Tottenham Moussa Sissoko thanks supporters after Champions League win
Tottenham will be hoping to repeat their performance this weekend as they travel to face Liverpool for the first time since the Champions League final.
Tottenham will be hoping to repeat their performance this weekend as they travel to face Liverpool for the first time since the Champions League final.
Ahead of Liverpool’s Premier League trip to Aston Villa this weekend, the Reds’ official Twitter channel @LFC shared a video compilation of Robbie Fowler’s hat-trick at Villa Park in November 1998.
The former Reds striker netted a treble against Aston Villa in a 4-2 win almost 21 years ago and he subsequently shared the footage on his Twitter account @Robbie9Fowler.
The 44-year-old, who is now managing Brisbane Roar in the Australian A-League, scored 173 goals in 355 appearances for Liverpool and he had a happy track record against the Midlands club.
Fowler netted 14 times in 16 games for the Reds against Aston Villa, scoring in six of his first seven matches against them. In addition to his 1998 hat-trick, he hit doubles against Villa on three occasions, including the 1996 FA Cup semi-final. [via TransferMarkt]
Indeed, Aston Villa were his joint-most regular victims, scoring more often against them than any other club except Arsenal, against whom he also has 14 goals. [via TranserMarkt]
Upon seeing the footage of his Villa Park hat-trick in 1998, these Liverpool fans on Twitter were in full nostalgic mode about Fowler:
Do you think any of Liverpool’s current players can emulate Fowler’s Villa Park heroics in this weekend’s clash? Comment below with your views!
This article is part of Football FanCast’s The Chalkboard series, which provides a tactical insight into teams, players, managers, potential signings and more…
Giovani Lo Celso enjoyed an excellent full debut for Tottenham Hotspur as they ran out comfortable 4-0 winners over Red Star Belgrade on Wednesday evening.
On the chalkboard
The Argentina international started the game in Serbia and turned in a tidy, assiduous performance in an initially raucous atmosphere.
Signed from Real Betis on an initial loan deal in the summer, Lo Celso opened the scoring with a clever volleyed finish and did not stop working throughout the encounter prior to his substitution.
Per WhoScored, Lo Celso had 102 touches of the ball, more than any other player on the pitch, and registered a 90% pass completion rate from 79 passes. Of the players to start the game for Spurs, only Moussa Sissoko, Juan Foyth and Dele Alli’s numbers were higher.
Lo Celso also laid on two key passes, had three shots on goal and won five of the five tackles he attempted from his position on the right of midfield. His tackle count was higher than any other player on the pitch, including both sets of defenders.
In addition to that, he also won the one aerial duel he contested and was never once dispossessed.
Keep him in the team
Lo Celso adds so much to this Spurs team.
Not only is he a creator who can play his team-mates into remarkably dangerous positions, he is also a grafter, a player who will sprint up and down the pitch again and again.
That he made more challenges than any player on the pitch is a testament to that and underlines the fact that he can influence the game at both ends of the pitch.
It is a far cry, too, from Christian Eriksen’s displays. The other attacking midfielder, who was initially benched against Red Star before coming on to score his side’s fourth goal, did not make a single tackle against either Everton or Liverpool while registering just one key pass in each game.
Lo Celso’s performance was a breath of fresh air, as he continually looked to make a serious impression for his new club.
If he keeps this up, Eriksen may well end up with splinters from sitting on that bench too long.
TalkSPORT pundit Adrian Durham has blasted Pep Guardiola for not giving Phil Foden a fair enough crack at breaking into the Manchester City first team.
Foden has been used sporadically since making his debut in November 2017, with 45 appearances and eight goals across the last two years.
Durham seemed furious as Foden was an unused substitute in the weekend defeat to Liverpool, directing his ire at his Spanish manager for leaving such a talent on the bench so often.
He said on TalkSPORT: “Phil Foden is talked up – and I’m not saying he’s the saviour of City’s title challenge – but we’ll never know.
“He’s got three defeats under his belt, Pep Guardiola, in the Premier League – that’s probably going to mean they have no chance of winning the title this season.
