Tottenham Turned Down Bale Bid
Gareth Bale
Tottenham star Gareth Bale was the subject of a “big-money bid” over the summer, according to Wales manager John Toshack.
The 21-year-old Wales international’s blistering form in 2010 has seen him become one of the hottest properties in the Premier League.
The former Southampton prodigy signed a four-year contract at White Hart Lane in May but that has not stopped other clubs casting envious eyes over the dynamic left-sided defender or winger.
Toshack, who is with Bale preparing for a Euro 2012 qualifier in Montenegro tomorrow, would not confirm which club had made an approach when he spoke glowingly of the player.
But given his extensive knowledge of European football as a former Real Madrid manager and seven other clubs on the continent, it is assumed to have come from overseas.
Toshack said: “It was a big-money bid – it’s big money to me anyway. You’ll have to ask Tottenham, they know about it.
“Gareth is aware people are looking at him and people are interested.”
When pressed on the identity of the club, Toshack said: “I wouldn’t do that out of confidence for the people who have informed me.”
Toshack did joke that Spurs manager Harry Redknapp should not be claiming the credit for Bale’s emergence.
Bale, who joined Spurs for £5million in 2007, only became a regular in the north Londoners’ side in the second half of last season.
Toshack has been an admirer since handing the Cardiff-born player, who now has 24 caps, his international debut at the age of 16 just over four years ago.
Toshack said: “Two years ago when we started the World Cup qualifying campaign, the first three matches Bale was named man of the match against Azerbaijan, Russia and Liechtenstein.
“I know Harry thinks he has performed some kind of miracle at White Hart Lane but it is certainly not a surprise to us. We know full well what Gareth can do.
“I think the fact the left-back (Benoit Assou-Ekotto) was injured at Tottenham opened the door for him a bit and that shouldn’t have been the case. But it was and he’s taken full advantage.”
Toshack has been impressed by Bale’s continued improvement but believes there is much more to come from the youngster.
He added: “He’s still a young lad and there’s things he has to learn but there are a lot of people looking at him and taking an interest in him.
“I just hope he can take his club performances into our games at international level.
“He’s in Champions League football now which is another platform for him to show what he can do and if he steers clear of the injury problems he has had he’s got everything going for him to be a big, big player.”
Giggs: Wayne Rooney Will End Goal Drought
Wayne Rooney
Manchester United veteran Ryan Giggs is in no doubt Wayne Rooney will recapture his goalscoring form from last season after the England striker netted his first of the current campaign against West Ham United on Saturday.
Rooney ended a lengthy goal drought, that had stretched into the end of the last campaign, with his effort from the penalty spot. Giggs feels that getting a goal early on this season will help him settle any lingering anxieties he may have had over his form.
“It’s only the third game of the season, and he’s only played in two of them,” the Welshman told United’s official website.
“But a goalscorer is a goalscorer and, especially with the season he had last year, he was keen to get off the mark.
“I’m sure he’ll start putting the ball away quite regularly now.”
However, Giggs insists that the burden of finding the net cannot only be left to Wayne Rooney, and he was encouraged by Dimitar Berbatov and Nani’s goals on Saturday against West Ham United.
“We can’t just rely on Wayne like we did last season,” he told MUTV.
“Berba has started on fire – in the games so far, he’s had a lot of chances and he’s putting them away.
“But everyone needs to chip in, midfielders, defenders, everyone. As a team, we need to score a lot more goals from different areas on the pitch.”
Giggs has been pleased with the way in which the Red Devils have begun this campaign, although he admits that there is room for improvement after the draw with Fulham.
“We’d have liked nine points out of nine, but it’s not to be,” he added.
“In our two homes games, we’ve played some really good stuff which is pleasing.
“We know we could be in a better position, but the last two years we’ve lost at Fulham, so maybe we should look at that as a point gained.”
Giggs has also hailed the form of blossoming winger Nani after his man of the match performance against West Ham.
He said: “It was a really good performance from Nani.
“His positional play was good. He was staying out wide and getting the crosses in.
“He scored a goal and made one. He could have had a few more.
“I was really pleased for him. He deserved man of the match.”
Courtesy of The Bleacher Report
Is Jose Mourinho The Right Man At Man United?
Jose Mourinho
Inter midfielder Wesley Sneijder’s declaration that his former boss Jose Mourinho is certain to be the man to succeed Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United has stoked a lively debate over whether the Special One is the right man for the job.
The Dutchman had previously touted the Portuguese coach to take to the helm when the ageing Scot calls time on his career, but was quoted over the weekend as saying that the deal is as good as done in many people’s heads.
“I have had many deep and long conversations with Jose and I would put money on him taking over from Ferguson,” Sneijder was quoted as saying in the Daily Star Sunday. “I know the job he would want is to be Manchester United manager.
“To be honest, he is probably the only coach in the world who is capable of taking over from Alex Ferguson.
”I know Ferguson will have a big say in who takes over from him – and, even though they have their differences, there is a big mutual respect.”
The claims brought many varied views from commenters on Goal.com UK.
MUFC from Manchester agreed with Sneijder, saying: “Bear in mind that Jose’s current contract with Madrid has a clause that stated he can leave the team after finish of each season. It gives us the indication that Jose already plans his next destination but he does not know when the great Fergie retires. So, he put that clause in order for him to join the best team in the world. Glory Glory!!”
However, A True United fan from Manchester believes otherwise, explaining: “Whilst I have a massive respect for Mourinho, one of the greatest managers of all-time without doubt; he’s just not United material. United have never had a manager from outside of the British Isles, and the kind of players Mourinho signs don’t fit with the United character.”
