A combination of a successful generation of young German talent and recent triumphs in last season’s Champions League tournament has made the Bundesliga an incredibly popular top flight for the footballing public, while a number of Premier League clubs have also begun to realise the vast opportunities in the transfer market the German first tier provides.
Tottenham signed former Schalke midfield prodigy Lewis Holtby earlier in the summer, and they could soon add to their Bundesliga cast in the near future as the North London outfit are linked to a number of stars and starlets from the German top flight.
So with that in mind, here’s FIVE players from Germany’s top tier that have caught the attention of Spurs boss Andre Villas-Boas.
Click on Sidney Sam to reveal the FIVE Bundesliga stars on Tottenham’s radar
Lady Luck has been so far removed from Anfield this season that I almost expected Sir Alex Ferguson to name her up front alongside Robin van Persie. If recent results have been difficult to stomach for Liverpool fans lately then I would probably skip to the end of the following paragraph as the defeat to Manchester United means the club have now failed win any of their opening five league games for the first time in a century.
The defensive frailties of Brendan Rodger’s new look side has helped contribute to the fact that Liverpool have managed just one clean sheet in the past 15 Premier League outings, which has in turn resulted in just four victories from the past 19 league fixtures at home. Is it fair to suggest that Anfield is no longer the unforgiving fortress that it once was?
The worrying truth is that Liverpool’s displays this season haven’t merited any of these demoralising statistics. Sunday’s performance was the second time in recent weeks where Liverpool have dominated a supposedly superior team from Manchester, and yet they only have a solitary point to show for their efforts. The supporters continue to arrive in vast numbers and set about creating an intimidating atmosphere that make my television speakers wince under such strain. So why are do those vital three points remain so elusive?
Gary Neville hailed yesterday’s game as a “reminder of how difficult it is to play at Anfield”, but I would argue that teams no longer fear playing on the hallowed turf. The ailing fortunes of Liverpool football club means that not only do visiting managers believe they can avoid defeat, but they are confident of picking up a win.
The Reds are a side in the midst of significant transition and this makes them vulnerable. The reliance on ball retention evokes a slow, gradual build-up in attack and unfortunately you will struggle to beat a team like United by ‘killing them softly’. For all its positives, there is a growing realisation that Liverpool have forgotten how to win ‘ugly’.
Liverpool are bereft of a natural goalscorer, especially when you consider the iconic names who have lead the line in the past. For all his positive attributes, Luis Suarez will never be as prolific as Torres, Owen, Fowler or Rush. At present he risks mutating into the next Dirk Kuyt, a player whose touch, work-rate and link up play will always impress but mean little without an end product. If Liverpool are relying on Suarez to constantly adorn the scoresheet, then they are in serious trouble.
The absence of Andy Carroll was tragically evident when Liverpool were chasing the game on Sunday. I can fully understand Rodger’s decision to exclude the burly striker from his preferred starting XI, but the fact remains that there are few better, more effective players to bring off the bench. The United backline was there for the taking and even though it would have been unattractive, Carroll would have battered them into submission.
The former Geordie talisman is not the only player to have struggled since his inflated transfer to Merseyside. In fact he tops a growing list of individuals who have wilted under the pressure of the high-profile move. Jordan Henderson for example, has spent most of his time weeping in Gerrard’s shadow although unless my T.V settings were slightly distorted, he has been punishing himself the gym recently in an attempt to make some kind of impact.
Speaking of shadows, Stewart Downing is a fraction of the player who once ran rampant for Martin O’Neill at Aston Villa. If he plays anymore defensively for Rodgers, he’ll never be able to break his goal/assist curse. I don’t deny that he’s been underwhelming in a red shirt but Rodgers should at least attempt to show the same faith that has seen Raheem Sterling and Jonjo Shelvey flourish under his leadership.
The new boss at Liverpool is clearly a dedicated believer of the phrase, ‘if you have the ball, the other team can’t score’. This served him well at Swansea but it goes without saying that teams expect Liverpool to have the majority of possession. Oppositions will sit back rather than become restless and flood forward, which means fewer gaps in the defence, reducing the number of goal-scoring opportunities. They need to be ruthless and in some cases more direct because at present they are not taking advantage of the respect teams are giving them.
