specific job in the team.

If you take a look at the group even closer you can see who were probably the biggest influences on Speed as a professional and as a player, the Scottish duo of McAllister and Strachan.

As Speed's career advanced his style of play was almost an exact replica of the duo combined as he took all the best attributes from both players (Strachan - industry, honesty, professionalism) (McAllister - technique, vision, playmaking ability) and made them his own. Perhaps the most important attribute learnt at Leeds though was his willingness to take on responsibility.

Speed's longevity in the game, the fact that he was still playing at 40, can also probably be attributed to his time with the duo where he learned the important arts of hydration, proper diets, yoga, and how to treat his body right. Strachan, in particular, was a huge influence regarding these facets.

At every club there are players who are leaders without having to wear the arm band. Players you can trust to dig the team out of a hole when the chips are down, players who will guide the younger players with no fear of passing on lessons or being replaced, players who will always do the right thing at the right moment. Speed was one of these players.

Writing a tribute in the Guardian newspaper, Speed's manager at Leeds, Howard Wilkinson, spoke of his devastation upon hearing the sad news.

"Gary Speed was honourable, trustworthy and a joy to manage. He was honest, he was a role model and he was a great bloke. An avid learner, he recognised responsibility and he was always fully committed. Above all, he was a lovely person. Out of all the players I've have had under my wing, he remained a real favourite.

"The players I worked with represented all colours of the rainbow in terms of character but, as the ultimate professional, Gary was a star in the true sense. For him to leave us at 42 is such a tragic loss. As a manager he had a life of success to look forward to, I'm sure. He had started so promisingly in charge of Wales, I imagined his managerial career would follow a steadily upward curve.

"His horrendous passing represents an unbelievable loss to his family and the football world. He leaves a huge, huge void and I can't begin to try to think what his parents, his lovely wife, Louise, and his boys are going through at this time. I'm finding this very, very difficult to come to terms with. It's unbelievable. I'm still struggling to get my head round it."

From Leeds, Speed moved to his boyhood team of Everton FC where he enjoyed two decent seasons as captain before Kenny Dalglish brought him to the North East and Newcastle United for just £5 million.
Under Dalglish, Speed seemed to regain the enthusiasm for the game that some had felt had started to falter and he became a key component of the side as they challenged for trophies and the top four over the following six seasons.

Despite being an integral part of the squad, Speed chose to leave Newcastle for Bolton in 2004. It was at the Reebok that Speed won, perhaps, one of the greatest achievements of his career when in December 2006 he became the first player to play 500 Premier League matches.

To this day his record of 535 games has only been beaten by two players, David James and Ryan Giggs.
His Premier League career effectively ended in Christmas 2007 when he left Bolton for Sheffield United in the Championship. His time at the Blades was blighted with injury, which is hardly a surprise when you consider that he joined them at 39-years-of-age!

He played on for three seasons but only managed to take to the pitch 36 times before continuing his life in football from the dug-out.

Speed always believed in player education. It is perhaps the main reason why his career lasted for so long. He would watch and analyse players he played with and take their best lessons for himself. As a deep thinker on the game he had no problem moving towards coaching and attaining his badges as he readied himself for life after playing and armed with this superior tactical knowledge he extended his career far beyond the realms of normal men.

His death has seen a sudden out pouring of grief from across the football world and beyond.

Former Wales team mate, Robbie Savage, tweeted: "The world has lost a great man in Gary speed I'm devastated spoke to him yesterday morning why ! Why. Why !! I'll miss him so much x

Another former Welsh team mate Ryan Giggs said: "I am totally devastated. Gary Speed was one of the nicest men in football and someone I am honoured to call a team-mate and friend."
"Words cannot begin to describe how sad I feel at hearing this awful news. It goes without saying my thoughts are with his family at this tremendously sad time."

Current Leeds manager Simon Grayson added: "We signed on the same day and played in the youth and reserve teams together.
"We also did all our coaching badges together. He was a good friend and this is a very sad day. Gary was such a popular person and this is a hard time for everybody."

Robbie Savage then went on BBC News to talk about the passing of his friend.

"I spoke to him yesterday and he was in high spirits... I just can't believe it... He was my mate and he's gone."

Savage, so obviously devastated by the loss, found it hard to hold back the tears as he was asked if there was any inclination as to why Speed would take his own life.

Howard Wilkinson was also left bereft by the loss and was equally shocked.

"Gary's death is a mystery – Gary McAllister says that, on Saturday, he seemed his normal, bright self – but these men are not born footballers. Like everyone else, they had a talent and football became their job but basically they are born human and subject to all the stress and strains and the good things that happen to people in life. My thoughts are with his family."

What makes the tragic death of Gary Speed, a man so obviously loved by so many, so sad was that he touched so many lives throughout his short time here and had just embarked upon a career where communication is so vital yet he felt so bitterly alone and took the ultimate step to end his own life.
The inquest into Gary Speed's death will begin tomorrow and will be an incredibly painful experience for all those who loved him dearly.

Nobody knows why he took his life but one of the main reasons for taking one's own life in modern society is depression.

Although most people who are depressed do not kill themselves, untreated depression can increase the risk of possible suicide.

Allaboutdepression.com informs us:

"It is not uncommon for depressed individuals to have thoughts about suicide whether or not they intend to act on these thoughts. Severely depressed people often do not have the energy to harm themselves, but it is when their depression lifts and they gain increased energy that they may be more likely to attempt suicide."

Recent studies from the site suggest that suicide is the eighth leading cause of death in the U.S.A. with 72 percent of people taking their own lives being men. These figures match up with studies in Ireland where suicide is the No.1 cause of death among young men.

If you look at the suicide of Gary Speed and take the fact that he was a footballer out of the equation then the instance of a 42-year-old man dieing in such circumstances becomes an all too common occurrence.

The death of a professional athlete in such circumstances can be confusing to many as there is usually a perception that the person in question has everything they could ever dream of, so why could they be so such a thing?

Stan Collymore admitted to suffering from depression whilst still playing professional soccer with Aston Villa and was ridiculed by many for being so weak.

Last week on Twitter the TalkSport pundit issued a heart felt plea;

“Around 10 days ago, I started to feel anxiety, which grew into irrational fear and insomnia for three days (little sleep and an incredibly active, negative mind) that turned over last weekend into hypersomnia, whereby my energy levels dipped to zero and my sleep went from eight to 18 hours overnight.

“So fit and healthy one day, mind, body and soul withering and dying the next.

"This to me is the most frightening of experiences.

“It’s me, bed and increasingly despairing thoughts of how long this one will last, a desperately tired but wildly active mind burns through its own blue touch paper until the paper ends and there is simply nothing left.”

It is usually at this stage of suffering that someone suffering from depression will start to have thoughts of suicide.

There are varying types of depression but those who suffer from bipolar depression are more likely to attempt suicide than those without.

Samaritans labels the following amongst the symptoms cited in cases of major depressive episodes.

"It is worth noting that these usually develop over days to weeks. In diagnostic terms, five of these should be present during the same two-week period and have caused a change from previous functioning. For a major depressive episode, symptoms must appear on a daily basis and last most of the day or all day.

Depressed mood (such as feeling sad, empty).

Markedly diminished pleasure in all (or almost all) activities

Insomnia (or hypersomnia)

Increase / decrease in appetite or significant weight loss

Fatigue / loss of energy

Feelings of worthlessness

Excessive or inappropriate guilt

Diminished ability to think, concentrate, and/or take decisions

Recurrent thoughts of death, suicidal ideation, having a suicide plan or making a suicide attempt.

Manic depressive episodes typically occur suddenly and symptoms escalate over the course of a few days or hours. In diagnostic terms a person should be experiencing persistently elevated mood for at least one week with three or more of the following symptoms persisting:

‘Racing’ of ideas’

More talkative than usual

Inflated self-esteem

Significantly reduced need for sleep

Great difficulties concentrating

Engagement in activities which appear pleasurable but can lead to painful consequences."

Depression and suicide are real problems for society. Unfortunately, those who suffer from depression often do so alone as they feel there is nobody out there to talk to.

In professional athletic circles the ability to talk these problems out with friends becomes very difficult as dressing rooms are not the kind of place where people can let their defences down.

This can be for a number of reasons, including ridicule from team mates, but perhaps the most important reason is not wanting to appear weak to the club and manager who hold your potential future contracts.
There are many organisations specifically set up to combat loneliness and depression and to give someone a sympathetic voice to talk to in tough times when talking to friends or relations is either not available or an option.

The Samaritans are perhaps the best known charity for dealing with such instances and have 201 24-hour clinics across the UK and Ireland.

"Samaritans provides completely confidential emotional support 24 hours a day by telephone, personal visit, email, and letter. Their purpose is to enable persons who are experiencing feelings of distress or despair, including those who may be at risk of suicide, to receive confidential emotional support at any time of the day or night from appropriately trained Samaritans in order to improve their emotional health and to reduce the incidence of suicide."

People contact Samaritans about a wide range of issues including depression, relationship and family issues, loneliness, physical and mental health issues, alcohol, drugs, self-harm, debt, illness and exam pressures as well as suicidal thoughts and feelings.

Speed was a well liked footballer and manager. His untimely passing is made all the more sad because of the life, potential and family that he has left behind.

Out thoughts and prayers are with his family during this awful time.

Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney...Robin van Persie?

2011-11-06T17:12:00.000-08:00

Arsenal striker Robin van Persie is in the best form of his career. So far this season, he has bagged 11 goals in 13 goals in 16 games across all competitions including 11 goals in 12 English Premier League games.

Such is the Dutchman's phenomenal run of form over the last 12 months that many analysts are now comparing Van Persie to his contemporaries; Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney.

But how do these favourable comparisons hold up?

Since January 1 2011, Robin van Persie has been on fire. The very fact that he was left out of the 23 players making up nominations for the 2011 Ballon d'Or is a crime against football in itself. How can players like Eric Abidal, Karim Benzema and Samuel Eto'o, amongst others, rate a nomination over a player who has scored 36 goals in just 45 games over the last calendar year?

This point is further pushed home when you realise that Robin van Persie is plying his trade for Arsenal in the Premier League which is arguably the toughest league in the league.

