Newcastle ace Yohan Cabaye admits he has yet to find the form he produced last season which made him an instant hit with the Geordie faithful.
The French international has yet to score in 2012/2013 season since re-joining the team four weeks later than the rest of his team mates after participating in Euro 2012.
“My pre-season wasn’t very good.
“I need to keep working, keep playing and need to be fit, because if you are not fit in England, it’s really hard,” Cabaye told BBC Newcastle.
Cabaye joined Newcastle in 2011 from Lille and has scored 4 goals in 39 Appearances on Tyneside, with his Premier League form last season drawing recognition from higher reputation clubs.
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The 26-year-old midfielder is yet to get off the mark this season in the first five games of the season and will be part of a Newcastle side that will take on Bordeaux in the Europa Cup as he looks set to put an end to his baron run.
Bizarre scenes at Dynamo Moscow’s training ground yesterday saw the first team squad fired at by disgruntled supporters who used paintball guns to vent their anger, as reported by the Daily Mirror.
The supporters in question broke into the training ground and fired paint bullets at the players after training in disgust at their poor early season form that has seen them drop to 13th in the Russian league. The camouflaged nutters were not part of the official supporters group and the club claim that they will severely punish the culprits when found.
“After training exercises, a group of individuals tried to shoot the players with paintball guns,” the club said in a statement on their official website.
“We are convinced this was a planned and organised action. This is a challenge to the club and we will answer in the toughest possible manner.
“We intend to use all the resources available to us to find and hold the shooters accountable in any way the current law allows, including criminal prosecution.”
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Manchester City boss Roberto Mancini is slowly losing his patience with both the City board and players as tensions continue to rise at the Etihad Stadium, according to the Daily Mirror.
City escaped with a 1-0 win at home to lowly Swansea yesterday but the pressure is still firmly on the Italian boss as the club look set to go out of the Champions League at the group stage as they did last year, and are also still trailing runaway leader Chelsea in the Premier League.
“Mancini has no interest in being a friend of the players. He doesn’t care whether they hate him.
“He just wants them to do as they are told when they are on the pitch and the training ground. Mancini is like a lot of Italian managers who believe the coach must be dictatorial in their approach.
“He will not back away from an issue if he feels it is undermining his position. Some players will not like his style, but he has the trophies to show that it works. It has also worked for Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United.
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“Mancini is in a strong position and he expects the full support of the people who pay him to do his job.”
For over five decades the League Cup has been graced by some of the finest talents to ply their trade in the English game with only a small band of individuals having the pleasure of lifting the famous trophy and taking away a winner’s medal each year. You tend to forget some of the players that have taken to the field in the competition at differing points and used it as a springboard for their career or to fill the empty voids in their trophy cabinet. Nevertheless some memorable names have encountered the League Cup one way or another and here’s 11 of the best.
GK: David James
James started between the sticks in Liverpool’s successful League Cup win over Bolton in 1995 in what is commonly known as the McManaman final. He went on to become England number one later in his career and one of the finest goalkeepers the country has produced, continuing to play well into his forties.
DF: Gerard Pique
A regular in the League Cup for Manchester United, the lack of first team action forced Pique to leave Old Trafford in 2008 and return to Barcelona. Unprecedented success followed the Spain international and he is now considered one of the world’s best central defenders. The one that got away for Sir Alex Ferguson.
DF: Gary Neville
Making his League Cup debut against Port Vale in 1994 the older of the Neville brothers became a mainstay in the Manchester United back four for the next 16 years before hanging up his boots. Lifting the trophy twice during his Old Trafford career, the former England international can credit the competition with launching his career.
DF: John Terry
Before all misdemeanors and newspaper headlines Terry was once a fresh-faced youngster looking to make his way in the professional game. His big break came in the League Cup as he debuted for Chelsea against Aston Villa in October 1998. Terry would lift the trophy twice in 2005 and 2007 as he become an immortal figure for the Blues, captaining them through the most successful period in their history.
MF: Cesc Fabregas
His debut in a League Cup clash against Rotherham in 2003 saw Fabregas make history as Arsenal’s youngest player at 16 years and 177 days old. His performance in that game gave us all a glimpse as to the player he would come to be, and although he was never tasted success in this competition; he has been a runner up on two occasions.