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Steven Gerrard has today declared that this is no time to “panic” and he is absolutely right, this is a time to persevere. Rodgers doesn’t have a point to prove, but he does have to prove he knows how to pick up three of them.
Join me on Twitter @theunusedsub where for once I feel sorry for Steve Kean.
According to The Times, Manchester United are nearing a deal for Juventus left-back Alex Sandro, who could officially join the Red Devils after the FA Cup final.
Sandro has long been linked with a move to Old Trafford, and the Brazilian is now heading for the 20-time English champions if the latest reports are to be believed.
Ashley Young has impressed in the left-back position for United this term, but Luke Shaw has been strongly linked with a move away, and there is no question that head coach Jose Mourinho needs to boost his options in that area of the field.
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Sandro is valued at £45m according to transfermarkt.co.uk, although Italian champions Juventus are believed to be holding out for more than £50m.
The United fans have been reacting to the transfer news, and it would be fair to say that a number are excited about the potential arrival.
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Sealing the signature of Sandro ahead of the 2018 World Cup would be huge for United, there is no doubt about that.
A selection of the Twitter reaction can be seen below:
Over the last few weeks, virtually every major club in Europe has been linked with Barcelona’s wantaway winger Pedro. It seems the Spaniard’s time at the Nou Camp has come to an end after inevitably failing to reclaim his starting role from a four-time Ballon d’Or winner, a £75million striker and another forward so ludicrously expensive former Barca president Sandro Rosell opted to resign rather than reveal his actual transfer fee.
He’s been hardly left short of potential next destinations. Respective domestic champions Bayern Munich, Juventus and PSG have all been linked with the 5 foot 6 attacker over the last few months, whilst Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United represent sustained interest from our own top flight. But in my opinion, Pedro should only be considering a move to the Premier League right now, just as Premier League clubs in need of a winger should only be considering Pedro. Here’s why.
First off, it’s worth pointing out the Spain international’s £22million release clause represents sensational value for money, on par with Liverpool’s bosman capture of James Milner and United’s £14million swoop for Bastian Schweinsteiger. After all, this is a three-time Champions League winner, a five-time La Liga winner, a European Championship winner and a World Cup winner still firmly in his prime at the age of 27. That’s the kind of experience and silverware you’d expect of a flagging veteran – like the aforementioned Schweini – but Pedro could have five or six years yet ahead before his joints start giving up.
Of course, value for money will appeal to clubs all across Europe, but particularly those in a top flight that’s decimated its spending record pretty much every year without fail since the turn of the millennium. Whilst the size of transfer fees appears to directly correlate with excitement amongst the fan base nowadays, Pedro is a signing chairmen and managers will feel the biggest affection towards – because he’s a world-class player without a world-class price-tag.
Considerably more pertinent, however, is Pedro’s individual style of play. Alexis Sanchez has changed the face of the Premier League since moving to Arsenal for £35million last summer and his former Barcelona team-mate has the potential to do the same, blessed with a similar blend of technical flair, pace, energy and netting prowess.
The Chile international has always been a little more potent than Pedro, outscoring him for all three of their campaigns together at the Nou Camp. But there’s an intrinsic difference that might make the Spaniard even more suitable to the Premier League than Sanchez; the latter being a predominantly skilful player, compared to the incredibly industrious, gritty and determined former.
Sanchez is by no means lackadaisical but Pedro’s work rate and stamina is firmly within the realms of world class – two attributes that continue to accelerate in importance for Premier League forwards and widemen with every season. After all, we’re talking about the running man, the work-horse, the engine room, who balanced the considerably less industrious styles of Lionel Messi and David Villa for what is still widely viewed as the greatest club XI of all time – the 2011 Champions League winning Barca side.
Former Barcelona manager Tata Martino summarises it perfectly; “Pedro’s secret is that he never gives up.” He’s their Johnny Walters, their Hamez Milner; the unsung hero who enters every game like his life depends on victory.
I’ve always been a firm believer that mentality and attitude can exceed talent in the Premier League like no other top flight in world football, not that the 27 year-old is particularly short of ability. Many stellar names have arrived from abroad only to feel lost in our high-octane matches and attritional mid-table skirmishes, especially those of Pedro’s slender build or those spawned from technique-centric academies like Barcelona’s famous La Masia.
