Talk Football Blog

Middlesbrough Ressies 0-1 Liverpool Ressies

2008-09-05T11:39:05Z

Liverpool Reserves kicked off their defence of the Premier Reserve League with a largely comfortable 1-0 win at Middlesbrough on Tuesday night.

A first half header from Jordy Brouwer gave the Champions a winning start in an uneventful encounter at the Riverside.

Manager Gary Ablett gave new signing Vincent Weijl a start, while Peter Gulacsi was untroubled in goal the day after signing a permanent deal at the club. Philipp Degen also played 45 minutes in his comeback from injury.

After their involvement in the Liverpool first team pre-season games, Stephen Darby, Jay Spearing and Dani Pacheco found themselves in more familiar surroundings in the reserve line-up, while Ablett was without Krisztian Nemeth, Damien Plessis, Nabil El Zhar and Emiliano Insua due to first and national team commitments.

After a slow start, Liverpool stepped up a gear. Pacheco was given too much space on the Liverpool right on 17 minutes; his dinked cross met the head of Jordy Brouwer, who after heading against the crossbar, made no mistake, nodding in at the second attempt.

Pacheco was not so fortunate as little as a minute later, after waltzing through the Boro defence only to strike the foot of the post. Captain Stephen Darby also had a goal chalked off for offside at the end of the first half.

A second half downpour saw Liverpool’s flair players fade, and despite some slack play the away side were always in control.

Player Review:

So while the result may have been comfortable for the Champions, are any of the side anywhere near getting into Rafa Benitez’s first team plans?

Peter Gulacsi (GK): Largely untroubled against Middlesbrough, the Hungarian did show last season that he is prone to the odd mistake or two. Signed permanently this summer by Benitez, but after also signing Diego Cavalieri as back-up to Pepe Reina, the occasional selection on the bench should an injury strike those above him in the pecking order, is the best he can hope for this season.

Stephen Darby (LB): Captain of the reserve team, Darby showed in pre-season that Benitez should have no worries in playing him should Degen’s injury problems continue and Arbeloa get injured. He is a solid performer who had a goal chalked off for offside against Middlesbrough Reserves despite not playing in his usual position of right back.

SUB: Philipp Degen (RB): Okay, this guy was bought as a first teamer, but his only ‘competitive’ appearance so far in a Liverpool shirt gave little away from what we already know. Average defensively but has pace going forward, the right back may have an easier time getting into the Liverpool team now that Steve ‘Mr Consistency’ Finnan has moved on.

Daniel Ayala (CB): Booked against Boro for some rash tackling he was replaced at half time by Philipp Degen.

Martin Kelly (CB): Similar player to Darby, although Kelly is not always a regular in Gary Ablett’s side. Not ready for first team stint this year.

Ronald Huth (CB): Largely solid. Regular starter for reserves but will not see any first team action any time soon.

Gerardo Bruna (RM): Faded as the game went on, the left-footed attacker had Liverpool’s first shot in anger at the Riverside. No chance of breaking through to the first team this campaign as he still settles in.

SUB Steve Irwin (RM): Right-sided youth team player has greatly impressed at the Academy and will be looking to play more for Ablett’s side this campaign.

Jay Spearing (CM): One of the Scouser’s quieter games. With the abundance of talent ahead of him in the first team, and his lack of height for such an important position, being one of the stars of the reserve team may be all he has to settle for this season, with the odd place on Rafa’s bench.

Mikel San Jose (CM): Normally deployed as a central defender, the Spaniard struggled at times in an unfamiliar role. One of the better players in the reserve squad though, and appearances on the first team bench last season make him a solid and reliable 5th choice there for Benitez.

Vincent Weijl (LM): One of Benitez’s less high-profile transfers this summer, the left-sided, left-footed Dutchman showed some nice touches and a willingness to take on his marker. His apparently casual style deceived the Boro defence on occasions, as he would come to life sparking a neat move or put in a dangerous cross. The first team’s lack of width has stuck out like a sore thumb so far this campaign, so surprise appearances on Rafa’s sub bench may not be too far away. The deadline day signing of Albert Riera may delay this, but if Sebastian Leto could get a start in last season’s Champions League, anything can happen.