As a player, van Persie possesses superb technique as you would expect from any Dutch international. He has incredible awareness and vision which combined with his superior technique offer him the ability to pick out passes that other players would not even attempt. Van Persie is also deceptively quick over short distances and he has used his pace and intelligent positional play to score all but ten of his Premier League goals inside the 18-yard-box.

In recent times, Arsene Wenger has played van Persie up front as the lone striker in a 4-5-1 formation. However, while there is no doubting the Dutchman's ability as a centre forward, many feel that his best position is just behind the striker where he would be able to marry his creative and predatory skills to better effect.

While there is no doubting his skill set, the biggest question against van Persie as a player over his Arsenal career has always his fitness, or lack of it.
Since joining the Gunners for £2.75 million in 2004 from Feyenoord, as the long term replacement for Denis Bergkamp, van Persie has only played 245 games.

That's an average of 35 games per season across all competitions. If you break that figure down further, van Persie has played only 167 Premier League matches, that's an average of just 20 games a season.

A quick glance across the next two tables reveals many aspects of Robin van Persie as a player.

Total Games Played by Robin van Persie for Arsenal since 2004.

2004/05 - Played - 41 / Goals - 10 (average 1:4)
2005/06 - Played - 38 / Goals - 11 (average 1:3.4)
2006/07 - Played - 31 / Goals - 13 (average 1:2.3)
2007/08 - Played - 23 / Goals - 09 (average 1:2.5)
2008/09 - Played - 44 / Goals - 20 (average 1:2.2)
2009/10 - Played - 20 / Goals - 10 (average 1:2)
2010/11 - Played - 33 / Goals - 22 (average 1:1.5)
2011/12 - Played - 16 / Goals - 13 (average 1:1.2)
Total - Played 246 / Goals 108

Premier League Games Played by Robin van Persie for Arsenal since 2004

2004/05 - Played - 26 / Goals - 05 (average 1:5.2)
2005/06 - Played - 24 / Goals - 05 (average 1:4.8)
2006/07 - Played - 22 / Goals - 11 (average 1:2)
2007/08 - Played - 15 / Goals - 07 (average 1:2.1)
2008/09 - Played - 28 / Goals - 11 (average 1:2.5)
2009/10 - Played - 16 / Goals - 09 (average 1:1.7)
2010/11 - Played - 25 / Goals - 18 (average 1:1.3)
2011/12 - Played - 11 / Goals - 11 (average 1:1)
Total - Played 167 / Goals - 77

The most obvious thing that stands out is the gradual improvement in van Persie's goals to games ratio over the last eight seasons.

At 28, the Dutchman is now at the peak of his powers, as is evident from Arsene Wenger’s recent assumption of his star.

The Frenchman said: "Robin is on fire at the moment and his class means he is taking advantage of being in a team that wants to attack a lot and create chances. The intelligence of his movement and the accuracy of his finishing is exceptional."

But when he joined from Feyenoord as a 20-year-old in 2004 he was far from the finished product. His progress is testament to Arsene Wenger's incredible vision and faith in the player and his phenomenal coaching ability.

Van Persie's gradual improvement since 2004 also shows that the player is extremely intelligent and that he not only works on his game, but that he also studies, analyses, and puts great thought into how his game can improve.

However, the most negative aspect against the strikers game is his weakness against injury. His average of just 20 EPL games a season from a maximum of 38 shows a stark reality for Arsenal fans; that Robin van Persie cannot be relied upon to push their team towards the title because he body always breaks down. And that if the Dutchman is ever going to be considered as one of the best players in the world he is going to have to put as much thought into his physical preparation as he does into his mental preparation.

During the exact same period, between 2004 and 2011, Wayne Rooney has established himself as one of the best players in the world.

The ex-Everton forward joined Manchester United in 2004 and has gone on to score 158 goals in 336 games for the Red Devils over the last eight seasons.
A quick comparison shows that Rooney has played almost 100 more games and has scored 50 more goals than the Dutchman over the same intervening period.

Rooney keeping his fitness has also contributed to United winning Premier League titles in '07, '08, '09, '11 and a Champions League title in 2008 where Arsenal have won nothing since the FA Cup in 2005.

There is little doubt that Wayne Rooney is a world class talent but even he pale's in comparison to Cristiano Ronaldo's and Lionel Messi's records over the last number of years.

Last week was a monumental week for both players as Ronaldo scored his 100th goal in just three seasons for Real Madrid while Messi bagged his 200th goal for Barcelona since making his debut in 2004.

Van Persie, the eldest of the four players at 28, made his debut for Excelsior in 2001. Ronaldo, 26, began his playing career for Sporting Lisbon in 2002.
Rooney, also at 26, also started his career in 2002. Whereas Messi, the youngest at 24, only made his debut for Barcelona in 2004.
A quick look at their vital stats reveals:

Robin van Persie (2001 - 2011) Pld - 322 Gls - 130
Wayne Rooney (2002 - 2011) Pld - 413 Gls - 175
Cristiano Ronaldo (2002 - 2011) Pld - 429 Gls - 226
Lionel Messi (2004 - 2011) Pld - 287 Gls - 203

Rooney and Ronaldo have both played around 100 more games than van Persie even though they began their careers one year later while Messi, who started his career three seasons after van Persie made his debut, has played just 35 games less than the Dutchman.

Goals can be an unfair method at comparison as both Ronaldo and Messi play in La Liga and their respective teams, Real Madrid and Barcelona, regularly beat teams by huge scores.

A further look at van Persie's record during his most prolific period (2009 - 2011), the same period that Cristiano Ronaldo played for Real Madrid shows that the Dutchman has an impressive record with 47 goals in 68 games.
However, once again we must compare his time on the pitch to his rivals. During the same three year period Ronaldo has scored an amazing 103 goals in just 106 games while Messi has scored an even more incredible 123 goals in 126 games. Rooney for his part has played 98 times and has hit the back of the net 61 times.

Basically the moral of the story for Robin van Persie is the exact same as it is for Arsenal's title chances.

If van Persie ever wants to be considered as one of the best players in the world he must improve his fitness and if Arsenal ever wants to win the league then Arsene Wenger must find a way to protect and improve his star player’s physical attributes.

The elephant in the room for Wenger and for the Gunner’s many fans though is the Dutchman’s contract situation. At 28, van Persie is facing the big pay day of his career and as of yet he has nothing to show for it as far as major trophies are concerned.

With his contract up in 2013 and his being available to negotiate a free transfer away from the Gunners in little over 12 months, Wenger is in the awkward position of facing his second successive captain leave the club after Cesc Fabregas left for Barcelona during the summer.

As a player, van Persie would have no end of suitors wishing to meet his demands but his current run of form combined with his incredible technique, intelligence and skill mean that every major club from Barcelona to Real Madrid to Manchester City and United will be interested in prising Wenger’s star asset away from the club.

It is a frightening thought for Arsenal fans as they are relishing this rich vein of form.

Will it be a double edged sword?

Does Wenger improve van Persie’s fitness? Knowing that it is the one aspect that will guarantee his team a top four finish while it may also guarantee a move for his star pupil…

Peamount United Optimistic Ahead of Champions League Return Clash With PSG

2011-09-30T11:28:00.000-07:00

Peamount United will travel to France to take on the financial might of PSG on Monday morning with the winds of hope flying their sails. The Dublin side trail their counterparts 2-0 after losing the first leg in Shamrock Rovers Tallaght Stadium on Wednesday night.

The Pea's, the first Irish side ever to make the latter stages of a European club competition, provided very good value for their partisan home crowd and matched PSG woman for woman until the French professional side's superior stamina and physicality kicked on as the game wore on.

In fact, Peamount should have been ahead before substitute Nora Coton-Pelagi's speculative shot found the bottom corner of Linda Meehan's goal after taking a huge deflection off Louise Quinn who had tried to block the shot.

Sara Lawlor and Quinn both went close in the space of a couple of minutes in an extremely tight first half. Firstly Lawlor, who put in a sterling performance as the Pea's loan striker, forced Veronique Pons into making a smart save at her near post after she had ghosted past the tackle of PSG's captain Lea Rubio.

The resulting corner was whipped in at incredible pace by the impressive Steph Roche and with the goal at her mercy Louise Quinn seemingly headed over with Pons beaten.

However, after talking to the midfielder after the match it became apparent that Laure Lepailleur had reached the ball just a fraction of a second before the Irish international to make a dramatic clearance.

After the match Quinn said "I wished I had touched it because I know I would have scored, but she just got there ahead of me."

It was just one of a whole string of last ditch saves by Lepailleur during the match with the French star easily standing out as PSG's best player on the night.

Quinn for her part was equally as impressive and patrolled midfield superbly with the aid of Roche, on loan Doncaster Belle, Aine O'Gorman, Ruth Comerford and Wendy McGlone.

The Pea's manager, Eileen Gleeson made a couple of early changes in the second half in an effort at introducing some more energy to her side but the phenomenal exertions of a match against a professional side eventually took their toll as PSG went on to dominate the late exchanges with two late goals.

"We knew what their shape would be like and what they would do and we set our tactics out to get to them. But the two late goals really caught us, especially the last one in added time. We're unhappy at falling asleep with that one."

Getting to the knock out stages of a European competition is an historic achievement for Irish football, no other side has ever progressed as far and despite the loss, that this is where she and Peamount will aspire to be from now on.

"It was great in playing in a game like this. We've never seen such a big crowd except in an international game. Playing against teams like that [PSG] was just so special. You'd love to be playing against teams like that every week, this is the highest level you can get at club level apart from the final.

Looking forward to the return leg in Paris on October 5 and upbeat Quinn remained confident of turning the tie around saying;

"It's only half-time and I know it's 2-0 and we should have kept it 0-0 or 1-0 but it'll be a huge game next week and we'll come out all guns blazing because we have a chance."

Eileen Gleeson, the Pea's manager spoke at length after the game and said that the second goal in injury time had really taken its toll on her team after its fantastic effort.

"Overall we're very disappointed with the second goal. It came three minutes into injury time and I was saying to the girls to just lock it up. But we were a little nervous and just got caught out.

"The girls are so disappointed with the second goal. It would have been so much easier to go away with just one goal behind but we're going to throw everything at them [in the return leg].

