All posts by h79snht.top

The NESV are seeking to put their money where their mouth is in terms of rebuilding Liverpool and making it into a competitive force once more. It’s rumoured that NESV’s cash injection should see a projected £30 million transfer kitty for Roy Hodgson (or whoever is in charge at the time) to spend in the January transfer window and during the summer. Many Liverpool fans are uncomfortable with the prospect of Roy Hodgson being in charge of such a large amount of cash with such an important bearing on Liverpool’s future. So I open it up to you, Liverpool fans – if you were in charge, which players would you go after in the oncoming transfer windows to help make Liverpool competitive once more?

My first move would be to shore up Liverpool’s defence. For all the loyal services Jamie Carragher has given to the club, this season has seen him somewhat exposed. You can’t help but feel that Liverpool misses the likes of Sami Hyypia and that a little extra competition in the defensive positions would do the whole team good. It’s here that Roy Hodgson could come in handy as he could utilise his contacts with old club Fulham to snatch up Brege Hangeland. It’s true that Hangeland signed a new deal with Fulham last year that would see him stay at the club until 2013, but given his previous relationship with Hodgson, it shouldn’t be too difficult for Roy to tempt him to a move to Liverpool. He’s a lad with great aerial ability and good physical strength that doesn’t come at the expense of pace or passing ability. He’s calm under pressure and could be a good signing for Liverpool.

A more attacking option could be Charles N’Zogbia, who would set Liverpool back around £8-9 million. N’Zogbia’s form seems to come and go, but at the right club you can’t help but feel that he could make a name for himself. Indeed, after an impressive year at the DW Stadium, N’Zogbia has forced himself into the French international side. Another, more expensive option would be to go after Villa’s Ashley Young. It’s known that Young is seeking to have an escape-clause written into his new contract so that if Tottenham come in for him in the future, he can leave the club. Could Young be persuaded to join Liverpool instead? If not, Liverpool could make a sweep for Tottenham’s own David Bentley. Sure, he’s had problems in the past with his attitude, but he’s also displayed a great deal of talent.

I’d also seek a player in the Sissoko/Mascherano mould. This is a tricky position to fill – there simply aren’t that many players out there who are both talented enough and willing to do this kind of job. Real Madrid may be unwilling to give him up, but I’d be tempted to take a punt on Lassana Diarra. Despite it being reported in the summer that Real Madrid had transfer listed Diarra, Mourinho opted to include Diarra in his starting line-up for the season. Still, if Real Madrid could be persuaded, he would be a wonderful purchase. He has great physical strength, bundles of energy and excellent ball control. He’s also highly versatile and could be used to plug any gaps in the Liverpool team that arise as a result of injury.

If you had Roy’s £30 million transfer kitty who would you sign? Do you agree or disagree with my takes?

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Arsenal 2-3 Spurs – Hollywood has nothing on football, which is generally why all attempts to make epic ‘sawker’ films have failed so miserably. It’s not that they’re unrealistic or clichéd – football itself is unrealistic and clichéd – It’s that we see the unimaginable happen so often for real that it fails to resonate properly when we see someone pretending.  “What? Sean Bean comes off the bench to score a late brace against a Man. United team made up of fat extras from The Bill? Happens every week!” Football is infinitely more ludicrous than Hollywood, even with Sylvester Stallone in goal. The best thing Hollywood could do is take their plots from real football matches. But then there’s a fair chance people wouldn’t believe them.

If they did, the script for the 165th North London derby would be hot property right now. So choc-a-bloc was it of tantalizing sub-plots, bad blood, mixed loyalties and historical back story that it could fill up a mini-series worth of running time, and that’s without even considering the possibility of a Sex and the City style spin off featuring Danielle Lloyd and Alicia Duval (with Dean Gaffney in a supporting role as comic relief.)

It had everything; Goals, drama, comebacks (in both events and personnel) flying water bottles, the obligatory Gareth Bale fawning, even a Terry/Bridge handshake moment. Except in this case rather than spousal infidelity the reason was apparently ‘sitting in the wrong seat on a bus’. You see? You couldn’t make that sh*t up! If you could, you’d be a millionaire.

