TOP 100 SOCCER SITES
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| Football transfer rumours: Nemanja Vidic to Real Madrid? Today's Mill was persuaded to throw out a football programme collection only a fortnight ago and is not at all resentfulThe Rumour Mill is minding its own business in a graveyard at dawn, attempting to roast its frozen chestnuts on a puny brazier when who should turn up but Blackburn Rovers' El Hadji Diouf muttering something about weather. "Ha! Ha!" he says. "'Tis ever and so nuncle, with the Black Monks. Scream did he, scream and gurgle as they skewered his cat flap for want of a farthing? Oh! Poor Diouf's cold! Pity poor Diouf, for his nose is frozen, and he does shiver." Apparently, it's taters out and the cold snap has badly affected his form.Real Madrid are hoping to capitalise on Mrs Vidic's similar contempt for the Lancashire climate by making a £20m summer bid for her husband, Nemanja. Manchester United are lining up Porto's Bruno Alves as his replacement. If that sounds familiar it's because Sir Alex Ferguson has had to go back to Plan A having been told by Palermo's Simon Kjaer that he has no intention of moving to England despite both United and City being prepared to trigger the £18m release clause in his contract.There's a lot of United ire in the tabs this morning, inspired principally by how comments made by Fabio Capello – United are no longer a "war machine" – were spun yesterday. "Get stuffed, we don't miss Cristiano Ronaldo and we're well placed to win the title," is the gist of Ferguson's rapid rebuttal.Manchester United will move, however, to bring in a goalkeeper and fancy Lyon's Hugo "Slender" Lloris but not the £20m asking price.In other Lancashire news, Darren Ferguson is on the verge of replacing Alan Irvine at Preston North End unless Gary Megson-less Bolton Wanderers beat them to it. Blackburn's Benni McCarthy has been heard humming the Kinks' Set Me Free. "Enough's enough," he told the Mail. "I feel I've been stepped on too much and it's best to go." And when it's Big Sam stepping on you, a £2m move to Birmingham City would relieve the South Africa striker of a great weight. Burnley, meanwhile, are close to agreeing terms with Algeria's captain, Yazid Mansouri. A million quid will persuade Lorient to let the midfielder strut in front of the David Fishwick minibus ads at Turf Moor.Moving south Arsène Wenger has outed himself as a Craig Bellamy fan but thinks getting him out of Manchester City is a non-starter. He'll turn instead to QPR's 15-year-old "wonderkid" Raheem Sterling and stop Jack Wilshere joining Burnley on loan following injuries to Cesc Fábregas and Denilson.Birmingham are going to sign Joe Hart on a long-term deal from Manchester City for £3.5m instead of waiting until June when they fear the price might be more.Ruud van Nistelrooy's wages have scared off Blackburn but Liverpool can just about run to the £87,500 a week he wants to leave Real Madrid.Wee Gordon Strachan, former chalkboard purveyor of this parish, is going to splash £6m on Celtic's Stephen McManus, Barry Robson and Scott McDonald while Paul Telfer sits by the phone wondering if he may have been inadvertently cut off.Mick McCarthy thinks Derby's Kris Commons would look dandy in old gold and Chris Hughton is eyeing up Leeds' Jermaine Beckford. Both men reckon £1.25m should swing the deals with Newcastle particularly bullish given Beckford has only six months of his contract to run and will tempt the Elland Road supremo, Bad Santa, with a cheeky bid.And finally, for Liverpool fans, here's a titbit from the web deep throats' site of choice: "Ryan Babel to Birmingham for £10m. Andriy Voronin to Zenit St Petersburg for £3m. Philipp Degen will move to Wigan for £2m and Andrea Dossena is going to Atlético Madrid for £4.5m. With £20m at his disposal, Rafa will spend £11m on [Galatasaray's] Arda Turan, £3.5m on [Standard Liège's] Milan Jovanovic and £5m on [Crystal Palace's] Victor Moses."Please feel free to add your own guff below.Manchester UnitedTransfer windowLiverpoolReal MadridRob Bagchiguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
West Ham United 1 Arsenal 2: match report Late goals from Aaron Ramsey an Eduardo deny West Ham Cup respite. telegraph.co.uk |
Rob Smyth recalls half a dozen crackers From a Valentine's Day massacre to Bobby Moore saving a penalty, here are half a dozen memorable clashesNB: this list does not purport to be definitive. It is just a list of six League Cup semi-finals we like. That's all. Then you can tell us the ones you like. The point of the Joy of Six is not to definitively rank things, only to enjoy them.1) Aston Villa 3-1 Tranmere (agg: 4-4; Villa won 5-4 on pens), second leg, 27/02/1994In the broadest possible terms, great football matches split into two genres: blockbuster and art house. And when it comes to the former, we really are struggling to think of a better example than peculiarly forgotten, deranged epic, in which Ron Atkinson's Villa somehow squeezed past John King's admirably progressive Tranmere.There were so many twists that you wouldn't have put the story in a parody of a thriller, never mind an actual one. "In all my life," said Atkinson, "I have never been involved in a cup tie as dramatic