"But I thought we showed great strength and stamina against a professional side and to get caught so late... Their quality showed and we're coming off the back of a long season while they're just finished pre-season.

While Gleeson was thoroughly impressed with the overall performance of her own team she reserved special praise for Sara Lawlor who plowed a lone furrow up front all night.

"She was really excellent, she covered a lot of ground and that pitch is really big when you're out there on your own. She got caught out with a few off-sides but overall she was excellent."

The crowd, a record 2,109 for Peamount really made a difference when PSG started to gain a foothold in the game and Gleeson was quick to heap praise and thanks on their support.

"The support was really just phenomenal. To get over 2,000 at a game is just amazing and I'd just like to say thanks to everyone."

Eventually the conversation gets around to the growing shadow that Irish teams have always had to compete with, bigger teams coming in to poach their players.

While a game like this Last-32 against PSG brings huge prestige to the league and Peamount in particular it also represents an opportunity for scouts from professional leagues in America and England to watch the talent on show.

"That's always there," she says. "We'll always be competing with scholarships to America and with girls going over to the Super League in England but our own National League will be critical and now that is in place. So that gives our players more of a chance to play at the elite level in the future."

"But, the best players are going to want to play with the best clubs and with [our] excellent facilities, excellent structure and brilliant underage section, we are going to attract those kind of players [in Ireland].

Just like her captain, Quinn, Gleeson remains optimistic about the Pea's chances next week.

"We'll watch the game and go over things that we can improve, little mistakes like off-sides and things, those are things we can correct straight away and we'll look to improve in the areas where they were stronger."

"We matched them in a lot of places and we can get at them next week."

Peamount may be down, but they are definitely not out of this tie just yet.

Hold The Back Page - Skinheads in Skirts - Man City / Tottenham 4-0 Liverpool / BRFC 4-3 Arsenal / Shamrock Rovers / The Rooney Rule / Gasperini

2011-09-21T23:53:00.000-07:00

Hold the BackPage - Skinheads and Skirts by bpfootball

Hold the BackPage returns for another edition with Neil Sherwin again taking the lead and he is joined by Ger McCarthy and Willie Gannon to sift through the latest Premier League action.

The lads discuss Manchester City losing their 100 percent record, Tottenham hammering Liverpool 4-0 and Blackburn beating Arsenal 4-3 as well as a number of other hot topics including Shamrock Rovers in Europe, the Rooney Rule, Gasperini being sacked at Inter Milan and Turkey’s innovative new measures to combat hooliganism...

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There were some big weekend results in the Premier League and Ger is understandably pleased with Spurs’ resounding win at home to Liverpool. There’s also a look at where things are going wrong for King Kenny before the focus turns to the battle of the relegation candidates as Blackburn Rovers took on Arsenal.
Manchester City’s slip up at Fulham comes under scrutiny as Manchester United see off Chelsea in another confident performance that sees them clear at the top of the table.

The second half of the show is very much a mixed bag as the lads get their teeth into a number of topics in Shamrock Rovers’ Europa League adventures, the sackings of Peter Reid and Gian Piero Gasperini, Barca’s return to form and the Rooney Rule before finishing off with a look at the Turkish FA’s latest bid to curb hooliganism in their domestic game.

Don’t forget, you can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or RSS!

Also if there is anything you would like to hear on the show in future simply drop us an email, tweet or comment on Facebook.

Asamoah Gyan Transfer Leaves Sunderland and Steve Bruce Up The Creek...

2011-09-16T17:33:00.000-07:00

The season may be just four games old but Steve Bruce and Sunderland's season is already on a knife edge. Having lost Asamoah Gyan to Al-Ain in one of the strangest loan moves the English Premier League has ever seen, the Black Cats have lost their focal point up front and now face a long cold wait until the January Transfer Window opens up...

Last season Steve Bruce guided Sunderland to 10th place in the EPL, this despite his star striker, Darren Bent, leaving for Aston Villa in January for £18 million after putting in a transfer request. The sudden move by his main player left the Black Cats reeling and it came as no surprise to see them struggle and only win three games from 12 after Bent had left.

However, when the chips were down, and at one stage Sunderland really did look like relegation contenders, Asamoah Gyan popped up with some good performances and some more important goals to stave off the drop.

Gyan had joined for a club record £13 million from Renne in September after impressing during Ghana's ill fated run during the World Cup and had initially struggled to adapt to the rigours of the Premier League.

Happy that the Ghanaian World Cup hero had stepped into the breach when he was needed most, Bruce happily consigned the 2010-11 season to memory and immediately set about rebuilding his team for an assault on European football in 2012.

Backed by the Chairmanship of Niall Quinn and the money of American Ellis Short, Bruce tore into the transfer market as soon as it had opened in June and immediately set about building his new look team around his record signing.

Ahmed Elmohamady was snapped up on a permanent deal following his impressive loan period and was joined by fellow wide players Sebastian Larrson, James McLean and David Vaughan as Bruce looked to inject penetration and pace into a new look 4-5-1 formation.

In came Wes Brown, John O'Shea and Craig Gardener to shore up the gaps through central midfield and central defence while Conor Wickham, Ji Dong-Won and the much maligned Nicklas Bendtner were all brought in to back Gyan up and to offer different options.

Optimism was at an all time high at the Stadium of Light after spending almost £20 million on strengthening the squad with many tipping Sunderland to push the established EPL teams all the way for Europe.

However, the wheels started to come off almost as soon as the Black Cats lost their first game of the season against fierce rivals Newcastle United. A shock defeat to Brighton in the Carling Cup followed before a 0-0 draw against Swansea in Wales preceded a poor performance and home defeat to Chelsea.

The big news going into the Chelsea game though was the shock loan move of Asamoah Gyan to Al-Ain in the UAE after the striker forced the deal to go through. The move came as a complete shock to Bruce and Sunderland especially as the striker had just celebrated one year at the club following his £13 million transfer last summer.

The day before the Chelsea match and the subsequent transfer Bruce had actually gone public to quell the fears of Black Cats fans;

"We have had a discussion with him and he needs now to focus and get himself back on track again and be the Asamoah Gyan we know he is capable of," said the Sunderland boss.

"These things affect these players, and it has affected Asa.

"I had a conversation with him two days ago to say, 'Look, the window as now closed, Asa. Right, we need to see you back playing again and back the way you know you can play'."

Bruce obviously felt the matter was closed but just 24 hours later he was back out to tell the media that Gyan had left the club on a season long loan deal. Not wanting to have a player whose mind was elsewhere and who did not want to play for the club, Bruce reluctantly agreed to let the Ghanaian join Al-Ain. It must be said though that Sunderland is earning a staggering £6 million from the loan fee alone.

"I had a conversation with him 48 hours ago and he shook my hand and assured me he wanted to stay at Sunderland.

"Within a few hours things changed. It's disappointing and the whole thing has left a bad taste in my mouth.

"It baffles me how he can leave the best league in the world to play in the United Arab Emirates. I'll let people make their own conclusions why."

Bruce had earlier claimed that following Gyan's impressive display against England in March that his striker had been turned by "parasites" who wanted to earn money by engineering a transfer away from Sunderland for the player.
Speaking on the deal, Niall Quinn shed some light on the saga, "Steve Bruce, our owner and the board all found the football decision baffling, but I as chairman, with everyone's full support, decided that this deal was in the best interests of our club."
Quinn has already given Bruce his full support and has said that the £6 million loan fee will be his to do with as he wishes come the January Transfer Window but that may come as too little too late for Black Cats fans.

As it stands, Bruce now only has three strikers to choose from at the Stadium of Light. One is an unknown entity, 20-year-old Ji Dong-Won, and in its 20 year history one two Asian players, Park Ji-Sung and Chung Yong-Lee, have flourished in the notoriously tough league and both needed time to settle.

While even though Nicklas Bendtner has played over 200 games across seven seasons, six with Arsenal and one on loan to Birmingham, he is still precocious plays like a player incapable of gaining experience at the highest level often making poor decisions during the course of a game.

That leaves 18-year-old prodigy Connor Wickham. The striker joined Bruce in an £8.1 million deal that caught the rest of the EPL by surprise. The England youth international had long been courted by both Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur and was also on Damian Comolli’s radar at Liverpool.

In the end he chose Sunderland, presumably because he perhaps thought first team football would come quicker in the North East than in North London.

With Gyan in his team Bruce had the cushion of being able to carefully select when he blooded his two new recruits with Bendtner being the link between them all. However, with Gyan leaving all of Bruce's tactical and philosophical plans has been realistically thrown in the bin.

There is now no two ways to look at it, but Bruce now has to start with Bendtner while rotating Wickham and Won.

This is less than ideal given the apprenticeship he had envisioned when he first signed the pair and now both players will be allowed to make mistakes and get away with them that otherwise they would not have as Bruce cannot drop or punish his players because he has no back up.

In the long run this could be severely detrimental to the development of both players but Wickham in particular because he had the previous option of joining a club where all his old faults and habits would be ironed out. Now with Sunderland in their current situation, Bruce simply does not have the time or the man power to iron out the undoubted creases that will show with time.

Speaking to the Sunderland Evening Echo Bruce had this to say on the duo;

“We’ve had to look afresh at things in the wake of Asamoah leaving for the season.

“My plan was to bed the young forwards Connor and Dong-won in slowly, build up their experience and confidence and then look to get the best out of them further down the line – we have to remember that they are only 18 and 20.

“When you look at big talents in the Premier League who came into it young with big reputations, it has taken Theo Walcott to this stage to finally establish himself as a first-team regular while Gareth Bale also took a long time to settle in before we started seeing the best of him.

“It’s the same with Connor and Ji – they’re still learning – and I hadn’t wanted them too exposed too soon because inevitably if they don’t play well there’s a danger they’ll get stick from the fans and that’s going to affect them and set them back.

“Unfortunately in some ways, we are where we are in terms of perhaps having to draft them in earlier than we would have hoped, but we need everyone to get behind them and hopefully they’ll rise to the occasion.”

Sunderland's fans will have to show super human levels of patience as the season rolls on, not with Wickham or Won, but with the team in general. Having only taken two points from the opening four games, the Black Cats now embark upon a 15 game run, before the window opens, where they will be tested on every level.