Man. Utd 2-0 Wigan – Speaking of films. You know that one where the young unknown Mexican prodigy arrives in the Premier League and starts scoring last minute winners before copping off with Anna Friel? Well as if to almost cosmically prove my point, the real life version seems to be playing itself out quite happily in Manchester without anyone batting an eyelid. Except unfortunately without Anna Friel (which is a shame, she was the best thing in it.) In fact if Javier Hernandez’s story was told in celluloid it would probably be lambasted for being too cheesy and overly heroic, eventually ending up in a DVD bargain bucket bin next to Soccer Dog – World Pup and Flashdance III – All’s well that ends weld. He’s netted three late or last minute winners so far, a goal on his debut against Chelsea, seven in all for United and international strikes against Spain, Argentina and France since he signed. He hasn’t even had to go through the obligatory ‘tough period’ where he makes bad decisions/gets unlucky and has to prove himself through a succession of training montages and humbling good deeds. On Saturday he played the hero yet again as he came off the bench to overshadow returning hero/villain (depending on where you were sitting) Wayne Rooney and grab another late clinching goal. Now if only I could get hold of Anna Friel I could start filming my remake. Though my version will be a lot racier. And we don’t really need Javier in it.

Bolton 5-1 Newcastle – Owen Coyle is doing little to dampen the growing motion that he’s not a naughty boy, buy may actually be the messiah, or a the least some kind of genius man-God as he guided Boltolona into the Champions League places, (if only for a day) continued to convince Kevin Davies and Johan Elmander that they’re in some way the spiritual re-embodiment of Garrincha and George Best, all whilst bringing himself on and scoring for the reserves, beating Chris Kamara at table tennis and shattering Big Sam Allardyce’s legacy of what should be expected at Bolton. If that’s not worth worshipping I don’t know what is.

Both Davies and Newcastle’s Carroll scored and looked impressive and on current form are England two best strikers by far. Which is an incredibly depressing thing when you think about it. Hoooof!

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Fulham 1-4 Man City – Replacing Bolton who’d in turn replaced Spurs in 4th, City recovered from their recent boo inducing goalless draws to torture former manager Marky Sparky Hughes with a performance of incredibly potent attacking vim. Carlos Tevez was again the driving force, with his sort of surrogate father and mentor Diego Maradona (who in reality would be the worst person to have as either, unless you were a self destructive drug addict) watching on in clear frozen discomfort, accompanied by a very bored looking blonde who’s sole purpose it probably was provide him with something to ‘do’ on the way home. After I’d figured out that nothing had actually happened to Gareth Barry’s face and that Aleksander Kolarov was in fact a different player all together, there was nothing left to do but admire City’s performance. If Bolton are playing like Brazil then City were playing like United, all while United were playing like City ‘were’ playing and Arsenal were bottling it like Spurs. What on earth has happened to football?

Birmingham 1-0 Chelsea – Is John Motson required by law to commentate on all of Chelsea’s games for Match of the Day? I was initially under the impression that he was limiting himself to London games so he’d never need to be too far away from his shed (or his carers) but an away at Birmingham shatters that theory. I wouldn’t mind were it not for his uniquely annoying pronunciation of Drogba, which inserts considerably more A’s than are needed (doubly so if he’s involved in something exciting) suffixed with a needless R. Drogbaaar was involved in a lot of excitement as it goes as Ben Foster consistently denied him and Chelsea heroically, helping his old club draw level on points at the top. Oh Butch where art thou?

Other Things I Noticed – David’s Gold & Sullivan’s Pimp and Cossack routine looks set to be outdone as Blackburn over take West Ham as the club with the dodgiest looking owners. Brad Friedel not actually being any good for ages now but nobody noticing it. Wayne Rooney’s street striker being the most pointless and over padded show on TV but worth it for Rooney asking a competitive BMXer “How d’you do that? D’you know?” (I think he does Wayne yes) and Colin Murray stealing my Prince William dressed as Tony Pulis gag on MOTD2. Damn you Murray. I’ll never top that!

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You can follow Oscar on Twitter here: http://twitter.com/oscarpyejeary, where he sometimes says stuff and that.

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When Robbie Keane returned to Tottenham from Liverpool in 2009 it was supposed to be a hero’s return. His mission was to help keep Tottenham in the Premier League, which they did, but Keane was never the same player and he didn’t really win over the White Hart Lane faithful.

