According to reports in the Daily Mail, Newcastle United have switched their attentions from Paris Saint-Germain goalkeeper Kevin Trapp to Sparta Prague’s Martin Dubravka as Rafa Benitez looks to bring a new stopper to the club before the January transfer window slams shut.
What’s the word, then?
Well, the Daily Mail says that after Trapp decided he was going to stay with PSG until at least the end of the season, the Magpies are now targeting Dubravka, with Benitez keen to tie up a deal for the Slovakia international in time for his side’s crucial Premier League clash against bottom side Swansea City at St James’ Park on Saturday.
The Daily Mail explains how Karl Darlow and Rob Elliot have rotated between the sticks so far this term, but Benitez is now keen to bring in an established number one and he has identified the 28-year-old as the perfect fit.
How has Dubravka done this season?
He has done well.
Despite having a short spell on the substitutes’ bench for Sparta earlier in the campaign following his summer move from Slovan Liberec, the Slovakian stopper has since established himself as the Czech outfit’s first-choice goalkeeper, and he has kept seven clean sheets and conceded 12 goals in 15 appearances in all competitions.
The 28-year-old also impressed in the latter stages of his country’s World Cup qualifying campaign, although they were the unlucky team to miss out on a play-off place despite finishing second behind England in Group F.
Would he be a good signing for Newcastle?
It’s difficult to say.
If Benitez and the Tyneside outfit’s scouts have watched him and are impressed then you have to trust them, but it is always hard to predict how a goalkeeper will do when he arrives in the Premier League having never played in England before.
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Rob Elliot and Karl Darlow have both had their bad games between the sticks this season, and if Dubravka can prove to be a little more reliable and consistent than they have been then the Magpies will be delighted as they look to avoid being sucked into a relegation battle.
Lucas Moura has been one of the names being linked with a switch to Manchester United this month.
The Paris Saint-Germain winger is no stranger to speculation involving the Premier League giants given that he was wanted by the club when Sir Alex Ferguson was in charge in 2013.
Moura ended up joining the French outfit from Sao Paulo that year and has gone on to win 11 trophies, including four Ligue 1 titles.
This season, though, the Brazilian has struggled for game time under head coach Unai Emery.
In fact, the winger has not played since December 13 and has only been included in a matchday squad once in the last month.
In total, Moura has played just 72 minutes of league action across five substitute appearances, but he did manage to score a goal in that time.
According to Sky Sports, United manager Jose Mourinho is keen on bringing Moura to Old Trafford, and the player has suggested that he wants to move to England.
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The winger told L’Equipe:
“It feels the end of a story for me unfortunately. Can I stay? It will be very difficult. Manchester United? There are topics I cannot talk about. English football I like a lot, it is the most competitive championship.”
The appointment of Sam Allardyce provided the bounce Everton needed to escape the relegation battle, but his influence on results has dramatically waned since. The Toffees haven’t won any of their last seven games across all competitions, have suffered elimination from the FA Cup at the hands of Liverpool and scored just three goals.
There are some mitigating factors behind that run, particularly an imbalanced squad and a string of games against high-quality opponents, but the current signs aren’t encouraging and Allardyce’s pragmatic style of play certainly hasn’t convinced everybody at Goodison Park.
Last week, Marco Silva – who Everton tried to appoint ahead of Allardyce – became available after being abruptly sacked by Watford, so we asked Toffees supporters whether they want Big Sam or the 40-year-old Portuguese in the Goodison hot seat.
According to our poll, a whopping 73% of Everton fans would back the club parting with Allardye and replacing him with the former Hornets and Hull City gaffer. Has Allardyce been a disappointment, Everton fans? Let us know by commenting below…
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According to reports in The Guardian, Everton director of football Steve Walsh is facing the sack with his position coming under review from owner Farhad Moshiri, and Toffees fans have been quick to have their say on the rumour.
The Guardian says that Walsh is coming under increased scrutiny for the new players he has identified over the course of the last two transfer windows, with the Merseyside outfit lying just seven points above the relegation zone despite spending almost £200m on signings during that period.
Players like Sandro Ramirez and Davy Klaassen have so far failed to make the grade – with the former joining Sevilla on loan until the end of the season last month – while another new boy Cenk Tosun looks as though he will take time to adapt to Premier League football.
