Swansea recorded their first win in six Premier League games with goals from Pablo Hernandez and Michu enough to see off Wigan at the Liberty Stadium.
The Spanish duo scored within two minutes of each other in the second half to stop the rot for Michael Laudrup’s side and prolong the misery of the visitors who find themselves in familiar territory at the wrong end of the table. Roberto Martinez will be cursing his sides luck after Arouna Kone was denied a late equaliser by the offside flag.
It leaves the Latics without a top-flight win since 25th August although they will be wondering how they didn’t leave South Wales with at least a point to show for their efforts.
Clear goalscoring opportunities were few and far between during a tedious first half with Michu going closest for the home side with a volley that sailed narrowly wide in the 18th minute. Jonathan de Guzman then curled wide from 20-yards before Michel Vorm denied Shaun Maloney from close range at the other end.
Thankfully the second half provided more entertainment value for the supporters and they were treated to three goals in four minutes just after the hour mark. Firstly Hernandez was on hand to break the deadlock in the 65th minute and notch his first Swans goal, scoring with a low effort after fine work from Wayne Routledge.
Two minutes later and Michu had doubled the home sides lead, taking advantage of some lax Wigan defending to head home unmarked from a corner. Emmerson Boyce then set up a tantalising final 20 minutes with an outrageous flicked effort that caught Vorm out in the Swansea goal.
FootballFanCast General Stay ahead in the world of football analysis, commentary, and fan insights with FootballFancast. FootballFanCast General Stay ahead in the world of football analysis, commentary, and fan insights with FootballFancast.
By subscribing, you agree to receive newsletter and marketing emails, and accept Valnet’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe anytime.
Wigan thought they’d snatched a point only for Kone’s effort to be chalked off for offside before goalkeeper Ali Al-Habsi was sensationally denied by Vorm at the death after meeting a corner with a firm header.
Southampton have agreed the signing of Japan defender and Olympic captain Maya Yoshida, subject to international clearance.
The 24-year-old will move to the Premier League side from Dutch Eredivisie outfit VVV-Venlo on a three-year deal. The centre back, capped 17 times by his country, captained Japan to fourth at the London 2012 Olympics and scored in their 3-0 last-eight win over Egypt.
In a statement on Southampton’s official site, Yoshida expressed his delight at joining the Saints: “To come to the Premier League was one of my biggest dreams since I was a child. I am very grateful to be able to become a Saint and I will do my best for the team and for the supporters.”
Manager Nigel Adkins added “We are delighted to bring in Maya to the Club. He is a centre half who is comfortable on both the right and left-hand side as he is good with both feet and has a good physical presence about himself. We are really looking forward to working with him here at Southampton.”
Yoshida becomes the second Japan international at St. Mary’s, joining forward Tadanari Lee.
FootballFanCast General Stay ahead in the world of football analysis, commentary, and fan insights with FootballFancast. FootballFanCast General Stay ahead in the world of football analysis, commentary, and fan insights with FootballFancast.
By subscribing, you agree to receive newsletter and marketing emails, and accept Valnet’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe anytime.
Manchester United are set to win the race to sign Malaga’s young midfielder Isco for £16 million.
The 20-year-old has been compared to United legend Paul Scholes and Alex Ferguson’s confident he can land the youngster to replace his veteran midfielder.
Arsenal, Liverpool and Tottenham are all also interested in signing the Spaniard but the Daily Star believes that Manchester United is his preferred destination.
Malaga are going to struggle to keep hold of their highly talented prodigy as the club continues to experience financial problems as they initially forked out huge amounts of money to provide Champions League football for the southern Spain side.
The club have been forced to sell Santi Cazorla and Salomon Randon and Isco could well follow them out of the club in January.
Isco has already been compared to fellow Spaniard Cesc Fabregas and could be seen as the ideal remedy to the stuttering United midfield, but will face stiff competition as there are plenty of teams chasing the Spanish under-21 star.
The midfielder was a key part for the team as they secured Champions League football for the first time in their history and has been even more effective so far this campaign.
FootballFanCast General Stay ahead in the world of football analysis, commentary, and fan insights with FootballFancast. FootballFanCast General Stay ahead in the world of football analysis, commentary, and fan insights with FootballFancast.
By subscribing, you agree to receive newsletter and marketing emails, and accept Valnet’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe anytime.
Malaga currently sit in second place with just the one defeat in nine games. It’s Isco’s form in Europe which has caught the eye of many suitors as the Spanish club have won their first three games.