MF: David Beckham
Arguably the most popular and well-known footballer on the planet began his phenomenal career as a substitute in a League Cup tie with Brighton 20 years ago, shortly before signing a professional contract with Manchester United. But despite never getting his hands on the trophy, the competition played a prominent part in his early years as a player.
MF: Steven Gerrard
It’s fair to say the League Cup has to be Gerrard’s favourite competition given he has acquired three winners medals during his 15 year career at Liverpool. The Anfield legend’s finest hour in the competition came against Manchester United in the 2003 final when his long-range deflected strike set the Reds on course for victory.
MF: Paul Scholes
Since making a goal-scoring debut in the competition, finding the net twice on his Manchester United debut against Port Vale in 1994, Scholes went on to win the competition twice in consecutive seasons during his time at Old Trafford.
FW: Robbie Fowler
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33 goals in 44 games and two winners medals prove that Fowler is one of the greatest players ever to grace the League Cup. Making a goal scoring debut for Liverpool against Fulham in 1993, the ‘Toxteth Terror’ hit five in the return leg despite being just 18 at the time. His dipping volley in the 2001 final against Birmingham is also perennially attached to any Fowler highlight reel
FW: Giuseppe Rossi
Limited primarily to appearances in the League Cup during his Manchester United days, Rossi gained the experience that would help him later in his career, now forging a reputation as one of Europe’s top strikers at Villarreal.
FW: Emile Heskey
For a player much maligned throughout his career by pundits and fans alike, Heskey has enjoyed major success in the League Cup winning four winners medals that are evenly split between spells at Leicester and Liverpool.
Patrice Evra believes his Manchester City rival Mario Balotelli is ready to quit the Citizens for a return to Italy, according to the Daily Mail.
The controversial striker has fallen out of favour at City, and there is growing speculation over the 22-year-old’s future at the club.
The Italian international has made 14 appearances in all competitions this season but is yet to stay on the pitch for a full 90 minutes, either being brought on from the bench or hauled off by Roberto Mancini, much to Balotelli’s frustration.
With rumours suggesting either Ramadel Falcao or Luis Suarez will be brought in during the January transfer window, it is believed Balotelli will be off-loaded to Serie A to make extra funds available to match the £50 million price-tag both transfer targets have been given.
The striker has also been labelled by the Citizens’ defence coach Angelo Gregucci as “definitely sellable”.
Manchester United’s Patrice Evra told reporters: “Mario really misses Italy. I don’t know if he will stay in Manchester, because he wants to return to his country. I am not his agent – I am only telling you how he feels.”
The left-back also discussed his relationship with his City counterpart.
“He is my rival in Manchester – I meet him a lot, I know him well. Off the pitch, we joke around and I take the micky out of him,” said the France international.
Meanwhile, Eastlands coach Angelo Gregucci seemed equally unsure over the striker’s future.
“Mancini has chosen to give him a signal, and it is his right to make choices,” said the Italian coach.
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“Will he stay? It’s not up to me to say. I just know that he is definitely sellable. He has 22 years of talent and quality.
“He is a resource of our football club. He will give his contribution to the national team and to City.”
European football appears to be at constant odds with itself. The Champions League is a competition of glory and heroics, often producing the most intense fixtures and beautiful football meanwhile the European competition’s ugly sister, the Europa League, constantly fails to grab the attention of fans.
Andre Villas-Boas told reporters at the beginning of the season that he was shocked by the English attitude towards Europe’s second competition, but then again, the Europa League tends to just get in the way. It comes with financial reward, but often proves detrimental to a club’s domestic season. Fulham played 19 extra games in the 2009/2010 season when they reached the Europa Cup final, and ended up finishing 12th in the Premier League – five places and seven points lower than the previous year when they achieved qualification.
Playing on a Thursday night against a team that came third or won a cup in one of Europe’s smaller nations is hardly beneficial to the likes of Tottenham, Everton or Liverpool, and the majority of managers opt to play youngsters and reserves instead of risking injury for their star players who will be needed at the weekend. So is it really any surprise if fans sitting on their sofa decide to watch Eastenders or Corronation Street instead of the Liverpool second team – now featuring the useless Stewart Downing at Left Back – taking on the third best club in Switzerland?