Everton supporters took to social media to give their thoughts on the story, and while one joked “I hope he’s not finding his own replacement”, another said it “has to be his last job in football this”.
Arsenal are back in Europa League action on Thursday night as they face Swedish outfit Ostersund in the first leg of their round of 32 clash.
Winning the Europa League might be Arsenal’s only chance of playing Champions League next football when considering that they are currently sixth in the Premier League table – eight points off fourth-placed Chelsea.
The Gunners are the overwhelming favourites to beat Ostersund, who are playing in their first ever European season.
Arsenal midfielder Mohamed Elneny, who is valued at £9m by transfermarkt.co.uk, posted an image on social media ahead of the flight to Sweden, with the 25-year-old pictured alongside Mesut Ozil.
As expected, the Arsenal fans filled the response section with comments about the Egypt international, who has made 21 appearances in all competitions this season.
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It would be fair to say that the club’s supporters are split when it comes to Elneny, with the midfielder producing some decent performances, but some poor ones also.
A selection of the Twitter reaction can be seen below:
Since arriving with the Hammers in 2012 from Aston Villa, centre-back James Collins has established himself as a firm fan-favourite.
It appears, though, that age is catching up with the 34-year-old Welshman, who has missed the majority of this season with a malleolar injury.
Collins’ contract in East London expires in the summer, and with Winston Reid, Aaron Creswell and Angelo Ogbonna cementing themselves as David Moyes’ preferred three at the back, time could be up for the Newport-born centre-half once valued at £7m during his time at Villa but now reckoned to be worth only £1.5m.
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Collins has said he wants to end his career at the club where it all took off for him back in 2005, but with Brighton reportedly lining up a £2m offer for the defender in the January transfer window, he could be headed to pastures new in the summer.
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What do Hammers fans think? Should West Ham renew his contract or not? Have your say in the poll below…
Everton paid Ajax just under £24m to sign Davy Klaassen during the summer transfer window.
The Netherlands international arrived at Goodison Park off the back of scoring 20 goals in 49 appearances during the 2016-17 season, and it would be fair to say that the Everton supporters were excited with the acquisition.
It has just not happened for Klaassen in England, however, with the 25-year-old only making four Premier League appearances this term.
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Klaassen has not even been in the Everton squad for a Premier League match since the end of October, which is an indication of his current standing on Merseyside.
Klaassen was in the Everton Under-23s side that beat Swansea City Under-23s 2-0 on Monday night, and the club’s supporters have been reacting to the situation that the Dutchman currently finds himself in.
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It is not quite what the midfielder, who is believed to pick up £100,000 a week at Goodison Park, would have had in mind.
A selection of the Twitter reaction can be found below:
According to an exclusive report in The Telegraph, Mark Hughes is the leading candidate to replace Mauricio Pellegrino as Southampton manager after the Argentine was sacked by the club on Monday night.
What’s the word, then?
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Well, Saints relieved the 46-year-old of his duties following a dreadful run of just one win in 17 Premier League matches that has left the south coast outfit just one point above the relegation zone and in real danger of going down to the Championship.
The Telegraph says that Hughes is the favourite to get the role, with the club working to finalise an appointment in the next 24 hours.
The Telegraph adds that the club is looking for a manager that will make a big impact in the short-term, but also fit with their philosophy in the long-term of giving younger players a chance.
Would Hughes be a good appointment for Southampton?
Considering the position they are in they won’t have loads of options, even though the St Mary’s faithful are hopeful they can attract someone like Carlo Ancelotti, and can’t afford to be too picky, with some candidates probably not wanting to potentially tarnish their name with a relegation on their CV.
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While things didn’t go too well for the Welshman at the end of his reign at the Britannia Stadium and with QPR previously, he did lead the Potters to three successive ninth-place finishes before they ended the previous campaign in 13th.
The 54-year-old knows the Premier League well and that is exactly what the south coast outfit need right now as they face eight matches – including against Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City – to try and save their skins.
Will he save them?
It’s difficult to say.
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The players looked to have no confidence and almost gave up in the 3-0 defeat against Newcastle United at St James’ Park on Saturday, and Hughes will need to lift the mood in the dressing room ahead of another crucial top flight encounter against fellow strugglers West Ham United at the London Stadium on March 31.
