A series of injury problems has resulted in Siem de Jong making just 26 appearances for Newcastle United following a move from Ajax in the summer of 2014.
The 28-year-old arrived at Newcastle with a big reputation, but he has scored just twice for the Magpies, and spent last season on loan in the Netherlands with PSV Eindhoven.
A total of 23 appearances during the 2016-17 campaign suggests that De Jong is moving in the right direction when it comes to overcoming his injury problems, and the Dutchman will be given the chance to make his mark for Newcastle during their pre-season preparations.
De Jong took to Twitter earlier this week to reveal his plans for the coming weeks as he bids to convince Newcastle boss Rafael Benitez of his worth ahead of the Premier League campaign.
The reaction from the Newcastle fans was extremely positive, with a large number responding with messages of support for a player that was highly-rated during his time at Ajax.
Pretty much all transfer talk involving West Ham this summer has centred around one position – centre-forward – and rightly so.
Rather incredibly, the last striker to score more than 15 goals for West Ham in a Premier League season was Paolo Di Canio in 1999/2000 – including the 32 strikers signed during David Gold and David Sullivan’s tutelage in east London. In fact, that underwhelming rabble have produced just 134 goals between them – averaging just 4.2 each – in nearly seven hundred games.
A star centre-forward is what eluded West Ham last summer as pursuits of Carlos Bacca and Alexandre Lacazette amounted to little, much to their detriment as they finished last season four places and 18 points worse off than the campaign previous, losing talismanic entity Dimitri Payet in the process. David Gold has already hinted signing a goal-scoring centre-forward will be the club’s priority again this summer.
“We are interested in all good players but we have to face the facts here – we have got good midfielders.
“We have got a good defence, we have got good midfielders, we have got good wingers. We need strikers and that is the key to everything for this season so we are focused first and foremost on bringing in two strikers.
“It’s clear to most fans that we are desperate for centre-forwards. Andy Carroll is injury-prone as we know, we have had an injury problem with [Diafra] Sakho and we have just got to bring in centre-forwards. We have got to find the money.
“Without strikers, you struggle in the Premier League. You struggle in any division because strikers are your key players.”
Yet, West Ham face many of the same problems this time around. Everton’s incredible spending shows how difficult it is for the Hammers to compete with those just above them in the table let alone Europe’s biggest clubs, during a transfer window in which Romelu Lukaku has moved to Manchester United for £75million and Arsenal have splashed out £52.7million on Alexandre Lacazette.
A striker merry-go-round is shaping up and unfortunately, there are plenty of clubs higher up in the food chain with more money to spend than West Ham.
However, that doesn’t mean West Ham can’t find a centre-forward before the summer window slams shut – they just have to think a little outside the box and accept this probably isn’t the summer when a long-term front-man capable of firing them up the league table for the next five to ten years comes along. A quality short-term fix is needed and looking around Europe, few options are more impressive than Wolfsburg’s Mario Gomez.
Make no mistake about it, the 32-year-old is a finisher pure and simple – he’s not the kind of forward who can take games by the scruff of the neck and to the opposition defence. His all-round play is limited and lethargic, whilst his mobility was never outstanding even in his younger years.
In fact, since moving to Bayern Munich in 2009, Gomez has averaged just 15.1 passes and 0.7 created chances per match at both club and international level.
Gomez isn’t a superstar, but he’s incredibly effective at what he does – scoring goals. In a career that has spanned five clubs and three top flights (two of which he won the Golden Boot in), the 6 foot 2 striker has produced 281 goals in 498 appearances, failing to reach double figures in the league just twice during the last eleven campaigns – both coming during a difficult, injury-thwarted spell at Fiorentina. His international record isn’t to be sniffed at either; 30 from 70 caps for the German national team.
Indeed, fox-in-the-box and all the clichés accompanying that term apply to Gomez arguably better than any striker in European football. He’s the kind of striker who can spend 89 minutes and 59 seconds of any given game looking like a competition winner thrown onto the pitch and given a jersey, only for the remaining second to produce a match-winning goal. Any frustration in watching Gomez is usually offset come the final whistle, by his world-class knack of being in the right place at exactly the right time.