“And Phil Foden’s been nowhere to be seen. He hasn’t been given a chance. That lack of chance given to Phil Foden is totally unacceptable. Why is Pep Guardiola so against giving Phil Foden a chance?”
Foden is well-known to Guardiola. He handed him his debut in the Champions League nearly two years ago, and even recently apologised to the teenager after impressing in one of many cameos in a City shirt to date.
Durham may not need to make Guardiola aware of the option Foden offers, but with an average of little over 39 minutes per appearance (as per Transfermarkt) you can see where the pundit’s anger stems from.
And for the City boss to afford such little time to a player he once labelled as ‘the most talented player he has ever seen’, his continued bit-part role at the club seems even more confusing.
Perhaps Guardiola has struggled to integrate the youngster into a team full to the brim with stars, but for a player who scored more than the likes of Ilkay Gundogan and Kevin De Bruyne last season, it seems the youngster has been hard done by despite his promising performances for City so far.
City fans, should Foden be playing more often? Let us know your thoughts below!
This article is part of Football FanCast’s Transfer Focus series, which provides opinion and analysis on recent transfer news…
West Ham United had the chance to sign Neil Etheridge in the summer, but turned it down to stick with Roberto, as reported by The Athletic.
What’s the word?
With Adrian having left London Stadium as a free agent, eventually heading to Liverpool, West Ham needed to find a new understudy for last season’s Hammer of the Year Lukasz Fabianski.
They eventually settled on Roberto and David Martin, who both joined the club on free transfers, though The Athletic claim the Hammers had the option to go for Cardiff City goalkeeper Etheridge.
However, they turned the move down, feeling satisfied that Roberto was the best option for the club.
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Ludicrous decision making
There was only one person to make more Premier League saves than Etheridge last season, and that man was Fabianski.
To turn that down for someone who didn’t make a single league appearance for Espanyol last season indicates that the Hammers’ priority in this deal was, perhaps, not the quality of the stopper.
The price has been paid for this during Fabianski’s absence, with Roberto making a whole host of mistakes, including his shocking positioning for Newcastle United’s second and a calamitous attempt at a punch for Burnley’s third against West Ham more recently.
Darren Bent even suggested he should be dropped, while speaking on Football Insider: “Maybe they should utilise their third-choice keeper just to give him confidence as at the minute Roberto Jimenez is costing them games.”
Meanwhile, Etheridge has not made any errors that have led to a goal this season, averaging 2.7 saves per game.
It is, of course, impossible to map out how this period would have gone with someone else in goal, but it can be safely suggested that Roberto has at least partly been at fault for the demise and that Etheridge likely will have done a far better job between the sticks.
The Hammers have been made to rue this decision.
Thing are seemingly looking up in the Catalan capital, with Barcelona sitting both atop the La Liga table, as well their Champions League group.
Of course, we are still very much in the early days of the ongoing 2019/20 campaign but for Ernesto Valverde, life is currently good in Catalonia.
But even so, many of the Cules are not happy at all.
And just like many times before, Valverde is once again the reason for their unhappiness. After all, the Basque coach is the main target of their criticism almost on a daily basis and social media is full of comments requesting his departure from the club.
By all means, the Blaugrana boss is paying the price of being at the helm of a highly successful club that insists on both results and performance.
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But even if the latter is sometimes missing, it’s really difficult to condemn Valverde for the former.
And yes, many of his biggest critics will immediately remind us that his Barcelona is the one that got demolished and frankly, embarrassed, at Anfield last season and the Olimpico the season before. And they would be right.
Valverde is by no means a perfect coach and might be even less so when it comes to managing a team like Barcelona, but for all his faults, mishaps and weird decisions, he is still very much underrated.
Granted, this does sound a bit suspect. How can a coach who has failed so many times in the Champions League, and has done so in an incredibly bad fashion, be underrated of all things?
