It’s Christmas and to celebrate the festive season and their sponsorship of the Football League, npower are giving away pairs of tickets to Championship club supporters. It is the perfect gift for these lucky winners and a friend to commemorate 2010 and see their team into a successful 2011. Make sure you don’t miss out!
npower are offering you one last chance to save on your energy as they are rewarding fans for switching their gas and electricity supply to npower and paying by direct debit. For ‘real fans’ npower has launched Football Saver* for new customers – It’s guaranteed 7% cheaper than standard rates until 31st December 2011 plus you will automatically be placed into a special prize draw where you could win a £45 voucher to spend at your local Football League club shop, courtesy of npower, say for example towards a new shirt for the season. To take advantage of the offer call 0800 975 6613** quoting N570P, offer closes 30th January 2011.
npower are all about giving not only to the fans but to the local community too. As the new title sponsor of The Football League Kids Cup, they fully support the annual six-a-side competition with teams of Under-11’s and Under-13 girls played in towns and cities throughout the country, culminating in finals played at Wembley Stadium before the end of season npower Play-Off Finals.
The Competition:
Here at FootballFanCast we have teamed up with npower to offer footy fans the chance to win a Pair of Tickets for sixteen lucky home fans to the following four matches:
Doncaster Rovers v Middlesbrough – Saturday 18th December Barnsley v Burnley – Sunday 26th December (Boxing Day) Derby County v Doncaster Rovers – Sunday 26th December (Boxing Day) Scunthorpe United v Preston North End – Sunday 26th December (Boxing Day)
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All you need to do to be in with a chance of winning is to answer the following question correctly:
Which team is not in the npower Football League?
A) Crystal Palace
B) Chelsea FC
C) Cardiff City
Email your answer along with the game you would like to watch to [email protected].
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Terms and conditions:
Tickets are located in the home team stand and are only valid for home team supporters.Winning the football tickets doesn’t guarantee the automatic win of the £45 voucher.Winners of the voucher will be notified by npower by 31st Dec 2010.*Residential customers only. Offer and vouchers subject to availability. Terms, conditions and exclusions apply visit www.npower.com/shirtoffer or call 0800 975 6613**** Calls may be recorded and monitored for training and security purposes.To view all the competition terms and conditions visit http://www.npower.com/footballcricketterms
It was a night that will go down in the history books. The football equivalent of David beating Goliath. Every bet hedged against the pesky Englishmen who dared to upset the European apple cart. Tactical skullduggery was their weapon of choice in the first bout for which they were universally condemned. A counterattack lay in wait on the streets of Catalonia where the distinguished natives yearned to educate their adversary on how to conduct themselves appropriately on the grandest stage of them all. Yet the much prophesied Barcelona backlash failed to materialise. Having carved a reputation as the supreme authority of our beautiful game their shortcomings on this occasion proved exasperating.
For the millions of viewers glued to their television sets and computer screens there was something amiss. The La Liga champions looked a shadow of the team that cruised to this stage of the competition going about their business with an audible swagger. The captivating football they usually brought to the table was absent as it was last week in West London. Chelsea stifled their play with a defensive game plan plucked from the mind of a military strategist. In reality it was the handy work of a man charged with steadying the Stamford Bridge boat after it had been caught in rough seas. Roberto Di Matteo not only guided the Blues into calmer waters following a stormy eight-months under the stewardship of Andre Villas-Boas but got them ticking along at a considerable rate of knots.
He came in for a great deal of criticism for the deployment of an ‘anti-football’ game plan in the first leg that saw side sit back and soak up the pressure from their Spanish counterparts and hitting them on the break when the opportunity presented itself. The general consensus was that the Italian would bow to censure, alter his strategy and go for broke in the return leg. That turned out to be a fallacy as Di Matteo set out his stall in exactly the same manner with identical results. Barcelona failed to adapt their style of play to break down the stubborn resistance of their Premier League opponents. It was another tactical triumph for Chelsea’s interim boss.