UEFA are fully aware of the problem, and have recently announced they are considering merging the beautiful damsel that is the Champions League with the brutish, slightly hairy ugly sibling that is the Europa League. Will combining these two ladies like some sort of bizarre Nazi experiment actually benefit the teams involved? Or will it just create a huge biological mess with seven arms but no hands?
From a domestic perspective, the top-half teams and cup winners that constantly miss out on Champions League football would surely benefit. The extra games are more worthwhile for a start. Facing Barcelona or Real Madrid with the chance to wow the fans with an upset is a much more exciting prospect than watching a Premier League team comfortably beat a side that would struggle in the Championship if they played in England, and furthermore would surely come with much higher gate receipts.
The long-term result would hopefully make the Premier League more competitive, and would not only give lesser teams having a good season (such as West Ham or West Brom this year) a chance of playing in Europe’s top competition, providing financial benefits for the following seasons, but also equate the balance between the top four and top seven.
The Premier League’s natural hierarchy provides stability, but it could do with a shake-up. The old top four of Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea was only broken into following the rise of Manchester City as their Sheikh owners flooded the club with their exotic fortunes, bar a few cameo appearances from Tottenham and Everton.
Then again, diluting the most elite tournament in club football by doubling the number of teams involved from 32 to 64 comes with its own set of drawbacks. There are already complaints about the likes of BATE Borisov and Nordsjaelland simply making up the numbers in the group stages, and the qualifying rounds are littered with teams that most English football fans are unlikely to have heard of. Adding an extra 32 teams that have less quality than the current 32 teams would simply make this problem worse, as countries only allocated a single Champions League spot will be given two or three, filling up the qualifying stages with worse teams.
But it would also ensure that by the group stages, only the highest quality teams in Europe would still remain, making room for the likes of Tottenham who unfairly missed out on Champions League football last season, and are clearly better than many of the lesser teams that make it to the latter stages of thecompetition. Furthermore, until the smaller clubs experience the financial benefits and quality required to be a competitive force at European level, they remain unlikely to ever progress on their own, unless the Premier League’s billionaire owners relocate to Europe’s smaller countries.
The merger is an interesting proposal, but it has not been set in stone, and is not the only idea on the table. For a long time, it has been suggested that the winners of the Europa League should be given an automatic qualifying spot into next year’s Champions League, which I believe would be a good thing. The hypothetical team would have enough quality to see off at least 14 European opponents, and would have the momentum of success from the year previous. Michel Platini, on announcing the new proposals, also rejected the idea that a European Super League, working outside of the bureaucratic politico of UEFA could come into existence. Of Course Platini would talk down such claims, but a Super League would be an interesting idea.
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Either way, something has got to give. The Europa league is a take-it-or-leave-it kind of tournament. No doubt any club in Europe would happily lift the trophy, but managers will always be unwilling to risk their domestic season to win a second tier competition. Even more so, I believe that especially in England, teams like Tottenham and Everton deserve their chance to play for more than one season in the Champions League, and certainly the involvement of such teams would not diminish the tournament’s quality.
Hopefully, the domestic league would also reap the benefits as the balance of power in the Premier League table shifts more evenly, leaving us with a top seven filled with teams capable of winning the league instead of the two horse race that tends to dominate the English game.
As Rio Ferdinand left the field of play following Manchester United’s tumultuous 3-2 victory over Manchester City earlier this month, the bloodied state of the defender’s left eyebrow was a fairly unsubtle precursor to the week of headlines that were set to come.
Within the aftermath of Robin van Persie’s 90th minute winner, Ferdinand was of course struck by a coin thrown from an as of yet unidentified idiot from the Etihad support. For the ex-Leeds United man, it was an unsavoury incident, but one he chose not to dwell on. Rather than fuelling the baying media’s incessant desire to panic, Ferdinand chose to play down the incident, jokingly referring to the culprit as a ‘good shot’.
Predictably however, this was never going to be enough to prevent the monsoon of moral panic that we’ve since been subjected to.
On the back of almost every Monday paper – and the front in some cases – editors chose to immortalize a frenetic Manchester derby with the image of a stricken Ferdinand, rather than that of a celebrating Van Persie. A decision based on appropriate news values? Maybe so, but the ensuing debate offered us something of a hallmark in terms of how far media hysteria has ballooned in the last ten years.
