Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard could miss the rest of the season, should he require surgery on his injured groin.Kenny Dalglish’s side play Sporting Braga in the Europa League last 16 on Thursday, but the Reds boss confirmed Gerrard is facing a long lay-off.The club will decide on Friday whether the England international will go under the knife.”For Steven and us, it’s a niggling problem to which we have to find a solution,” Dalglish said.”Hopefully, it will be cleared up and he will be available for most matches. But everyone has to be carefully managed, whether they’re fully fit or slightly fit.””That’s why we have a squad of players, because sometimes the most important ones are those who don’t play as often as they’d like.””There’s no way we will speculate about any player, especially Steven. It’s a problem that is minimal but needs to be fixed.”Gerrard has not travelled to Portugal with the squad, and the midfielder’s fitness query leaves a doubt over whether he will appear for England against Wales in their Euro 2012 qualifier at Millennium Stadium this month.
Despite all the negative press Arsenal have received in the past few weeks, I don’t think they need a massive overhaul. Unlike what I have heard recently, I don’t think Arsenal need to buy a new player or need to change their formation or philosophy. They do not need to do anything too drastic. I think they need to fine tune the roles of their midfielders and they will not be far off the best sides in the world.
My point is in regards to the role of Alex Song in the middle. He should be playing as a defensive midfielder. That means looking after the defence, breaking up play and giving the ball to one of the other players who will concentrate more an attacking. As I see it at the moment, Song does not play this role.
He plays too offensively for my liking. Countless times this season, I have seen him pass a ball then move forward into the space and look for a return. It is ok for the other midfielders to do this, but the defensive midfielder has to stay back. He needs to pass and move but stay behind the ball. At the moment, the unrestrained attacking instincts of Song, or whoever plays the defensive midfield role, exposes the back four.
The comparisons between Arsenal and Barcelona are obvious. Both sides try to retain possession at all times, keep the ball on the floor and pass to feet. But even Barcelona, the best team in the world, rely on a defensive midfielder who does not bomb forward, to help defend their defensive line.
Barcelona understand the importance of this role in a 4-3-3, in the summer they bought Javier Mascherano to do just this. Mascherano has not been prevalent in the Barcelona first eleven this season, but that is because of the impressive from of Sergio Busquets. Busquets passes the ball neatly but rarely advances deep into the opposing half, his duty is to retain possession and protect the back four, but not to surge forward and join in on attacking moves. Before this season they had Yaya Toure who took on this role, they always have someone to do it. The same cannot be said of the Arsenal ‘defensive’ midfielders.
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The best sides in the Premiership also rely on this role. Chelsea built their team around Claude Makelele and now have Mikel, Essien and Ramires who can do this job. On Sunday I was very impressed with Nigel de Jong who looked after Manchester City’s back four exceptionally well. Manchester United play Scholes or Carrick from deep and have Fletcher who is a ball winner, as well as the unfit Owen Hargreaves.
My issue is with Song because if Wilshere were to play this role Arsenal would lose out on his attacking creativity. When playing a 4-3-3, one midfielder must sit and the other two can move up the pitch. But in Arsenal’s 4-3-3, all three midfielders play from the same depth, they move up and down the pitch together. While this makes for some very attractive football, it is not conducive to good defending.
Asking Song to play more defensively will not have a dramatic effect on Arsenal’s style of football. They will still have three attacking forwards. Wilshere and Fabregas can still play in midfield and look to build attacks. But at 6ft, Song is big enough to play the role that Gilberto Silva did so effectively in the invincible season. Song is technically good enough, both defensively and offensively, to play this role and still fit in with the Arsenal philosophy. He could be the key to Arsenal’s future.
This importance of defensive players might seem laboured, but I am not calling for new signings or a change in formation or philosophy, I am just calling for Alex Song to curb his attacking nature and play a more disciplined defensive role, like Busquets, his Barcelona equivalent.
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Check out Arsenal’s representative in the Top TEN solo goals of all time…
Manchester United’s Wayne Rooney will contest the two-match ban for using inappropriate language, the Football Association confirmed.Rooney plead guilty to the charge on Tuesday, but will contest the severity of his sentence.
If the penalty is downgraded to one game, Rooney will be free to face Manchester City in the FA Cup semi-final on April 17.
The Football Association handed down the charge for ‘the use of offensive, insulting and/or abusive language’ on Monday, following the striker’s foul-mouthed rant after scoring his third goal against West Ham United at the weekend.
With the prospect of missing the City clash and the English Premier League game with Fulham, Rooney accepted the charge but not the resultant penalty.
“Rooney has submitted a claim that the automatic penalty of two games is clearly excessive. A commission will hear the submission on Wednesday,” a statement from the FA read.