Dani Pacheco (ST): By far the most promising of Liverpool’s youngsters who played against Boro. Showed classy touches and was unlucky not to score in the first half. Surely set to get some form of chance, if not this season then surely next.

Jordy Brouwer (ST): Despite a flurry of goals at the back end of last season and another against Boro, fans of Football Manager will know that the young Dutchman is far from the complete article and is more likely to lose his place in the reserve side than making any inroads into Benitez’s plans. A loan move back to his homeland failed to materialise, and his chances even in the reserve side are set to be limited with Krisztian Nemeth to return and the signings of David N’Gog and Vitor Flora.

SUB Andras Simon (ST): Missed a great chance in the second half against Boro, and is still being used sparingly in the reserves as he has failed to adapt as well as compatriot Krisztian Nemeth.

Their next game is at Sunderland on September 17.

Written by Michael McGuinness

Keegan has now walked - The final word?

2008-09-05T10:20:11Z

You have around £1.4bn in the bank so you clearly are doing something right. There was a day in your life that your bank account went up by nearly a billion pounds in one single 24 hour period. You aren't a stupid man clearly but then you get to the first week of September in 2008 and you've invented and swallowed a vast amount of moron pills.

You are Mike Ashley. You own Newcastle United Football Club. You brought back the man they call 'The Messiah' and straight away your paying public are slurping at your feet. You are one of them. You wear a replica top with 'King Kev' on the back of it. You sit amongst the fans. You are the man that they believe will take you back to the top with Keegan at the helm.

Then you make some changes.

You bring in Dennis Wise seemingly over Keegan's head. You alienate the faithful. You then take Wise down to London and have him run the club from down there. You give Dennis Wise total control over players both incoming and outgoing. You don't list to Keegan when he says who he wants in and who he wants out. You basically make every attempt possible just plain and simply piss off your fanbase.

Monday was a stunning day in the world of football but it just couldn't compare with the goings on from Tuesday through Thursday ending in Keegan announcing his departure via a statement through the League Managers Association:

“I’ve been working desperately hard to find a way forward with the directors, but sadly that has not proved possible. It’s my opinion that a manager must have the right to manage and that clubs should not impose upon any manager any player that he does not want. It remains my fervent wish to see Newcastle United do well in the future and I feel incredibly sorry for the players, staff and most importantly the supporters. I have been left with no choice other than to leave.”

It means that owner Mike Ashley has chosen a guy with little background in football management or coaching over the man the public would walk through a brick wall for. Dennis Wise wasn't liked as a player and now he is being vilified after the owner chose to back him instead of following Keegan to the promised land.

Quite simply you do not appoint Keegan and then not back him to the hilt. To do what he's done is lunacy of the highest order. You might get some hacks like Steve Curry saying that Keegan has thrown his toys out of the pram, but if you are promised something in your job and then it turns out to be nothing like that then you have every right be annoyed. Keegan tried to get it to work but Ashley wouldn't budge on his plan and Keegan walked.

Keegan is not a quitter. He was promised things that didn't come to fruition and felt his position was untenable. Quite right too. If Newcastle do pursue Keegan for compensation for breaking his contract then they would be committing commercial suicide. The Toon Army would follow Keegan into the fire whereas I doubt at this very moment whether they would even piss on Wise or Ashley if they were on fire.

No Way I'll take over West Ham

2008-09-04T14:57:56Z

Harry Redknapp was the second favourite to take over at Upton Park but the Portsmouth manager has quickly moved to distance himself from the job. He states he is extremely happy at Portsmouth and although West Ham is a great club, it isn't the time to go back.

