Reading’s Jason Roberts has announced that he will refuse to wear Kick It Out T-shirts this weekend in protest at the F.A.’s handling of the John Terry scandal. The veteran striker has urged the Premier League’s other black players to join his boycott of the anti-racism campaign, suggesting it has failed to stop racial abuse in football.
It is believed that brothers Anton and Rio Ferdinand, who have been at the heart of the John Terry scandal, will join Roberts as will a number of senior black footballers, however several Premier League managers have spoken out in order to quash the revolt.
Following John Terry’s announcement that he would not appeal against his four game ban and fine handed to him by the F.A. as a punishment for racially abusing Anton Ferdinand last year, 34-year-old Roberts told Sky Sports News “Certainly a four-game ban is nowhere near what people would expect for something like this.
“It seems like the authorities don’t have the stomach to take this on, and if the players don’t take it on then nobody will.
“You know we’ve sat and we’ve spoken about the Serbian FA and their view of what happened out there with the England Under-21s and how you have to take responsibility.”
Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger and Roberto Mancini have announced that all of their squad will be wearing the Kick it out T-shirts at the weekend, meaning Roberts could be standing alone in his protest should Ferguson convince Ferdinand to drop his issues with the F.A.
The United boss has spoken out in disagreement with the Royals striker: “I have to disagree with Jason Roberts. I think he is making the wrong point. Everyone should be united, with all the players in the country wearing the Kick it Out warm-up tops.
“I don’t know what point he is trying to make. I don’t know if he is trying to put himself on a different pedestal from everyone. But he really should be supporting all the rest of the players who are doing it” added Ferguson.
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have confirmed that Paul Jewell has left the club by mutual consent following a disappointing start to the Championship season.
Jewell joined the club in January 2011 and led them to a 13th place finish and followed that up by finishing 15th last season. But just one win in their opening 12 Championship games this season has seen Ipswich slump to the bottom of the league, four a drift from safety.
A statement by club owner Marcus Evans on the club’s official website reads: “Since he first walked through the door here, no one has worked harder to bring success to this Football Club than Paul Jewell.
“Unfortunately his outstanding commitment has not been rewarded by results on the pitch and having spoken with Paul at length, we feel it’s best for him and the Club if we go our separate ways.
“I’m bitterly disappointed – as is Paul – that it has not worked out as we had hoped when he became our manager 21 months ago and I would like to put on record my thanks for his services to the Club and wish him every success in the future.”
Paul Jewell said: “We all know that football is a results business though and I’ve never hidden from the fact that our results have not been good enough.
“It’s been a privilege to be manager of such a fantastic football club and I want to thank the staff and the supporters for the backing they have given me in my time at the Club and wish Ipswich Town the best of fortunes ahead.”
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Assistant manager Chris Hutchings will take over as caretaker manager while a search for Jewell’s replacement gets under way.
Manchester City captain Vincent Kompany admitted that defensive errors cost his side victory during their Champions League tie with Ajax.
The Sky Blues conceded twice early on from set-pieces, but were able to fight back to earn a draw at the Etihad Stadium.
After the game the Belgian confessed that the goals they shipped were avoidable and cost them their chance to win:
“It’s very important to defend as a team when corners come in and we’ve probably let ourselves down on those two occasions.” He told ITV after the game.
“Those two goals were really not good.
“We’ll look back at the game, try to see what went wrong, and try to improve.”
“It’s not the case that we’re not good enough for the Champions League but it’s a matter of time.
“It’s unfortunate that we’re letting those chances go at the moment.”
City were denied a penalty late on in the game as Mario Balotelli appeared to be wrestled to the ground in the area.
Both the striker and manager Roberto Mancini were angered by the decision not to award a spot-kick, but Kompany refused to blame the officials:
“You guys have the images and you’ll be able to judge better than me.” He responded when asked if it was a foul.
“We didn’t do enough to win tonight and we have to learn from this and take it into the next game.”
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Ajax took the lead after ten minutes, as Siem de Jong poked home from close range. The Dutchman then doubled the lead with a header following some slack marking from the City defence.
The home side battled back with goals from Yaya Toure and Sergio Aguero, but were unable to force a winner leaving them rooted to the foot of Group D.
Tottenham Hotspur’s disgruntled goalkeeper Hugo Lloris has hinted he may push for a January transfer when he meets up with Spurs boss Andre Villas-Boas on his return from international duty, according to the Daily Mail and Sky Sports News.
The French shot-stopper only joined the North London club in the summer, but has been kept out of the Spurs starting XI by veteran goalkeeper Brad Friedel, who has been in a rich vein of form since the start of the season.