Rooney, who scored a hat-trick in the 4-2 win over West Ham United, issue an apology after the game.
Birmingham striker Obafemi Martins has been ruled out for the rest of the season with a stress fracture in his leg.The 26-year-old, who is at St Andrew’s on loan until the end of the season from Russian side Rubin Kazan, has undergone surgery to correct the problem, but will be sidelined for Birmingham’s remaining four games.
The Nigerian scored the winner in his side’s 2-1 triumph over Arsenal in the final of the Carling Cup on February 27, and Birmingham boss Alex McLeish said the problem had proved difficult to diagnose.
“It’s a blow for him and a blow for us and we wish him a speedy recovery,” McLeish said.
“He passed his medical and everything was fine for six weeks but then it became obvious something was not quite right.”
“The problem has crept up on him during the past month or so, and a stress fracture was diagnosed.”
It had been reported that the Midlands club had an option to buy Martins at the end of the loan period, but McLeish said he would not speak about any move to sign the striker permanently until the end of the season.
Every season in the Premier League 40 points is set as the benchmark target to avoid relegation. Ask the manager of any team outside of the top five or six what their target is at the start of the season and they’ll say “40 points”. Ever since the Premier League became a division that consists of 20 teams, 40 points is the magic number. However, this season has been the tightest for a number of years with no team being cut adrift at the bottom. So, the question is, will 40 points be enough?
A few weeks ago I’d have said ‘no’ but following results in recent weeks and Wolves’ defeat to Stoke, it now looks like 40 points will be enough. The likes of Newcastle, Sunderland and Aston Villa have already made it to the hallowed mark, which now looks further and further away from West Ham, Wolves, Wigan, Blackpool and Blackburn. They’d all snap your hands off if you offered them 40 points now and it seems that the bookies agree that 40 points will be more than enough to avoid the dreaded drop.
bet365 are 4/6 about the side finishing in 18th ending the 2010/11 Premier League campaign with less than 38.5 points. bet365 spokesman Steve Freeth says “The sides at the bottom aren’t winning games and time is running out.” As the end of the season approaches, three points is becoming more and more like gold dust, and a victory for any of the bottom clubs will propel them out of the relegation zone.
As it stands West Ham prop up the rest on 32 points, while Wolves have 33, Wigan and Blackpool are on 34 and Blackburn rest far from easily on 35. Two wins for any of those five teams will get them close to, if not over the magical 40 points mark, and with four games to go, victories in half of those will represent a good end to the season. It’s odds on (4/6) that the team finishing 18th will have 38 points or less. So is 40 points still the magical number? It sure is!
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Levski Sofia kept the pressure on leaders Lovech after coming from behind for a 3-2 win over Lokomotiv Plovdiv on Saturday.Yasen Petrov’s team, who inflicted Lovech’s first league defeat of the season on Sunday, again closed the gap to five points with three games remaining.
They went into the break 1-0 down after Senegalese striker Basile de Carvalho gave the hosts the lead, but midfielder Darko Tasevski levelled two minutes into the second half.
French forward Garra Dembele hit a brace in five second-half minutes, the first from the spot, to give Levski a two-goal buffer.
It proved to be handy as 35-year-old Zdravko Lazarov popped up to score a 94th-minute penalty, leaving Lokomotiv Plovdiv fifth.
Pirin Blagoevgrad moved further out of the relegation zone with a 6-0 thrashing of Akademik Sofia.
Midifelder Yanko Sandanski had them 1-0 up at the break, before Anton Karachanakov hit a second-half double along with goals from Dimitar Iliev and Dimitar Nakov.
They are now five points clear of 14th-placed Rakovski, while Akademik are three points from safety.
In other games, a Dimo Bakalov brace was not enough to help Sliven win, as they settled for a 2-2 draw at Montana.
The midfielder twice put his team ahead, but forward pairing Luiz Eduardo and Ventsislav Hristov pegged them back to leave Sliven bottom, four points from safety.
Chernomorets Burgas secured a 1-0 win over Minyor Pernik thanks to a 32nd-minute goal from Portuguese midfielder Braganca in a battle between two mid-table sides.
The win maintained his team’s hold of eighth, while Minyor Pernik are 10th.
In the late game, a last-minute penalty from Marcho Dafchev salvaged a 1-1 draw for Lokomotiv Sofia against Cherno More.
According to Mirror Football, Inter Milan’s forward Samuel Eto’o is the man Roberto Mancini wants to lead Manchester City’s first campaign in the Champions League, after sealing qualification on Tuesday night with a victory over Tottenham Hotspur.
Eto’o has notched 20 goals in 33 Serie A appearances this season, the only player in the Inter side to hit double figures. The Cameroon international has also bagged 35 goals in 79 Champions League appearances, which is the main reason behind Mancini’s desire to sign the former Real Madrid man.