But the Spaniard has always been a warrior first – a hassler, a hurrier, a harasser of the opposition who works hard for every single goal – and players of that ingrained mentality have a knack of thriving in the Premier League. I’m certain that will be the case with Pedro as well.
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So if you’re Arsenal, Liverpool or United – or for that matter, just a Premier League club with a spare £22million – your transfer policy for the next six weeks should be dominated by one single, crucial objective – sign Pedro.
Newcastle United are approaching a crucial stage of the transfer window as the September 3rd deadline looms ever closer. Joe Kinnear’s appointment as director of football may caused a lot of furore and a media circus following his every move, but he appears to have been given a simple mandate from the board. This is to sign one more elite striker alongside the capture of Loic Remy on loan to ensure Magpies will once again be a force to be reckoned with in the Premier League.
All the noises regarding the club’s transfer policy suggest that they believe that if Kinnear delivers Alan Pardew the necessary firepower in the striking department the foundations will be fully laid for the club to succeed. Is this though a short sighted approach which is set to once again leave Pardew in the position where he does not have the necessary tools to succeed?
I certainly find this argument one that is hard to ignore. It would be foolish to claim that Newcastle are not crying out for another centre forward. They are in desperate need of an addition to what they have even with the arrival of Remy, but the buck can’t stop there. The reason why Alan Pardew came under such heavy fire from the regulars at St James’s Park last term was that style of play he was delivering on match days was below par. It is clear that bringing in even two new strikers won’t suddenly fix this problem.
The arrival of new centre forwards in theory would provide the manager the flexibility to be able to change the system of last season from the ailing 4-2-3-1 to a traditional 4-4-2. This switch in tactics could help the club be tactically astute and reach the upper echelons of the Premier League once more, as they could avoid the problems they encountered last season. The formation rolled out last term saw key performers being played out of position and therefore they were simply not delivering to their full potential. The addition of a forward to Papiss Cisse will enable the Tyneside club to get the best out of their number 9 who was extremely isolated at times last season, but it won’t cure the inherent problem the Magpies will face with any system they try to play, if they only bolster their forward line.
The whole starting XI were caught out by their opposition last season due to the fact that their full backs and wingers failed to help the ensure the team could press higher up the pitch rather than be constantly penned in their own half. The only way to fix this problem is for the club to sign wingers capable of adding the pace and creativity out wide so Newcastle can use their wide players as an outlet to unlock the attacking potential that clearly exists through the whole starting line up.
In Santon and Debuchy there is without doubt the potential for Newcastle to create expansive play starting from the full backs but these defenders currently aren’t in a position to be able to utilise their attacking flair. Whenever, either of those players marauder forward they soon find themselves exposed because of the direct style of play currently on offer at St James’s Park. Newcastle’s best full back pairing became diluted as players because they didn’t make as many incisive runs forward as they knew that they would simply not be supported in trying to hurt sides down the wings. It may seem a bizarre claim to make from a neutral perspective because on paper there appears to be an abundance of talent on the flanks with Gouffran, Ben Arfa, Gutierrez and Marveaux. All these players however, are not traditional wingers in the sense that they like to drift into a central role in one form or another.The added issue on top of this is that Ben Arfa is the only player out of those wingers seen as having the craft and attacking instinct that can truly hurt opposition.
The knock on effect of this is that Cisse and now Remy simply can’t score any cheap headers from crosses that are a staple part of a centre forward’s diet and any threat from set pieces is also negated. Newcastle have not scored from a set piece in competitive action since a dubious Demba Ba handled finish against Reading at the beginning of the 2012/13 season. It is no coincidence that within this period that the team has desperately starved itself of any threat from the wings. It is crippling Newcastle’s long term chances of success.
This message is not lost on Newcastle’s first opponents Man City who signed Jesus Navas as a solution to being caught too narrow last season, and the Magpies would do well to take a leaf out of their book. There may be a constant hysteria all the way up to and even on deadline day as to whether Newcastle get that centre forward “over the line” but it could all be in vain if the striker is not provided with a sufficient platform to flourish.
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Italian side Napoli have enforced a new club rule that will prevent their players from engaging in any sexual activity two days before a game, the Daily Mirror state.