More so it displayed the 41-year-old’s headstrong disposition that has transformed the Blues during his short time in the dugout. Despite being painted as lambs to a Catalan slaughter Di Matteo stuck to his guns and it ultimately paid dividends. With stints at MK:Dons and West Brom making up his managerial CV there were concerns that he’d struggle to exert his authority over a divided dressing room teeming with inner-circles and millionaire egos. It was well documented that the experienced players disagreed with the methods employed by Villas-Boas which ultimately led to his demise. However the former Chelsea midfielder has carried off something his Portuguese predecessor failed to accomplish and repaired the fissures that divided the fractured squad.
That new found togetherness has manifested itself on the pitch and hit it’s peak at the Nou Camp on Tuesday evening. Even when Di Matteo lost Gary Cahill to injury in the early stages before seeing captain John Terry sent off he galvanised his team ensuring they remained disciplined and focused on the task in hand. Egotism was a plague during the AVB era but his successor has instilled a ‘all for one, one for all’ mentality that has brought the best out a group of players allegedly difficult to manage. If you’re looking for evidence of that new selfless approach look no further than Didier Drogba. With Chelsea pinned onto the edge of their penalty by a wave after wave of Barca pressure the Ivorian sacrificed his attacking obligations to pitch in at the back.
More of the same will be required when they meet Bayern Munich in the final at the Germans’ home ground. With key figures Terry, Branislav Ivanovic, Ramires and Raul Meireles all missing due to suspension the likelihood of Chelsea returning home with the famous trophy have been severely hindered. But in Di Matteo they have a manager who has built up a serious momentum and proved to be a revitalising presence in West London. Whilst owner Roman Abramovich’s dream of Champions League glory he has a man that has taken his club beyond the realms of expectation. It was another interim boss that lead the Blues to the final of Europe’s elite club competition in 2008.
Avram Grant’s services were ultimately dispensed with after his side lost out to Manchester United in a penalty shootout on a rainy night in Moscow. The fate of Di Matteo has yet to be determined but you’d like to think Abramovich might have learnt a lesson or two after sacking seven managers in the nine-years since his takeover. One thing is for sure the Italian deserves a chance to build his own Chelsea dynasty after putting himself on the cusp of providing the trophy his employer craves the most.
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Liverpool and Blackpool are no further forward in negotiations for the transfer of playmaker Charlie Adam to Anfield.
The Scottish international impressed in The Seasiders debut Premier League season despite the club being relegated, and has been linked with a move to Merseyside after scoring a penalty against his suitors in the 2010/11 season.
However, with the addition of fellow midfielders Jordan Henderson and Alberto Aquilani, who has returned to England after a loan spell at Juventus, Liverpool are refusing to be held to ransom by the Championship side, who reportedly want £12 million for their talisman.
The former Rangers player will start pre-season with his current club on Monday, and knows his future is out of his hands.
“I go back to Blackpool on Monday and that’s the way it is,’ he told the Blackpool Gazette.
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“Everybody knows the situation – the club have met with Liverpool but that’s as far as it has gone. I had a conversation with the chairman but that will remain private. It’s important that we keep everything in-house – whatever happens will happen,” the 25-year-old concluded.
The 3-2 loss to Spurs was Arsenal’s third home defeat of the season. That’s a pretty damning statistic considering it’s still only November. Arsenal have played seven home Premier League games this season and have won only four of them – not the form of title contenders. They may be only two points behind Chelsea, but results such as this will not fill the Arsenal faithful with too much hope.
Regarding the situation, Wenger said this: “Three home defeats are three too many. The first two games we didn’t deliver the performance and we can only say that we got what we deserved. Today we delivered the performance, but what is worrying for me is that we had an opportunity to go to the top of the league and when we have to deliver we can’t.”
