TOP 100 SOCCER SITES
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| Arsenal, Hull charged over brawl Arsenal and Hull City have been charged with failing to control their players by the Football Association (FA) following their Barclays Premier League match on December 19. foxsports.com.au |
Football transfer rumours: Peter Crouch to Zenit St Petersburg? | Barry Glendenning Please consider today's tell-all before printing the environmentContrary to what many would have you believe, the rumour-mongering trade is not all fast cars, loose women and big creamy slices of moist fruit-cake covered in marzipan, then icing with garish bits of fruit clinging to the sides like rogue pubic hairs on a bathroom tile. Oh no.It's on bleak mornings like this, when a bleary-eyed Rumour Mill has had to drag itself out of bed at ridiculous o'clock having spent a restless night tossing and turning like a pig on a spit, that we really earn our corn. After all, those snippets of transfer speculation won't lift themselves out of assorted other websites and pitch up here on their own. (although it would be very nice if they would). So yes, that's the Rumour Mill - trawling the Daily Mail website so that you don't have to. And there was you thinking this gig was all about the stage-door groupies.Despite yesterday's comically straight-faced assurances from Harry Redknapp that he wouldn't be putting a pony in his pocket or fetching the suitcase from the van during the forthcoming transfer window, the names of assorted Tottenham Hotspur players figure prominently in today's back pages. Having noticed what a good touch Peter Crouch has for a big man, Zenit St Petersburg coach Luciano Spalletti will offer to double the striker's wages if he'll consider a move to the city formerly known as Leningrad. Meanwhile in Moscow, Spartak are interested in re-securing the scrawl of their former striker and Tottenham outcast Roman Pavlyuchenko, but are not prepared to pay the £15m Harry wants for the Russian. CSKA are also primed to bring one of their old boys, Jo, back to the Russian capital in the wake of the striker's dismal failure to either score many goals or secure the much-coveted title of Newly Monied Manchester City's Most Spectacular Brazilian Flop.Crouchigol isn't the only Premier League player getting the come-on from Zenit St Petersburg - the Russian club's suits have been pouting suggestively at Andrea Dossena and Liverpool may well be prepared to ship a £5m loss on the Italian full-back in order to raise funds to cover the cost of Brann's striker Erik Huseklepp. We know next to nothing about the Norwegian but have already decided unfairly, just from looking at his name, that he's unlikely to become a Kop favourite and will probably be farmed out to Peterborough United on loan or sold on to AEK Athens for a substational loss within 18 months of arriving at Anfield. You mark our words. Of course it's no secret that Liverpool manager Rafael BenÃtez also wants to get rid of Ryan Babel and Andriy Voronin in a bid to raise funds for Galatasaray winger Arda Turan.This just in: "Nemanja Vidic se une a la lista de galácticos para 2010," according to Spanish newspaper Marca. Now the Rumour Mill doesn't speak Spanish very well, but we're fairly sure this means that despite all the talk linking Nemanja Vidic with Barcelona, it is in fact Real Madrid who have decided to stop at nothing to sign the Manchester United centre-half in 2010 and Sir Alex Ferguson is so resigned to losing the Serbian that he's already eyeballing Porto's Bruno Alves as a replacement.Big Sam Allardyce may be long gone from Bolton Wanderers but his transfer policy remains very much in place, if this morning's rumours linking the Trotters with an ageing past-his-pomp Real Madrid midfielder is anything to go by. Guti is the man Gary Megson wants to go buy. His go-to Guti, as it were.With Bayern Munich striker Luca Toni having limited his options and bargaining power by announcing that he will not sign for any club other than Roma, West Ham manager Gianfranco Zola has turned his gaze on Fiorentina striker and Chelsea old-boy Adrian Mutu, who could probably do with the signing-on fee. Zola may have to raise funds by selling Scott Parker, which shouldn't be too difficult considering Stoke, Liverpool and Tottenham are all clamouring for the midfielder's services. Well, sitting in the auction house with mobile phones glued to ears and table-tennis type paddle things poised for when the inevitable bidding war starts. And while the news that Middlesbrough manager Gordon Strachan is hoping to bring Scott McDonald south of the border to Teesside would normally prompt the Rumour Mill to crack a lame gag about the gamble involved in seeing if Celtic's Aussie striker would be able for the step up in class that such a move would entail, we'll resist the urge today because the joke in question is becoming increasingly less