If he can do that then Southampton do have the quality in their squad to get the points they need to survive, but it could be a rollercoaster ride.
There’s a theory that if politics is war and economics is politics, then economics is war as well. Perhaps the most obvious example of that is the Cold War, a half-century of proxy skirmishes between the two superpowers created by opposing economic systems – capitalism and communism – but it loosely applies to the world of football too; if war is what happens on the pitch, then economics is what takes place in the transfer market.
There is an inevitable subsequence between the two spheres and plenty of Premier League titles have been settled without a ball being kicked. The old adage goes that a manager is only as good as his signings, but so is a team and to a wider extent, a club too. Not only who clubs recruit but also how they recruit can have an intrinsic impact on their fortunes for generations at a time, as the approach becomes cultural and institutional.
And thus, after dropping Paul Pogba and Alexis Sanchez for an FA Cup quarter-final Manchester United needed to win to have any chance of claiming silverware this season, amid the backdrop of reports claiming Jose Mourinho wants to make four more major signings in yet another summer overhaul at Old Trafford, the Red Devils’ transfer policy must inevitably come under the microscope.
Since Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement in 2013, United have spent over £600million on new signings – that’s roughly £120million per summer – but are yet to mount a serious title challenge, have finished in the top four just once and only found success in secondary tournaments like the League Cup and the Europa League.
Now, Mourinho’s reached a point where his club-record signing and his most recent signing, one of the Premier League’s flagship talents since arriving from Barcelona in 2014, can’t even get into the starting XI for one of United’s most crucial games of the season. Clearly, some part of the recruitment process at the club isn’t working properly.
What’s been so unusual about Mourinho’s signings at United is how individualist the majority of them are, especially for a manager with such a strong emphasis on creating a cohesive defensive unit and who often publicly laments players that struggle for conventional functionality in their respective roles.
Pogba, Sanchez, Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Romelu Lukaku all fall into that category, yet they account for over 30% of that aforementioned £600million sum, plus whatever value can be given to the swap deal that brought the Chile international to Old Trafford in January.
Perhaps Mourinho believed he could mould those impressive individual entities around the collective will of the team, and in Lukaku’s case he’ll feel that process has been a successful one. Mourinho’s hardly had a bad word to say about the Belgium international and while his goal tally this season has been largely unspectacular, the former Everton front-man has clearly become much more of a team player under the Portuguese.
Mkhitaryan though just never appeared to buy into that mindset, while even academy product Scott McTominay has proved a more functional option than Pogba in midfield during the last few weeks.
It’s a curious theme, but major signings struggling to perform for United stems back further than Mourinho’s tenure. David Moyes’ only major acquisitions, Marouane Fellaini and Juan Mata, have rarely exceeded a rotational role in the squad.
Memphis Depay lasted just 18 months at Old Trafford before being allowed to leave for Lyon where he’s rekindled his prodigious Eredivisie form, and Morgan Schneiderlin suffered a similar fate but has been a shadow of himself at Everton.
Luke Shaw, albeit hindered by injury, couldn’t hold down a spot under Louis van Gaal and is now being kept out of the team by Ashley Young. Anthony Martial is still yet to make himself a true focal point of the starting XI. Then there’s former club-record signing Angel Di Maria, who decided he wanted to leave just six months after his move from Real Madrid.
All in all, ten of United’s 14 most expensive signings since Ferguson’s retirement plus Sanchez have struggled to meet expectations at Old Trafford – the only arguable exceptions being Lukaku, Nemanja Matic, Eric Bailly, Ander Herrera and Victor Lindelof (the jury’s still out). Furthermore, four of them have left the club already and just two,
Lukaku and Matic, have earned such importance under Mourinho that they’ve made more than 20 starts in the Premier League this season. In fact, the last major signing to truly drive the club onto success after arriving is Robin van Persie – Sir Alex Ferguson’s final significant acquisition, made in 2012.