Here is a list of players that I feel should seriously consider a move in January – whether that be because they aren’t getting enough time on the pitch, are simply not up to the standard their current club expects, or are exceptional players that should make the next logical move in making their careers historic.
We are only a few months away from the January window opening, and these players have had a taster of the new season to see what role they may have to play – or not to play – in their clubs plans for the rest of the coming season. Worringly some of these players may opt to remain on the bench, sitting on hefty wages rather than forcing a move and getting more regular first-XI football.
Click on Kaka to get the ball rolling
[divider]
FootballFanCast General Stay ahead in the world of football analysis, commentary, and fan insights with FootballFancast. FootballFanCast General Stay ahead in the world of football analysis, commentary, and fan insights with FootballFancast.
By subscribing, you agree to receive newsletter and marketing emails, and accept Valnet’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe anytime.
Who do you think should look at a January move? Any clangers that I’ve missed? Let me know on Twitter @dudeyoungy
Park Ji-Sung is on the verge of retiring from professional football as a result of QPR’s battle against relegation from the Premier League, according to his father.
The South Korean midfielder joined the Super Hoops from Manchester United in a £2m deal last summer, and has endured a tough spell in London.
His stint at Loftus Road has been blighted with injuries, limiting him to just 22 appearances.
During his brief playing time he has been helping the club in their battle against the drop, but has been unable to drag them from the foot of the table.
His father, Park Jung-Song, says that the toils of this season have effected his son, and confessed the could consider quitting the sport:
“Nobody knows the future, but I think he has made his mind up to retire. He thinks he’s played enough,” he is quoted by The Metro.
“He’s never had times like this with PSV Eindhoven or Manchester United. My son has had difficult times at QPR this season; it was a new experience to him.
“Ji-Sung said it’s difficult to keep his feel for the game as his playing time is inconsistent, but he doesn’t have any hard feelings.”
The 32-year-old retired from international football in 2011, in a bid to prolong his club career.
FootballFanCast General Stay ahead in the world of football analysis, commentary, and fan insights with FootballFancast. FootballFanCast General Stay ahead in the world of football analysis, commentary, and fan insights with FootballFancast.
By subscribing, you agree to receive newsletter and marketing emails, and accept Valnet’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe anytime.
He is set to discuss his future with manager Harry Redknapp at the end of the season.
Sunderland goalkeeper Simon Mignolet has called West Ham’s last gasp equaliser as “stupid” after the Black Cats were pegged back from a winning position for the third time this season.
The Belgian international produced one of the saves of the season denying Kevin Nolan in the first half.
But the ex-Newcastle man wasn’t to be stopped striking in injury time to leave the Wearsiders still winless having drawn all four Premier League fixtures.
Mignolet told the Sunderland Echo: “I was pretty pleased [with the save] at the time, it kept us in the game.
“However as a goalkeeper you are always frustrated to concede no matter when. When you get into stoppage time, you shouldn’t be conceding goals.
FootballFanCast General Stay ahead in the world of football analysis, commentary, and fan insights with FootballFancast. FootballFanCast General Stay ahead in the world of football analysis, commentary, and fan insights with FootballFancast.
By subscribing, you agree to receive newsletter and marketing emails, and accept Valnet’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe anytime.
“After the game you always reflect on the goals you concede rather than the saves you have made. I feel like the rest of the lads that if we had defended like we had for the rest of the game, we wouldn’t have conceded such a stupid goal.”
The prospect of a long and ultimately debilitating injuring list, is one that every club in the Premier League will have to deal with at some point this term. But after a season in which they found themselves with the most atrocious injury record in the division, it appears that Manchester United are looking to take things into their own hands.
Work is well under way at the Red Devils’ Carrington training ground to develop a new £13million, state-of-the-art medical facility, in partnership with Japanese technology giant Toshiba. According to The Telegraph, the facility’s remit is to produce quicker and more private injury diagnosis on site, rather than rely on nearby hospitals in the region, encompassing MRI scanners and the like to boot.
But such was the damning nature of last season’s injury statistics, the timing of this development, set to open before the end of the year, doesn’t seem to be a coincidence.
Last season saw United pick up 39 injuries that lasted for duration of two weeks or more. The Premier League average is around 20. With United already suffering a defensive injury crisis at the start of the season – in which Michael Carrick had to play centre half – that would have most other teams baulking, the new facility couldn’t open fast enough.