One sticking point maybe the price after Inter’s President Massimo Moratti told La Gazzetta dello Sport: “If a club is interested in Samuel Eto’o they will have to pay £45m. A lower offer will not even be considered.” But with money clearly no obstacle the Manchester City owners and Inter re-portedly trying to raise funds to lodge a bid for Arsenal’s captain Cesc Fabregas, Eto’o could well be on his way to Eastlands.
When Martin O’Neill resigned in August last year, a season that seemed so full of promise for the Villains off the back of the previous campaign was plunged in to uncertainty.
His departure was blamed on the lack of ambition from Randy Lerner who adopted a sell-to-buy approach in the transfer market toward the end of O’Neill’s tenure.
It was compounded by a humiliating 6-0 defeat at the hands of Newcastle United and the exit from the Europa League at the hands of Rapid Vienna, with care-taker manager Kevin Macdonald proving to be a touch out of his depth.
The enigmatic Houllier hardly got them off to the best start. Languishing in the bottom half of the table for much of the season, they were even flirting with the possibility of relegation at one stage.
But they finished the season strongly, with wins against Arsenal and Liverpool propelling them back into the top half.
On the face of it, they have one of the most dangerous attacks in the Premiership. The £24 million spent on Darren Bent was ridiculed by myself, the public and some sections of the media, but he has lived up to the price tag, banging in 9 goals and becoming the clubs joint top scorer in half a season.
Those goals were vital, particularly with the absence of Gabriel Agbonlahor for much of the season.
Ashley Young and Stuart Downing always pose a threat and are perfect fodder for Bent, who thrives on the end product they produce so regularly.They also provide a constant goal threat, with their end of season goal tally underlining their value to the team, scoring nine and eight respectively.
Added to a nucleus of young talent such as Marc Albrighton, Jonathan Hogg and Fabian Delph and coupled with the relegation of bitter rivals Birmingham, there is a real sense of optimism blanketing the club.
There are doubts over the futures of Young and Villa’s player of the year Downing who have both been linked with moves away, but after releasing ten first team players, surely only serious money could tempt them into selling their star duo.
The players themselves are said to be keen on a move to a ‘bigger’ club. It would represent a sad state of affairs being that Aston Villa is more than a feeder to their richer counterparts.
Yet if that were to happen, Houllier is the right man to replace them.
Already proving that he is shrewd when identifying and capturing important players, Villa could be the surprise package over the summer.
Walker, Makoun and Bradley were all added to the squad along with Bent in January, fitting into the team nicely and adding valuable squad depth.
They have been linked with Jose Enrique and Gervinho, but the unpredictable Houllier has the potential to throw a curveball.
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Scott Parker, a midfielder that would replace the inconsistent Reo-Coker, might be on his hit-list. He would provide them with dynamism in the middle of the park, something that has been missing throughout the season.
Whatever the outcome, Aston Villa need to recover from a season that, even the most ardent fan would admit, has been a failure.
The mystery surrounding the £7.4million signing of Bebe by Manchester United last summer continues as the Portuguese has been loaned out to Besiktas for next season. He featured sparingly at best last season and appeared well below the standard required at Old Trafford and for a player commanding such a transfer fee. His team-mate, Gabriel Obertan, has been linked with a similar move back to his native France with recent Champions, Lille. He is another modern fledgling who has failed to make any significant impact for Sir Alex Ferguson’s side and faces an important decision when the transfer window reopens next month in order to steer his young career back on track.
The United youngsters aren’t the only Premiership stars to be facing the choice of whether to remain at their club, as a host of familiar faces decide if their futures lies elsewhere – Here are the top ten….
Click on Gabriel Obertan to see the TOP TEN…
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Fenerbahce president Aziz Yildirim has been remanded in custody and charged as part of the criminal investigation into Turkish match-fixing.Yildirim and 25 others, including directors of 2010/11 Super Lig champions Fenerbahce, as well as players, are set to face trial over alleged match-fixing.
The president was one of 61 people arrested as part of the investigation, following raids across the country on July 3.
Yildirim had been allowed to receive treatment in hospital last week, but he was sent back to jail after police finished questioning him on Saturday.
Fans of the Istanbul club, who narrowly beat Trabzonspor to the title last season, protested in support of Yildirim.
Fenerbahce released a statement on Saturday defending the senior figures implicated in the scandal.
“We do not believe the accusations that have been made against the president and directors,” the statement said.
UEFA are due to receive confirmation from the Turkish FA by Friday confirming which clubs will take part in the forthcoming Champions League campaign.
Fenerbahce could be stripped of last season’s title and even relegated when punishment is handed down, while individuals found guilty face heavy fines and prison sentences.