Because contrary to what the reaction to the Ferdinand incident might suggest, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen someone targeted with a missile by one of English football’s moronic minority.
Indeed, it will be 11 years next month since Liverpool lost 1-0 away to Arsenal in a stormy FA Cup fourth-round tie. It was hardly a game that will be fondly remembered in the annals of history, but given the events of the past couple of weeks, it seems strange that many seem to have forgot what happened that day.
There was only around 20 minutes left to play in the game, before a young, fresh faced and decidedly unhappy Jamie Carragher was struck by a coin amongst a couple of other missiles from the Highbury crowd. As opposed to seeing out the rest of the game and delivering a Ferdinand-esque jovial retort, Carragher took matters into his own hands, picked up the coin and proceeded to launch it back into the stands.
It was a moment of madness from the man who went on to lift the Champions League under Rafa Benitez, and it was certainly a far, far more serious incident than what we witnessed in the blue half of Manchester ten days ago. In this case, it was a supporter allegedly left with an injury, as opposed to a Premier League footballer.
Although the difference here is within the immediate aftermath. We didn’t have anyone demanding that the players reign in their celebrations and take responsibility, as Jamie Redknapp did last week. Furthermore, you certainly didn’t hear anyone calling for the introduction of netting at football grounds, as Martin Keown recently suggested in his column for the Daily Mail. As opposed to launching into a moral crusade looking for someone to vilify and someone to change, English football took a step back and viewed it for what it was.
Carragher was widely condemned, forced to apologize and sat out the three-match ban that came with his red card for violent conduct. But there was no mass vilification for either Carragher or English football fans in general. There were no more games heaped onto his initial ban, in an attempt make an example out of him.
The incident was accepted for what it was – an unsavoury moment instigated by a minority and a ridiculous reaction from a player who was dealt with appropriately. Then that was it. Naturally, there was debate and critique within the public forum, but both fans and media accepted for what it was and moved on.
Yet in those 11 years, while the English media has always bestowed a penchant for hysteria, it seems to have developed an inability to move on from an incident without finding some form of closure.
The notion that out of the thousands of people that attend football matches every week, occasionally one or two of them might in fact be bad eggs – as in any other realm of society – is rendered inconceivable. Of course, after one coin hits Ferdinand on the head, the natural reaction is to destroy grounds by placing netting behind the goals and to stop players from celebrating.
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What happened to Ferdinand shouldn’t for five minutes be swept under the carpet or sought to be underplayed in any way. It was a serious incident and it could have had some terrible ramifications should it have landed on his retina, rather than his eyebrow.
But as opposed to focusing on the frequency in which players tend to be hit from objects from the crowd, which usually tends to be once in a blue moon, the media have decided to use an undoubtedly nasty, yet generally rare incident, as a yardstick for Premier League reality.
Increased media hysteria might seem like part and parcel of modern day football, but as with any other continued, overzealous dissection of an incident, it only serves to drag the agenda into the public domain. Before the Manchester derby, coin throwing was a condemnable, yet rare practice at football grounds. Now, we apparently need netting up and our players are at risk of getting stabbed, if you listen to Redknapp and co.
English football’s never been known for its famous sense of perspective, but it needs to try and reign in the hysteria before it starts cultivating widespread and potentially damaging changes to the game. He’s made his fair share of mistakes during his career, but perhaps we could do a lot worse than following the lead of Rio Ferdinand’s take on this one. As with all things in life, perspective is key. We’d do well to bear that in mind next time we see a flashpoint in English football.
In recent years, lower league clubs have increasingly become breeding grounds, where young Premier League players are sent out on loan in order to further their professional development.
On the face of things, this may seem a convenient situation for all parties concerned.
The Premier League clubs benefit from having players of greater maturity after their stints on loan, who might have progressed enough to challenge for the first-team.
The players gain valuable game time and are in a better position of pushing for a starting berth upon returning to their parent clubs. They may have been playing 90 minutes regularly for their youth teams, but that is no substitute for rubbing shoulders with experienced professionals in a more competitive league.