wide of the mark and now seems tantamount to kicking a blind man's stick. And kicking the sticks of blind men is not how the Rumour Mill rolls. Tottenham HotspurZenit St PetersburgBarry Glendenningguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Flimsy defence flags up striking issues Manchester United showed resolve to salvage a draw against Birmingham, but they lack the swagger of oldAn unfortunate corollary of Cristiano Ronaldo's sale to Real Madrid for £80m is that it caused an inflationary leap that now works against Manchester United. The average £25m forward doubled in price in line with the new reality and prompted Sir Alex Ferguson to say this week: "I am not going to pay £50m for a striker who isn't worth it."Behind the scenes at Old Trafford there is a conviction that the side's uneven form is merely another transitional phase of the sort that separates great eras. They accept that Ronaldo's match-changing brilliance has been harder to live without than was previously imagined and say the huge disruption to the back four is a formula for inconsistency.Adversity has had more than its normal say in this campaign and a first-half goal for Birmingham against the run of play exemplified United's Premier League campaign. Before Cameron Jerome converted a brief spell of home team pressure on 38 minutes, Wayne Rooney, Darren Ferguson, Michael Carrick and Park Ji-sung all failed to penetrate a Birmingham defence of lunging bodies and desperate blocks. Park has many virtues, but he is no assassin.The vulnerability at the core of United's depleted defence can render them susceptible to just about any serious attack. Jonny Evans has yet to acquire the bullying, territorial countenance to supplement his abundant talent and Wes Brown's anticipatory powers have waned, temporarily, as he demonstrated by losing a foot race with Jermaine Beckford of Leeds for the only goal of last Sunday's FA Cup tie.The United staff crave a resumption of the Nemanja Vidic-Rio Ferdinand partnership that would have thrown a blanket over Jerome as he exploited a routine corner. Birmingham's own impressive back line held out for 63 minutes until Scott Dann put through his own net.Against the wider backdrop of reconstructive thinking, Arsène Wenger is allowed to preach patience while Ferguson is expected to fill Ronaldo's boots immediately with a comparable talent. Manchester United's more thoughtful followers acknowledge the impossibility of replacing Lionel Messi's rival for the title of world's most gifted player in a January transfer window. But the curse that comes with winning 11 Premier League titles is that the rebuilding periods are invariably cast as crises.Here in Birmingham, where the council was sensible enough to recognise that slipping on a pavement on the way to a football match is no different to sliding on the way to the Bull Ring, the team Ronaldo left behind were coming out of the doghouse of their FA Cup third-round defeat to Leeds. A Manchester United player will be forgiven for not setting the sky alight with artistry, but never for a lack of application, which Ferguson diagnosed in the supine efforts against Leeds. In cold that hurt the bones, there was no option but to keep moving on a pitch that showed the effects of frantic thawing, but still United's industriousness against a Birmingham side unbeaten in 11 outings spoke of new resolve to assert the Fergusonian principle of fierce endeavour.The eye counsels that United have been less aesthetically pleasing this season, less fluent, less symphonic. Subconsciously, we are gazing into the void where Ronaldo used to dance and demanding that one of his former colleagues takes up his functions. The best way to disguise that absence is to play at a consistently high tempo, which was always the United way. Aiming to regain top spot in the league, they moved the ball faster than of late and tried to impose their authority. Scholes, whose spirit is formed from iron, and always responds to a downturn by redoubling his efforts, was hyper-busy in the centre of midfield.However good the work from the base formed by Fletcher and Scholes, United remain heavily reliant on Rooney to finish the moves. Notable by his absence from the team-sheet was Dimitar Berbatov, a culprit in the defeat to Leeds. United said Berbatov has a knee problem, which left Michael Owen and the 22-year-old Mame Biram Diouf as the reinforcement options as McLeish began to scent a first managerial victory over Ferguson in five attempts.In essence it all looks much harder work for the big clubs this term, which is what we all wanted, or said we did, until the entertainment quota dropped. Until this season the big four had been a kind of Broadway in a parallel world of village drama. We tune in now not to see imperiousness from Chelsea or United but the rest of the league roughing up the nobility. Arsenal up the ante but then need a late