Lloris singed from Lyon for £8million plus future incentives on transfer deadline day, but has only made a single Premier League appearance.
The French no.1, who featured in last night’s international friendly against Italy, has spent the season warming-up the bench, and is expected to continue doing so for the North London derby at the weekend.
Although considered the future first-team goalkeeper at White Hart Lane, AVB is struggling to keep Lloris happy, suggesting the player will want a move away in January. Villas-Boas is preparing to hold talks with the disillusioned 25-year-old when he arrives back in London following international duty.
It has been revealed that the French international was being closely watched by Arsenal in the summer, but the Gunners pulled out of making a bid at the last minute.
Wenger has recently announced he is on the hunt for a new goalkeeper, and could attempt to lure Lloris to the Emirates during the imminent transfer window.
Lloris told french newspaper L’Equipe: “I remain a competitor. I want to be on the pitch.
“I feel much at ease at the club, where I have been very, very well received by the players, the fans and people at the club.
“Now you have to ask all those questions [over the No.1 spot] to the coach” he added.
France head coach Didier Deschamps has been vocal about AVB’s decision to pick Friedel over the discontented Hugo Lloris.
The former Juventus and Marseille manager has now told reporters: “He doesn’t play enough at his club and it doesn’t sit very well with him.
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“His situation is difficult, burdensome, not ideal.
“Returning to the bench after the performance he made with us in Spain [in the World Cup qualifiers] is not easy. He cannot be satisfied playing only one game out of two or three.
“Of course, he would like to play more. He is getting on with it as best he possibly can but obviously he would like to play more,” added Deschamps.
13 may be unlucky for some, but today we’re giving away arguably the most popular prize of our Football Advent Calendar so far – Football Manager 2013.
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The winner will be announced tomorrow, when we will also be unveiling our prize for Day 14. Don’t forget to come back to FootballFanCast.com then!
Rio Ferdinand believes that Manchester United must improve defensively if they are to regain their Premier League title.
The Red Devils’ Boxing Day win over Newcastle saw their lead at the summit of the table extended to seven points, with local rivals Manchester City losing to Sunderland.
Although they secured all three points, United dropped behind three times to the Magpies, before Javier Hernandez’s late winner.
Sir Alex Ferguson’s men have recovered from a losing position on eight occasions in the league this term, and whilst Ferdinand maintains that it’s nice to be victorious, he feels that they must improve their defensive record:
“When you’re conceding goals at any level, you want to stop it,” he is quoted by The Mirror.
“We’ve let in far too many goals and need to change that.
“We have to make a big effort to push on from a good position. If we’re going to maintain where we are, we have to sort ourselves out.
“We seem to make sure the punters get their money’s worth when they come to the ground at the moment.”
He went praise the character shown by the team to take all three points against Newcastle:
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“But it was a great show of character from the lads at the start of a really busy schedule.
“It was really important to get the win, no matter how we did it.”
The signing of Robin van Persie should have given Alex Ferguson a new lease of life for the game, a new-found motivation to go and do it all again next summer. Talk of bargain signings from Spain continue to fill the air as the best moves of 2012, but no one can deny that £24 million for the best striker in England is a remarkable piece of business. Even if van Persie is pushing towards the age of 30, the Dutchman’s talent is enough to make any manager rethink the idea of retirement.
So why not go for another round next summer? Bild recently reported that Manchester United were after Borussia Dortmund’s Robert Lewandowski, stating that the Polish striker was keen to move to the Premier League for a fee just over 22 million euros. And why not? The are very few strikers in Europe who are better than Lewandowski. Few have managed to create a hybrid of the traditional, tall no 9 and the dynamic modern equivalent.
Does the Dortmund striker signal a quick-fire address to van Persie’s age, or is there something else in there?
Dortmund are in a similar state to Arsenal of last year, whereby their most valuable forward is nearing the end of his contract and the club are in a position where they may need to sell. You can bet the German champions will do everything in their power to keep hold of one of their assets, and the reported wages of £5 million a year that United are willing to offer should quite easily fall into their comfort zone.
If Dortmund go all the way in the Champions League—and they’re more than good enough to do so—then it may be a case that Lewandowski opts to stay. Even if the club do not retain their Bundesliga title this season, the loyalty of their other stars would signal a more than ferocious attack on the title next season. Bayern Munich may have the financial means to outmuscle Dortmund, but Jurgen Klopp’s side won’t be put down by the reinvigorated powers in the south of the country.
So how would Lewandowski fit in at Old Trafford? How does one of the Bundesliga’s most impressive forwards fit into a group of strikers who Alex Ferguson claimed were on par with his 1999 treble-winning squad? Javier Hernandez has already spoken out about his desire to leave should first-team opportunities remain limited in the future and the signing of Shinji Kagawa last summer gives the team an option of playing just one striker in attack. Ferguson has done so a few times this season, notably when the pressure was off, but how do you leave van Persie out of your starting XI for an extended period of time—even for Lewandowski?