The fact of the matter is this: opponents should fear coming to the Emirates. It should be an impenetrable fortress. When opposition players look across their fixture lists, they should register some concern when they know they are heading to the Emirates. At the moment that’s just not the case. Arsenal are too soft, too brittle and always on the verge of cracking.
How can Arsenal turn this around? The change has to start with Wenger. He has to encourage and motivate the players better. If he can’t motivate his players to give their all for the full 90+ minutes, then there’s something seriously wrong with the dynamic at Arsenal. It’s simply not good enough to go ahead and then take your foot off the pedal. Arsenal have to learn not only how to kill of games, but how to maintain a performance over 90 minutes. At the moment Arsenal are much too prone to falling apart at the end of games, and this will always give the opposition team hope and desire to get back into the game.
The next point of call is the defence. Offensively Arsenal are fine: 2 goals should have been enough to see off Spurs. Defensively on the other hand, Arsenal’s back four are always liable to leak goals. Yet it’s not fair to lay all the blame on the back four – Arsenal’s midfield must work harder to support the defence. Alex Song is Arsenal’s midfield anchor, but his attacking spirit often sees him travel too far up the pitch. This buccaneering attitude has seen Arsenal caught out a couple of times this season. Players like Andrey Arshavin need to work harder and show a willingness to track back.
It’s all about developing the correct attitude. Manchester United have shown this season that they still have the attitude required to win the Premier League. That’s why they remain unbeaten. It’s their refusal to crack and their belief in their own ability that has seen them come this far. Arsenal have shown signs that they’re capable of reaching this level of self-assurance, but they are certainly not there yet.
With the right kind of attitude, Arsenal can set right their current home form. In time, The Emirates will become a place that opponents fear once more.
If you’re interested and want to hear more feel free to follow me on Twitter, where you can also keep up to date with the latest Arsenal news!
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Click on image below to see a gallery of Christian’s lady wife
Charlie Austin couldn’t have timed his return to goalscoring form any better. With Jay Rodriguez looking set to miss the next few weeks with a groin injury, I was concerned about our goals drying up between now and the end of the season.
I needn’t have worried. Austin, who has played second fiddle to Rodriguez for much of the season, came off the bench at Portsmouth and bagged his first career hat trick in the final fifteen minutes. He began the season well, scoring 9 goals in his first 17 appearances, but then a shoulder injury suffered against Leeds United in November set him back, and after missing four matches he struggled to find the net upon his return.
Before his hat trick at Portsmouth, he had scored only twice in his previous eighteen appearances, and I think that was down to a lack of confidence brought about by the dislocation to his shoulder. It can’t have been easy for him to watch his strike partner Rodriguez – who has scored frequently and consistently throughout the campaign – grab the headlines but his goals on Saturday should provide him with the boost he needs.
With Rodriguez facing a battle to return before the end of the season, Austin has a genuine chance to overtake his partner’s league tally of fifteen. He currently stands two shy of that mark, and a fully confident Austin could be about to benefit from a purple patch over the remaining seven fixtures. Three of those games are against teams in the bottom four, and I’m sure Austin will be looking at the next few weeks as a chance to stake his claim for a regular starting berth next season.
Of his 39 appearances so far this season, 13 of those have been as a substitute and often he has only entered the action in the final ten minutes of games. On Saturday at Portsmouth he came on shortly after half time and I think that this is much more suited to his game. It gives him the time to get up to speed with the action; as we saw on Saturday, his first goal arrived twenty minutes after coming on, and two more followed in the next fifteen minutes.
His finishes were all predatory, coming from a combined distance of about fifteen yards and as an out and out goalscorer he brings something different to the squad. Rodriguez is more of an all-round forward who holds the ball up, wins the flick-ons and scores all types of goals. Martin Paterson is a workhorse; never likely to be prolific in the Championship but his high energy performances create chances for others. Danny Ings, who scored his first goal for the club at Portsmouth, looks very sharp but as yet Burnley fans have not seen enough of him to make an informed opinion.
