Tottenham are ready to make a move for Lyon goalkeeper Hugo Lloris, with negotiations over a transfer underway according to Mirror Football.
Andre Villas-Boas is eager to bolster his Spurs squad this summer, with a new goalkeeper on his wishlist as a long-term replacement to the ageing Brad Friedel.
With Gylfi Sigurdsson and Jan Vertonghen already been signed, Daniel Levy has flown to France to talk to the Ligue 1 side over a possible move.
Lyon have stated that they want £16 million for their star man, but Spurs are trying to bring that price down to around £12 million.
Lloris captained France at Euro 2012 and is widely-regarded as one of the most exciting goalkeepers to shoot onto the scene in recent years.
Villas-Boas was keen to sign Lloris last season for Chelsea, and will try again this summer as Tottenham boss.
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Ivory Coast international Seydou Doumbia has never made a secret of his desire to play in the Premier League, and the CSKA Moscow striker may find his dream coming true sooner rather than later with reported interest from Tottenham Hotspur.
German media 4-4-2 have claimed that the striker is high on Harry Redknapp ’s wish list, as he continues to tinker with and rejuvenate his attacking options. Spurs were believed to be keen on adding new attacking threats to their squad this summer, following the departure of both Peter Crouch and Robbie Keane , but due to the ongoing transfer saga involving Luka Modric , they were limited to just bringing in Emmanuel Adebayor on loan.
Should Spurs follow up their interest in Doumbia, a fee in the region of €20M is believed to be needed in order to convince CSKA to sell their star striker. Although Spurs fans will be hoping that Redknapp is backed financially and allowed to bring in Doumbia without having to offload any players in the meantime, there is a cheaper option reportedly available to the North Londoners.
Ander Herrera of Athletic Bilbao is also thought to be in Redknapp’s sights, and would likely cost slightly less, somewhere in the region of €15M. At only 22, Herrera offers tremendous potential, and should Redknapp be able to convince Bilbao, a club notorious for keeping hold their talented youngsters, to sell, he may well have procured himself a real star of the future.
Article courtesy of Alex Shaw from the excellent Transfer Tavern
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Italy coach Cesare Prandelli could hand caps to several new faces to in Wednesday’s friendly against Germany in Dortmund.
Prandelli’s squad includes Juventus loan signing Alessandro Matri, Parma midfielder Sebastian Giovinco and former Brazilian under-23 representative Thiago Motta, with all three set to make their international debuts if called upon.
Matri returned to haunt parent club Cagliari in Serie A on Saturday, scoring twice to help Juventus earn a 3-1 win away from home.
The 26-year-old, who has now scored 13 league goals this season, said he was prepared to be flexible in order to make his bow for the national team.
“It is quite strange how much my life has changed in a week. I’ve gone from Cagliari to Torino and now from Torino I’m here. This is aim of all players. I’ve always wished to be in the national team,” he said.
“You only get to play for the national team if you are playing well for your club. Maybe I would have had the same chance if I had kept on doing well in Cagliari.”
“This is for sure a dream that has come true. Now I have the pleasure to train with this team and this is extraordinary for me. I don’t know how the coach will be using me. In any case I’m available and I’m ready to play as first, second or third forward.”
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Prandelli backed Antonio Cassano to perform for Italy after his very public issues with Sampdoria. He made his return to the squad following his move to Serie A leaders AC Milan in December.
“He (Cassano) has been capped because as far as I’m concerned he is an important player. I believe it would have been right to cap him not only for his desire but also he has the spirit we are looking for,” Prandelli said.
Leeds United have completed the signing of Lee Peltier from Leicester City, for a reported fee of around £500k.
The former Huddersfield man now becomes Neil Warnock’s 10th signing this summer, signalling a complete revamp from the squad that existed last season.
Neil Warnock said that a new face would be in place for the friendly trip at Preston North End, and yet again the old timer has stuck true to his word. Lee Peltier now fills a void at right back, a position that has lacked any real quality since the days of Gary Kelly.
The former Liverpool trainee is known for his pace, a commodity that is valuable in going forward and of course defending efficiently.
Neil Warnock also stated to fans before the Preston game that a possible move for Jermaine Beckford could work ‘if the fans can round up some money for his wages’ with the playful 63 year old also claiming that Jermaine Beckford would turn down Southampton to re-join Leeds United.
Sadly Mr. Warnock could shed no further light on the mooted takeover that still drags on heading into the early stages of August.
Fans will have their fingers crossed that come August 18th, fans will be able to sing, ‘Sheikh Abdulrahman bin Mubarak al-Khalifa give us a wave!’.