Watch Lionel Messi and Gareth Bale answer the internet’s weirdest questions in the video below…
But yes, I didn’t mix up my words and while it would be easier to build an argument for him being overrated, that’s hardly the case.
It’s difficult to find a coach in the top European leagues who’s as consistent and dominant domestically and yet so hated by his own fanbase as Valverde is.
But dominant? Valverde? Do those two words even go together?
Well, yes, they do and once we delve into the stats a bit more, this will become much clearer.
It took Barcelona 153 days to get back on top of La Liga and if history is any indication, they are bound to stay there.
After all, Valverde is nothing if not a master of dominating the Spanish top-flight with his Blaugrana troops.
Interestingly enough, if we compare him to two former extremely successful Barcelona gaffers in Pep Guardiola and Luis Enrique, both treble winners, we see that the Basque coach is not really lagging behind that much.
Valverde has so far recorded 2.24 points per game on average as Barcelona’s boss while Guardiola and Enrique had 2.36 and 2.41 respectively.
Keep in mind that the former had the Blaugrana golden generation on his hands while the latter had the illustrious Messi – Suarez – Neymar trio to lead him to glory. Needless to say, both iterations are more than formidable.
But it’s actually Valverde’s ability to dominate his rivals that makes him stand out from the crowd.
Since his appointment a couple of years back, he has tallied a total of 36 points more than Real Madrid, has bagged 40 more goals and won 12 more games than their arch-rivals.
Not only that but he can already boast with two La Liga titles, one Copa del Rey and one Supercup under his belt and has done so in incredible fashion.
Let’s not forget that we are talking about a man who has mustered 205 points in the domestic league so far, winning 62 games, drawing 19 and losing only seven. Seven. In more than two years. Let that sink in.
In that time, his team also scored 222 goals and conceded just 80, leaving Valverde’s troops top of the table in 74 out of 88 matchdays he has played in La Liga as the Barcelona boss.
By all standards, that is an incredibly impressive feat and no amount of fan criticism can disprove it.
So yes, he has his flaws and maybe this Barcelona team is not good enough to succeed in Europe, although we’ll have to wait and see about that, but the man they have in charge is far from incompetent.
And sure, having Messi in your team is a huge cheat-code but for all his brilliance, the Argentine still needs some help in order to do his magic.
Valverde will most likely never be revered as one of the greats at the Camp Nou and quite honestly, that’s a real shame.
Maybe he’s not the ideal coach the Blaugrana faithful are dreaming of but the stamp he’s made on La Liga cannot and should not be ignored.
So here’s to his success.
May his domination of Spain continue this season as well.
This article is part of Football FanCast’s In Numbers series, which takes a statistical look at performances, season-long form and reported transfer targets…
FC Inter News reported last week that Crystal Palace are ready to launch a £20m January bid for striker Gabriel Barbosa, so it was certainly interesting to see him in action for loan club Flamengo in the Copa Libertadores final on Saturday.
It seems certain that the south London outfit will look to bring a new centre-forward to Selhurst Park in the New Year given the links with the Brazilian as well as Scottish Premiership duo Odsonne Edouard and Alfredo Morelos, and ‘Gabigol’ certainly didn’t let any potential watching scouts done with a prolific display.
The 23-year-old took his tally to 31 goals in 38 matches in all competitions with a match-winning brace against River Plate, with the goals coming in the 89th and 90th minute in the dramatic 2-1 victory.
The five-cap international showed his quality in the final third by beating the goalkeeper twice, while according to WhoScored all four of his attempted shots during the encounter were on target – even more impressive given he only had 26 touches of the ball.
He did left himself down in one regard though, and that was his behaviour at the end of the match. Firstly, he was shown a yellow card for taking his shirt off having netted the decisive goal.
Barbosa still had time to sarcastically applaud the referee though, and was given a red card.
It wasn’t an isolated incident either, with the dismissal the second straight red he has received in the Copa Libertadores competition this year, also now collecting 12 yellow cards in his 38 games.
He may well be a goalscorer, but he has also shown his indiscipline too – much like another striker the Eagles are reportedly looking at in Morelos.