The types of goals Austin scores remind me of watching Andy Payton in the late nineties, and as a Burnley fan I can’t pay him a higher compliment than that. He is not particularly tall, muscular or quick, but he often finds himself in the right place at the right time in and around the penalty area. His partnership with Rodriguez has produced 35 goals so far this season, and if a Premier League club do come in with a good offer for Rodriguez in the summer, Eddie Howe will have to base next year’s campaign around Austin’s goals. His display at Fratton Park on Saturday suggests he is up to it.
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Sunderland manager Steve Bruce looks set to make a move for Tottenham Hotspur striker Peter Crouch, claims the Daily Star.
Star striker Darren Bent moved to Aston Villa in January in a deal that could be worth up to £24 million. Bruce failed to replace Bent and Sunderland struggled for form toward the end of the season and eventually finished in 10th place. Loan signing Danny Welbeck has returned to Manchester United whilst Frazier Campbell continues to recover from a long-term knee injury.
Crouch nearly moved to the Stadium of Light from Portsmouth two years ago but chose instead to be reunited with former manager Harry Redknapp at Spurs. The 6ft 7in target man would fetch around £10 million if he was to move on and play for the 10th club of his professional career.
The 30-year old had an inconsistent season despite scoring 12 goals in all competitions and Redknapp is considering cashing-in on the England forward as he looks to overhaul his attacking options.
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Bruce does have cash to spend, particularly if the sale of Jordan Henderson to Liverpool is completed. The Black Cats have also been linked with moves for Crouch’s Spurs teammate Roman Pavlyuchenko and Manchester United pair Wes Brown and Darron Gibson.
Walter Smith has not given up hope of reaching the last 16 of the Champions League even after watching his Rangers team slump to a 3-0 defeat to Valencia in the Mestalla.
Victory against Bursaspor and draws with Los Che and Manchester United had raised hopes of the Gers reaching the knockout stages of the competition, but that now appears unlikely after the result in Spain.
Smith is aware of the difficult task his side now faces, saying after the loss:"We need circumstances to go with us if we're going to win games in the Champions League. That didn't happen here and Valencia took their chances to score.
"Steven Naismith had a good opportunity at the start of the match and, if that had gone in things might have been different. But credit to their keeper for making a fantastic stop.
"Steven then had a header which could have caused a bit of nervousness in the latter stages of the match. But it wasn't to be and, in the end, we can't have too many complaints about the final result. Valencia played very well and we can do better but we can't dwell on this result.
"We have a difficult game against Manchester United at home next and they look as though they've qualified. So we'll wait and see what happens but we'll aim to acquit ourselves well in our remaining games.
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"We still have a chance to put pressure on Valencia in terms of getting that second spot in Group C. It will be a big ask for us to do that now when you consider we play Manchester United and Valencia will probably be favourites to beat Bursaspor.
"We need results to go for us but we just have to go out and try to win the games and play better than we did tonight."Subscribe to Football FanCast News Headlines by Email
Tottenham boss Harry Redknapp has revealed that he is unsure whether or not he wants the vacant England manager’s position.
The White Hart Lane head coach has been the frontrunner to succeed Fabio Capello as national selector, but he has admitted that he is happy in his current role.
“I’m not sure,” Redknapp said in an interview with L’Equipe, translated to English by Sky Sports, when asked if he would like to manage England.
“I have a very good job at Tottenham today and I like it. But I do not know. We will wait and see.
“When you have a club, you are looking for a striker and you take them. When you’re coach, you must do with the players you have in your country.
“If you do not have a good scorer, you have none. And you almost never see the players. Two days every two months, it is very difficult,” he stated.
Redknapp continued by talking up France’s hopes at Euro 2012, who he believes will be a difficult opponent for England.
“The French team has a good team. It will be difficult for England at the Euros. The group is difficult with Sweden and Ukraine.
“I believe Laurent Blanc is doing a very good job. The 2010 World Cup was a disaster, but he has come in and done a great job,” he praised.