Rahul Ponodath in India adds: “Everybody seems pretty excited about this. But let’s just stop and think about their principles when it comes to building a team and making players. Fergie has a history of building players through the youth ranks with a great emphasis on home grown players. He has this way of driving United history into each and every player at the club. Jose on the other hand, no doubt a great coach but he is pretty one dimensional when it comes to his mindset. How many players has he built from scratch?”
With opinion seemingly divided, we are giving you the chance to cast your vote either for or against Mourinho succeeding Ferguson at Old Trafford. And don’t forget to explain your decision in the comments section below.
Courtesy of The Bleacher Report
HAVE YOUR SAY
Man City Pay For Their Excessive waste
Those Eastlands spendthrifts break the trend of a new realism as the Premier League transfer window closes.
More compelling than Manchester City’s lavish buys were the crashingly expensive errors they tried to correct in this transfer window: chiefly, that deadline-day thespian, Robinho, who has bounced between Real Madrid, City and now Milan inside two years, and left no pool of perspiration at Eastlands when he moved to Italy.
While the gaze was locked on David Silva, Jérôme Boateng, Yaya Touré, James Milner, Mario Balotelli and Aleksandar Kolarov as they pushed City’s new wage commitments to £488m, the purge of other recent acquisitions pointed to a problem only the sky blue half of Manchester could afford to solve without recourse to Valium. In the downturn other Premier League high-spenders focused their energies on shedding players whose inflated transfer fees felt onerous and whose high wages have rendered them hard to move on.
Liverpool’s Alberto Aquilani, bought for £20m to replace the superior Xabi Alonso, was dispatched on loan to Juventus to conceal the reality that he was the worst piece of business in the Rafa Benítez years. So frantic were Liverpool to correct that booboo that they rushed Aquilani off the wage bill for a year and will not know whether the £20m transfer fee is recoverable until the Old Lady of Turin has seen him play.
Across the league there is a platinum club of names who were big enough for long enough for agents to secure mega-deals that their clubs are still manacled to. Among those who might have been on the move at 6pm had their employers been able to persuade their rivals to assume the high salary costs were Newcastle’s Xisco (a dud, reportedly on £55,000 a week), Nigel Reo-Coker (Aston Villa) and David Bentley, Robbie Keane and Roman Pavlyuchenko of Spurs. Bentley was wanted by Fulham, but only as a loanee.
These beneficiaries of the boom years pre-date the new realism, in which only Manchester City still embrace the rampant expansionism that turned the Premier League into the banking system’s love child. But with each acquisition by the Abu Dhabi United Group comes the dumping of a player bought in previous years with the same ostentation that took Silva and Balotelli to the north-west, Robinho was Abu Dhabi’s crash course in football’s celebrity economics.
Hoping to sign for Chelsea in the final hours of 2008’s deadline dash, he was presented by City as a “signal of our very real intent”, which, if true, meant that Sheikh Mansour – who attended his first game at Eastlands only a week ago – was “intent” on doling out £34.2m for people who rather would have joined Chelsea and whose indolence in some matches must have tempted the coaching staff to check him for a pulse.
Emmanuel Adebayor remains at City by default, because Roberto Mancini failed in his reported mission to snatch Fernando Torres from Liverpool (City deny they pursued the striker) and needs him as back up to Carlos Tevez. But the Adebayor-City love affair was painfully brief. Cumulatively he and Robinho cost City £54m in transfer fees alone and Mancini would surely have ditched Adebayor had there been a suitor willing or able to match his “personal terms”, aka exorbitant demands, a phrase that surfaced when Charles N’Zogbia’s agreed move from Wigan to Birmingham fell through.
Fully driven out of City were Craig Bellamy, exiled to Cardiff City, a full division below, and Stephen Ireland, an academy boy who left complaining about the smashing of City’s greenhouse. The club have pushed out figures showing a £4.5m spend on the first team’s Carrington training ground, £3.7m invested at the Platt Lane academy and an 80-acre land purchase at Openshaw West, where the whole operation will end up. The party line is City will one day function like Arsenal or United, buying top young talent (Boateng is a prime example) and cultivating their own.
This summer, though, a trawler net was thrown over players one tier down from household name. City also hired a 16-year-old winger from Swindon Town (Alex Henshall) and an 18-year-old called Albert, who turns out not to be from Moss Side. Albert Rusnak is a Slovakian signed from MFK Kosice.
Acknowledging the futility of fighting a dollar-war with the boyish Sheikh Mansour, Chelsea, Arsenal and United turned inwards, to youth, to potential, and hoped that scattergun extravagance would be City’s downfall.
Each made one big-ish buy to soothe the nerves of their own players and fans. Arsenal took Marouane Chamakh, Chelsea went for Ramires and United may have landed a peach in Javier Hernández. Under Roy Hodgson, Liverpool picked up Joe Cole, Christian Poulsen and Raul Meireles (for £11.5m) in a quest for the kind of value-for-money that eluded them with Aquilani.
Further down Aston Villa lost Milner, 12 months after Gareth Barry, Stoke City raised their game with Kenwyne Jones (£8m), Everton maintained their faith in lower-league talent (Jermaine Beckford) and Sunderland successfully chased Ghana’s Asamoah Gyan all the way to the chimes. This was the most exciting and exotic of the last-day moves.
Abroad, Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s move to Milan was another attempt to correct a blunder, by Barcelona, who bought more scientifically this time, with David Villa and Liverpool’s Javier Mascherano, while José Mourinho displayed a new taste for creativity when enticing Mesut Ozil to Real Madrid. Here in England consolidation beat conspicuous consumption, except at City, who bought into the myth of Robinho one summer, then bought their way out again two years later, not caring if anyone thought them decadent.
Roberto Carlos Free Kick
Roberto Carlos of Brazil
Needing some inspiration to get you through this Wednesday?
Watch the greatest free kick of all times done by Roberto Carlos against France in 1997.
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