Rather than a talismanic entity up front, a pure goalscorer is arguably what West Ham need more. Despite scoring only the eleventh-most goals in the Premier League last season they actually created the ninth-most chances; the real problem, especially during the first half of the season when Payet averaged the most created chances per match of any player in the league, was putting them away.
The Hammers don’t have the Frenchman at their disposal anymore, but Manuel Lanzini increasingly grew into the chief creator role at the end of last season and will be desperate for a natural goalscorer to take advantage of the supply he can prove next term.
The real question mark, of course, is how attainable Gomez actually is – one can only imagine the time West Ham wasted last summer targeting strikers they either couldn’t afford or had no real desire to play for them. But at the age of 32, a final chance to test himself in the Premier League could appeal to Gomez – especially in a World Cup year when his place in the German national team is far from certain.
Likewise, current club Wolfsburg are in a much less healthy position than West Ham, having depended on the relegation playoff last season to secure their top-flight status, and Gomez’s contract only has two years remaining, so it’s not as if the Bundesliga outfit have taken huge strides to protect his future.
Transfermarkt value Gomez at £6.38million and even if West Ham end up paying double that sum, that’s a pretty small drop in the ocean compared to many of the deals that will go down in the Premier League this summer.
So, West Ham fans, is a swoop for Gomez the answer to your club’s striker problems? Let us know by voting below…
The workload of the job, the modern professionalism of football management requiring coaches to hold badges, and, frankly, the fetishisation of football managers have led to a staple of the early years of the Premier League, the player-manager, to become a near-impossibility in the modern game.
Ian Porterfield was the manager of Chelsea when the Premier League’s first games were played in 1992, and was the first manager to be sacked in the Premier League era when a relegation threatened Chelsea had gone 11 games without a win at the turn of the new year. He was replaced by David Webb, a former Blues player himself, but that was only on a temporary basis, and although he steered the club to safety, the next permanent managerial appointment Chelsea made was that of Glenn Hoddle as player-manager.
It’s a sign of how times have changed from the early years of the Premier League. From Hoddle’s appointment as Chelsea’s second permanent manager in the new era, until the arrival of Claudio Ranieri in September 2000, Chelsea were managed only by player-managers – Hoddle, Ruud Gullit and Gianluca Vialli.
That might have taken the genre and stretched it a little further than most would have been comfortable with, but player-managers were hardly obscure curiosities in football back then. In the 1980s, Graeme Souness at Rangers and Kenny Dalglish at Liverpool won league titles in Britain as player-managers, whilst Hoddle himself took over at Swindon Town in the role before moving to Chelsea in 1993. Not long after that, names as big as Gordon Strachan and Bryan Robson took up the position at Premier League clubs to start off their managerial careers.
That changed after the 1990s, and indeed, Gianluca Vialli’s sacking at Chelsea seemed to sound the death knell of the player-manager as a popular concept. It wasn’t the incident to spark its decline, but the landscape had changed so much in the preceding few years that the world of football had become a very different place, and Chelsea’s player-manager was replaced by a coach of continental renown.
Chelsea had been managed by player-managers for the best part of a decade up until then.
Since 2000, when Ranieri was appointed, the Premier League has had only three player-managers, but all of them have been short-term stop-gaps. None were appointed as visionaries to lead the club to a new and glorious era, but as night watchmen until a real manager came along. Stuart McCall found himself in charge of Bradford City for two games in 2000 as a player-manager, and after the sacking of David Moyes, Ryan Giggs led Manchester United as a player manager for a few games to end the season.
Perhaps the closest we’ve come is Garry Monk, who was appointed player-manager of Swansea City in February 2014 after Brian Laudrup was sacked, ended his playing career at the end of the season after steering Swansea to safety. But he didn’t play any games for the club after his move from player to manager: in fact, he made just one appearance in the entirety of the 2013/14 season, in a 3-1 defeat to Birmingham City in the League Cup.