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It has come to that stage in the year, where fans can start to look back on their season and decide which of their players have done well and which were poor. Today I am creating a let-down eleven.
I have had to exclude some pretty poor players. I think Manchester United players Gabriel Obertan and Bebe have been hugely unsatisfactory this season, but we already knew Obertan was bad and Bebe has hardly played enough. Another enormous let-down was Mauro Boselli, but he has since left Wigan who obviously realised this.
Players like Jovanovic and Squillaci were bought as squad players, so I would not class them as being as disappointing as others, despite playing poorly. As for Laurent Koscielny, he has been unfortunate that Thomas Vermaelen has been injured all year, and that his ‘keepers have been dire. All the same, he has not made the impression many expected and misses out narrowly.
The players that follow have disappointed most, in comparison to what is expected of them.
Click on Manuel Almunia below to see the Let Down XI
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Former Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez has come out in a staunch defence of his time at Liverpool arguing that he left the squad in good shape, but some of his comments are disingenuous and misleading to say the least.
Benitez’s exact words were as follows: “I was very clear that when I left we had a better squad than we had in the past, and a better team. We knew we had to bring in better players. We left a good team, a very good team. A lot of people are talking about the legacy but the legacy is fantastic. When I left the club, (Javier) Mascherano, (Yossi) Benayoun and (Albert) Riera were there, along with Carra [Jamie Carragher], (Steven) Gerrard, (Jay) Spearing, (Stephen) Darby, (Emiliano) Insua, (Diego) Cavalieri and (Jonjo) Shelvey. They cannot talk about legacy when (Christian) Purslow [managing director] and Hodgson signed seven players. They have already changed the squad.”
While I don’t doubt for a second that the squad Hodgson has inherited was better than the one Benitez inherited from Gerard Houllier, I do doubt that it was even Benitez’s finest squad during his time at the club with departure of Xabi Alonso in particular hurting the club terribly on the pitch last season, but whether a side that lurched from crisis to crisis last season limping to a 7th place finish in the league and poor performances in every cup competition can be labelled as a ‘very good team’ is doubtful.
The hangover from last season has continued well and truly into this season and despite a good team on paper, Liverpool have underperformed to the extreme, even going as far as to eclipse last season’s disappointments with notable defeats at home to both Northampton and Blackpool.
While Hodgson has doubtless made mistakes since taking charge, with the constant calls for patience and downgrading of ambition understandable yet grating at the same time, often trotted out to the press seemingly on a daily basis now, I think it’s fair to say that the club has been on the slide for more than just these last few months since Hodgson took charge and it’s time that Benitez took some of the blame rather than trying, and failing may I add, to paint a rose-tinted view of his last few months at Anfield and washing his hands clean in the process.
The legacy cannot be said to be ‘fantastic’ as Benitez puts it. No youth team player has broken into the starting eleven during his time at the helm and gone on to feature consistently, despite the excellent performances of the youth teams in the FA Youth Cup, which makes naming players such as Spearing and Darby all the more puzzling. Whereas Shelvey was signed at the end of last season and hadn’t even kicked a ball for the club under Benitez’s tenure, and although he does have potential, his signing was a surprising one. The less said about Insua the better and the worst news the club had all summer was that his move to Fiorentina broke down.
The quotes attributed to Benitez include some very strange views indeed. The youth setup was derided by Rodolfo Borrell, a former Barcelona youth coach brought in by Benitez himself last season to help with the youth team’s infrastructure, with Borrell stating that “The reality of what we found here was unacceptable. The under-18s had no centre forward, no balance, no tactical level, no understanding of the game. We are working hard but you can’t change things overnight. I think if we keep working hard maybe in two tears somebody can appear in the first-team.” Correct me if I’m wrong, but after already being manager at the club for six years, isn’t the youth setup’s failings Benitez’s fault as much as anyone’s.
