Ed Woodward, apart from having the same name as a late actor who used to portray, amongst others, a character known as “The Equalizer“, (yes, it was an American series, although the actor was English), has nothing else whatsoever in common with that persona.
A man who spent his waking hours righting wrongs, looking after the poor people who couldn’t afford protection and didn’t trust the police, he was a mixture of Robin Hood and the A-Team and always came out on top. (more…)
If the press is to be believed, (and why shouldn’t they be?), then Chris Smalling is of major interest to West Bromwich Albion.
He is also rumoured to be of interest to Everton, West Ham, Newcastle, Leicester, Stoke, Crystal Palace and Arsenal with the latter’s interest probably proof of why ArsĂ©ne Wenger should have resigned at the end of last season.
The West Brom move, however, is one of those which would make sense to all parties. Smalling has struggled to play regularly under JosĂ© Mourinho whilst Louis van Gaal didn’t even know his name! (more…)
Come on Ed! You can do it! Don’t forget to breathe! Breathe! Just a few short weeks to go now and then you can retire to your office in Mayfair and forget all about the football side of the game until January. You can concentrate all your efforts on getting obscure conglomerates to sign massive sponsorship deals.
Of course it will be easier in January because, by then, JosĂ© Mourinho will have worked out that, if he wants two players, he has to ask for four. He just has to be careful of the order in which he asks as he won’t want to be saddled with the two players he didn’t really want. (more…)
PART TWO – JĂśRGEN KLOPP, ARSÉNE WENGER AND JOSÉ MOURINHO
Continuing to answer our question from yesterday when, in part one, we focused on Antonio Conte, Mauricio Pochettino and Pep Guardiola, today in part two we look at the remaining three of the top six managers and assess the likelihood of them staying with their current clubs.
JĂĽrgen Klopp – Liverpool
Seems to be as loyal as they come nowadays and only left Borussia Dortmund because he couldn’t really take them any further and had ambitions to manage in the Premier League. (more…)
PART ONE
Dani Alves is going to PSG. This, reportedly, after verbally agreeing to join Pep Guardiola at Manchester City.
His reason? He wants to win a title. Surely this is as near as it gets to admitting that he thinks this will be a much easier task in France than it would be in England. Either that or he is being economical with the truth and couldn’t care less about a title as long as he gets paid lots of moolah.
Now we don’t want to be the ones to pour scorn on his reasoning, after all, it may be perfectly true. The facts, however, tend to disprove what he is saying. (more…)
Manchester United have won the Premier League title thirteen times. Chelsea have won it five times and Manchester City have won it twice.
Sandwiched in between City and Chelsea is Arsenal, who have won it three times, but that was back in the days when they were quite good, days which are unlikely to return as long as they, and their manager, continue to stick their heads in the sand in the forlorn belief that he will be able to compete with the new kids on the block at any time soon.
Their riches also do not amount to as much as any of the “big three” which means that they will either always be picking up players unwanted by the others, or scouting very good players for themselves, as they used to do very successfully. (more…)
Here we take a look at the transfer dealings of two London clubs, the two from Manchester and the two Merseyside teams.
CHELSEA
Chelsea have signed Antonio RĂĽdiger. He is a centre back and there was, as far as we know, no competition for his signature.
Chelsea have not signed Romelu Lukaku because they had competition from a bigger club. They may not sign Timoue Bakayoko because that same bigger club is now expressing an interest in the player. (more…)
It’s all a question of size. Ask Pep Guardiola about the importance of a player’s height and our guess is that the adage, “a good little ‘un will always beat a good big ‘un“, will be his first response, or the Spanish equivalent at least!
Ask the same question of José Mourinho and the answer may very well be reversed. He has usually built his teams around big centre forwards backed up by relatively big midfielders.
If Manchester United were to field a team of their tallest players right now it would include Marouane Fellaini at 6’4″, Paul Pogba at 6’3″, Romelu Lukaku at 6’3″ and Michael Carrick at 6’1”. (more…)
WAYNE ROONEY
Forget nostalgia. Forgive any possibly deluded Evertonians who think they are getting a good player. They are not.
The fact of the matter is that Wayne Rooney is now not good enough to get into the Everton side. He may occasionally be OK coming off the bench for the last half hour of games but, as a starter, he has lost it.
Who at Goodison actually wants him back? I can’t imagine that Bill Kenwright would ever sanction the kind of money Rooney is paid, especially as he is now no better than average. (more…)
As conspiracy theories go, it’s not up there with 9/11 or the JFK assassination, but it is still worth throwing in the water to see if it floats.
JosĂ© Mourinho left Chelsea “by mutual consent” in December, 2015. In January, 2016 it was announced by Manchester City that Pep Guardiola was to be their new manager. Those two seismic events were pretty close in the happening.
In fairness to City, this is where their connection with the conspiracy theory ends because it is highly unlikely that they even knew, let alone cared, who was to follow Louis van Gaal as Manchester United manager. (more…)
WHY SAY ANYTHING? 