Although United’s training ground remains one of the most advanced facilities in the country, 12 years have since passed since Carrington’s opening and in the world of medical advancement and sports science, that’s quite a long time. There’s nothing more to suggest that the current facelift to their medical department is anything more than an upgrade, rather than a dramatic reinvention.
But this isn’t the first time that United, or indeed the realms of English football, have come under fire for their track record with injury and injury prevention.
When Owen Hargreaves ended his injury-ravaged spell at United and moved to rivals Manchester City in 2011, he aimed a parting shot at the medical staff at his former club. Hargreaves made a series of startling claims, suggesting that the prolotherapy injections he was administered for his tendinitis issues equated to ‘guinea pig’ treatment. But perhaps more concerning, was the claim that he was made to star his final game against Wolves, when he made the medical staff well aware of a hamstring complaint. A hamstring that subsequently gave way after five minutes.
Of course, Hargreaves’ chronic knee issues are an extremely rare and difficult problem to manage, but it certainly gave an interesting insight into the medical travails at United.
Because similarly with Hargreaves, the long-term and often terrible injuries such as the knee ligament damage that Nemaja Vidic suffered last season, are relatively rare. A club can do little to prevent someone breaking their leg or the chronic bowel condition that Darren Fletcher has fought back from. But the majority of their 39 ‘significant’ problems, weren’t a series of cruciate ligament ruptures; they were muscles strains and pulls.
According to the Daily Mail, this is something that the Fergie has not been best pleased with and is perhaps an area in which both his side and several others in the country, could do well to improve on.
Dutch fitness coach Raymond Verheijen, famous to most on these shores as the former assistant to the late former Wales boss, Gary Speed, has been an outspoken critic of English training regimes. But his pedigree within the game goes a lot further than his work with the Welsh national side, and he’s been employed by Frank Rijkaard during his time at Barcelona, Guus Hiddink during his spell with Chelsea and a host of international tournaments with the Netherlands, Russia and South Korea respectively. He believes that many clubs are failing in the preparation of their training and that by overworking players and ignoring their previous injury records, they are catalysing disaster.
Indeed, Verheijen points to the change in his countryman Arjen Robben’s fortunes when he switched Real Madrid to Bayern Munich, following a reputation as something of a ‘man of glass’, during his time with Chelsea.
“What they did [with Robben] was reduce his training volume and all of a sudden, he was not injured anymore. The question is, ‘Was he a player of glass or was he trained by coaches of glass? Robben and all the other explosive players like Robin van Persie, when they make an action they use more energy than other players.
“If they train the same volume as the other players their energy expenditure is twice as high as the other players. So you have to reduce the training volume by 50 per cent, which is what Bayern Munich did with his programme.”
FootballFanCast General Stay ahead in the world of football analysis, commentary, and fan insights with FootballFancast. FootballFanCast General Stay ahead in the world of football analysis, commentary, and fan insights with FootballFancast.
By subscribing, you agree to receive newsletter and marketing emails, and accept Valnet’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe anytime.
Verheijen’s ideology is that fatigue due to overtraining, is the cause of many muscle related injuries and that a player’s injury history, style of play and body composition, should all be considered when devising a training routine. His methods, coined with a typically Dutch phrase in Periodisation, can be controversial and his claim that 80% of injuries could be nullified by doing so, are open to scrutiny. But his beliefs certainly offer some food for thought.
Because the facilities of a medical facility are only as good as the methods in which they are being utilised. Some have suggested that the influx of investment at United can bring their facilities up to a par with AC Milan’s fabled Milanello complex. But Milanello is more a laboratory, than just a series of expensive medical instruments. It’s there to prevent injury, to achieve ultimate physical performance, in complete tandem with managerial selection.
Manchester United will be looking to scratch something of a very irritating itch indeed, when their new medical facility opens. But the ethos needs to be centred around preventing injury – not just addressing it.
Do you believe anything can be done to stop the incessant flow of injuries at Old Trafford? Just bad luck or something a little deeper? Let me know how you feel on Twitter: follow @samuel_antrobus and tell me what you think.
The 31st of January. Just another day in the football calendar, albeit one without any actual football, save Southend United vs. Newport County.
Distinguished slightly by the ending of the mid-term period allotted to register new players but little more than a logistical failsafe to cross the i’s and dot the t’s and make sure all the cumbersome bureaucratic paperwork is completed before we exit the first month of the New Year.