That means Monk doesn’t really count as a player manager on the grounds that he didn’t actually play, but more importantly, it shows that the role of player-manager these days is largely a stop-gap at the highest level. Although Monk certainly was a long-term choice for Swansea before his own sacking, he was only installed permanently once he’d officially hung up his boots.
There’s a reason for that. For one thing, dealing with the media, scouting, board meetings, strategic and tactical planning, and the planning of training sessions all mean that the job of the manager away from the training ground is already a full-time job, never mind taking the actual sessions themselves. It’s become much more difficult
Back in the 1990s and before, managers of top flight clubs didn’t really need to keep abreast of the transfer market across the world, just on the couple of divisions below. Nowadays that’s all changed. The role of the manager is so broad that there’s simply no time to worry about their own fitness and technique, too.
Perhaps the last real player-manager was Dennis Wise, who took over at Millwall in 2003. His time there was defined by the 2004 FA Cup run which saw his side make it all the way to the final where they lost to Manchester United at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium. That day, unlike Monk at Swansea, Wise did indeed play himself. He played 89 minutes before substituting himself off for the final few minutes of the game with his side already losing 3-0.
More recently, Edgar Davids turned up at Barnet in an ill-fated spell as a player-manager, but it’s not the same. Such coaches are novelties these days, and for a name like Davids to turn up at a non-league club on the outskirts of London was surely something of a publicity coup for the club more than anything else.
In an era where managers are the subject of more and more scrutiny, and as the game is understood in terms of tactics and strategies, managers are the figurehead of the team in a way that a player-manager could never be. Even if you could find a player-manager who could deal with the workload, finding one who is also tactically astute enough to mix it with Antonio Conte and Pep Guardiola seems like a tough ask.
According to reports in The Guardian, Manchester United are set to hold talks with Galatasaray over the sale of midfielder Marouane Fellaini as they close in on the signing of Chelsea’s Nemanja Matic.
What’s the word, then?
Well, the addition of Matic to the Red Devils midfield is set to push Fellaini down the pecking order at Old Trafford and potentially out of the exit door, with The Guardian saying that Galatasaray president Dursun Ozbek, or another member of the Turkish giants’ board, will travel to Manchester for talks over a deal on Monday or Tuesday.
The report adds that a contract offer worth £3.6m has already been agreed with the Belgium international – who has just one year remaining on his contract – which will make him Galatasaray’s best-paid player.
Despite the rumours over his future, Fellaini was named in the starting line-up for United’s pre-season friendly against Valerenga on Sunday evening.
How did Fellaini do last season?
Britain Football Soccer – Manchester United v Celta Vigo – UEFA Europa League Semi Final Second Leg – Old Trafford, Manchester, England – 11/5/17 Manchester United’s Marouane Fellaini celebrates scoring their first goal with Jesse Lingard Action Images via Reuters / Jason Cairnduff Livepic
The 29-year-old has been something of a controversial figure for United supporters ever since his move to the club from Everton in 2013, but he was something of a regular in the side last season.
The Belgian made 47 appearances in all competitions for Mourinho’s men, including a start in the Europa League final success against Ajax, scoring four goals and providing a further two assists.
His 6’4″ frame has also proved to be particularly effective from set-pieces at both ends of the pitch.
Are United right to sell him?
It’s a difficult one.
The midfielder has often flattered to deceive and made some silly decisions – such as when he gave away a last-gasp penalty against Everton at Goodison Park and was sent off against Manchester City last term – however they may still need to bring in another midfielder to replace him.
The addition of Matic will mean that they have the Serbian, Ander Herrera and Michael Carrick in central midfield, with Paul Pogba likely to be given a more attacking role.
Considering they will be fighting for the Premier League title as well as looking to make an impact in the Champions League, you would think that they might not have enough depth and as a result, they should have kept Fellaini for another year.
On the other hand, they can get a fee for the 29-year-old rather than losing him on a free next year.