as that one." On at least five occasions, Villa were dangling over the precipice, with a Derringer up each nostril and a bomb in their pants that was due to go off inside 10 seconds.First when they went 3-0 down in a raucous first leg at Prenton Park, only for Dalian Atkinson to give them hope for the second leg with a last-minute goal. Second when, having roared into a 2-0 lead at home to level the tie on aggregate, their goalkeeper Mark Bosnich brought down John Aldridge in the area. By the standards of the day it should have been a red card, but Bosnich was not even booked – "Such decisions make a mockery and a farce of football," said Christopher Davies in the Telegraph – and, though Aldridge inevitably scored the penalty, Bosnich's continued presence on the field would prove decisive.Third, Villa were two minutes from going out when Dalian Atkinson headed in to make it 3-1 on the day and 4-4 on aggregate. Fourth when, in injury-time, Liam O'Brien's free-kick arrowed towards the top corner, only to smack off the underside of the angle of post and bar. And fifth during one of the great penalty shoot-outs – the sort that, like a great film ending, still makes you nervous when you watch it now. Bosnich saved Tranmere's third kick, from Ged Brannan, which meant that Ugo Ehiogu had the chance to put Villa through with their fifth. He hit the bar, and Aldridge made it 4-4 with a kick of outrageous nervelessness. That meant sudden death, and Villa's Kevin Richardson spanked the first one over the bar and into an executive box.O'Brien had the chance to put Tranmere through, but was jiggered by some textbook Keeganballs. "There will be no cooler man in the stadium," said Keegan, the ITV co-commentator, with shades of his David Batty moment. Bosnich saved O'Brien's weak kick and, after Tony Daley scored, he also denied Ian Nolan to make it a hat-trick of saves and spark celebrations of rare intensity. Tranmere, who were also in the middle of a run of three consecutive play-off semi-final defeats, were heartbroken. The unhappy ending deviated from the unwritten rules, but in every other sense this was a textbook blockbuster.2) Oldham 6-0 West Ham (agg: 6-3), first leg, 14/02/1990Supporters of Liverpool, Manchester United and Nottingham Forest in particular might disagree, but Oldham were the team of the 1989-90 English season by a mile. The other three got the domestic trophies, but Oldham got something more important: glory, and in industrial quantities. At club level at least, they were the coolest neutral's favourites there ever was. They were simply magnificent: swashbuckling, unassuming and youthful. Their plastic pitch, on which they went unbeaten for 38 games, added a sense of the unknown and altered the parameters of what we could reasonably expect from giant-killers – although their cup performances away from home obliterated the niggardly myth that they were only winning because of the plastic pitch.Before that season Oldham had not beaten a top-flight side for 66 years; then came what their manager Joe Royle called the "pinch-me season". They didn't just beat their superiors; they hammered them, all the while playing high-class football. The splendid Andy Ritchie, who even made baldness look cool, enjoyed the brightest of Indian summers, including two marvellous goals in the 3-1 defeat of the champions Arsenal; Rick Holden, a shambling maverick who looked like a roadie for a particularly rubbish indie band and who was actually Phil Brown's best man, would terrorise right-backs and send over a relentless stream of huge, booming crosses; Mike Milligan was a midfield bumblebee whose inability to reach the very top is hard to fathom; Earl Barrett (lightning fast) and Paul Warhurst (even faster) were at the centre of a formidable defence that also included Denis Irwin. Of their best XI, only Ritchie and the evergreen Roger Palmer were over 25.Their season was full of what Dan Turner described as "merciless gianticide" in When Saturday Comes. On the way to the final of the Littlewoods Cup and the semi-final of the FA Cup, they beat Aston Villa, Arsenal, Everton and Southampton – who would respectively finish second, fourth, sixth and seventh in Division One – yet in many ways their most famous victory was an extraordinary demolition of Lou Macari's West Ham, who were also in the second tier, in the first leg of the semi-final.Oldham played an extraordinarily offensive 3-4-3 formation, with Barrett the only orthodox centre-back, and a decent West Ham side – which included Liam Brady, Phil Parkes, Alvin Martin, Julian Dicks and Alan Devonshire – were embarrassingly helpless. With the game played on 14 February, it was inevitably dubbed the St Valentine's Day massacre. It all sounded so good on Radio 2 that nerdish 14-year-olds with school the next day gave their parents no choice but to let them stay up past midnight to watch the highlights.Neil Adams scored the first, slamming a long-range shot in off the post, and West Ham crumbled. The splendid Ritchie scored for the seventh consecutive League Cup game that season with the aid of a deflection, and goals from Barrett, Holden, Palmer and Ritchie again sealed a devastating victory.Oldham lost the second leg 3-0, not that it