Can anyone honestly tell me that Daniel Ayala was a better defensive prospect than Jack Hobbs? The lack of chances afforded to young players at Liverpool during Benitez’s reign was palpable. I became sick and tired of hearing stories about the latest bright young thing from the reserves that looked all but ready to set the world alight. It never happened. Nothing ever materialised. Benitez never gave them a chance. So far, to his credit at least, Hodgson has. If they are not good enough, fine, but don’t try to change the past please Rafa, Darby and Spearing were less than fringe players under your tenure.
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But it’s in naming the likes of Benayoun, Mascherano and Riera that I begin to believe that Rafa’s now truly off his rocker, why not just name Ryan Babel as well while you’re at it. Riera had been frozen out after some ill-advised comments about the club towards the end of Rafa’s reign, Benayoun openly stated upon joining Chelsea that one of the main reasons for his departure was Benitez and Mascherano was always destined to leave the club this summer no matter who was in charge, the club wasn’t the problem in his case, simply the location and proximity to his family.
Labelling these three as evidence of a strong squad is laughable, as two of them had nothing but contempt towards Benitez due to the lack of playing time he granted them and the other, Mascherano, had wanted to depart the club last summer only to see any potential move scuppered by the sale of Xabi Alonso to Real Madrid. If he had highlighted the string spine that he left, the likes of Reina, Agger, Carragher, Gerrard and Torres I wouldn’t have any quibbles, but highlighting the players listed above is nothing short of bonkers.
Hodgson had this to say in a thinly veiled attack on Benitez’s transfer policy towards the end of his time at the club and the squad he inherited: “We were unbelievably overstaffed when I came to the club and we still are overstaffed. It was just as big a job making sure that some of the players who never feature for the first team move on. We had to limit our squad to players who are either in the frame to play first-team football or who have a bright future [and] who are still anxious to play academy and reserve-team football. We don’t want that middle group, who are too old for reserve football but are not serving any purpose for the first team because they never feature.”
I don’t know about you, but quite how the likes of the players that departed this summer, such as Phillip Degen, Damien Plessis, the aforementioned Cavalieri or Nabil El Zhar could be constituted as being part of a ‘fantastic legacy’ at the club is beyond me and the squad Hodgson inherited had as much dead wood in it as the one Benitez inherited and Hodgson was entirely correct with his sentiments.
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Former managers always like to take credit for a club’s successes after they leave just as much as they like to apportion blame to the new manager if the club continues to do badly after they’ve gone, but Benitez’s latest comments leave a bitter taste in the mouth and although he’s trying to wash his hands of the current mess that the club find themselves in, he was the one in charge of player recruitment, and as much as the owner issue is like an albatross hanging weightily around the club’s neck, dragging it further down into the mire, Benitez has to be held accountable too.
It’s clear for all to see that with Liverpool currently in the relegation zone for the first time since 1964, that things are going extremely poorly on the pitch, but on the face of it at least, Hodgson’s signings look to be pretty good. Wilson and Jovanovic had been tracked by the club while Benitez was still manager which makes his ‘they have already changed the squad’ claim seem even more hollow. Joe Cole is still finding his feat but should pay-off in the long term and Raul Meireles looks to be a fine addition. I still have my doubts about Paul Konchesky at this level and I think it’s fair to say that Christian Poulsen has struggled somewhat since his move but has a great pedigree, and Brad Jones will rarely feature only serving to be an able if unused understudy to the excellent Pepe Reina.
I completely understand that Benitez worked under incredibly difficult circumstances for a number of years at the club, and that these restricted the impact he could have had on the club’s fortunes immeasurably, but he was afforded a power and responsibility over first-team affairs that was unprecedented in scope and scale, and one that no manager previously could claim to have acquired. The legacy he has left the club is there for all to see right now, languishing in the bottom three of the Premiership. Rather than wash his hands clean of the mess the club currently finds itself in, perhaps it’s time Benitez took off the rose-tinted specs, as he’s not kidding anyone with this latest baffling ramble.