Meanwhile for the lower league clubs, the loan system has become an integral part of surviving in this tough financial climate, as they are able to reinforce their squads without having to pay a transfer fee nor having to contribute to the loanees’ wages.
A resounding success, you might think?
Unfortunately, from a supporter’s perspective, there are many serious drawbacks.
Loans are often as short as three months or even a ludicrous one-month period.
As a lifelong Yeovil Town fan, I have barely been able to keep track of the constant incomings and outgoings in recent years, to the extent that I have begun to lose some of the interest and enthusiasm I once demonstrated in following the side’s fortunes.
This goes for many supporters of the Glovers, where attendances have seen a steady drop from 6,667 in 2005-06 (Yeovil’s debut season in League One) to the current season total of 3,831.
For many, the days of visiting the club shop to buy shirts complete with players’ names emblazoned on the back are a thing of the past. After all, the shirt could be outdated within weeks or even days, if the parent club of the player in question were to enact their powers to recall him whenever it wants.
Indeed, at this rate, no ten-year-old fan will ever be able to repeat the feat of Gordon Ottershaw’s son in Michael Palin’s classic ‘Ripping Yarns – Golden Gordon,’ who learnt by heart the names of all eleven players of his father’s favourite (but comically inept) team long before his birth.
Indeed, one can imagine even a most loyal supporter such as Gordon, who has struggled through six years without witnessing a single victory, losing the will to follow a side, with which he would no longer be able to identify.
The logic is quite simple. True supporters generally devote themselves to their clubs for long periods, if not for the rest of their lives, and are therefore inclined to show, at times, immeasurable levels of appreciation and respect to players who reciprocate their loyalty by remaining at the club for many years.
This is not to say that all short-term loanees are incapable of endearing themselves to supporters.
Yeovil fans still look back with great affection on Leon Best’s three months at Huish Park between November 2006 and February 2007. Despite having to return to Southampton for the final part of the season, his ten goals in fifteen matches in Somerset were crucial to maintaining our promotion push in a season which culminated in a Play-off final defeat to Blackpool at Wembley.
Tottenham’s quartet of Steven Caulker, Andros Townsend, Jonathan Obika and Ryan Mason are also remembered for the positive impact they made while on loan with the Glovers.
The problems arise when a club becomes dependent on loan players, who are subject to recall from their parent clubs at the drop of a hat. Much rests on the strength and breadth of a manager’s contacts in order to keep the cycle going of replacing one loanee with the next.
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Even if a manager is able to bring in the new man promptly, it can rarely be guaranteed that he will add much, if any, extra quality to the original squad. Needless to say, there have been a number of youngsters loaned in, often from large Premier League clubs, who have simply failed to make the grade.
Several players can claim to have used loan spells as springboards to bigger and better things, very noticeably Steven Caulker, who has started in defence for Tottenham this season and scored on his England senior team debut against Sweden in November.
But for every beneficiary there will be a loser. One need only look at Caulker’s Spurs team-mate, Obika, who doesn’t look like ever making the first-team, having returned to White Hart Lane after eight separate loan stints of varying success in just three years.
The loan system, as we know it today, has depersonalized clubs, while a large share of their supporters, and indeed players, has been cast into somewhat of a football wilderness.
Should David Bentley finally make his long-overdue departure from Tottenham Hotspur this month, the circumstances around his protracted exit are likely to be about as polarizing to his arrival at the club as you could possibly imagine.
Those interested in the former Blackburn Rovers winger shouldn’t be too concerned by his seven international caps, the array of technical gifts he gathered under Arsene Wenger or the £15million transfer fee it took for Spurs to once prise him away from Ewood Park.
In fact, should those wishing to take a roll of the dice with the former Arsenal apprentice fancy lining up a permanent deal this month, it should take little more than a nominal fee to pluck him out of Andre Villas-Boas’ squad. With his six-year-deal effectively ending a year early this summer and no place back for him within his manager’s plans, Spurs are set to take a huge financial hit on Bentley.
Yet where as he entered N17 as one of the great young hopes of English football, he’ll be leaving as one of its greatest ever wastes. And while an element of bad luck and a dashing of mismanagement have played their part in his tale, Bentley’s fate is ultimately one of sustained self-infliction.