Many Spurs fans never quite forgave the Irishman when he left for Liverpool in the summer of 2008. Despite saying that he would stay at Spurs for as long as he was happy and as long as the club wanted him he sealed his move away on the 28th July. It was his departure, followed by that of Dimitar Berbatov, which signalled Tottenham’s sudden decline at the start of the 2008/09 season.

Originally many Spurs fans hailed his return as a great piece of business by new manager Harry Redknapp, but many were also unimpressed that Tottenham were prepared to offer the struggling striker an olive branch just months after he’d been so desperate to leave. Keane’s first game back for Spurs was at home against Arsenal – the perfect opportunity to regain his hero status. Even though he played fairly well and Tottenham got a creditable draw Keane missed a glorious chance to get the winner, and the remainder of his Tottenham career panned out in much the same way.

If you take away Keane’s four goal showing against Burnley he only managed to score two league goals in the 09/10 season before he was allowed to go to Celtic on loan. By this point Keane had fallen sharply down the strikers’ pecking order and his performances had become lazy and aimless, a shadow of the player he once was. His temporary move to Celtic, one of his boyhood clubs, was a resounding success but raised the question among Spurs fans as to why it took a move north of the border for Keane to refind his form.

Keane has only featured sporadically in the Tottenham first XI this season and his appearance against FC Twente seemed to be Harry Redknapp allowing him a last hurrah as much as anything else. Redknapp said earlier in the week that Keane could be sold to the highest bidder with Wolves reportedly in the frame for the player.

It is worth remembering that Keane is still only 30 years old so potentially has another five or six years of top flight football left in him, however his poor second spell at Tottenham has left people thinking that he is already over the hill.

When Keane does depart I don’t think that Spurs fans will lose much sleep. However I also feel that while a move is the right deal for all concerned, his departure will trigger feelings of ‘if only’ for a man whose return has tarnished his previously untouchable reputation at White Hart Lane.

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Mark Schwarzer has revealed Australia’s Asian Cup veterans laid down the law to their younger team-mates ahead of their Qatar campaign.The 38-year-old Fulham goalkeeper was a member of the Socceroos squad that struggled in their debut Asian Cup appearance in 2007.

Billed as one of the favourites to win the tournament after their successful 2006 World Cup campaign, Australia laboured through the group stages and were knocked out in the quarter-finals by Japan.

Four years later, Schwarzer says the Socceroos are determined not to suffer the same fate in Qatar.

“That was something very, very much at the front of our minds,” Schwarzer told the Asian Cup’s official website.

“We made it very clear that for this tournament – especially the players that were there in 2007 and are here now – that we did not want to go through the same sort of process we did then.”

“It was important that we got off to a good start and it was important that we played some decent football as a team.”

The Socceroos have been true to their word so far, defeating India 4-0 and fighting out a 1-1 draw with South Korea to top Group C with four points.

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A draw with Bahrain on Tuesday will be enough to see Australia through to the last eight, and Schwarzer says the next step will be to erase the pain of their quarter-finals loss four years ago.

“We are very united as a group and we are determined to perform better than we did four years ago,” he said.

Darren Bent’s shock move to Aston Villa from Sunderland for a fee that could cost in the region of £24m in total has highlighted, possibly more than ever before, the ridiculous premium put on English talent with concerns to the over inflated transfer fees that they’re able to command.

Let me get this on record before we begin, I’m a big fan of Darren Bent. I think he should have gone to the World Cup, I rate him higher than current first-choice England striker Jermain Defoe, a player who he is often compared to, in particular by those who reside on White Hart Lane’s terraces, and that for pure goal scoring, there are few better in the whole of Europe. But the fact of the matter is, there is simply no way he is worth £24m.

The initial deal that Villa are paying is constructed in a way that means that they pay £18m up front, a huge outlay and tremendous show of faith on Chairman Randy Lerner’s part to his beleaguered manager Gerard Houllier, and that the deal could eventually rise to as much as £24m depending on appearances and add-ons.