The Colombian picked up five red cards in 48 games for Rangers in 2018/19, although he does appear to have calmed down a little for Steven Gerrard’s men this time around, with no reds and five yellows.
It will be interesting to see what Palace decide to do in January, but the indications are after the weekend that signing ‘Gabigol’ would be a risk in some ways.
In other news, some Crystal Palace fans noted one man’s absence from their U23 fixture on Monday…
Liverpool’s Jurgen Klopp was rewarded for the job he has done at Anfield by being inducted into the LMA’s Hall of Fame on Thursday.
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The 52-year-old has done some incredible work on Merseyside, taking the Reds to two Champions League finals, winning one, whilst also leading them to a second-placed finish in the Premier League last season.
Check out footballers’ biggest fashion disasters in the video below…
However, although he deserves recognition, he has some way to go to match Bob Paisley. The former Red is a bona fide legend in the north-west – as nine years with the club as the boss, he won six First Division titles, three European Cups and three League Cups. He is the most successful manager in the club’s history.
He unfortunately passed away in 1996, but he has now been brought back to life thanks to computer technology. In a Liverpool video, in association with Standard Chartered and the Paisley family, the great man is surrounded by some of the club’s players, past and present, who applaud him as he walks onto the pitch.
It seems the video has divided the club’s fans. Some love it, whilst other don’t seem to have enjoyed it. They took to Twitter to share their thoughts, and you can see some of the best comments from the social media platform below.
In other news, one man gave the Reds an extra dimension against Napoli.
Tottenham’s 5-0 win against Burnley on Saturday proved they have no trouble finding the net under Jose Mourinho, despite his reputation for negative-minded football. They’ve now scored 16 goals from five matches in all competitions, but the Mirror have reported they’re interested in ex-Manchester City striker Edin Dzeko to add to their firepower.
The 33-year-old Bosnian has scored six goals in 15 appearances so far this season since signing a contract extension in the summer, and it’s thought that Jose Mourinho wants to bring him in as back-up for Harry Kane. During his time with Man City, he scored 72 goals from 189 appearances and won two Premier League titles.
Many Tottenham fans agree, and they made it clear they’d be happy to see the forward at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Twitter. Spurs news aggregator Daily Hotspur posted news of the Mirror’s report to their followers, and plenty replied to show what a good move they think it would be.
You can see some of their reactions to the tweet below:
Spurs fans, who do you want your club to sign as Harry Kane’s back-up?
This article is part of Football FanCast’s Pundit View series, which provides opinion and analysis on recent quotes from journalists, pundits, players and managers…
Everton are just hours away from taking on Liverpool at Anfield tonight in a Merseyside derby that could well determine Marco Silva’s future.
Discussion regarding his starting XI has been rife ahead of the game, and The Athletic journalist Patrick Boyland has weighed in with his opinion on who should start up front.
What’s the word?
It doesn’t get much bigger than this for Silva.
The Portuguese manager’s job is seemingly hanging by a thread which looks likely to be snipped unless he clinches a stunning victory over Everton’s city rivals this evening.
But which 11 players will he trust to go onto the pitch and save his job? There are a handful of players who appear to pick themselves, but that is not the case at centre-forward.
Dominic Calvert-Lewin was trusted to lead the line against Leicester on Sunday and, despite calls for Moise Kean to start tonight, Boyland believes that the 22-year-old should keep his place.
Stick or twist?
If ever there was a time to gamble, it may well be tonight.
Silva’s faith in Calvert-Lewin has been a divisive sub-plot during his reign, and the scrutiny over his credentials to lead the line have intensified following a relatively anonymous display at the King Power Stadium.
Kean’s impact and fiery presence from the substitutes bench last Sunday provided a timely reminder of his ability to Silva, but it would certainly be a surprise if the 19-year-old prodigy was handed his first Premier League start since September off the back of one impressive cameo.
And as Boyland suggests, the extent of his impact from the bench suggests he may be a more effective weapon during the latter stages of the game rather than from the outset.