Leeds United continued their unbeaten start to the 2017-18 campaign on Tuesday night after drawing 0-0 at home to Fulham.
The Whites opened the new season with a 3-2 win over Bolton Wanderers in the Championship, before recording a 4-1 victory at home to Port Vale in the League Cup.
Leeds have since shared the points in their last two in the Championship – playing out a goalless draw with Preston North End at the weekend, before the draw at home to Fulham.
It has been a modest start to the new campaign, but it appears that the club’s supporters were extremely encouraged with the performance at Elland Road on Tuesday night.
Leeds are facing the possibility of losing star man Chris Wood to the Premier League in the latter stages of the transfer window, with the New Zealand international strongly linked with a move to Burnley.
The Leeds fans are remaining positive, however, as their club look to secure what many feel is a long overdue return to the Premier League.
Inter Milan will not include a release clause in a new contract for Manchester United target Ivan Perisic, according to Gazzetta dello Sport.
What’s the word?
The Red Devils were linked to the Croatian all summer, but a deal was unable to be agreed before the transfer deadline.
The Express claims that Inter refused to drop below their £48m asking price, and as a result, prospect of a deal fizzled out.
Jose Mourinho made it clear that he wanted four new signings, but he ended up with three – Victor Lindelof, Romelu Lukaku and Nemanja Matic.
If the Portuguese coach was considering moving for Perisic in January, he may need to re-think amid news that Inter are planning to make it very difficult for any suitors to nab the winger’s signature.
According to Gazzetta dello Sport, the Italian outfit plan to offer Perisic a contract until 2022, but a release clause will not be inserted.
The 28-year-old’s current deal expires in three years’ time.
Do United need him?
The wide area was worth addressing in the summer for Mourinho, but now that the season has begun, it has not emerged as a problem.
Anthony Martial and Marcus Rashford have proven to be worthy options, with both impressing in the early stages of the campaign.
The pair have featured in all three Premier League matches, with Martial starting just the one and Rashford being named in the first XI for the other two.
The England international has contributed with one goal and an assist, while Martial has scored twice and made another.
Both players have displayed strong senses of character that would have impressed Mourinho.
Last season, Martial was in and out of the team due to his manager not being convinced that he deserved regular game time.
Since then, the 21-year-old has knuckled down and given his Portuguese coach something to think about.
Rashford has consistently performed since breaking into the first team, but the 19-year-old has shown maturity, particularly on the international stage for England when he recovered from a mistake to score in a crucial World Cup qualifier this week.
Right now, Mourinho has some strong options to call upon, so perhaps missing out on Perisic was not the end of the world.
Arsenal are looking to rejuvenate their forward line in the upcoming year and have identified a talent in Italy as their ideal successor to Santi Cazorla, according to Calcio Mercato.
What’s the story?
Left out of Arsenal’s Premier League squad for the first-half of the season and unavailable until January at the earliest, 32-year-old Santi Cazorla is coming to the end of his time at the top and the fact his contract is due to expire next summer is a major concern.
Many felt Arsenal needed to act in the transfer market this summer to sign a central midfielder but the club clearly felt differently, although the situation will change in the next 12 months as they seek to replace the veteran Spaniard.
Reports in Italy claim Udinese’s Jakub Jankto is Arsenal’s prime target to fill Cazorla’s void, although it’s indicated the 21-year-old Czech Republic international may want to remain in Serie A; where AC Milan and Juventus are also linked with the player’s signature.
What would he offer?
Elegant on the ball and possessing a keen eye for a killer pass, Jankto is, on paper at least, the sort of player Arsenal have been crying out for. Without Cazorla, Arsenal have looked rather lacklustre and are without the link from defence to attack that they need.
With Jankto slotting into the centre of midfield alongside Granit Xhaka, Arsenal would have a playmaker and an enforcer in the heart of their side. He’d allow Aaron Ramsey to potentially move into a more attacking role behind the striker, possibly replacing Mesut Ozil.