The Italian side earned much praise last season for their efforts against both Chelsea and Manchester City in the Champions League and they also had the fewest injuries in the Italian top division last season.
The ‘sex ban’ seems radical but professional boxers, wrestlers and athletes adhere to similar regimes before big events and so time will tell whether this will improve Napoli’s performances and injury record this season.
“Avoiding sexual activity for two days before a game is fundamental to prevent muscular strains, contractions or inflammations, for us this is a rule,” Doctor De Nicola told Italian newspaper Corriere del Mezzogiorno.
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“There is also a specific work done by my staff and the fitness coaches which is aimed more at prevention than cure.”
Liverpool and Jurgen Klopp deserve a good deal of praise and credit for reaching a Champions League final and to suggest otherwise would be to pull the shutters down around personal bias.
It is important, however, not to succumb to giddy hyperbole because, should the Reds prevail over Real Madrid in Kiev on May 26th, where is there left to go? Already this past week, Mark Lawrenson has compared Klopp to Bill Shankly, while Daily Telegraph hack Chris Bascombe has declared him to be ‘more than equal’ to Pep Guardiola. More than equal? That’s another way of saying ‘better’, right?
If Liverpool are building up a good head of steam on the continent at present then the same can be said of their perception within the media, and if a sixth European Cup is attained later this month then it’s all too easy to imagine the inundation of nonsensical platitudes to come. There will almost certainly be a think-piece insisting that the German coach is Liverpool’s greatest ever gaffer and the logic put forward by the author will be that it is so much more difficult in the modern era to forge a collective team vision, what with agents and other distractions – pressures that Klopp’s predecessors did not have.
There will also inevitably be favourable comparisons made between this Liverpool side and a Manchester City XI that has won the Premier League at its earliest ever juncture, while some bright spark looking to capitalise on the jubilation of a fan-base is sure to place Milner and co. high in the firmament of all-time great British sides.
Some pre-emptive perspective is needed then – and fast.
Let’s start with the big picture and work our way in. Liverpool is not a great team and Jurgen Klopp is not a great manager. He crafts exhilarating sides full of ferocious attacking intent but it is a singular strategy inbuilt with an inherent and significant flaw, in that they are decidedly ordinary when it comes to breaking down stubborn, well-organised banks of four.
This season they have come unstuck against Burnley, Stoke, and West Brom (twice). Last season they were neutralised by Burnley, Bournemouth and Crystal Palace. And next season take your pick because there WILL be sides who will deprive them of space to enact their devastating sprees; who will place ten men behind the ball and essentially say, ‘come on then, what have you got? Without your blood and thunder and bombastic pace what do you have?’ and the answer will be ‘not a lot,’ besides plenty of huffing and puffing and an ability to blow the house down.
That is not a great side overseen by a great manager. Great sides do not require opponents to play a certain way. Great sides find a way.
When it became apparent that Manchester City were rampaging through the league with a style and substance unparalleled in recent years, opponents took fright and set themselves up as a carapace. On every occasion City had a cuteness and cunning to succeed.
Liverpool’s one-dimensional superpower is precisely why they will always be a very real threat in cup competitions where – barring the exceptional exception when an opponent seeks out penalties from the opening whistle – teams are susceptible to being blown away. In the league though – week-on-week, month-on-month – such passion-play is simply not sustainable. It never will be. Not for the whole nine yards.
And it is league titles that determine greatness: not riding a wave of momentum that takes you past Maribor and Porto and Manchester City (at this point, let’s at least cede that if Manchester City are by some considerable distance Liverpool’s betters then the Reds are the former’s Achilles heel. Let’s also cede that nobody remembers who exactly threw the spear in that historical analogy).
As Brian Clough once noted: “I will gladly go out of the European Cup, the football League Cup and the FA Cup if you could guarantee me winning the football league. Because that is the one where you have to have every single aspect of football management about you to win it.”
On that note, let’s remind ourselves how Liverpool have fared this season after a full campaign last year under Klopp that led to a fourth place finish (and no silverware of any note) and three-quarters of a campaign before that that took them to eighth (and no silverware of any note).
This time out Liverpool have fired on every conceivable cylinder. They have maximised their manager’s ethos and done so boasting a player in Mohamed Salah who has enjoyed a freak purple-patch that has harvested 43 goals. They have been fortunate to avoid key injuries throughout.