At only 28-years-old, Bentley enters the prime-years of career seeking redemption, rather than seeking silverware. If he is to finally turn things around, the chances are he’s going to do it the hard way. With his last Premier League appearance coming in Birmingham City’s 2-0 defeat at home to Fulham in the May of 2011, it’s been over 18 months since he last played regular top-flight football. You have to go back even longer to find the last time he found anything resembling form.
A move to the Championship seems like the most likely scenario, bar a desperate late enquiry from one of the Premier League’s contingent of struggling clubs. Although given the underwhelming nature of the last time a relegation threatened club took a chance with him, it seems unlikely that history might repeat itself. Indeed, the Birmingham Mail certainly didn’t sugar coat his time at St. Andrews, describing Bentley as ‘flattering to deceive’ in producing a raft of mistakes that proved ‘costly’.
Thing have of course gone from bad to worse for David Bentley and while no one can account for the knee ligament damage that deprived him of a desperately needed season of regular football for West Ham last term, the road to his current plight has been paved by his own failings.
When he does speak to the media these days, an increasing rarity as the years have gone by, the cocksure demeanor and the silhouette of arrogance seems to have eroded away.
In a recent interview following his loan move to FC Rostov, Bentley seemed more open, aware and acknowledging of the mistakes he’d made in the past:
“I thought I was James Dean in the day,” he said.
“If I saw a cliff, I’d want to jump off it.”
The James Dean comparison may have been given in good humour, but given his car accident in 2009 – ironically also in a Porsche – it certainly offers a painful insight into Bentley’s former mindset. His reputation as a troublemaker is perhaps verging on the unfair, but his decision to drive his 911 Turbo home after sinking four pints and two spirits with Aussie band Jet, delivered what Bentley described as a ‘wake up call’.
But regardless of his past alleged care-free attitude off the pitch, it was what he was doing on the field that was perhaps as disappointing as anything he was doing away from it.
Bentley’s often spoke about his disappointment in then-coach Juande Ramos’ departure and the lack of subsequent ‘communication’ with his successor Harry Redknapp. He’s even described his time under the now-QPR boss akin to ‘banging his head against a wall.’
Yet although Redknapp’s insistence on playing with two out-and-out wingers was always going to serve his fellow right-wing rival Aaron Lennon in a better way, Bentley offered little in the way of any fighting instinct. His lack of application for Spurs was never delivered with the sort of sneering attitude that generates widespread malaise from the stands; it was often more a half-hearted, neither here-nor-there sort of desire.
And for a man with such an unnerving amount of natural talent, Bentley’s approach at times in a Spurs shirt let himself down, as much as anybody else. For a self-proclaimed childhood supporter of the Lilywhites, it seemed strange that those who flocked to watch him at White Hart Lane were never treated to anything near the sort of performances those at Ewood Park were able to enjoy.
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His time at Tottenham may well have inflicted irreparable damage to his reputation and he’ll never reach the level of which his ability once demanded. But for all the water that has since passed under the bridge, Bentley still has time to make one more positive mark upon English football.
Whether he still retains the hunger for the game after two bitterly disappointing years remains to be seen, but if a Championship side can give him the sort of environment needed to rebuild both his confidence as well as his career, then he has the talent to help any team in that division gain promotion.
Everyone deserves a second chance and David Bentley isn’t any different. And if he is lucky enough to be given that opportunity, then how he fancies being remembered in the game could define how he fares in his last chance saloon.
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Tottenham defender Benoît Assou-Ekotto’s commitment to football has often been questioned in the past, but the latest news coming out of White Hart Lane suggests it’s even worse than Lilywhites fans first thought.
The Cameroonian, who once told The Guardian: “I play for the money. Football’s not my passion” has been diagnosed with what medical experts are calling ‘soccer blindness’.
The Premier League full back is so uninspired by the beautiful game it is said that he often forgets what a football actually is and has been ordered by Andre Villas-Boas to wear special headphones during games that repeat the word ‘football’ up to 750 times in a 90 minute period.
The fantastical claims were reported by none other than Arsenal legend Ian Wright for O2’s Future News, a show where the former Gunners striker predicts what will happen in the game during the coming months.
You can see the full video report below but for now it is said that Assou-Ekotto remains in a stable, if uninspired condition.
[youtube Q3kMdRJi4sw]
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