Starting with Stoke (Sep 18), before Norwich (Sep 26), West Brom (Oct 1), Arsenal (Oct 16), Bolton (Oct 22), Aston Villa (Oct 29), Man Utd (Nov 5), Fulham (Nov 19), Wigan (Nov 26), Wolves (Dec 3), Blackburn (Dec 10), Spurs (Dec 17), QPR (Dec 20), Everton (Dec 26), Man City (Dec 31).

At the beginning of the season the Black Cats, with European aspirations, would have hoped to take between 20 and 25 points from the 45 on offer. That points total would have put them on target to finish in the top eight as the season turned.

However with recent events they could now realistically take something between 14 and 18 points which would put them in line with a season long relegation battle. Their current run of form is abysmal, only fives wins from the last 22 and losing their main striker has done nothing to ease the pressure on both Bruce and Niall Quinn.

The international break could not have come at a better time for the beleaguered Black Cats boss and if he is to make a success of Sunderland's season he is going to have to dig deep through the depths of his playing and managing experience.

Tactically he is going to have to come up with solutions that he has never figured out before and he is going to have to bring the best out of Nicklas Bendtner, something even Arsene Wenger has failed to do.

In short, this will be a long, long season for Sunderland.

Hold The Back Page Podcast - Champions League / Manchester Domination of the EPL / Spurs / Dalglish and Liverpool / Peamount Utd

2011-09-15T02:31:00.000-07:00

Hold the BackPage - Manchester Mania by bpfootball

The podcast is back for another edition as Neil Sherwin is joined by Ger McCarthy and Willie Gannon to discuss the opening round of Champions League action as well as the latest goings on in the Premier League as the Manchester clubs continue to lead the way.

With no vested interest in this year’s Champions League, Ger McCarthy is the perfect man to discuss the opening round of the competition as both Manchester sides picked up points. City were very much hit and miss at home to Napoli while, as Willie Gannon explains, United were far from convincing in their clash with Benfica. There’s also a look back at last night’s results for Chelsea and Arsenal as well as a round up of the rest of the games played.

Part 2 sees attentions turn to the Premier League with the possibility of a two horse race for the title developing. There’s a look at Liverpool who faltered against Stoke, while questions are asked about the possibility of Tony Pulis’ side qualifying for Europe this season through the league. Asamoah Gyan’s money grabbing antics also come under scrutiny and to round off the pod, Willie gives us the heads up about a massive game for Peamount United in the UEFA Womens Champions League.

Don’t forget, you can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or RSS!

Also if there is anything you would like to hear on the show in future simply drop us an email, tweet or comment on Facebook.

10 Things We Learned From Wayne Rooney vs. Kun Aguero and EPL Week 4

2011-09-11T10:04:00.000-07:00

Manchester United and Manchester City dominated proceedings once again as the two sides continued their own private "anything you can do..." battle as both Wayne Rooney and Kun Aguero scored hat-tricks for their respective teams.

Liverpool traveled to Stoke for what many regarded as Kenny Dalglish's first real test of the season, which says a lot about how Arsenal are now perceived.

Speaking of the Gunners, they entertained Swansea at the Emirates as their struggling North London neighbours, Tottenham Hotspur, took on Wolves at Molineaux with Harry Redknapp entrusting his future to Emmanuel Adebayor and Scott Parker...

As with every Premier League weekend there was a multitude of talking points, so lets begin by going to the Emirates...

Arsenal 1-0 Swansea City

Having been trounced 8-2 by Manchester United in Week-3, the international football break really couldn't have come at a better time.

It gave the Frenchman a chance to bed in his three panic buys, Mikel Arteta, Per Mertesacker, and Yossi Benayoun.

Over the course of one transfer window "slamming-shut" evening, Wenger eventually managed to bring in the three aforementioned players but only after failing with bids for Yoann Gourcouff, Mario Goetze, Yann M'Vila and, of course lest we forget, Gary Cahill.

Mertesaker has been available for transfer from Werder Bremen for the last three seasons while Arteta has always been there if Wenger was really that interested before. As for Benayoun? Who knows?

Anyway, as expected Arsenal were very very nervous and they never really managed to get their game going at all.

They managed to beat the manager-less Swans thanks to a freak mistake by Michael Vorm after the Dutchman threw the ball against the back of one of his defenders legs and into the path, of the otherwise distracted, Andrei Arshavin who passed home with ease.

From there the nervy Gunners had Wojeich Szczesny and the crossbar to thank as Swansea pushed for an equaliser.

As the weeks roll by the young Polish 'keeper seems to be growing towards his potential. However, it will be at least another three to four seasons before his experience, strength, stamina and concentration levels reach the levels expected of a top class 'keeper, and that is only if he keeps doing the right things.

In the end debutant Mikel Arteta, speaking to BBC Sport, probably summed the game up best;

"It was important to get the three points and we've done it. It was important to forget about what happened two weeks ago [the 8-2 defeat against Manchester United]."

In other words: the result was more important than the performance as far as Arsenal was concerned.

Across to North London and up to the Black Country...

Wolves 0-2 Tottenham Hotspur

Make no mistake, this was a crucial result for Spurs and Harry Redknapp.

Last year Tottenham's season floundered against teams from the bottom half of the table where they only took six points from a possible 24.

While the defeats to Manchester United and Manchester City were probably expected the manner of them was not and the performances betrayed a Spurs squad who were bereft of confidence and any fight whatsoever.

With that in mind, Redknapp parachuted both Scott Parker and Emmanuel Adebayor into the side and the difference was immediate.

Wolves can no longer be regarded as relegation candidates as Mick McCarthy has built a side who are experienced in all the wiles of the Premier League and they do not just roll over, perhaps unlike Spurs, because they are playing against heavyweight opposition.

The game was an open affair with numerous players impressing for either side. Kevin Doyle, fresh from his heroic exploits with Ireland was immense up front for Wolves while both Luka Modric and Parker seemed to enjoy playing with each other as their best games started to show for the first time this season.

In the end it was inevitable that Emmanuel Adebayor would score. The Togo international has scored on his debut for Manchester City, Arsenal and now Tottenham after he rounded the outstanding Wayne Hennessey after collecting Scott Parker's deft through ball.

Jermaine Defoe added a late second after the wind had been taken out of Wolves but perhaps the more important factor to note was that Spurs kept a clean sheet and their two strikers scored on the same day in a 4-4-2, all without the injured Rafael van der Vaart...

Stoke City 1-0 Liverpool

The Reds tasted defeat for the first time this season as they were beaten by Stoke at the Britannia Stadium.

This was always going to be a tight affair as the two busiest "transfer-window" managers went head to head.

Stoke is never an easy place to go to and that task has become even harder after Tony Pulis added numerous top class Premier League players to his squad during the window. Confidence is now at it's highest ever for Pulis' side and it says much about their constant growth that many expected them to turn Liverpool over.

The two sides were separated by a Johnathan Walters penalty after some dreadful defending by Jamie Carragher allowed the Irish international to get goal side of him in the penalty area. In the ensuing tussle referee Mark Clattenburg awarded the spot kick to Stoke after Carragher hauled the striker down.

Before the Potters took the lead the game was all Liverpool with Luis Suarez, once again, pulling the strings. The sheer speed of the Reds attacking play was impressive and they opened up Stoke on numerous occasions but failed to pull the trigger.

Perhaps, the key moment of the game for Liverpool came when Jordan Henderson broke from midfield and failed to beat Asmir Begovic with three quickfire shots after the 'keeper had saved his first efforts.

However the most worrying aspect of this phase of play was not Henderson's wayward shooting, it was his complete lack of vision as Luis Suarez was completely free on the left hand side of the box. The Paraguayan international would have had an open goal if the English U-21 had looked up.

It is in little moments like this that you can see the potential of players laid bare and from here it looks as if Henderson will never reach the heights hoped of him of Anfield unless he learns rapidly.

As it was, and this perhaps shows the self-inflicted pressure Kenny Dalglish is under, the Liverpool manager blamed the defeat on the referee showing disrespect to his team by awarding Stoke their penalty.

And while the old saying of "these things even out over a season" may be true, it was most definitely true for the 90 minutes at the Britannia where the referee could have given up to five penalties.

One for Skrtel hanging out of Shawcross at a corner, a possible hand ball against Delap in the Stoke box (the one with Upson would have been harsh in the extreme), one from Etherington on Skrtel after the Slovak had a rare shot at goal, and of course Carragher hauling Walters down.

In the end blaming the referee is just an excuse, Kenny Dalglish knows his team came up short and that they really should have won.

Manchester City 3-0 Wigan

The Sergio Aguero show continues to roll, and continues to get rave reviews after he scored a hat-trick to bring his goal tally to six goals in just three Premier League games. The little Argentinean was simply superb again and once again he was at the centre of everything that was good about Roberto Mancini's attacking side.

Yes, you read that right.

In the space of one summer, or more probably one signing, Manchester City have become what everyone always wanted the lavish spending side to be - entertaining.

Mancini's side were already the meanest team in the league with 18 clean sheets last season and this year the Italian has started putting the final pieces into play as the Citizens begin their assault on Europe and the hearts and minds of the football public.

Surprisingly Mancini started with a straight forward 4-4-2, although perhaps when you consider the opposition it wasn't surprising at all.

Tevez, who had a penalty well saved by Al Habsi, joined Aguero up front in a fantasy football front two while, this season's big Fantasy Football points earner, Edin Dzeko who scored a four last week was left on the bench.

The incredible work rate by their two strikers combined with their undoubted talent set City up perfectly for the game and once they scored early it was a case of damage limitation for Roberto Martinez's relegation candidates.

Bolton 0-5 Manchester United

Kicking off with the evening kick off Manchester United knew that they needed a victory to put them back level on points at the top with Manchester City and that only a win of four goals or more would give them outright leadership.

Just as was the case in the last weekend, United set about trying to win two battles. One was against their opposition and the other was against City.

Poor old Bolton just never knew what hit them and were 3-0 down after just 25 minutes as a Hernandez strike and a Rooney double put them in control.