This then is the best that Klopp can do and hope for.
Yet his team still resides a startling 21 points behind City having played a game more. City’s game in hand is against Brighton at home and given that the Blues will start that fixture as 2/9 favourites, it’s reasonable to presume that gap up to its full 24 and if we do that, we match the present gap between Liverpool and their struggling neighbours Everton. We would only be two points off the difference between bottom of the table West Brom and seventh placed, high-flying Burnley.
It is a vast chasm in class and consistency. It is the difference between eight wins and eight losses across a season.
So then, Chris Bascombe, is Klopp really ‘more than equal’ to a coach set to smash every meaningful record that the Premier League can throw up? By the season’s end, Guardiola’s creation will have most likely accrued more points and goals in a single year than any other side since the league’s inception. Furthermore, they will have done so while playing an extraordinary standard of beautiful football that has raised the bar of what is possible on domestic turf in the modern era.
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This weekend Liverpool travel to Stamford Bridge, where a defeat will put their four hopes in jeopardy.
Some perspective; that’s all that is needed here. An acceptance that a Champions League triumph will be a magnificent achievement from a very good side who ride momentum arguably better than anyone other than a handful of sides across Europe. An acceptance, too, that the arrival of Naby Keita and the possible arrival of a top-class goalkeeper this summer will make the Reds better equipped to mount a more sustained challenge for the runner-up spot next term, instead of being bested by a United outfit with an identity crisis.
You can’t blame Liverpool supporters for getting hopelessly carried away right now. They would not be doing their job as a fan if they weren’t. As far as the media goes, however, it is hoped they stop pandering to this giddiness in return for easy clicks.
Because otherwise they’re in danger of looking positively stupid.
Jurgen Klopp has outlined the way he sees his Liverpool side playing ahead his first game in charge against Tottenham on Saturday, as reported by MirrorFootball.The German manager replaced Brendan Rodgers last week and after enjoying his first week with his new players, took part in his first pre-match press conference on Friday morning.And Klopp revealed how successful his first training sessions have been and how he wants his players to play under him.WANT MORE? >> Liverpool transfer news | Latest transfer newsHe said: “We’ve had three excellent training sessions.“The boys are willing to listen. It’s not the time to change many things. It’s time to just turn the screws a little bit in the right ways.“I know how I want to play. At the end it is only football. Now we have to open our chests, run and fight and shoot.â€â€œWe have to restart. I only think about what we have to do to be stable in a game.“All these guys can play their best football. That is why they are here. We have to play like our best dream.â€Klopp also delivered an injury update following the news young defender Joe Gomez had been ruled out for the rest of the campaign with an ACL injury.“What a wonderful young boy Gomez is,†Klopp said.“He has done his ACL. Now we have to wait. He will have surgery. This is his home.â€But he did have some positive injury news about big money summer signings Christian Benteke and Roberto Firmino.“Benteke and Firmino are back on the pitch but not training with the team.“I hope they will be back with the team next week.â€
So we come to the end of our Brazil special, in tribute for next year’s World Cup, and in what better way to complete the trilogy than with a Part 3 on a player who could light up the very occasion, Neymar, but is he a player who will live up to the hype?
At 21, Neymar has attracted the attention of nearly every club in the world, with Barcelona hot on his heels and looking most likely to snap him up. Neymar has managed to attract all this attention while never playing for a European club, playing all his football in the Brazilian league. Not many players can create a storm among the big European clubs and not play in any one of their leagues. So, just how has he done this?
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Neymar’s skills were identified when he was at a very young age, signing for Santos at the age of 11. Santos being a club which was known for an excellent youth academy producing players such as Alex, Elano, Robinho and legends such as Pele and Pepe. Neymar was certainly in good hands and by the time he turned 14, he travelled to Madrid in order to join their ranks. Madrid at the time, hosted stars such as Ronaldo, Zinedine Zidane and Robinho. Passing all the trials and impressing, he was ready to join, however Santos paid £1million to keep him. Staying on, Neymar developed through the ranks quickly and was awarded with a promotion to the first team in 2009. At this point Neymar was 17 years of age, making 48 appearances and notching 14 goals. It wasn’t the most prolific start, but given his age and it being his first season in the Brazilian league, it wasn’t looked upon to seriously. Neymar went on to flourish in the following season with 42 goals in 60 appearances, an incredible feat given his age and the number of goals scored. Neymar has now gone on to make a total of 219 appearances scoring 136 along the way. For a young man who has now only just turned 21, it is an enormous statistic, over one goal every two games. Although distancing himself to comparisons of Pele, it seems as though he would be the only player to possibly eclipse the legend’s gargantuan goal record. Providing he stays of course, which is becoming increasingly unlikely.