At 21, Jankto also has the ability to be crafted into a top-class player for the coming years and is the sort of man that Wenger and his successor can build a team around. He also wouldn’t break the bank, which fits into Arsenal’s strict budget.
Earlier this week, Manchester United favourite Henrik Larsson celebrated his 46th birthday. And much like the 5 foot 9 former forward himself, his stay in English football was short and sweet – in fact, it lasted just 13 games across all competitions as Sir Alex Ferguson signed him on a short-term loan from Helsingborg.
Nonetheless, the Swedish icon is well-remembered by those at Old Trafford for his role in their 2006/07 Premier League title win, providing quality on the pitch and an extra sense of leadership in the dressing room.
So in honour of Larsson’s birthday, here’s a look at some of the greatest cameo signings in Premier League history – top talents who came, saw, conquered and left as abruptly as they’d arrived…
Esteban Cambiasso
Before Leicester City were miraculous Premier League title winners, they were fighting for their lives at the very foot of the Premier League table. Keeping them slightly afloat, however, was former Real Madrid and Inter Milan star Esteban Cambiasso, who moved to the King Power Stadium on a free transfer in summer 2014 – four years after lifting the Champions League title.
Cambiasso turned 34 at the start of the campaign but the quality he provided in midfield became talismanic; in fact, it was his goal against Everton in February that earned Leicester a first point in five games and his opening goal against West Ham that secured the Foxes’ first win in eight. The Midlands outfit completed their great escape with 22 points from their final nine games, with Cambiasso featuring in all of them.
Seemingly feeling he’d done all he could for Leicester, Cambiasso decided to leave on a high and headed for Olympiacos. If only he knew what’d happen next.
Fernando Hierro
When Fernando Hierro lifted a third Champions League title in 2002, he can’t have imagined he’d end his career with a twilight campaign at Bolton Wanderers, but that’s the magic of Sam Allardyce for you.
After spending a year in Qatar, the 89-cap Spain international signed for the Trotters on a free transfer in 2004, partnering up with former Real Madrid team-mate Ivan Campo and joining the curious rabble of ageing one-time world beaters Allardyce had somehow lured to the Reebok Stadium.
One can only imagine what Hierro thought of Anthony Barness and Ricky Shakes (a then-youthful striker whose career has gone on to be as obscure as you’d imagine), but Hierro went on to make 29 appearances, mostly starts, as Bolton went on to record their highest finish of the Premier League era and qualify for the Europa League.
Despite incredibly thorough attempts to convince him otherwise, Hierro hung up his boots at the end of the campaign.
Jurgen Klinsmann (second spell)
Wimbledon v Tottenham 2/5/98 Premiership Please Credit: Darren Walsh / Action Images Tottenham’s Jurgen Klinsmann celebrates scoring the second goal, his first Tottenham Hotspur
Jurgen Klinsmann breaches out cameo criteria somewhat, having already enjoyed one affluent spell at Tottenham Hotspur during the 1994/95 season.
Yet, it was the German icon who the Lilywhites were forced to turn to two years later as the genuine threat of relegation loomed over them, signing him on loan from Sampdoria in January for the second half of the season.
Upon his arrival, Spurs were in 18th-place and staring at life in the second tier, but Klinsmann’s run of nine goals in 15 games – including four in a 6-2 win over relegation rivals Wimbledon – steered the White Hart Lane outfit clear to safety.
After Spurs had secured a 14th-place finish, the 82-cap striker decided to hang up his boots – although he later went on to enjoy a brief swansong in the MLS in the early 2000s.
Asamoah Gyan
Asamoah Gyan varies slightly to the rest of our cameo heroes in that he’s not remembered too fondly by those at former club Sunderland, largely because he took the audacious step of forcing a move to Al-Ain in Abu Dhabi where he picked up a small fortune (even by footballer standards) as a weekly salary.
But for his single season on Wearside, the Ghana international was an invaluable asset, his ten goals in 31 appearances pushing the Black Cats to the dizzying heights of 10th place – their highest finish in the Premier League barring two consecutive seasons of second place in the 1990s.