In past years with the game dead and buried Alex Ferguson may have been tempted to make some early substitutions, especially as much of his team played over the international break, but knowing that momentum in the league is important he instructed his team to be even more ruthless.

They added two more goals, a second from Hernandez who tellingly played his first 90 minutes of the season before Rooney put the icing on the cake with a hat-trick.

As it currently stands Rooney is playing like the complete striker. He has everything you could want in a player, an incredible work rate, superb technique, magnificent vision, with strength and stamina to match. However, and like all great players, his greatest asset is his ability to make his team mates look brilliant.

Elsewhere on Saturday...

Daniel Sturridge was given a first start to the season as Fernando Torres found himself dumped the bench. Which was hardly surprising given he has only scored two goals from 22 games.

The ex-Manchester City striker helped Chelsea to a 2-1 win over a dreadful Sunderland side who already look like they're in all kinds of trouble. His goal was improvised brilliance as he back flicked the ball into the bottom corner after running onto a through ball. He could have a great future at the club unlike Fernando Torres.

Everton were unlucky not to take all three points against a very lucky Aston Villa side as Richard Dunne brought his incredible international form to the Premiership.

David Moye's team, using a patented 4-6-0 formation, played all the best football and were denied by a late Agbonlahor strike.

The Scot's standing in the game is unquestionable and he is arguably one of the best managers in the league if not the best. Given the protests at chairman Bill Kenwright before the match, the potential sale of their top players and the complete lack of future finance at the club, the Toffees will do well to hold onto him going into next season.

On to Sunday...

Peter Odemwengie scored after just minutes and then missed a penalty as Roy Hodgson's West Brom claimed their first win the season with a 1-0 over Norwich City at Carrow Road.

The Baggies were just too Premiership savvy as they bossed the game and they really should finish the season comfortably this year.

As Euro 2012 edges closer and with it the England managers job when Fabio Capello's contract ends, Roy Hodgson will be more than keen to challenge Harry Redknapp for the job as their country's number one.

Tony Soprano handed a debut to Bryan Ruiz as Fulham entertained Blackburn at the nicest stadium in the world, Craven Cottage.However, on this evidence the Costa Rican centre forward has a steep learning curve ahead of him as far as the EPL is concerned.

With his side beginning to get on top he dawdled on the ball and allowed Rovers to break quickly. The ball eventually ended up at the feet of Ruben Rochina who fired home an absolute rocket of shot to relieve some of the mounting pressure from Steve Kean.

The Cottagers hit back almost immediately through Bobby Zamora after some poor defending by Gael Givet.

As with all things, you make your own luck in this game and Blackburn can only have themselves to blame for another three points missed, despite a very strong late penalty claim.

When you're under pressure as Steve Kean is, the God's don't smile on you.

10 Things We Learned From EPL Week 4:

1) Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better...Does that make Wayne Rooney Betty Hutton?

2) Liverpool's great start to the season depends upon them beating Spurs next week and what has bloody ear-flicking got to do with morale?

3) Roberto Mancini is growing into being an outstanding manager after he demanded improvement from his high flying team.

4) Wayne Rooney is only the fourth player to score a consecutive hat-trick in the Premier League after Les Ferdinand, Ian Wright and Didier Drogba.

5) Javier Hernandez's movement for his first goal was world class and made a very good defender in Tim Cahill look very ordinary indeed.

6) Was Michael Vorm auditioning for a job at Arsenal?

7) Arnold Schwarzenegger was coming out of retirement for the next Terminator film when he met Richard Dunne he said "ah no, its already done!" Thanks to the best Twitter trend in months, step aside Chuck Norris.

8) Emmanuel Adebayor has scored on his debut for Arsenal, Manchester City, Real Madrid and Spurs (but only if you count his home debut for Real) and if he hits the ground running Redknapp's side could finish as high as third.

9) Sergio Aguero isn't half bad.

10) What in God's name was going through Asamoah Gyan's mind when he left Sunderland for the UAE?

"The Older I Get The More I Love It" - Interview with Australian International Footballer Richard Garcia

2011-09-05T13:59:00.000-07:00

"The older I get, the more I love it," says Richard Garcia when I ask if he still loves the sport he has played for near on a lifetime. The Australian international moved halfway around the world at just 15-years-of-age to learn his trade at the famed Academy at West Ham. He has seen the game from more angles than many professionals ever get the chance to see and is still as enthusiastic as he was on the day that he first pulled on a pair of boots.

From League One to the Championship and the Premier League to playing at the World Cup in South Africa, to suffering career threatening injuries, there is very little in the game that Garcia has yet to see.

I caught up with the midfielder, currently recuperating from a serious knee injury, to find how he is coping whilst out, how he views the game, and what he sees in his possible future after he finishes playing.

-) You're currently out injured until December. This is the second time you've suffered a major knee injury. How are you coping physically with rehabilitation and, probably most importantly, how are you coping mentally? Is it tough getting up every morning to work out knowing you can't play football? Or do you concentrate on the positives (IE you're only 29 and you still have a good career ahead of you.)

I'm coping well. Of course, it's hard watching football and watching training, but I've been through it before. I know I can use this time to my advantage and work on the things that you might not normally get time to during the regular season.

It's just about staying positive and setting small goals for yourself so that you have something to focus on, rather than the fact you're not playing.

-) What are you doing in your spare time? Studying? Reading? Rehabilitation? DVDs? Helping out around the house?

Most of my time is spent doing rehab, but when I'm not at training I have my hands full with my son who keeps me well entertained!

If I'm not playing with him I like to relax and watch a bit of TV.

-) It's been mentioned on forums and on websites that Hull did not give you a new contract because of the injury. Could you clarify this? If so, are you still rehabilitating with the club and are you hoping to sort something out when you prove your fitness?

I'm signed to the club until November, and then we will take it from there.

-) You're one of a handful of players who have played through League 1, the Championship, and the Premiership. The obvious aside, what do you feel are the biggest differences between the leagues?

Just the quality of Football played.

Any team from League 1 can give a Premiership team a run for their money, and might even win on a one off game, but it's the consistency and the quality that shines the higher up you play.

You don't get seconds chances in the Premiership and you're usually punished for your errors.

-) I've heard that scouts saw you playing when they went to see your brother. Is this true? If so, how did your family deal with it?

It was actually my brother who invited the scout to come and watch me while they discussed his future!

So I was very lucky my brother had my future in his in mind as well. We both came to the UK, but unfortunately my brother got injured and had to return home, and I was lucky enough to stay.

-) When you first arrived in London, it was as a 15-year-old with West Ham. Was it hard upping sticks and leaving Perth? Did anyone travel over with you or did you end up in a Craig Johnston type situation and having to live in a bedsit by yourself and phone home every couple of months?

It was tough. But at 15, I was so excited at the challenge ahead that I didn't really think about it.

Homesickness would hit when things weren't going well, if I'd had a bad game or picked up an injury and it was hard just speaking to your loved ones over the phone.

-) Having left Australia, did you feel under pressure to succeed for yourself or for your family?

Not at all, my parents and family always reassured me that there was no pressure and that I could come home when I liked.

I think it was a huge sacrifice from my parents to let me leave home and travel across the world to pursue my dreams, and I thank them greatly for that.

-) While with the Hammers, you were part of what is widely regarded as their best youth team of all time. If you could have been kept together, do you think the team could have achieved something more substantial than the FA Youth Cup?

You never know. But we, as players, all develop at different times and at different paces so it would have been hard to keep everyone together. We had a great bunch of players in that team and we had a great team spirit and I think that showed when we played together.

-) You seemed to enjoy three great seasons with Colchester, jumping from League 1 to Championship promotion contenders in a short time. This was obviously an exciting time to play for the U's. What made that period so good for them and for you?

We were all hungry players who wanted to succeed. Most of the players had come from clubs in the Premiership or Championship. Again we had a great team spirit, and mixed with our drive to be successful we had three great years.

It is the most successful period in the clubs history, so it was great to be a big part of that.

As the new boys in the Premiership there was always focus on us and a lot of the time it was hard to ignore it.

Things that you might not want drummed in like losing streaks and win / losses, were now in your face constantly and especially when things weren't going well, the pressure mounted on the team.

I think we as a team dealt with it quite well, but I'm sure it must of had an effect.

-) Many analysts now feel that Champions League football has overtaken International football in terms of quality. Do you feel this is a fair assumption or will international football always be the most pressurized type of football, particularly the World Cup, on the planet?

Not really, the quality would be the same as the same players are playing in both.
Spain are World Champions and Barcelona are European Champions is there much difference there?

The difference between the two would probably be national pride and that the World Cup is such a big event that the whole world takes part in.

-) When you played for Australia in South Africa you became not only the first Hull City player to ever play in a World Cup but also the first ever Western Australian I believe. What was it like for you, personally, as a player, and as a representative of your country, to play against Germany and Serbia? In the end was it tough going out on goal difference?

It was a very proud moment, and one I will never forget, it's such a great honour to represent your country. It was unfortunate that we didn't get through as four years earlier on the same amount of points we progressed.

-) What do you feel about tactics? Are they over-valued over players?

They go hand in hand.

In my opinion good tactics with average players can be just as effective as bad tactics with good players.

The difference being you might get away with bad tactics occasionally with great players.

-) Agents always come in for bad publicity. Are they actually needed or are they an essential part of the game?

I think they are essential. As always you only hear about the bad, so the good agents get stuck with the tag also.

-) At 29, you have a good number of years ahead of you in the game. Do you ever think of life after football? What interests you? Is this something most players don't like to think about until it happens, in case they take their eye off the game? (IE like a boxer thinking about defeat?)

It's something that's in the back of your mind, but for me I feel like I want to give all my attention and effort in to my playing. Personally I would like to coach or manage when I finish.

-) Some professionals actually grow to hate the sport when it becomes a job, because it can be monotonous combined with a Spartan lifestyle. Do you still love playing?

I do still love playing, but there have been times when I haven't liked it so much.

For me the older I get, the more I love it.

When I was in my teens it sometimes felt like a job, and that was hard to deal with because you can lose your passion for it and that reflects in your performance.

-) Footballers have extremely short careers so do you think players owe it to themselves to play at the highest level possible or to make the most money possible? Does it go hand in hand or does there have to be a compromise?