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Arsenal coach Arsene Wenger has called his side’s 8-2 defeat to Premier League rivals Manchester United ‘humiliating’, and targeted the signing of three new players to ease the club’s injury woes.
The English champions ran riot against their lacklustre opponents on Sunday, and the French coach was hurting after the game.
“After a game like that it’s terribly painful. It hurts, it was humiliating,” the 61-year-old told reporters.
“We were short in some areas, we had eight players out and they had class. They punished us in front of goal.”
The Emirates outfit have recently sold senior players Cesc Fabregas and Samir Nasri, but the former Monaco boss is standing by his decisions.
“I’m in a public job and I have to accept that. I make the right decisions for the club and I will continue to try to do that. The players we have sold I also brought to the club,” he continued.
“It’s difficult when you lose 8-2. It’s better that you don’t talk too much because it hurts and it looks like you’re looking for excuses.
“I feel it was under very special circumstances and what’s important is we’ve played three games of the season. It’s not like it’s the end of the season, when you make a balanced judgement of the season,” he stated.
The Gunners have had a tentative approach to player employment in Wenger’s span as manager, who is reluctant to spend extortion transfer fees, but he has stated that the London club are in the market for three new faces before the window shuts on August 31.
“We’re working very hard on transfers. We’re close to signing a striker at the moment and we want a defender and a midfielder as well,” the Frenchman admitted.
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“I say I’m very open to finding the right players. If we find the right players we will sign them. We have the money to sign the right players – if we find them we’ll do it – we have 20 people working on it, I’m not the only one.
“I know that in England when you lose a game the signing is a solution but we need first to get our players back. We had eight players out today and anybody would suffer with those players out,” he concluded.
A story on the Guardian’s website this week claimed that United youngster Ravel Morrison’s future at the club was “hanging in the balance.”
Morrison who turns 18 in a fortnight, has for the last year or so been touted as one of the most naturally gifted players to emerge from United’s academy in recent memory.
Morrison’s performances for both the academy and more recently the reserves have won him many admirers and even led to a cameo for the first-team in the Carling Cup.
The Wythenshawe-born youngster is a fast-paced strong, skilful winger who doesn’t look too out of place playing just behind who ever’s leading the line.
The reason the young winger’s Old Trafford future isn’t secure has nothing to do with his footballing ability or his desire to play elsewhere. No, like many young players who come from some of the less affluent areas Morrison has found himself with a reputation for shall we say ‘running in certain circles.’
It’s all been a bit ambiguous as to what exactly the young Mancunian midfielder has actually done wrong although there has been rumours of some sort of charge for ‘witness intimidation’ or something along those lines. These are only rumours though and as of yet there is no evidence, at least not in the public domain, to support them.
Morrison had supposedly been suspended from playing by United for ‘off the field issues’ however again there is no real evidence to substantiate what is going on.
I’ve met Morrison a couple of times in my part-time job at the Powerleague and while it’s obvious he is a little rough around the edges, he seems no different from any of the other lads we get in there, who come from certain areas.
Admittedly, occasionally meeting him hardly qualifies me to make a judgement on his character and I like many other Reds would be hard pressed to tell you if he really is a troubled youngster or not.
The problem many United fans have is two-fold. Firstly : Morrison’s actions remain clouded in mystery, no one really knows what is actually going on and even though you could fill a novel with all the rumours, theories and conjecture surrounding him, it’s all still very murky. Secondly- Morrison seems to be one of the most naturally gifted players the club has produced in the past few years, anyone who seen him play will testify that he has bags of skill and could easily go all the way.
If we were talking about a player who was merely ‘good’ we wouldn’t be talking- if that makes sense to anyone.
Morrison is the type of player who stands out to you, when you’re watching some of the brightest young stars in English football, and that for me speaks volumes.
There’s no doubt that thanks to the Guardian story Sir Alex will feel the need to act one way or the other, either issuing a statement declaring Morrison is fine and staying at United or perhaps issuing a press release saying he’s left the club.
Personally, despite the problems having a troubled player like Morrison at United could potentially cause, I’d like to see the club give him a chance and try and salvage his career.
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I’m hoping someone like Wes Brown, who grew up in Longsight and was once reported to be at loggerheads with Sir Alex over moving out of the area, can put his arm round Morrison – or get him a headlock and talk a bit of sense to him.
It all may depend on Morrison himself, after all we’d all probably give our right arm to play for United but not every supremely talented teenager always feels the same, or has the real sort of foresight.