Not Wise

2008-09-04T14:50:08Z

King Kev says kick Dennis Wise out of his job and he'll stay at the Toon and I say bravo. Keegan has realised that he holds all the aces and has all the power. If Mike Ashley decides he wants to keep Newcastle then he has to fully back Keegan, the man he should've always backed to the hilt from day one. Whilst this has been an ugly few days for the Toon Army - if it ends up with Keegan wielding all the power then maybe it'll of all been worth it.

Window Shopping - A Review

2008-09-04T14:15:44Z

There are very few occasions, events or sets of circumstances that can induce me to sit in front of the TV with the laptop on, hitting the F5 button every 45 seconds to refresh any updates on a text page on the internet. However, ticking towards midnight last night, this is exactly what I, and I dare say a fair few football fans, were doing, as we anxiously awaited the last Machiavellian moves of the transfer window.

My main concern on waking was, as a Red, to see if a tall, dark and, well, slightly sleazy looking Bulgarian with feet presumably clad in silk such as his touch, would move to Manchester United. As it turned out, the day had enough intrigue and conspiracy, claim and counter claim, obfuscation and rumour to be the basis of a new Thomas Pynchon novel.

The day started sedately enough, with Tottenham tying up deals for Pavlyuchenko (you won’t believe me but I managed to spell that first time without looking) and Corluka, two fine signings that you might sensibly have thought would start the merry-go-round for the day. In comes the Russian, Berbatov signs for United, and on to Hull goes young Fraizer Campbell. The circle of life in football transfer terms, you might comment. But then in comes news of the Arab takeover of Manchester City, complete with City fans’ well meaning but probably offensive tribute to traditional Arab headgear. You can just see Man City fans charging into their kitchens and whipping the nearest tea towel off the draining board, tea stained and damp, and gaffer taping it to their heads. Bless ‘em…

And off they went, throwing money around the globe in true cheating-at-Football-Manager style. First Berbatov, though the bid for him was most likely an attempt at pointless brinksmanship and trying to drive the price out of United’s reach. This transfer was the most entertaining of the day mind, with rumours that Ferguson himself had shot out to Manchester Airport and picked the striker up himself, a wonderful image if you’ve got a ridiculous imagination like mine. Then came the television pictures of him shaking hands with Ferguson and having a medical, acts that at the time were, due to the fact we hadn’t agreed a fee, about as legal as setting fire to the Queen in parliament whilst liberally dusting the area with heroin. In any case, as the midnight oil being burned warmed up, Berbatov was posing in a red shirt, and I could breathe a sigh of relief.

But this was only a cue for further madness. Roman Abramovich, he of the pockets as deep as the Mariana Trench, was flustering around looking for a spare couple of million down the back of his sofa as Manchester City then outbid Chelsea for diminutive, Carlton Banks lookalike Robson de Souza, better known to you or me as Robinho. The speedy, tricky winger-cum-striker is an exciting player, and had spent the best part of last week with a flamethrower, comprehensively burning every bridge he had with Real Madrid. In a sense, he hamstrung himself into moving to Man City by doing this, and when his hero Scolari looked to Roman and the Russian shrugged with his pockets turned out, he had no choice but to pack his bags for Middle Eastlands (how cringeworthy is that going to become do you think?).

Now, it remains to be seen if Robinho is the first step on a glorious path for Manchester City, though it would seem revolution will be a long time in coming. For instance, Berbatov yesterday showed that Manchester City do not have the pull of other clubs, regardless of how much lucre is waved in their direction. This is just one transfer too, and January will see the kind of player City will be endeavouring to pursue locked up in European competition, and therefore this new revolution at City might be a non starter until next summer at the very least.

Other rumours swirled like an eddying current and never came to fruition. I froze a little when I read that Portsmouth, a team I have a sneaking respect for, were going to sell Diarra on to finance the purchase of uber-moron Joey Barton, he who comically suffered the French trip on Saturday night. Why they would ever consider this what boo-yah stockbroker types call “good business” is so beyond my comprehension I rang some great minds, but unfortunately Stephen Hawkins was busy and Noam Chomsky wouldn’t answer my text. Luckily, this rumour, like many others, proved to be unfounded and I could breathe easy. The only place that should consider an offer for Barton is, in my opinion, a leper colony.