It's a fine balance and it can go hand in hand if you are a playing in a top league in Europe.

People only hear about the guys at the top earning millions and don't hear much about guys in the lower leagues...

Sometimes you have to do what is in the best interest for you and your family.

-) What goals to you still have in mind? The Asian Football Championships in Australia in 2015? Brazil 2014? A coaching career?

I definitely want to play in the next WC and the Asian Champs.

Eventually when I retire from playing I would love the opportunity to coach. I feel like it would be something I would really enjoy.

Would you ever consider playing in the A-League?

Playing in Australia in front of friends and family would be fantastic.

So yes, I would love to go home and play at some stage.

Best of luck Richard, hope the injury heals well and you're back playing soon.

You can follow Richard Garcia on Twitter - @RichGarcia19

Tottenham Transfers: 5 Last Minute Harry Redknapp Targets

2011-08-31T08:15:00.000-07:00

He may not like being called a "wheeler dealer" but no transfer window can go by without Tottenham Hotspur manager Harry Redknapp pulling a deal out of nowhere.

The window still has another eight hours to go and Spurs have already pulled off some of the best deals of the window as Emmanuel Adebayor, Brad Friedel, Scott Parker and Souleymane Coulibaly have all joined the club for less that £10 million, albeit with Adebayor only joining on loan from Manchester City.

Heavy defeats against Manchester United and Manchester City in their opening two games of the season guarantees that the White Hart Lane fax machine will be working right up until 23:00 GMT.

Here we look at some of the transfer targets Harry Redknapp is more than interested in...

Name : Gary Cahill

Team: Bolton Wanderers

Position: Centre Half

Value: £12m-£15m

The 14-year-old England international was the centre of attention earlier in the transfer window as Arsene Wenger tried to bring the defender in to shore up his leaky defence.

That bid seemed to crash and burn as Bolton's chairman, Phil Garside, tweeted that the bid was derisory. In the end Arsenal moved for Per Mertesecker while Harry Redknapp jumped right in and offered Owen Coyle a deal involving players and payments.

The big question now is whether Owen Coyle will accept the deal or not.

Redknapp may be able to sell him Sebastian Bassong as a replacement centre half easily enough but the deal may hinge on whether Coyle accepts players like Bentley, Jenas, Kranjcar, or perhaps one or two of Tottenham's Academy team.

There is no doubting that Redknapp is trying to buy characters rather than supreme players as he feels his dressing room has become too quiet following the release of Jonathan Woodgate and the sale of Wilson Palacios.

Both Parker and Cahill fit exactly into the profile of the player Harry is looking for so expect Spurs to push this deal as far as they can.

Name : Craig Bellamy

Team: Manchester City

Position: Forward

Value: Free

Kenny Dalglish and Neil Warnock are the two main interested parties that Harry Redknapp will have to hold off if he is to bring Craig Bellamy into the club.

Having just signed Emmanuel Adebayor and announced to Sky Sports News that Peter Crouch may move to Sunderland to free up space in the squad the move for Bellamy would be purely opportunistic and tactical.

Redknapp has settled on a 4-5-1 formation to suit Rafael van der Vaart but he has no cover for either the Dutchman or Adebayor who will presumably play at the top of the formation.

Bellamy would immediately give Harry a player of Premier League quality who could cover both positions brilliantly for free. Hence the opposition for his signature.

As mentioned before, Redknapp is looking for leaders on the pitch and in the dressing room and as Bellamy has matured he has grown into the kind of leader few would have predicted.

The main problem here is that Bellamy's signing may be predicated by the sales of other Tottenham players like David Bentley and Jermaine Jenas.

Name : Leandro Damiao

Team: Internacional

Position: Striker

Value: £15m-£20m

Spurs and Harry Redknapp have been linked with the 22-year-old ever since they signed Sandro from Internacional and as part of that deal they also linked up with the club with a view to getting first preference on their youth production line.

As a player Damiao is a perfect fot for Redknapp and his preferred 4-5-1 but both he and Levy have reservations about the price tag of the inexperienced youth.

The 6'1" striker has only played for one season in Brazil making 42 appearances and scoring a healthy 15 goals into the bargain. Such was his good form that Menezes, Brazil's manager, has drafted him into recent friendly squads with a view to a measured introduction towards international football and possibly Brazil 2014.

Make no mistake about it, Spurs have money to burn having bid huge sums for centre forwards based in Spain last January but they are keen to only buy the right fit, Leandro Damiao could possibly be it.

Name : Yossi Benayoun

Team: Chelsea

Position: Attacking Midfielder

Value: £1m-£4m

The little Israeli seems to have been frozen out at Stamford Bridge and is believed to be available for transfer. Spurs and Arsenal were both monitoring his availability earlier in the transfer window and now his agent has confirmed that the player will leave for either Spurs, Arsenal, or return back to Liverpool.

At Spurs he would immediately provide competition for Aaron Lennon as well as providing cover for Rafael van der Vaart while at Arsenal or Liverpool he would be only used sparingly as a reserve back up so the deal has to be sweet as it is likely to be his last major contract in football.

Again he fits the profile of a player able to play 4-2-3-1, 4-5-1, or 4-4-2 so he would be highly sought after wherever he goes.

He is a model professional but is not what you would consider a "character" and this seems to be the main requisite for Harry Redknapp in this transfer window.

However, we know that Harry is interested and he is never one to turn down a cheap deal, and Benayoun would most certainly be that.

Name : Lassana Diarra

Team: Real Madrid

Position: Central Midfield

Value: £7m-£10m

Redknapp faces stiff opposition for Lassana Diarra as AS Roma have entered the race late on.

For a long time Spurs were pretty much the only team who were negotiating with Real Madrid and for that reason the talks have dragged on for the last six weeks or so.

The stumbling block in the talks for Spurs is Diarra's prohibitive wages. Currently he is on around £120,000 per week but the Tottenham wage structure's peak is an estimated £70,000 per week.

Levy and Redknapp are willing to pay the player that amount but want Real Madrid to pick up the rest while Real Madrid want to get the player and his hefty wages off their wage-bill and are almost willing to forego a transfer fee to do so.

Having sold Wilson Palacios and now signed Scott Parker and with Tom Huddlestone, Luka Modric and Sandro still at the club central midfield is already congested so Redknapp's interest may have cooled somewhat.

However, Spurs have a previous relationship with Real Madrid after the transfer of Rafael van der Vaart so if they two sides can compromise this deal will still be very much alive until 23:00.

Name : Luka Modric

Team: Tottenham Hotspur?

Position: Central Midfield

Value: £25m-£40m

The Luka Modric transfer saga has been one of the longest running stories of the summer as Chelsea pursued their target. And the ripple effects of the chase has been felt as far as the Tottenham training ground.

Daniel Levy's refusal to sell a player, who just signed a new six year contract, on principle if fine but holding onto an unhappy player could have a detrimental effect on the clubs Champions League ambitions this year.

If Spurs can hold onto the player they will have one of the best protagonists in the game at what he does but the question remains; will he play well?

And if Spurs do sell him it would give them the money to bring in up to four or five players to improve the squad.

Its a Catch 22 situation for Spurs as they don't really want Modric to be so unhappy that his game falters but at the same time if they do sell him they will also have to move other players on as they have a very large squad and wage demands are the key element in football finances these days.

Keeping while he's on good form and playing in the Champions League is a no brainer but will Spurs be in the Champions League next year?

Harry will have to work some magic today if they are to make that far.

Owen Hargreaves: Manchester City Snap Up Ex-Manchester United Star on Free Transfer

2011-08-31T04:17:00.000-07:00

Owen Hargreaves is to join Manchester City in one of the most dramatic and sensational transfer deals of the summer after the ex-Manchester United player agreed to undertake a pay-as-you-play deal for the Champions League debutantes.

Fresh from signing Sergio Aguero, Samir Nasri, Gael Clichy and Stefan Savic it would seem that the free transfer of Owen Hargreaves to the club will gazump them all in terms of interest and,hopefully pray City fans, value.

"Shock signing" and Manchester City seem to go hand in hand since Sheik Mansour took over the club in 2008 and no one in their right minds would have suggested to add Owen Hargreaves to that list, expect perhaps for the midfielder himself...

Hargreaves joined Manchester United from Bayern Munich in 2007 after the club's agreed upon a £18million deal but his career was blighted by his injury problems.

Acute tendonitis left him as a peripheral figure in Carrington, and he spent much of the last four seasons on the treatment table.

United's doctors tried numerous times to diagnose the midfielders knee problems but came up blank such were the complications they faced. Hence Hargreaves seeking other opinions in Europe and America with knee specialist Dr. Richard Steadman.

He went from making 37 appearances between club and country during his debut season in 2007-'08 to making just five appearances over the next three seasons as his horrendous injury problems made him a firm fixture on the operating table and the physio room.

It has now been that long since Hargreaves donned a football jersey; it is almost impossible to remember him as a player.

As a midfielder he was blessed with a good engine and was a simplistic passer of the ball, letting the attack minded players instigate United's, Bayern's and England's forward thrusts. Position-wise he was very defensive minded and was similar in type to Javier Mascherano in that he broke up attacks rather than directed them, providing good forward cover for his central defenders.

Before the start of last season, many United fans felt they would never see Hargreaves in a red jersey again, so when the player was released you could count the amount of people who thought he might play in the Champions League again with one hand. This move to Manchester City certainly opens up that door.

His career at Manchester United effectively ended on November 6 2010 against Wolves when he lasted just four minutes before pulling his hamstring. Even though it was such an innocuous and regular injury a hush immediately fell over the Old Trafford crowd as a dawning sensation grew over the fans as the realized that this could actually be the last time they would see Hargreaves in a United jersey.

To rub salt into the wounds, Hargreaves was replaced by Bebe...

Given his past injuries, it is fair to estimate that Hargreaves has a powerful personality. He does not give up easily and has had more than one chance to call time on his career over the last couple of years.

The hamstring injury was hopefully only a setback for him, but he did take solace in the fact that he actually started the game and received the chance to take to the pitch. With that in mind, his efforts to get back playing were doubled and despite offering to play for Manchester United for free it did come as something of a shock to the player to be released from the United family.