WRONG Bitches! For this is Sky’s Super Awesome Magic Transfer Deadline Day Bonanz-O-rama! Only the most bed soilingly Bangerang day of the year. Like Christmas crossed with New Year sprinkled with your 21st birthday, only not your 21st birthday, you worthless boring peasant, your 21st birthday if you were one of the Beckhams or the Osbournes only featuring Jim White – That’s right, JIM WHITE! THE JIM WHITE!! (Actually no, not the Jim White, he plays snooker.) The country’s SECOND MOST NOTABLE JIM WHITE! – That bloke you might recognise off Sky Sports News if you watch it enough accompanied by an interchangeable collection of tits, both figurative and literal!
If Sky’s overly dramatic Nolan-esque promo is anything to go by, this years festivities will be scored by Hans Zimmer and take place in Aaron Sorkin’s Newsroom Universe. It’s only a matter of time before they’re numbered and sponsored. With that in mind, what can we mere mortals expect to get for our subscription fees from the 20th Biannual Sky Deadline Day Bonanza in conjunction with EDF Energy & Wimpy?
REPORTERS STANDING OUTSIDE, IN FRONT OF THINGS
Reporters often stand outside, in front of things. Standing outside in front of things is an important pre-requisite of what reporters do. Standing inside, behind things is far too easy, and probably comfortable, and reporters should never be comfortable inside of things, lest we cotton on to how easy their jobs actually are.
I once watched a report on the dire effects of the cold snap on hospital admissions, which required the intrepid reporter on scene to stand outside, in front of the hospital in question. All the way across the road from it in fact, so it was nicely in view, interviewing its chief resident doctor in the snow on a traffic island in the middle of a busy intersection. Ironically this both increased their chances of getting ill and diminished their ability to get to the hospital.
Often reporters are made to stand outside in front of important landmarks that have nothing relevant to do with the story they’re discussing, but merely to prove they’re in a place and “looking busy.” We can expect to see a lot of this kind of pointless behaviour as reporters stand idly about in front of Stamford Bridge or The Etihad despite the actual negotiations taking place in Portugal or Belize and not in the middle of the Fulham Road. Or perched at the end of a country road that leads to a training ground they’re not allowed near, all just to reassure us plebs they’re not merely sitting at home checking their Twitter feeds like the rest of us.
This is almost always accompanied by…
SPURCHINS… AND OTHER ANIMALS
If Reality TV has taught us anything (and it hasn’t) it’s that everyone wants to be on television. Being on television, however fleetingly or ignominiously is the status signifier of the 21st century, along with Twitter followers and pretending to like Ryan Gosling films. As soon as a reporter is stationed outside in front of a thing, it’s only a matter of time before a curious throng of dubious specimens begin to gather, enraptured moth like by the bright lights and the promise of nationwide exposure.
More often than not they manifest as urchin-like children, escaped from parental attention (providing their parents aren’t watching Sky Sports News) and determined to spend their youthful freedom staring gormlessly into the dark lens of the soul. This tends to make the reporter look a bit like Fagin, or a dowdy pied piper, harnessing the evil power of transfer speculation to lure the nation’s children out of their homes to do his bidding.
EX PLAYERS SITTING INSIDE CUPBOARDS
While reporters are rightly treated like the roaming cattle they are, former players are treated with a modicum more respect by the transfer speculation express. When discussing the possibility of a player’s transfer from one club to the other, it is of course vital to have the opinion of someone who has – at one time or another – played for one club, or the other. This player will likely have no knowledge of the current inner workings of the club, or indeed football itself, having stopped playing in the early 80s and never gotten closer to the game than a celebrity golf tournament since.
Yet his opinion will lend gravitas to whatever story it is he’s commenting on and he’ll be available. Former players are almost always interviewed in two ways; via satellite from a celebrity golf tournament, or in a cupboard full of monitors. The second allows said former player to view footage of said transfer and rattle off insightful phrases like. “…which is what he’ll bring to the table” and “a whole new dimension.” If he’s really lucky he’ll be able to slip in an anecdote about his time at Fulham in 1981 before he’s allowed to return to his life of golf and bankruptcy.
REPORTERS REPORTING ON OTHER REPORTERS
Whether standing outside in front of things, or sitting indoors behind things, or merely trapped in limbo on their way to do things, Sky will leave no stone unturned in their efforts to cannibalise their own reporting and eat up those precious viewing hours. Enter Jim White, the sort of self-created deadline Deity cum dancing transfer monkey of Sky Sports News who’s projected image is used as the headline act in the network’s deluded promotion of the event.