Bent currently has the third best goal scoring record in the Premier League since 2005 with 81 league goals, only fractionally behind Wayne Rooney and Didier Drogba with 82 goals. The fact that anyone can doubt his pedigree is beyond me. He may not be the best all-round striker out there, but he scores goals by the bucket load and lest we forget, that is a striker’s main priority whenever he takes to the pitch.

But the price is simply astronomical. Bent, is, at 26 years of age, approaching his peak years and should he stay at Villa for the rest of his career, the longevity may counterbalance the price, but it’s a huge price tag to live up to. The only reason for the large nature of his fee has to be down to the nationality inked in on his passport.

Everyone knows that English players’ price tags are at a premium, and that’s why foreign managers when they come to England persist with pursuing transfer targets from abroad, because you can quite often get the same player for half the price if you don’t shop around in England.

At Man City for example, David Silva cost £25m, which in today’s market, seems a hugely fair price. Obviously, this was in part due to the financial woe that befell his former club Valencia who became crippled with huge debt. They were also forced to sell off other prized asset David Villa to Barcelona this summer for £34.5m too, to try and ease their financial constraints.

Contrasting Bent’s fee with David Silva’s and it’s clear only one club is getting value for money. Indeed, Man City have also been on the receiving end of paying over the odds for English talent – with the £26m forked out for James Milner (£18m transfer fee and the £8m valued Stephen Ireland moving in the opposite direction to Villa) and the £22m they paid for Joleon Lescott’s services and it looks something akin to daylight robbery. The combined cost of Vincent Kompany and Kolo Toure was fractionally less than Lescott and the Englishman rarely gets a look in beyond this solid pairing. The fact that nobody has been arrested yet on fraud charges for the £10m transfer of Wayne Bridge to City is nothing short of criminal.

It would be unfair to contrast the Bent deal with say, the Alan Shearer move from Blackburn to Newcastle in 1996 for £15m, for they are two completely incomparable eras and there is simply a lot more money in the game now than there was back then. But Shearer, baring Ronaldo and at a push, Patrick Kluivert, was the best striker in Europe at the time of the deal. Could you honestly count Bent as being in the same category at the moment?

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To put this deal into a more digestible perspective. Fernando Torres cost Liverpool £20m in 2007. Wayne Rooney cost Man Utd £23m in 2004. Didier Drogba’s move to Chelsea in 2004 cost £24m. Bent’s deal has the opportunity to equal or eclipse them all.

Bent will undoubtedly improve Villa on the pitch. They’re a side that’s been crying out for some firepower up top for quite some time and Martin O’Neill seemed quite reluctant to address the issue, instead focussing on trying to stop his side losing games rather than going out their to win them. The way Villa have set up so far under Houllier has seen a change in tack to a more attack-minded approach and perhaps this is why Lerner has backed Houllier so vehemently.

Just five days before the beginning of the season Martin O’Neill quit Villa, with the James Milner deal seemingly the straw that finally broke the camel’s back. It was thought that O’Neill was only going to receive £16m this summer to reinvest in the squad and that this lack of faith and ambition prompted his hasty departure.

Despite his relative success at Villa Park, tensions grew between Lerner and O’Neill and the Chairman, who had already forked out a hefty sum of money on new players upon becoming Chairman, obviously felt that he was seeing enough return on the pitch for his investment, despite the stability and consistency that O’Neill’s tenure offered.

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For a Chairman to turn around a complete policy on spending so quickly is really rather shocking, especially one as stable as Lerner. Only at the end of last season and the beginning of this one was Lerner waxing lyrical about the need to balance the books at Villa Park and that the club, in order to become sustainable in the current economic climate, needed to sell to buy. The Bent signing may not be a panic buy, for he’s just what they need right now, the sudden change in approach most certainly has a panicky ring to it.

Can Villa truly justify spending 25% of their annual turnover on just one player? Particularly when he’s one that’s so reliant on the service that’s given to him. Bent is capable of feeding off scraps and taking the few opportunities that he may receive in any given match, a skill he acquired in his time at lesser lights such as Charlton, Ipswich and to a lesser extent, Sunderland, and while he can be clinical, he’s simply not the sort of player to take teams on and beat them on his own. He’s not a world beater, he’s simply a fantastic goal scorer with a proven track record in the Premier League. It’s imperative now that Villa keep hold of in form and in-demand winger Stewart Downing now, as well as Ashley Young.