equaliser at home against Everton.United have a host of players at the same stage in their development as Wenger's youthful wonders, but the expectations at Old Trafford are higher. At the same time Ferguson has invoked less often the jam-tomorrow promise. All of which means the onus has fallen heavily on a patched-together defence and the three legends (Scholes, Ryan Giggs, Gary Neville) who assist in the education of a cosmopolitan squad.The steeliness that has underpinned Ferguson's 23 years in charge survives, and will be seen more frequently now that they are entering their favourite part of the campaign: the second half, in which game management and experience come so forcibly into play.After the equaliser Giggs came on for the wayward Park to add control and cunning, and United, reduced to 10 men for the final six minutes after Fletcher's dismissal, returned to a mode they may be in for a few more games until Vidic and Ferdinand return and the old rhythmic confidence comes back. That mode is toil.Birmingham CityManchester UnitedPremier LeaguePaul Haywardguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Man Utd bond issue faces stiff competition for cash • Glut of similar high-yield offerings on market• MU Finance roadshow to refinance £500m debt arrives in UKAttempts by Manchester United's owners to refinance the club's £500m debt could be hampered by a glut of similar high-yield bond offerings, City bond traders said yesterday as the club's banks and executives started the European leg of a series of roadshows designed to spark interest.At a meeting in Edinburgh's Balmoral Hotel, representatives of the consortium of banks managing the deal – JP Morgan, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and Royal Bank of Scotland – and United executives presented the detail of the bond offer.This week is one of the busiest launch periods for new bonds in two years, as a series of indebted companies rush to refinance bank debt with investors who have a renewed appetite for risk in the wake of the market meltdown in 2008.City sources said the fear that interest rates, currently at a historic low, would begin to rise, plus the fact that fund managers had money to invest and were looking to add riskier bets to their portfolio, had combined to create a glut of new issues. But the busy period also means there are plenty of other options for potential investors at a similar price. "One of the things they will be up against is the fact there is a massive amount of supply at the moment, particularly in high-yield bonds. I've counted five other deals pricing today alone," said Euan McNeil, fixed income manager at Aegon Asset Management."There is quite a lot of paper to come on to the market. Aside from judging the merits of the Manchester United deal on its own, there is also the relative consideration one has to make on how much money there is to go into the asset class."Virgin Media, UPC and Ardagh Glass are among six or seven companies to turn to the bond market to refinance their debt this week. The MU Finance roadshow that started in Hong Kong on Monday reached the UK today and will continue in London tomorrow. It then moves to continental Europe and, next week, to the United States.Through the plan, the Glazer family, who bought United in a controversial leveraged buyout in 2005, hope to refinance the £509.5m in debt currently secured on the club through a series of four loans. The seven-year bond is expected to be priced at between 9% and 9.5%.That will increase the amount of interest that the club pays on its £500m debt, currently fixed at just over 5%, but will create a mechanism for the Glazers to funnel up to £70m from United's existing cashflow to their holding company to start paying down a £200m hedge fund debt secured on their shareholding. Those so-called Payment in Kind notes are accumulating at a rate of 14.25% a year.The offer document released this week revealed the Glazers had taken £23m out of the club in management fees and loans since 2006 and had made a provision to transfer ownership of the Carrington training ground to their holding company.While the banks behind the issuance are believed to be confident, the counter view is that the inherent risk in investing in a football club might count against it.McNeil said: "I think it's fair to say we have not been bowled over by the initial price guidance. It strikes me that at those kind of levels it's quite a good deal for Manchester United but doesn't strike me as a massively attractive deal as an investor. That's not to say we won't get involved but it doesn't strike me as a 'shut your eyes and buy' job."endsManchester UnitedBusinessPremier LeagueOwen Gibsonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
German champion Wolfsburg fires coach Veh Defending Bundesliga champion Wolfsburg has fired coach Armin Veh after a nine-match winless streak in all competitions. cbc.ca |