Ravel Morrison’s career is at a crossroads and although he may only be 17, if he’s not careful he could end up looking back on it with a mixture of regret and anger rather than contentment and pride. I for one certainly hope it’s the latter.
Read more of Justin’s articles at the excellent ‘Red Flag Flying High’
The 51-time England international started his professional career at Millwall back in 1983, and scored 93 league goals for the club before joining Nottingham Forest.
Sheringham’s first spell at Tottenham Hotspur came between 1992 and 1997, and he managed 75 league goals in 166 appearances before joining Manchester United.
The centre-forward continued to enjoy success at United as he famously won the treble with the English giants – ultimately spending four years with the Red Devils before returning to Tottenham for two seasons.
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Sheringham later represented Portmouth, West Ham United and Colchester United before retiring from football at the end of the 2007-08 campaign.
The fact that Sheringham did not win his first England cap until the age of 27 is an absolute tragedy, but he more than made up for it in his latter years.
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Sheringham turned 52 on Monday, and Tottenham’s official Twitter account posted a birthday message for the former ATK manager, which led to a host of praise from the Spurs fans.
A selection of the Twitter reaction from the Tottenham supporters, who have also been reacting to the latest news surrounding head coach Mauricio Pochettino, can be found below:
March is one of those months where fans start to speculate who will win the Premier League and, equally importantly, who will fall through the relegation trap door in to the Championship.
The bottom six are separated by just nine points, but with nine games to go of this year’s highly entertaining season still to play, the table could change quite considerably. But if the bottom teams maintain the form they have displayed for the last seven months then the following three teams might find themselves preparing for life in England’s second tier come the end of May.
Leicester City look set to yo-yo back into the Championship next season after gaining promotion just last year. The Foxes last won a Premier League game in January – beating Aston Villa 1-0 – and have lost three of their last five.
Sitting in bottom place, the players continue struggling to pull themselves out of this desperate situation and with Leicester only scoring 24 goals all season, they may have to rely on other teams to slip up if they are to have any chance of staying up. Argentine forward Leonardo Ulloa has only managed seven goals so far – and is still their top scorer this season – so it’s difficult to see where they can turn to in order to get those crucial table climbing points.
Winning four matches and losing 17 proves that the Foxes just aren’t ready for the high tempo and quality of the Premier League and there is little manager Nigel Pearson can do about that now.
Queens Park Rangers are another team who made a return to the Premier League this season but they’ve been looking like a side ready for a swift return back to the Championship for some time now. Rangers have suffered the most defeats, 18, with 12 of those coming away from Loftus Road.
Since Harry Redknapp took the highly unusual step of resigning back in February, QPR have tried to see it as a new chapter and an opportunity to rescue their season. To think that the appointment of Chris Ramsey could get them out of the hole they had dug themselves in all season in just four months has proven fans to be too optimistic.
Don’t get me wrong, Ramsey is a nice man and a capable coach, but even Jose Mourinho would find it difficult to get this group of players to finally click with so little time available. No other team has had more goals scored against them (49), and with matches against Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester City to come, that number is only going to increase.
I was tempted to include either Aston Villa or Sunderland in my list until I saw Burnley’s fixtures. All three clubs have had a disappointing season, but Burnley still have to face Southampton, Tottenham, Arsenal and Stoke. The Clarets have a huge task on their hands with it looking seriously likely that they will be back playing in the Championship come August.
The Clarets’, yet well deserved, victory over champions Manchester City at the weekend will have given them the belief that they can do the unthinkable, but it remains a pretty steep mountain to climb for Sean Dyche’s men.
Top scorer Danny Ings has done his best – finding the net nine times – but it won’t be enough and I can’t see Burnley finding a mass of goals from anywhere between now and the end of the campaign.
The race to beat the drop is always an intense affair for all involved – and the aforementioned clubs all have a bit of a job on their hands if they are hold on to their top flight status.
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But with Tim Sherwood seemingly working miracles at Aston Villa and Sunderland today sacking Gus Poyet, the current three in the relegation zone may find their ‘Great Escape’ efforts even more difficult to achieve.
Brendan Rodgers is trying to make the best of a bad situation, I get that. The tie isn’t over yet, and why would it be? Zenit scored twice at home and still have to travel to Anfield. For all the money they’ve spent in recent transfer windows, Zenit are not that good.
The Liverpool manager might be forgiven for consciously protecting his players, even if he believes they should come in for some criticism. Describing the away loss as “near-on perfect” is what you’d expect from a manager, as how often do they stand before reporters and publically slaughter their own team? But sometimes you’d like that, and at the very least, it would be better if managers didn’t try and convey something that is as far from the truth as can possibly be.