mattered, and were beaten by Forest in the final and Manchester United in a taut FA Cup semi-final replay. The overload of fixtures almost certainly cost them a play-off place, but they would get it right the following season, achieving promotion to the top flight for the first time since 1923 and winning the Division Two title in extraordinary circumstances. Many an Oldham fan cites that as the zenith; to most neutrals, however, any thoughts of Oldham will always lead to the amazing season of 1989-90.You can see the third, fifth and sixth goals here and the fourth goal by clicking here.3) Tottenham 1-2 Arsenal, replay, 04/03/1987Rivalries are not a constant thing. Just as you sometimes listen to your favourite song and sometimes really hear, so sometimes you experience a local derby and other times you really feel. From afar, it is hard to imagine that the rivalry between Tottenham and Arsenal has ever reached a greater peak than it did on the evening of 4 March 1987, when they produced an epic semi-final replay at White Hart Lane which, for the victors at least, went straight into folklore.There are a number of reasons why this game meant so much. It was significant that the sides were so evenly matched - just one point separated them in the league that season - and that they were both apparently embarking on exciting new eras under new, ideologically opposed managers in George Graham and David Pleat, whose use of a fluid five-man midfield was revolutionary. Most of all, the League Cup was in its golden age. With English clubs banned from Europe, it mattered more than the FA Cup does now. All this manifested itself in one of the great atmospheres and, according to the great David Lacey in this paper, "a fiercely competitive encounter that generated far more passion than precision".Three days earlier, on the same ground, Arsenal had come from 2-0 down on aggregate to force a replay. Again they fell behind to Clive Allen, who scored in all three games on his way to a mind-blowing 49 in the season; with Spurs the better side, it seemed like one comeback too many even for Graham's cockroaches. But they had a tremendous combination of indefatigability and team spirit – five were 20 or under, seven were homegrown – and did it again, thanks to one of the more unlikely heroes: the substitute Ian Allinson, who looked like the Chuckle Brothers' phlegmatic older sibling and who would be released at the end of the season, sneaked an equaliser through Richard Gough's legs in the 82nd minute and then, in the first minute of injury-time, inadvertently created the winner for David Rocastle. In the 271st and penultimate minute of the tie, Spurs were behind for the first time.Rocastle, a fresh-faced 19-year-old who shimmered with an ultimately tragic promise, was an appropriate symbol of Arsenal's triumph: a humble bloke with an infectious boyish smile. Graham's Arsenal would become unloved but at that stage they were fresh, exciting and likeable. "I would like to think this is just the start of a long period of success," said Graham. In a roundabout way it was, and consequently Spurs and Arsenal have never been such close rivals since. Until they are, the legend of this match will grow and grow.4) Stoke 3-2 West Ham, second replay, 26/01/1972Some people don't bother with old films or old football because they can't really understand the milieu, yet the very appeal of this game is the fact that it couldn't possibly happen now: it was played on a bog in unbelievably bad weather, it was a second replay – seven weeks after the first leg was played – and it had an outfield player, Bobby Moore of all people, saving a penalty.The match was only played because of another penalty save, a remarkable effort from Gordon Banks to deny Geoff Hurst, in the last few minutes of the second leg. After a 0-0 draw in the first replay at Hillsborough, the sides went to Old Trafford and staged a classic. "I have always resisted the temptation to describe any match as the most exciting I have ever seen, but this was the exception," wrote Peter Batt in the Sun. "This really was the greatest."It started when the West Ham keeper Bobby Ferguson was concussed by a dodgy challenge from Stoke's Terry Conroy. He went off after seven minutes of treatment, but West Ham did not use their substitute - just one in those days - in the hope that Ferguson might be fit to resume after treatment, so Moore went in goal. He saved a penalty from Mike Barnard, who followed up to score, but then a couple of marvellous runs from Billy Bonds set up goals for himself and Trevor Brooking in the 31st and 39th minutes. In between those goals Ferguson, who would remember nothing of the night, returned in goal but he was still all over the place when Peter Dobing equalised in the eighth minute of first-half injury-time.Conroy, the villain of the piece, gave Stoke the lead soon after half-time. Chances continued to come with obscene frequency at both ends: most notably, Harry Redknapp hit the post twice for West Ham, while Dobing went round Ferguson only to run the ball out of play. Stoke held on to reach their first-ever Wembley final. "What a fantastic feast for the game," said their popular manager Tony Waddington. "I think it was diabolical that