Of course, there are some caveats to consider here, particularly that United have appointed three different managers during that time, two of which – van Gaal and Mourinho – are aligned at largely opposite ends of the spectrum, one sticking to his possession-retaining philosophy to the point of it becoming dogma and the other being arguably the most pragmatic boss at the elite end of the trade. Inevitably, some van Gaal signings haven’t quite fitted in under Mourinho, just as some of Ferguson’s old cronies didn’t make sense under Moyes or the Dutchman.
But to return to the original analogy, if the manager of any given football club is the commander-in-chief, then the chief executive is surely the chancellor of the exchequer, the man tasked with driving the economic side of the club forward and overseeing its dealings in the transfer market.
It’s easily forgotten that United lost David Gill at the end of 2012/13 as well as Ferguson, and there’s an argument to suggest it’s the former the club has missed more since the Scot’s retirement.
There’s a comparison here with David Dein, the mastermind behind much of Arsenal’s transformation under Arsene Wenger. He left in 2007, a year after the Gunners reached the Champions League final and three years on from the Invincibles season; on the pitch and in the transfer market, the north London club just haven’t been the same since.
Even their club-record acquisition Mesut Ozil continues to divide opinion, while few of Arsenal’s signings have lived up to the calibre that Dein brought in – the likes of Dennis Bergkamp, Patrick Vieira, Thierry Henry, Sol Campbell, Thierry Henry and even van Persie and Cesc Fabregas.
While Ed Woodward’s proved a fantastic asset for United in the commercial sphere, pulling off some incredibly lucrative partnership deals, his approach in the transfer market has been far less focused and far more opportunist. There has been a strange scattergun strategy of United seemingly working to bring in what ever big names are available to them, rather than players who instantly address an obvious need for the team.
Mata and Sanchez are perhaps the clearest examples because they arrived in January; three managers later, United are still no closer to finding a permanent place in the starting XI for the Spaniard, while Sanchez – for all his undoubted quality and versatility in attack – has left Mourinho with three winger-forwards to choose from, all of whom are at their most effective when starting on the left wing.
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Signing Sanchez has only limited opportunities for one of United’s most expensive ever signings, Martial, and their most successful youth product in a generation, Marcus Rashford.
Which all begs the question of what United’s recruitment strategy ultimately is, and whether Woodward is the right man to provide that long-view perspective. All the recent managerial upheaval at Old Trafford only adds to the argument that Woodward should be the rudder overlapping these appointments and providing some sort of direction regardless of who is in the dugout.
We’re yet to see anything like that from Woodward, and that lack of overall vision has cost the club an unimaginable sum in the transfer market, one that will only grow bigger this summer.
More crucially though, as economics becomes war, it’s costing United on the pitch too. Moyes, van Gaal and Mourinho have all struggled to get anything near the best out of their most expensive acquisitions and if anything, it’s the more understated players – the likes of Rashford, Young and Antonio Valencia – who have kept the first team going over the last few seasons.
Clearly, United aren’t recruiting in the right way, so before the club commit to another costly transfer window under Mourinho that will likely result in more club-record acquisitions, the whole process needs to be reviewed with a long-term strategy finally formed.
As reported by The Daily Mail, West Ham United are interested in signing Fulham defender Ryan Fredericks this summer.
What’s the story?
With an excellent point earned against Chelsea on Sunday putting the Hammers in a commanding position to beat relegation this season, fans are beginning to think about what kind of signings could improve them in the top-flight next term.
One of the big priorities in the defensive line and if David Moyes stays on, he has a task on his hand rebuilding that aspect of the team.
One player he is interested in is Ryan Fredericks, according to The Daily Mail.
He’s a player who has been in sparkling form in the English Championship this season.
Out of contract this summer, the 25-year-old would be an excellent addition on the cheap if they could convince him to make the move to the London Stadium.
The paper say Moyes was impressed by the Fulham star on a scouting mission at Craven Cottage last week.
Can he make the step up?
Fredericks has never made an appearance in the Premier League despite getting his footballing education at Tottenham Hotspur, but the consistency in his form this season suggest he’s more than capable of performing well in the top-flight.
He’s made 39 appearances in the second-tier this term, creating nine assists from the right flank in the process, the kind of attacking contribution from the full-back area that would be welcome at the Irons.
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With plenty of time left in his career to improve, he could develop further at the London Stadium and the fact he is out of contract means there is little risk in giving him his Premier League opportunity.