Neymar has managed to collect a total of 37 individual awards to his name, 35 of which have been associated with the Brazilian league. At the Club World Cup he picked up the bronze ball for third top scorer, but the one that really caught the attention of the world was when he won the FIFA Puskas award in 2011. Neymar’s stunning solo effort against Ronaldinho’s Flamengo showed, skill, strength, pace and a deft finish. Rightly winning the award, Neymar was the name on all the big clubs’ lips. However everyone seemed to be more looking forward to one game in 2011, the Club World Cup final with Santos versus Barcelona. It was a disappointing performance with Neymar going without a goal, and a match he was judged far too highly on. Critics took this performance too seriously, they seemed to forget that he was only 20 and playing against a Barcelona team in their prime. He hasn’t yet managed to get close to a Ballon D’or but it wont be too long before his name will be in lights. More recently, to silence his critics Neymar had a great 2012 Olympics, scoring four goals and assisting as many as three – he’d finally proved it on a bigger stage.
Currently Neymar has played 17 games in the 2013 season scoring 13 goals to continue his impressive record. He has also become an integral part of the Brazil national team making 31 appearances and notching 19 goals again showing he can do it on an even bigger stage. A stage which some criticise Lionel Messi for lacking in. Following on from Part 2 with the Brazil team, it could be that Brazil will be built around Neymar, this in return would rejuvenate the Joga Bonito style Brazil fans so dearly miss. To sum up the love of Neymar, when Dunga did not include him in the 2010 World Cup squad, 14,000 Brazilian fans signed a petition to get him in the squad.
So what does the future hold for Neymar? No one can deny that he has got serious talent, he’s done it enough times to prove so, especially after just turning 21. After rejecting a contract extension from Santos, Vice-President Odilio Rodrigues has resigned to the fact Neymar will leave. Speaking to Spanish radio station Cadena Ser he stated: “He has informed us that he won’t be renewing his deal because his time at Santos has come to an end.”
He is widely expected to leave after the 2014 World Cup with father and agent, Neymar Sr stating that Neymar would “close a chapter in his life” and “will then leave for Europe”. Barcelona’s chief transfer negotiator Andre Curry further added that “Neymar is Barcelona’s top choice, and I’m currently attending all Santos’ games” (ESPN).
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Seemingly with only one destination in mind, Neymar will soon grace the pitches of La Liga. Before he does though, expect a magical World Cup, with another season’s experience under his belt, Neymar will show the world how good he really is.
Andy Carroll has joined West Ham on a season-long loan deal from Liverpool.
The England international is surplus to requirements at Anfield after the appointment of Brendan Rodgers, who has ideally been looking to sell the forward this summer.
However, with no suitors able to match the Reds’ valuation of the burly striker, a temporary deal has been agreed with Sam Allardyce’s men, who have no obligation to buy Carroll at the end of the season.
Carroll has admitted that he is looking forward to playing regular first-team football.
“I want to be playing games and obviously hoping to score some goals. I know the manager well and some of the lads, so it is nice for me to come to a place where I know people,” The Telegraph report him as saying.
“I’m hoping to add a lot of goals and create a few chances. I know Sam from Newcastle and he was a massive reason for me coming. When I worked with him at Newcastle it was great so it was a no-brainer really.”
Allardyce is glad to have Carroll in London, and feels that the switch benefits everyone.
“I think for all parties this is a great signing. Andy is an all-round footballer, but because he is 6ft 3in and one of his strengths is his aerial power, everybody dismisses the ability he possesses on the floor,” the Hammers coach stated.
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“Hopefully he can score goals for us and we will be in a very good position at the end of the year in the Barclays Premier League.”