any team should lose after putting so much into the game as West Ham did." In this paper, Eric Todd agreed. "If some of us live to 100," he wrote, "we shall not witness such wholehearted endeavour by two sides in the most appalling conditions imaginable." A glorious match full of heroism, dignity and uncomplaining enterprise. You can't really imagine that in the modern game, can you?To read more about this game, click here.5) Arsenal 2-4 Manchester United (agg: 3-6), first leg, 15/02/1983Never judge a match by its scoreline. This was an utter thrashing, probably the pick of the many cavalier displays served up by Ron Atkinson's United. In a first leg that was expected to be pretty tight - the last three matches between the sides had been scoreless, and United hadn't won at Arsenal since 1968 - United roared into a four-goal lead just after the hour. Norman Whiteside, the oldest-looking 17-year-old this side of Benjamin Button, was at his unplayable best, and only the elasticity of Pat Jennings "stood between Arsenal and an utter rout", according to Robert Armstrong in this paper. It was all so good that a couple of supporters swear to this day that they saw Frank Stapleton break into a smile. He scored the second after Whiteside's classy opener, and two goals from Steve Coppell - playing his final season at the age of just 28 - ended the tie there and then. Arsenal scored in the final 10 minutes through Tony Woodcock and Charlie Nicholas, but not even they could have disputed that the scoreline flattered them.6) Nottingham Forest 2-1 Coventry, first leg (agg: 2-1), 11/02/1990This wasn't much of a game, in truth. In fact it was a dog, played in dire conditions. But it stays strong in the memory for one reason: a late winner of chilling ferocity from Stuart Pearce. It was 1-1, thanks to a dodgy penalty from Nigel Clough and an equaliser from the hulking 20-year-old Steve Livingston, his sixth goal in three games, when Forest won a free-kick on the right corner of the box. Pearce, who might not have been on the pitch after a gruesome early reducer on Kevin Gallacher, produced a glorious winner as if to order.What was already a spectacular, visceral experience was heightened by the fact that the ball whammed in off the underside of the bar - the best pre-goal foreplay a man can experience. It also prompted a memorably po-faced celebration, pitched somewhere between showmanship and joylessness. In a relatively faceless age of English football, Pearce was as close to an anti-hero as could be found in Division One, and this goal summed up his appeal. The earth was always going to move on the weekend of 10-11 February 1990, with Nelson Mandela released from prison and Buster Douglas beating Mike Tyson. Pearce ensured it moved just that little bit more.Carling CupRob Smythguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Ferguson fearful of City's threat • 'You have to recognise they [City] are a competitor now'• Evra: We need to win trophies at a club such as UnitedSir Alex Ferguson has seen most things in Manchester derbies during his 24 years at Manchester United, but tonight's Carling Cup semi-final first leg against City at Eastlands may provide a new angle. The United manager has admitted that the neighbours are starting to pose a threat."You have to recognise they [Manchester City] are a competitor now," he said. "They are making a much better fist of their league programme this year than they have done in the past. We have had to wait a long time for it to be like that."City's 2-0 defeat at Everton was the first defeat for the new manager, Roberto Mancini, after four straight wins with four clean sheets in the league and FA Cup. The Italian will no doubt be anxious to bounce back quickly in the biggest game of City's season so far."It's a popular argument [that the match means more to City]. As far as I am concerned it is a semi-final," Ferguson said. "It doesn't matter how many semi-finals you have played in, they are always occasions you want to do well in. That is important."Patrice Evra has echoed his manager's words by saying the desire for trophies – not local bragging rights – will motivate him in the game against City."We need to win at [a club like] Manchester United," he said. "Every year I win two or three trophies. For me it's normal. If I don't win the league it looks like I haven't done my job properly, because now I have the mentality to win."Evra is well aware of the United's rivalry with Manchester City – after all, he made his debut in a derby – but says beating the neighbours is secondary to reaching the Carling Cup final."It's an important game against City, a big game, but I only talk about it because I want to win this game and have a chance to win a trophy," he said. "Maybe that's the difference between Manchester United and Manchester City: we play the game to win and to win the Carling Cup, they play to win against Manchester United."Sir Alex FergusonManchester UnitedManchester CityCarling Cupguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Crouch not the answer for England Wayne Rooney is a world-class striker, but Peter Crouch is not the right man to partner with the Manchester United star for England at the World Cup in South Africa. cbc.ca |