To be fair, there were some other good signings that came out of yesterday’s action. The young Belgian Fellaini was snapped up by Everton for the rather inflated sum of around £15m, though it has to be said that on every occasion I’ve seen him play he has seemed assured, a smart passer of the ball and good in the tackle. Also purchased by Everton was Louis Saha, he who is made of biscuits. When fit, and that is an enormous caveat to this sentence, Saha is an extremely effective forward, with pace and power, and could do a good job for them.

In other news on Merseyside, the sale of steady and efficient Steve Finnan gave more evidence to the world of Rafa Benitez’s seeming hatred of good players. For further evidence, see his almost criminal ignorance of the excellent Ryan Babel. I don’t know why I’m moaning, I loathe Liverpool FC…

Now though, we must accept the fact that the madcap zaniness of the transfer window has ended with that window being slammed shut. In fact, did it slam shut, as every media outlet seems to have it? This of course gives the image of all those unscrupulous agents and managers getting their grubby mitts trapped in the window. For me, I rather naively think the transfer window was gracefully closed, with everyone backing away slowly, knowing their time is up.

In any case, the window has once again gifted us with an almost unprecedented day of footballing drama, and all without a ball being kicked. My team got the striker they so desperately needed, and now we can all settle down and enjoy the football itself, and not the aimless gossip that lingers like an eerie mist over the opening stages of the season.

Of course, in reality this just means that the gossip now switches to the January window, and I’d like to get us off to a start; Robinho to Chelsea for £10m. Away we go...

Written by Paul Madill

Market Pressures

2008-09-04T13:58:19Z

The media circus surrounding this year’s summer transfer window has had a deleterious effect on a number of teams, managers and players alike, and countless transfers have fallen through or evaporated into thin air having never existed in the first place.

The rash of media attention associated with the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo has become a staple of Premier League business but, after the current transfer window saw only a handful of high-profile signings completed, the implications of involving the media in negotiations has become all too apparent.

Written media is as integral to the operation of the Premier League as Bovril is to thousands of frozen fans on a Sunday afternoon, but while beef extract soothes the soul and keeps the cold at bay, professional football teams have long utilised the media as an underhanded tactic to unsettle players under contract.

Perhaps the most publicised move of the summer was Gareth Barry’s purported move to Liverpool which collapsed on Saturday despite the fact that The Reds had already been offered (and turned down) an £18million deal by Aston Villa. A frustrated Benítez made it abundantly clear that talks with Villa’s chief executive, Rick Parry, had ended amid a furore of media speculation: “some newspapers and journalists blame me for everything: global warming, rises in petrol prices, everything”. The Spaniard has since said that the ‘Barry saga’ had brought him close to leaving Liverpool stating that his lack of involvement in the transfer proceedings undermined his position at the club.

Garry Barry sensationally jeopardised his chances of moving to Liverpool after ruling himself out of the Champions League group stages by playing in Villa’s 4-1 UEFA Cup victory over FH Hafnarfjordur last Thursday. The decision undoubtedly won him a few brownie points with the Villa faithful but the publicity surrounding his involvement with one of his club’s main rivals will not be soon forgotten.

Many smaller clubs are forced to shy away from unwelcome media attention for fear of losing their key players or disrupting their team-building activities. The words ‘hands off!’ have graced the back pages of many a newspaper since the transfer window was implemented during the 2002-03 season and while refusing to sell players maintains the integrity of the club in question, young starlets may find future transfer avenues closed off to them as a consequence.

It is worth noting that the players the media dubbed the most likely to move clubs this summer – Christiano Ronaldo’s move to Real Madrid and Emmanuel Adebayor’s brief fling with Milan to name but a few – have all failed to agree terms with their respective clubs. It begs the question why clubs choose to conduct their transfer business in the full media spotlight?

Written by Chris Illingworth