What about Wayne Rooney? The idea of letting Rooney go would be more of a blow to the club from a symbolic perspective rather than for football reasons. Rooney is yet to fulfil the potential he had and become one of Europe’s finest attackers, while his inconsistencies, coupled with the presence of van Persie, means it’s not all that difficult to leave him on the bench.
Regardless of form and where the level of his talents may be in two or three years time, Rooney is a name who would bring in a royal fee from any number of the growing powers around Europe. Lewandowski is younger and can only continue to get better—as mentioned, there are few strikers in Europe who play the role as well and importantly as he does—so the prospect of swapping one for the other hardly seems catastrophic from a footballing perspective.
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But the real concern for United remains the other areas in the squad, notably defence and the centre of midfield. On one hand, you simply can’t pass up the opportunity to sign Lewandowski for the rumoured price, but those problem areas in the squad are unlikely to heal themselves. Maybe the manager has big plans for Nick Powell in the near future, maybe Phil Jones will convert to midfield and become the all-action defensive player the team needs. Maybe Rooney’s known versatility will mean he stays on at the club and fills a role elsewhere in the squad. He’s capable of scoring 30 goals a season, but how sure can the club be of that every year? He can play the wide positions and even in midfield, however a role on the flanks will limit the productivity he can bring from a central position.
For all the talk of where Lewandowski may fit and whether Rooney’s future at the club is certain, it may simply be that Alex Ferguson is loading the deck for one last charge on the Champions League. A Premier League and European double would undoubtedly be the grandest way to exit the game, and who can really complain when a squad has the most fearsome attack in English football?
Tottenham winger Gareth Bale became the first player in Premier League history to have earned himself a one-game suspension after picking up five yellow cards this season, three of them for going down easily, but is he being victimised or does he need to cut out this sort of behaviour from his game for good?
Firstly, the often used cliche by pundits and ex-pros when discussing the issue of diving is that they always argue ‘he’s going to get himself a reputation’. Well that horse has well and truly bolted. Bale undoubtedly has a reputation as a diver, earned for his quite awful fall at work incurred during the 5-2 defeat to Arsenal last season in winning a penalty for his side and he has picked up five cautions for diving since the start of last season.
I feel comfortable calling Bale a diver, just as I would Ashley Young, Steven Gerrard or Wayne Rooney. These are repeat offenders. These are not more examples of Johnny Foreigner over here sullying our good and honest game. These are British players, darn good ones at that, who use the rules and pace of the game to their advantage. It’s cheating, there’s no other word for it.
Bale stated after the Sunderland win where he earned his fifth booking of the season: “That’s three times now I’ve been clipped and booked for no reason. People keep saying I’m diving, but if there’s contact it’s not diving. Referees need to look more closely.” Presumably then, the other two times were indeed actual dives by his own admission.
An excuse has began to fester away at the footballing establishment and has gradually been accepted as a reason for a player going down so easy; namely that Bale travels at such speed that even the slightest touch knocks him off course and brings him down. Alan Hansen even used it when trying to claim that his dive against Sunderland was indeed a penalty. It’s laughable really and it’s only used because Bale is actually an exceptional footballer when he’s not trying to con the referee. Would Emerson Boyce have been given such a ridiculous benefit of the doubt had he gone over? Or Titus Bramble for that matter? No, of course they wouldn’t, because they don’t happen to be very good or play for big, fashionable clubs.
To quote from The Laws of the Game: “A player must be cautioned for unsporting behaviour if (he)…attempts to deceive the referee by feigning injury or pretending to be fouled.” The Sunderland foul serves as a case in point, Bale has glided past Craig Gardner at pace and beaten him, driving into the left-hand side of the box before he inexplicably tumbles at the slightest glance of an arm against his rib cage. It’s a tricky one to ponder, for he has not feigned injury as such, but with his man beaten, he is most certainly pretending to be fouled. Would he have gone over so easily anywhere else on the pitch if the reward of a penalty was not on offer? Probably not.
Sometimes players can get penalised for staying on their feet after being knocked off balance by a rough challenge or two, but that didn’t appear to be the case with Bale here; his path didn’t deviate and while surging past Gardner, neither of his feet were clipped nor did they change angle, they just appeared to collapse under the weight of expectation that was the pressure placed on the referee to make a decision. Aaron Lennon on the opposite flank is just as fast but seems to shrug off these sorts of challenges because guess what? He’s not a diver. The tag has stuck, but there’s a reason for that and being defended by David Ginola of all people will not help his cause much. Next up, Robert Pires.