Jim’s whereabouts will be reported on throughout the day by other reporters as if he’s a transfer himself, in an act of almost Zen satire entirely lost on the protagonists. His grinning visage will also appear routinely on the sidebar alongside whichever news-tits he’s scheduled to anchor with, like a sort of monstrous inter-gender boxing card. Those in the know say this year he’ll wear a cape and enter on a runway of dry ice to the strains of Headline News by Weird Al Yankovic.
FootballFanCast General Stay ahead in the world of football analysis, commentary, and fan insights with FootballFancast. FootballFanCast General Stay ahead in the world of football analysis, commentary, and fan insights with FootballFancast.
By subscribing, you agree to receive newsletter and marketing emails, and accept Valnet’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe anytime.
CARS & SUNGLASSES
Cars form a crucially important part of transfer speculation. Most footballers these days drive cars of course, and most of these are inappropriately large, expensive things with tinted windows that all inexplicably look the same. This makes for the perfect visual filler in virtually any story. As rolling news trundles on in its constant desperation for something to happen, such footage will be replayed endlessly as the hapless roving reporter informs us that “we’ve heard nothing yet, but he arrived at training this morning as usual.”
Occasionally, to the unbridled joy of the huddled, wild outdoor newsmen, a car will stop and converse with the mass of hungry reporters. Frequently however, this conversation will yield no interesting information, and ‘Arry will simply be asking if anyone knows the form for the 3:40 at Lingfield.
When, against all the odds, a transfer actually is happening, footage of cars simply won’t cut it anymore and only footage of players walking around airports with wheeled suitcases dressed like diamond encrusted clowns will suffice. This is a must for your more personal rolling news filler, and will mandatorily require the player in question to be wearing sunglasses, despite the fact he’s in England, in the winter and most significantly indoors, contravening Rule 4 of the official people’s guide to not being a giant tool. (See also: Scarves) If one thing can be said for super Jim and his merry band of excitables, they’ve never needed sunglasses.
Everyone loves Fantasy Football, it dominates our thoughts the closer we get to a new Premier League season, we can spend hours pouring over the information before we settle on our side. A key component of this is picking players that will score goals in positions that don’t normally rely upon them, such as a goalscoring centre-half or full-back. With this in mind, do we overrate goalscoring defenders? Ando do we let them off lightly when it becomes to their defensive deficiencies because they happen to be good at finding the back of the net? Fantasy Football has a lot to answer for….
I’m a sucker for goalscoring defenders may I just say begin with. My fantasy football teams at school always, always included Everton’s David Unsworth (45 goals in 445 games) and Leicester’s Matt Elliott (70 goals in 589 games), with the occasional nod to Julian Dicks (55 goals in 379 games). They were invaluable, the poorness of the defences they played in was completely counter-acted by the points they’d get me for their inevitable solid five-goal a season return. Heck, I even had Gary Cahill (21 goals in 234 games) and Mats Hummels (17 goals in 162 games) in my Euro 2012 side until injury cruelly robbed me of the former, while the other never bloody scored.
The short but simple fact is that everyone loves a goalscoring defender. We love the unexpected nature of their forward forays up the pitch. We love the fact that because they can clear the ball a whopping great distance means, this all of a sudden qualifies them as a free-kick expert. However, does this mean that we shy away from criticising them for doing the job that they are actually paid to do, which is defend?
According to the Premier League’s own player performance index, Arsenal’s Thomas Vermaelen was the 58th best player in the top flight last term. His season was interrupted by injury on ocassion, but he still managed to complete 29 league games, scoring six goals in the process. He made 29 clearances, 11 blocks and helped his side to 11 clean sheets during his time in the starting eleven. At the other end of the pitch, though, he finished the campaign with 37 shots, five crosses and one assist – not too bad at all for a centre-back it has to be said, certainly more than a lot of the deadwood currently at the club are capable of (I’m looking at you Park Chu-Young and Marouane Chamakh).
On the face of things it would seem like he had a very good season, would it not? However, Vermaelen has developed a worrying propensity to get dragged out of position, as was clearly in evidence during the 3-3 draw against Norwich last season at home, where he was quite frankly all over the place. He was far from his best throughout the course of the campaign, with partner Laurent Koscielny the superior partner for the most part.