Bent is exactly the sort of player that Villa need, but they have been seriously hit in the pocket by two factors – doing their business in January and that fact that the man in question happens to be English. Bent will score goals at Villa, lots of them probably and Houllier’s arm around the shoulder management style will suit a player that needs to be top dog and loved to perform to his best, but that nagging feeling that they are paying over the odds persists.

When a Premier league manager is next criticised for buying a foreign player instead of an English one, can you really blame them after looking at the Bent deal? There is simply no value in the market anymore, particularly if you happen to be born on these fair shores.

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Everton manager David Moyes wants his side make amends for one of their poorest performances of the season when they face Arsenal on Tuesday.

Moyes still has bad memories of his team’s display that saw them lose 2-1 against the Gunners at Goodison Park in the English Premier League in November.

Arsenal raced into a two-goal lead through Bacary Sagna and Cesc Fabregas, though the scoreline could have been a lot higher.

Midfielder Tim Cahill pulled a late goal back for the home side but Moyes never expected to get anything from the game.

Everton have suffered just one defeat in their last ten games but they won just three of those encounters, and Moyes is keen to see his side get back to winning ways.

“I think one of our poorest performances this season was at home to Arsenal this season,” he said.

“I didn’t think we got to the standards we had in other games. We will try to do better than we did in that game at Goodison Park.”

“Arsenal have good sides every year. There is no question of the quality they have got there. They try to compete at the top of the league which is very difficult.”

“It is always a hard game because of the quality players they have in their side but we have quality players as well.”

“We have drawn a lot of games – some we could have won. Getting a win is important and we have not got enough of them. We need to win instead of drawing them – that would be the answer.”

Moyes is banking on Louis Saha to continue his good form in the second half of the season.

The former Manchester United forward netted his third goal in just four games during the 1-1 FA Cup draw against Chelsea on Saturday.

After scoring just four goals in the whole of 2010, Moyes is praying the Frenchman can regain the form which saw him net 12 strikes in the first half of last season.

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Moyes added: “Goals change centre forwards and everything they do feels a lot better.”

“At the start of last season he scored a lot of goals in the first half of the season so let’s hope he can score a lot of these goals in the second half of this season.”

“He is playing with a lot more confidence and belief. I would like to think he can keep it going.”

Moyes has no fresh injury worries for the trip to north London but will make a decision over the inclusion of defender Tony Hibbert, who has been suffering from illness.

Manchester United striker Javier Hernandez has been named in Mexico’s squad for next week’s friendly against Bosnia-Herzegovina in Atlanta.

It will be coach Jose Manuel de la Torre’s first game in charge of the national team after he took over from World Cup coach Javier Aguirre.

De la Torre also named former Spurs midfielder Giovanni dos Santos, who recently joined La Liga’s Racing Santander on loan, and Fulham defender Carlos Salcido in the 22-man squad for Thursday’s match.

Dutch-based defenders Francisco Rodriguez (PSV Eindhoven) and Hector Moreno (AZ Alkmaar) were also selected for the match at the Georgia Dome.

The friendly is the first of three on Mexico’s US tour as De La Torre prepares for the CONCACAF Gold Cup in the US in June and the Copa America in Argentina in July.

Mexico will also face Paraguay in Oakland on March 26, and Venezuela in San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium on March 29.

Goalkeepers: Jesus Corona (Cruz Azul), Alfredo Talavera (Toluca). Defenders: Carlos Salcido (Fulham), Héctor Moreno (AZ Alkmaar), Francisco Javier Rodríguez (PSV Eindhoven), Paul Aguilar (Pachuca), Iván Estrada (Santos Laguna), Edgar Dueñas (Toluca), Jonny Magallon (CD Guadalajara), Jorge Torres Nilo (Tigres).

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Midfielders: Gerardo Torrado (Cruz Azul), Israel Castro (UNAM), Jesus Zavala (Monterrey), Antonio Naelson Sinha (Toluca), Luis Perez (Monterrey).

Forwards: Javier Hernandez (Manchester United), Giovanni dos Santos (Racing de Santander), Pablo Barrera (West Ham United), Edgar Pacheco (Atlas), Nestor Calderón (Toluca), Jose María Cárdenas (Santos Laguna), Aldo de Nigris (Monterrey).