The release, however, did spur Hargreaves into an otherwise untried form of communication.

Twitter has become synonymous with professional athletes in recent years while YouTube has rarely been used other than putting up videos of great goals or prodigious children.

Hargreaves took the unprecedented step of placing videos of him training up on the social video site in an effort at proving his fitness. Considering that his last injury at United was a hamstring injury he was keen to show that his knees could still take substantial impacts while training.

Initially West Bromwich Albion and Roy Hodgson were in the driving seat to secure the midfielders signature and were very close to capturing Hargreaves on a pay as you play deal but somewhere along the line the deal went cold so when Hargreaves was seen coming out of the Bridgewater hospital in Manchester late Tuesday night the football rumour mill went into overdrive.

Having satisfied Manchester City's doctors with his fitness and his knees, described as the worst his specialist had seen in 35 years, it now looks like Hargreaves will sign up for a nominal fee with a pay as you play clause built in.

City's doctors would have been extremely stringent as Roberto Mancini is renowned for his focus and attention towards his teams physical and mental fitness.

Last season he introduced double training sessions on certain days of the week that were initially met with scorn by some of his players and then he installed a steep training hill at City's training ground as he wanted to increase his teams stamina further.

Hargreaves will be expected to compete in and complete the same amount of trials he sets for the rest of his first team squad so it would seem strange for the club to sign the player if could not satisfy their demands.

His addition to the squad, as presumably back-up to the central midfield regulars of Nigel De Jong and Gareth Barry, will add some character and experience to the Manchester City dressing room as they begin their exploits in the Champions League for the first time and it would not be beyond the realms of fantasy to see the star play against his old team Bayern Munich at some stage of the group games.

Even the most hardened Manchester United fans would not begrudge their ex-player getting a second chance at the cherry even if it is with City so it will be interesting to see how they greet him when the two clubs come face to face with each other in October.

If the deal does workout then Roberto Mancini may just have picked up the EPL's most expensive signings of the summer as well as the best bargain of the summer.

10 Things We Learned From Manchester v North London and EPL Week 3

2011-08-29T18:25:00.000-07:00

We're just three weeks into the new English Premier League season and we have already seen two of the greatest team performances of recent times, two of the worst team performances of recent times, and two clubs in crisis.
All in all it was a good day for Manchester as they beat North London 13-3 and the scary thing is, Wayne Rooney and Sergio Aguero are only going to get better as the season goes on.

The obvious place to start either White Hart Lane or Old Trafford as Manchester United destroyed a decimated Arsenal side 8-2 while Manchester City travelled to London and beat Spurs 5-1 with Edin Dzeko scoring four. But we won't go there just yet.

We'll start at Anfield where Liverpool put in a performance every bit as special as either of the Manchester sides.

Liverpool 3-1 Bolton

It is hard to believe that Kenny Dalglish only took over as Liverpool boss eight months ago. Since then Liverpool have literally rocketed up the table and with certain Champions League rivals in disarray the Reds really do have a great chance to put some daylight between them and Spurs and Arsenal.

In recent seasons a 15:00 kickoff on a Saturday at Anfield has become a rare thing so it was fitting that Liverpool pit on a performance for their fans.

Andy Carroll was surprisingly dropped for Dirk Kuyt which is really saying something because when your first touch is worse than the frantic Dutcman's you know you're in trouble.

As it was, Luis Suarez once again ran the show. His positional sense and intelligence on and off the ball is phenomenal to watch and in his current form his movement and use of the ball is an education to any youngster who is interested in football.

He tore Gary Cahill apart all day long and dragged the Arsenal transfer target around so much that he must have wondered what sport he was playing at time. Goals from Jordan Henderson, Martin Skrtel and Charlie Adam were the difference on paper as Liverpool beat Bolton 3-1 but that couldn't be further from the truth.

Liverpool absolutely hammered Bolton and could easily have won by more but what is most impressive in the Reds is their attitude. They want to do the right things all the time and Kenny Dalglish deserves huge credit for the job he is doing there. They won't challenge for the league and will still have to hold off Spurs and Arsenal but the start is more than encouraging.

Oh, lest we forget. Following the win, Liverpool moved to the summit of the Premier League for the first time in years. It won't be the last.

Blackburn 0-1 Everton

Steve Kean welcomed the giant Christopher Samba back into the fold for the visit of David Moyes and Everton. Unbelievably Blackburn missed two penalties after Tim Howard saved the first before Formica hit the post with the second. To rub salt into the wounds Mikel Arteta then scored an injury time penalty for the Toffees after Samba had been harshly adjudged to have climbed upon Marouane Felliani's shoulders.

Judging by Blackburn's awful start to the season, it is right that they are many peoples favorites to go down. They lack penetration up front and are very slow across midfield and without Ryan Nelson or Samba in the team they are lost defensively.

Chelsea 3-1 Norwich City

Believe it or not, Norwich are just one of three sides who have an actual better record against Chelsea than the Blues have against them. The other two being Arsenal and Oldham...

Anyway, the first 20 minutes of this match was a stoll for the Pensioners and after opening the scoring through the revitalized Jose Bosingwa on six minutes it really did look like Andre Villa Boas' side were going to win by a cricket score.

However, Paul Lambert made a few tweaks and put two big men up front, Morison and Holt, and they really caused havok across the back for John Terry and co. They scored a deserved equalizer before the best penalty taker in the business, no not Robbie Keane, Frank Lampard scored to ease the growing pressure on the home team. Before Juan Mata scored his on his debut.

The game was marred by an injury to Didier Drogba after the Ivorian leaped and headed goal-wards only for John Ruddy to misjudge his flying punch as he caught the centre forward fully with both fists. Drogba was instantly knocked out and probably received as much damage from the fall as he did from Ruddy.

I know the punch was accidental but two things should have happened here.

1. Chelsea should have won a penalty and
2. Ruddy should have been given a yellow card.

For Andre Villa Boas the win was much needed. The Portuguese is only in his third game in charge of Chelsea and you can already see the pressure he is under. He will have to sort his teams' formation though because for long periods they were outplayed by the promoted team.

Nothing else really worthwhile happened on Saturday...

The ever improving Wolves traveled to Birmingham to take on Aston Villa in a derby or sorts and the game proved to be a real tactical battle. Initially Mick McCarthy got on top as Wolves probed and penetrated the Villa rearguard at will with Kevin Doyle impressing once again. However, McLeish made a few changes and the game swung like a pendulum in Villa's favour. The 0-0 draw was probably the fairest result in the end.

Wigan beat QPR thanks to two goals from Franco Di Santo and their five points from the opening three fixtures is their best ever start to a Premier League season.

On a side note, we are still waiting for the first Premiership goal to be scored on foreign soil as Swansea and Sunderland had a boring 0-0 draw. The big news for the Black Cats was the first appearance of the season for ex-Man Utd defender John O'Shea and that's about as much as you can say about that particular game.

On to Sunday...

The third weekend of the 2011-'12 season is one that will live long in the memory of fans of the Manchester teams...

Tottenham Hotspur 1-5 Manchester City

Manchester City travelled to White Hart Lane to take on Spurs in a game that many thought would be very tight.

Since Spurs pipped City to the Champions League at the end of the 2009-'10 season Roberto Mancini has spent somewhere in the region of £150 million improving his side so it was little wonder that City went into this game as favourites.

Spurs for their part started well again with Luka Modric and Nico Krancjar pulling the string in central midfield and they actually carved out the best chances of the opening 30 minutes. But once Edin Dzeko scored his first, he would score four altogether, Harry Redknapp's team literally fell apart.

Credit to City to brushed Tottenham aside without breaking sweat as Gareth Barry impressed in midfield while Samir Nasri and David Silva provided all the ammunition Dzeko could ask for.

In the end their 5-1 win was well deserved. But Spurs were embarrassing in the way they just rolled over and had their collective bellies tickled.

Manchester United 8-2 Arsenal

make no mistake about it, this was one of the greatest Premier League performances of all time.

You may argue that Arsenal had little more than a B-Team out there and you would be right but the way Manchester United went about their business and the speed, skill, precision and attitude they showed really has set a high bar for the rest of the season.

In short, Arsenal were shocking but Manchester United were sensational.

As with any great Manchester United performance of recent years, Wayne Rooney was at the very epicentre of it. His hat trick was phenomenal even if it did include a late penalty.

There is no two ways about it this is the lowest point in Arsene Wenger's time as Arsenal manager and he is now learning that his transfer policy is a very flawed piece of strategy.

Elsewhere on Sunday...

Stoke City continued their impressive start to the season with yet another win over West Brom at the Hawthornes. With Wilson Palacios signing from Spurs on Sunday evening it looks very much like Tony Pulis' side will improve once again and they are a very real threat to teams ranked from 5th to 8th especially if he can add one or two more players by the end of the transfer window.

Newcastle also won on Sunday after they beat Martin Jol's expansive playing Fulham side thanks to a brace from Leon Best and from an inspired display by their goalkeeper Tim Krul. Fulham have attacking options all over the pitch and someday they will hammer somebody.

10 Things We Learned From Week 3 of the EPL Season.

1. Arsenal are the dirtiest team in the EPL with three red cards in just three games.

2. Wayne Rooney is back to being...Wayne Rooney.

3. North London is at Defcon 5 and both Redknapp and Wenger will have to splash the cash before the transfer deadline on Wednesday to save their seasons.

4. Blackburn are doomed.

5. Wilson Palacios is a fantastic signing for Stoke. With him in the team Spurs won 55 percent of their games, without him they only won 34 percent.

6. Emmanuel Adebayor must be wondering why he left Manchester City for Spurs...

7. Daniel Levy should let Luka Modric go to Chelsea and take Daniel Sturridge as part of the deal.

8. Luis Suarez is phenomenal and it will be more than interesting to see how Dalglish accommodates Steven Gerrard when he comes back from injury.

9. Wayne Rooney is Manchester United's record Premier League goalscorer with 107 goals. And his hair actually looks good too.

10. The main reason for Arsenal's poor start to the season is the size of their crest. It is so big and heavy that their players aren't balanced correctly...