Nevertheless, the flip side of that coin shows you that while the Sunderland one was a dive, not every single booking that Bale has picked up has been the correct decision, with referees obviously mindful of his reputation. Match officials are not supposed to let the media or external influences effect their decision-making, but that’s both naive and unavoidable and in some ways, the Tottenham man has become a victim of past indiscrections.
The validity of a foul is no longer the only barometer by which they are judged it seems when Bale is concerned, external influences are playing a part and all the opposition has to do now is throw their arms up in the air in mock outrage and harangue the referee to see the decision go in their favour. Plenty of careers have been ruined by the sort of filthy challenges that players like Bale have suffered in the past, and there’s something to be said for him trying to dive out of the way of them, such as the yellow he picked up against Reading. The terrible Charlie Adam challenge from last season and in pre-season this term have clearly left more mental scars than physical ones.
Bale is fast by footballing standards, but he does not run at 25mph; he is not a professional sprinter and he can’t be expected to find a way around every cynical challenge that comes his way, but the theatrical nature of his tumbles leaves a lot to be desired and distorts how we view what at times is a genuine foul on him, like the one he was booked for against Fulham.
Moreover, he has left himself in an increasingly difficult position now, does he continue to flail his limbs and arch his back at the slightest contact in the future or does he now simply take the hit? There’s a legitimate case to be made that he could get seriously hurt and his suspension has served as little more than a green light for some of the league’s nastier players to have a free-for-all.
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Much like Luis Suarez and his relationship with Liverpool fans, Tottenham supporters will be delighted to have a player of the quality of Bale in their squad but embarrassed by his artful mastery of the game’s darker arts. The Welshman has the potential to be a world-class player, he’s not quite there yet, but in a year or two’s time he wouldn’t look out of place in a side like Real Madrid’s.
With manager Andre Villas-Boas going as far as to call him ‘persecuted’ in recent weeks, while there may be an element of truth to that assertion, the player hasn’t helped himself at any point this past year either and the reputation he’s garnered is entirely fair, even if the suspension itself wasn’t – straddling some sort of middle ground between avoiding contact and diving is a tricky one to quantify, and all boils down to one question – does all simulation count as diving? Only retrospective action, both awarding and rescinding cards, is the fairest future path to take.
Rumours about Everton manager David Moyes’ future at Goodison Park have surfaced after their 3-0 defeat to Wigan in the FA Cup, The Telegraph reports.
The Latics beat Moyes’ side in a game decided in the first-half in which Roberto Martinez’s men booked a spot at Wembley with three goals in as many minutes.
Fingers have been pointed at the Scot, whose contract runs out in June, and many are suggesting it is time for a change at the Merseyside club.
While a sector of the fans believe the Everton hierarchy have been lenient with Moyes, making the club settle with their current status, others suggest his work has not been given enough credit.
The Scotsman, who has led the team for the last 11 years, eluded to the debate by saying his enthusiasm at the club is there for all to see.
“I still have the same appetite for that job,” Moyes insisted.
Although he admitted the cup defeat against the Premier League strugglers cannot be excused by the lack of signings.
“It had nothing to do with those issues, or anything else, it was just a poor performance.”
Moyes still suggested he knows where the squad could be improved, hinting that the club’s performance could have been boosted had he been given the funds to strengthen the starting XI.
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“I’ve always known what I need to do to move it forward here but a lot of those things aren’t apparent to people viewing from the outside,” he added.
Brede Hangeland’s agent has confirmed that a number of clubs are interested in the Fulham centre-back.
The Norwegian is out of contract at the end of the season, and was the subject of speculation regarding a move to QPR during January.
Although reports have circulated in recent weeks that he could renew his deal at Craven Cottage, no official agreements have been announced, leaving the 31-year-old’s future up in the air.
This lack of certainty has led to rumours that he could move on this summer, and his agent, Rune Hauge, has revealed that a number of European sides are interested in Hangeland:
“There have been some enquiries about what is going on.” He is quoted by Sky Sports.
“That includes top clubs, but no offers. We do not have permission to negotiate with other English clubs yet.”
Hague went on to confirm that discussions with Fulham are ongoing, but that the longer they take the less likely it is that the Scandinavian will stay with the Cottagers:
“We are still negotiating.” Hauge told the Norwegian media.
“But the longer it takes to reach an agreement, the chance that he will stay is decreasing.
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“At the same time, Brede is happy at Fulham and the club is happy with him. We will see in one or three months.”
If Hangeland leaves it will be a big blow to the club, with the commanding centre-back a fans’ favourite in west London.