Andre Villas-Boas was guilty of similar actions earlier in the season, at a time when he was still finding the right level of comfort for the hot seat at Tottenham. He was overly confident of his team’s performance in the 5-2 loss at Arsenal, while having absolutely no evidence from the 90 minutes at the Emirates to support his claims.
But that’s what managers do, and some go to greater lengths to try and paint a better picture than what is actually a more worrying reality.
How does Rodgers realistically defend his Liverpool side after the trip to Russia? For starters, Hulk, who isn’t really worth the fee Porto received from Zenit, opened the scoring with a scorcher – one of his few party pieces. Where was the Liverpool defence? Why allow someone of his ability from range the time and space to size up Pepe Reina’s goal?
The finer details of the Liverpool performance can be dissected elsewhere and the topic of the team’s quality over the course of the season will continue to be much debated.
But it’s Rodgers. It’s whether he believes what he’s saying. It’s whether he’s still struggling to find that position in the Liverpool dugout that he’s had to look for since the start of the season.
What good do the manager’s post-match offerings do for his team? If he says the performance at Zenit was good, then his team are likely to accept that. Subconsciously they’re under the impression that they gave their all in a match where a better side came out victorious. That’s not the case, because again Zenit are not that good.
But it’s not just central to the away trip in the Europa League. This Liverpool team have not beaten any of the teams above them in the league; West Brom have done the double over them, and they’re out of the FA Cup. Yet Rodgers seems to offer small packages of praise to his players, as if all is well on the road to ultimate victory.
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Do you wonder if the pressure is starting to tell for the former Swansea manager? Maybe he is in at the deep end. I doubt he’s the type to admit defeat, but the wider footballing world are not going to be too forgiving, nor are they likely to offer leeway with the idea that Liverpool are on a long-term plan to rebuild.
It’s about status and maintaining a high level in English football. Liverpool are one of the most decorated teams in England, one of only two who are well ahead of everyone else. Chelsea and Manchester City still have a lot to do to match Liverpool and Manchester United, who collectively hold eight European cups and 37 league titles. However, the Liverpool manager speaking about wins at home against much lesser teams doesn’t create a pleasant image. Is he conceding that Liverpool have fallen that far and now have to take whatever they can get from wins against recently promoted sides?
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It isn’t really a surprise that Rodgers was part of Jose Mourinho’s coaching staff at one time, and you can see he wants to pick up traits from the Portuguese manager. But no one will allow that. Mourinho can do what he wants and wage wars where he feels the need, and for the most part he can leave you wondering whether he is actually in the right. You had to smile at the Real Madrid manager’s post-match interview following the 1-1 draw with Manchester United; calm, confident and maybe just a bit too cool considering the surrounding issues at the Bernabeu.
For Rodgers, it’s hard to talk about in him a similar light because he hasn’t earned that reputation in the game. It’s always necessary for managers to twist the truth in a manner which suits them and their team, but consistently drawing conclusions that do not sit at all right can become a damaging trend for Rodgers.
I’d like to see the Liverpool manager given the time he needs at Anfield and go as close to completing this five-year plan as he can, and then perhaps even go beyond that. But admitting sometimes that you weren’t quite good enough is always essential. Targeting underperforming players isn’t always a bad thing. Going stale, however, is the likely outcome from indulgence into the fantasy world.
John O’Shea has quashed reports that he plans to retire at the end of the season, and Sunderland fans are gutted.
Reports this week suggested O’Shea would retire when this season ends, as his contract at Sunderland runs out this summer, but the 36 year-old says this isn’t true.
The Irish defender has started 27 Championship games for Sunderland this season, who sit five points adrift of safety going into their clash with Derby County on Friday night.
While O’Shea certainly isn’t solely to blame for all the Black Cats’ problems, he has had a relatively poor season, and his lack of pace has been a real problem at times.
“When I wake up in the morning my body still feels good – believe me, if it didn’t I’d be the first one to admit it and finish up,” O’Shea said.
“There’s plenty of things to look forward to when my playing career ends, from coaching and management to media and punditry work, and spending more time with my family, but my wife is certainly happy I’ve decided to play on for another year!”
O’Shea says his fitness this season has shown he can still perform, but insists he is only focused on keeping Sunderland in the Championship.
“First and foremost, I’m concentrating on helping the team between now and the end of the season – that’s the big thing, that’s the only thing.”
Fans haven’t been particularly impressed by the defender this season, and they are even less impressed by his plans to continue playing.
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Some of the best Twitter reactions can be found below…