Upon arriving in England, it was noted that at just 6ft tall, he looked a tad on the short side to be a commanding centre-half, but his aerial ability is one of his greatest strengths and plays a large part in his prowess in front of goal. To talk about Vermaelen in terms of criticism, he rarely comes in for any flak considering his poor positioning. He’s quick on the ground, mobile and decent on the ball, so anything that isn’t seen as a positive is conveniently glossed over.
Jonny Evans last season was the main beneficiary of Nemanja Vidic’s season-ending knee injury, going on to play 27 times for Manchester United as they were pipped to the post for the title by bitter rivals Manchester City. He has often been made out to be a scapegoat by many fans, yet he managed 30 blocks, 56 clearances and 16 clean sheets in less games than Vermaelen. The crucial difference is he doesn’t offer anything going forward and any mistake at the back is magnified tenfold, whereas with Vermaelen it is not.
We often gloss over the glaring weaknesses in a defender if they manage to chip in with the odd goal. John Arne Riise had an excellent first few years at Liverpool, but then spent his last two seasons trying to replicate his goal against Tottenham from 40 yards out every single time he crossed the halfway line. Matt Taylor suffers from a similar flaw. To call it frustrating to watch would be an understatement, yet at Fulham last season, shorn of his pace at 31 years of age, he looked a much better defender than his final couple of years at Anfield, but he had no goals in 40 appearances to show for it, despite his best efforts at breaking his duck.
Taye Taiwo managed to score 23 goals in 253 games at Marseille, where his job was to bound beyond the winger down the left-hand flank and he became a key part of their style of play. He then moved to AC Milan but struggled, as it seemed nobody actually checked first if he was any good at this defending lark before being farmed out to QPR on loan in the second half of last season. He’s full of energy, built like a tank but seems oddly unsure of where to actually stand when he’s on the back foot and is hugely susceptible to a ball played in behind him, a common occurrence for pacy full-backs these days.
Andreas Granqvist managed to bag 11 goals for Groningen in the Eredivise the year before last, but Wigan fans will remember a defender frightfully out of kilter with the pace of the top flight, yet AC Milan and Inter are rumoured to be interested in the Swede this summer after a decent first year at Genoa in Italy. It’s all about striking the right balance.
Ian Harte, Marco Materazzi, Daniel van Buyten, Naldo, Alex all made headlines for their goalscoring exploits in their respctive leagues over the years but they all have obvious flaws to their game. It’s when the goals become solely what they are remembered for that you start to worry and Vermaelen is in danger of falling into that trap.
The likes of Brazilian centre-half Juan, Sami Hyypia, Robert Huth, Sergio Ramos and Diego Lugano are all remembered for their defending first and foremost, with their attacking prowess just an added bonus, which is why they’re quite rightly regarded as superior players to the aforementioned list above, Vermaelen aside.
FootballFanCast General Stay ahead in the world of football analysis, commentary, and fan insights with FootballFancast. FootballFanCast General Stay ahead in the world of football analysis, commentary, and fan insights with FootballFancast.
By subscribing, you agree to receive newsletter and marketing emails, and accept Valnet’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe anytime.
It may not solely be the result of Fantasy Football, but something has become distorted along the way – goalscoring defenders are judged on their abilities further forward just as much as they are on their ability to stem an attack at the back and that’s a worrying trap to fall into. We should treat the goalscoring defender as a positive, they bring unexpected joy to the terraces and every side likes to have one in their side, but they have to be good enough defenders first, otherwise, that’s a slippery slope to head down.
Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson has stated that referee Chris Foy did not play enough injury time in his side’s 3-2 defeat to Tottenham on Saturday.
The official indicated that four minutes of additional time should be played at the end of 90 minutes, however the Red Devils failed to capitalise and in the end slumped to their first loss to the north London club at Old Trafford in 23 years.
However, the legendary Scottish trainer feels that his team were hard done by and that Spurs were guilty of time wasting.
“It is a flaw in the game that referees are responsible for time-keeping. It is nearly 2013 and the referee still has control of that,” he commented to Sky Sports.
“They gave four minutes. It is an insult. It is ridiculous. It is denying you the proper chance to win the football match.
“There were six substitutions and the trainer came on. That is four minutes right away.
FootballFanCast General Stay ahead in the world of football analysis, commentary, and fan insights with FootballFancast. FootballFanCast General Stay ahead in the world of football analysis, commentary, and fan insights with FootballFancast.
By subscribing, you agree to receive newsletter and marketing emails, and accept Valnet’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe anytime.
“The goalkeeper must have wasted two minutes. They took their time at every goal kick. That is obvious to everyone,” he concluded.