Alex Ferguson Defends Wenger From Arsenal Supporters Before Dealing Knockout Blow

2011-08-28T01:29:00.000-07:00

Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson has leaped to the defence of his rival Arsene Wenger and has hit out at the Arsenal managers recent critics by saying the "work he has done is the best in Arsenal's history." However, as always with Fergie there is more here than just meets the eye because the United supremo has also lashed his rival for allowing a five year barren run at the Gunners to happen.

On the eve of what is already looking like a crunch game for Arsenal and Arsene Wenger, Sir Alex Ferguson questioned the wisdom of Arsenal's supporters booing and calling for Wenger to be replaced.

"I would like to know who is going to replace him

"The work he has done in the 15 years he has been at the club is the best in Arsenal's history.

"Yes, he has not won a trophy for six years but what does that mean? The quality of his side has not been reduced. The competition is far greater now.

"When Arsenal and ourselves were going head-to-head, that went on for about eight years.

"It is a bit unfair of course, [the criticism] but who understands fairness and unfairness today?

"It is quite a cynical world. Supporters are far less easy to please than they were 20 years ago. But Arsenal answered everybody back on Wednesday [beating Udinese to qualify for the Champions League]. A lot of people thought they would go out. I didn't. I thought they would win it. The game on Sunday will be another stepping stone for them."

In recent years the rivalry between Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger has tempered somewhat and in 2009 they actually came across as long time friends such was the cordiality between the two veteran managers.

Of course, this friendship seems to have blossomed the further Arsenal has slipped from the title picture as neither manager has had any real or fake reasons to have a pop at each other.

However, just as Ferguson seems to have softened up Wenger he has come back and hit the Arsenal manager with something of a knockout blow by declaring that he would never have allowed Manchester United to go five years without a trophy.

"I would not have allowed it to happen," Ferguson told the Observer before Sunday's home game against the Gunners.

"The press would have played their part and you expect that, but I could not have contemplated these things."

"Arsène has got his way of managing and I have got mine

"You do the best with what you believe in and that is what Arsène is trying to do.

"I don't know exactly what his philosophy is but for a long period he had a group of good young French players but that seems to have dried up a little bit.

"Teams go in cycles and you just have to hope that you are part of that cycle.

"For years it was Arsenal and ourselves competing for the title.

"Then it was Chelsea and now Manchester City are on the map.

"We have always been part of that cycle."

When the United legend was asked could he go five years without a trophy he simply replied;

"Not at this club."

Arsene Wenger has come under increasing pressure over the last three seasons as his tactics and philosophies have been questioned at almost every corner by Arsenal's fans.

Recent polls by the Arsenal Supporters Trust suggest that Gunners fans are beginning to fall out of love with the Frenchman.

A whopping 69 percent of Arsenal fans reckon that Wenger's football philosophy takes too much precedence over winning trophies while 42 percent of fans feel that if the club finish the 2011-'12 season trophy-less Le Prof will have taken the club as far as he can.

There is no way around it: This is a make-or-break season for the club.

Arsenal got over their first major hurdle of the season last Wednesday when they beat Udinese in Italy to qualify for the Champions League.

As in any dark period heroes come from otherwise unseen sources and that was very much the case in Udine as new signing Gervinho and Wojiech Szczesny literally played out of their skins and played like the Champions League qualifier was the very last game they would ever play.

They duo came through for their manager when many, including Arsenal fans, were expecting the Gunners to fail. And now Arsene Wenger has learned a little bit more about his team; about who accepts pressure and uses it to further their game and who freeze under the spotlight.

It speaks volumes about the kind of pressure that Wenger is under that here we are in just week three of the new Premier League season and already some Arsenal fans are calling for his head.

Last week in the defeat to Liverpool at the Emirates a massive contingent of Arsenal fans chanted "spend your f***ing money Wenger" while another section in front of the press box called for Wenger to be replaced with Bolton's Owen Coyle.

As it stands Arsenal have just one point from their opening two fixtures while United have taken all six including a demolition of Tottenham Hotspur at Old Trafford last Monday.

The upcoming Manchester United-Arsenal game will give all and sundry a chance to observe the two great managers philosophies first hand.

Both bosses can read the direction of the wind beautifully and seem to have a second sense for when it comes to signing potential stars. However a major difference arises where veterans are concerned.

Sir Alex Ferguson recognises how important an old head is on the training ground, the dressing room and, more importantly, on the pitch.

Fergie knows that he does not have all the answers and that some solutions can only be passed on by players who have suffered in the white hot heat of battle. This is the very reason he keeps players like Giggs, Scholes, Neville, and Ferdinand around, players who have gone past their best days and who will now only be used as squad players, but players who have decades of experience that simply cannot be replaced.

Contrast the current set up at United where Phil Jones, Chris Smalling and Jonny Evans have begun second apprenticeships if you will under Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic to Arsenal's current midfield situation where Frimpong has to look to Jack Wilshere and Aaron Ramsey for advice.

In one simple swoop all the frailties of Wenger's transfer policy is laid bare while Ferguson's looks astute, wise and most importantly it looks as if United do not care about the bottom line.

This, of course, could not be further from the truth but whereas Arsenal seem to use players to drive their profit margins United use trophies to drive theirs.

Defeat on Sunday to Manchester United would virtually rule Arsenal out of the title race before August has even ended as it would mean they would almost have to go the rest of the season unbeaten to claim the title. That simply won't happen with this current inception of the Wenger model so expect things to harder for Wenger than easier over the coming months.

The Arsenal transfer philosophy so often hailed as the right model has been shown up exactly for what it is. It is a profit making system for clubs without the ambition of winning trophies and right there the flaws in are revealed because football fans don't understand any language other than "winning."

Wilson Palacios to Stoke City? Why Tottenham Should Not Sell Their Hidden Gem

2011-08-27T16:17:00.000-07:00

If rumours are to be believed Stoke City and Tottenham Hotspur have entered advanced talks about the transfer of Honduran international Wilson Palacios from White Hart Lane. The combative midfielder signed for Spurs from Wigan in 2009 for £12 million and it is thought that Tony Pulis will pay Harry Redknapp around £6 million to secure his services.

It is highly surprising to see that Harry Redknapp has lost complete trust in the player and is happy to see him go. During the 2009-10 season Palacios was nothing less than outstanding for Spurs as they qualified for the Champions League in style.

His all action displays in midfield provided the perfect foil for Luka Modric to push on and his ability at offering defensive cover meant that Spurs were always balanced when they attacked down either flank. Palacios' brilliant reading of the game gave Spurs an option that had not been seen at White Hart Lane since the heady days of the '80s.

The high level of Palacios' performances in the 2008-'09 season are made all the more amazing when you realise that his 16-year-old brother had been kidnapped in Honduras. In May as Spurs readied to play Everton in a crunch game for European qualification Palacios received a late night phone call from his mother to tell him that the youth, Edwin, had been found murdered.

He would not play again for Spurs that season.

In short, Palacios had two outstanding seasons before the World Cup kicked off in June.

Coming back to White Hart Lane he was short of fitness and missed the opening game of the season against Manchester City. Then he played three games in a row before injury and poor form reduced him to only starting two games in the following ten but in both games he was removed at half time.

He was restored to the team for the 2-1 win over Liverpool in November and remained in the side as they only lost twice in the following 13 games. Amazingly, Redknapp surprisingly dropped Palacios for the Everton game, and lost.

Following a 3-1 defeat to Blackpool in late February where Palacios was hauled off at half time he was more or less left out of the team for the rest of the season. Only making a 31 minute cameo against Manchester City in the third from last game of the season. Meaning that he only played 31 minutes from the remaining 11 fixtures.

When you sit down and analyse the win / loss statistics comparing Spurs with and without Palacios you come across some stark differences.

During the 2010-11 season Wilson Palacios played 21 times for Harry Redknapp with a record that reads:

PLD-21 W-11 D-5 L-5 PTS-38 (points average of 1.8 pts per game with a win average of 55 percent)

Without him Spurs record reads as:

PLD-17 W-5 D-9 L-3 PTS-24 (points average of 1.4 pts per game with a win average of 34 percent)

Overall Tottenham's record was:

PLD-38 W-16 D-14 L-8 PTS-62 (points average of 1.6 pts per game)

In the end Spurs missed out on the Champions League by just six points. The very same six points they may have taken if Palacios had played. Statistics show that Spurs fared far better with Palacios in the side that without him so it is more than perplexing to see Harry Redknapp allow his only bit of midfield steel to leave.

In August 2009 Harry Redknapp spoke very highly of the player:

“Palacios has made a massive difference to this club,” the Tottenham manager said.

“He gets on with it, he’s strong, he’s aggressive—he’s what Tottenham haven’t had.

“I always felt you could bash Tottenham up when they used to come to Portsmouth. We always felt you could get after them and beat them.

“I don’t feel that now. He has been a major part in changing that because he closes down and is strong. That has rubbed off on other people.

"You need people like him if you are going to be successful. He walks round like he is pleased to be here and appreciates everything."

While Palacios may be unfit at the moment it was apparent for all to see against Manchester United last weekend that Tottenham's centre pairing were too lightweight.

To play in any league players like Palacios are essential. Players who do the donkey work who sacrifice their own game for the benefit of more skillful players and from the outside it would appear as if the relationship between the player and manager has broken down.

It may be understandable to allow Palacios to leave if Spurs have signed another player of his ilk in recent times but a quick browse through Harry Redknapp's options reveals a midfield that would not "tackle a good dinner."

Players like van der Vaart, Modric, Lennon, Bale and Krancjar are more renowned for what they achieve in the final third of the pitch rather than battling in the trenches not to mention Townsend, Livermore, Pienaar, Huddlestone, Jenas, Rose, and Sandro.

If anything only Sandro would be capable of replacing Palacios but he is more an intelligent defensive covering player rather than a roll-up-yer-sleeves combatant like the Honduran.

Leaving Palacios out of the team was the difference in Spurs not qualifying for the Champions League last season.

Selling him and not replacing him properly will be the difference between finishing in Europe or outside it.

Unfortunately for Spurs they need to get players off their wage books. Their squad is full of deadwood to the extent that you could use half the players to make a raft to row the Thames and Harry Redknapp has to sell before he can really buy.

However, selling Palacios is definitely the wrong thing to do.