Hannover and Mainz kept the pressure on the Bundesliga leaders on Saturday as both sides recorded hard-fought away wins.Hannover had an 89th minute header from defender Christian Schulz to thank for their 1-0 victory over St Pauli, a result that temporarily lifts them into third place on the table ahead of Bayern Munich’s clash with league leaders Borussia Dortmund later on Saturday.A 2-1 win over Hoffenheim ensures Mainz remain in fifth spot on the table.Mainz took the lead through Andreas Ivanschitz at Rhein-Neckar-Arena, but the hosts looked to have salvaged a share of the spoils when David Alaba equalised seven minutes from time.Enter Elkin Soto, and the Colombian midfielder secured all three points for Mainz just two minutes later when he found himself on the end of a Marcel Risse cross to fire home the winner.Elsewhere on Saturday, Cologne moved five points clear of the relegation zone with a surprise 1-0 win over Freiburg thanks to a Lukas Podolski goal.Relegation battlers Kaiserslautern claimed a valuable point at home with a 1-1 draw against Hamburg, while Schalke and Nuremberg also drew 1-1 when Raul cancelled out Jens Hegeler’s opener for the visitors.

Lazio coach Edy Reja is already looking forward to the Rome derby next weekend after his side triumphed 2-0 over Palermo on Sunday.Lazio consolidated their hold on third on the Serie A table with victory at the Stadio Olimpico, which came courtesy of a Giuseppe Sculli brace inside the first 18 minutes.But the Italian striker was substituted off in the 52nd minute for what Reja described as an allergic reaction to the pitch, which had been treated with green paint to cover up patches of dry grass.Reja’s men will face Roma next Sunday in a clash vital to both teams’ hopes of securing European berths.Roma have gone undefeated since manager Vincenzo Montella took over from Claudio Ranieri, and Reja is anticipating a thrilling encounter.”We struggled a little in the second half (on Sunday), even if we defended in an organised fashion,” Reja said.”I expected a little more push, but we took our foot off the accelerator.””Now there is the derby next week. Roma have quality and experience, so we’ve got to give it heart, just as we have done up until now.””We are slightly ahead of them in the standings and hope we can keep both Roma and Udinese behind us. I’ve lost a few derbies, so I hope it’s our turn this time round.””I have brought harmony back to the locker room and that was a great conquest for me.”Palermo coach Serse Cosmi experienced a first-up defeat after replacing Delio Rossi, and did not mince words in his first post-match press conference.”I had a great deal of enthusiasm and hunger to get back to work, but we were shocking in the first 20 minutes,” Cosmi said.”We were too timid, so Lazio were allowed to go in front too easily and then doubled their lead straight after.””There’s a long way to go yet, but the fact remains we basically lost to their only two shots on goal.”

Laurent Blanc was content with France’s 2-0 Euro 2012 qualifying win over Luxembourg, despite a lacklustre attacking display from Les Bleus.Goals from Phillipe Mexes and Yoann Gourcuff at Luxembourg’s Stade Josy Barthel were enough to lift Blanc’s side four points clear of Belarus at the top of Group D, but the former Bordeaux manager watched his men squander a number of good opportunities.

Real Madrid star Karim Benzema was one player who looked particularly out of touch, leaving Blanc with some selection headaches ahead of Tuesday’s friendly against Croatia in Paris.

“Offensively, it was not a very good or very powerful performance. But we must make a comprehensive analysis,” Blanc said.

“In saying that, we lacked consistency, but there was little space against Luxembourg.”

The match was the first game back for Bayern Munich winger Franck Ribery and Manchester United defender Patrice Evra after their controversial suspension in the wake of France’s disastrous 2010 World Cup campaign, and Blanc was pleased with the influence of both.

“They took a tentative start. They then gradually got into the match. They did a good job and there is a chance to see them stay with us. They actually are part of the France group,” he said.

Ribery paid tribute to the fighting spirit of Luxembourg and said he was relieved to have gotten through the match.

“It was not an easy game, but the win was the main thing,” he said.

“It was nice to play the full 90 minutes, but the main thing is to work well.”