That was the 31-year-old’s final stint in European football until signing for Turkish outfit Kayserispor during the summer.
Christophe Dugarry
Football – FA Barclaycard Premiership , Birmingham City v Blackburn Rovers – 6/12/03 Birmingham’s Christophe Dugarry walks off after getting sent off Mandatory Credit;Action Images / Paul Dowker
A World Cup and Euro winner with France and a one-time member of AC Milan and Barcelona’s illustrious midfields, Birmingham City’s shock swoop for Christophe Dugarry in 2003 certainly caught the Premier League world off-guard.
At that point, Birmingham had just gained promotion from the championship and were fighting for survival at the bottom of the top flight, but Dugarry’s mid-season arrival on loan added class to an attack that also included such dignified talents as Geoff Horsefield, Stern John and Clinton Morrison.
He bagged five goals in 15 appearances to ensure top-flight survival for Steve Bruce’s side, and even signed a permanent contract at St. Andrew’s. Dugarry’s next 15 outings weren’t quite so successful, scoring just once before terminating his contract, but he now takes pride of place in Birmingham City’s Hall of Fame.
According to reports in The Telegraph, Tottenham Hotspur are ready to go head-to-head with Premier League title rivals Chelsea with a January bid to sign £20m-rated Everton midfielder Ross Barkley, with Mauricio Pochettino believing he could be a potential long-term replacement for the injury-hit Mousa Dembele.
What’s the word, then?
Well, The Telegraph says that Spurs boss Mauricio Pochettino had made the 23-year-old one of his top targets during the summer transfer window, but a hamstring injury complicated a potential deal before Barkley rejected a £35m move to Chelsea on deadline day.
The Telegraph says that with the England international’s contract due to run out at the end of the season, he could be available for around £20m in the New Year.
The report adds that Pochettino believes that the Toffees star is the perfect man to compete for a place with Dembele alongside Eric Dier or Victor Wanyama in the middle of the park, and a partnership with the former could also help England boss Gareth Southgate out as he looks for his perfect midfield combination.
Why do Tottenham want him?
Despite sometimes struggling to perform consistently during his time at Goodison Park, Barkley has also shown plenty of glimpses of the quality he possesses and that obviously hasn’t gone unnoticed by Pochettino.
The Argentine boss obviously feels that he can develop the player and with The Telegraph saying that Dembele needs to be managed carefully after summer surgery on his foot could mean that he is never 100% fit, he needs another option in central midfield.
Many Spurs supporters would question whether both he and Dele Alli could play in the same team considering they are both used to playing in the number 10 position, but The Telegraph adds that Pochettino believes that the 23-year-old could be used in a deeper role.
Will they get him?
A move does seem likely, yes.
The fact that Barkley turned down a move to Chelsea at the end of the summer transfer window suggests that he may feel a move to Tottenham would be more beneficial for his career as he is likely to get more game time under Pochettino.
In addition, as he could be available for £20m it certainly means he is right in their price bracket too, and it would probably be a surprise if the deal didn’t go through in the New Year.
It had been thought that Jack Wilshere would leave Arsenal during the summer transfer window after spending last season on loan at Bournemouth.
There appeared to be no way back for the 25-year-old, but after recovering from another injury layoff, the midfielder has made three first-team appearances for the Gunners this season.
Indeed, Wilshere, who is valued at £16.2m by transfermarkt.co.uk, has featured in both of Arsenal’s Europa League group matches this term, and also played against Doncaster Rovers in the EFL Cup last month.
It is understood that head coach Arsene Wenger is now seriously considering Wilshere for Premier League action, which returns for the Gunners away to Watford on Saturday night.
On Thursday, Arsenal’s official Twitter account asked their supporters to provide an XI for the clash with the Hornets at the weekend.
Wilshere featured in almost all of the responses, which is a strong suggestion that the Arsenal fans believe in the England international once again.
A selection of the Twitter reaction can be found below: