… Van Gaal has never been a “template” manager,...
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Cost of Starting Eleven – Top 4
No analysis; just numbers. Make your own judgement. Ever wondered how much it costs for the starting XI of the top 4? Their subs bench and their reserves? How much your team needs to spend to win a league title? How far away Arsenal really are? How much have Chelsea spent? I have taken the […]
Even if Gareth Bale goes, Spurs look healthy
Real Madrid target is the dominant story but in Paulinho, Roberto Soldado and Nacer Chadli, Tottenham have already bought well. With all the masses of column inches currently being devoted to the future of Gareth Bale it has almost gone unnoticed that Tottenham have been quietly going about the makings of a very satisfactory transfer window. Of course, […]
Guardiola’s golden image already tarnished at Munich
… The 2-1 win over Manchester City at the Allianz Arena bestowed another, altogether tinier treble of three friendly titles on the team and their new manager, Pep Guardiola, but the 42-year-old was on the defensive in the subsequent TV interview with the local broadcaster. Are you – despite the team’s problems – optimistic for the new […]
Dynasties in decline
Two years ago, Barcelona were competing to be the greatest club team of all time. Cruel fate’s intervention means they have been forced to seek a new direction. …Gerardo Martino, a coach whose experience of European football extends to a single season spent as a player at Tenerife over two decades ago, has been given […]
Time for Spurs to make transfer gamble
…When news broke on Monday that Tottenham are refusing to meet Valencia’s €30 million asking price for their striker Roberto Soldado, the alarms bells ringing in the office of Villas-Boas and new sporting director Franco Baldini created a din that could be heard in the homes of the club’s vast army of supporters. Tottenham fans […]
Rooney domino effect creating United quandary
…It was early spring, shortly before that fateful Champions League defeat to Real Madrid, when Alex Ferguson reportedly came to a conclusion. It wasn’t about his future, but rather that of the player once considered the future of Manchester United. Although 27 and notionally entering the prime of his career, Rooney had gradually come to […]
No lessons learned from Suarez history
This is all starting to feel vaguely familiar. If the build-up to Luis Suarez’s seemingly inevitable exit from Liverpool mirrored that of his departure from Ajax – the wonderful goal-scoring form, the suggestion that he cannot fulfil his ambitions at his current club, the sudden taste for human flesh – then the act of it […]
How ‘Tata’ Martino sees football
Playing spectacular football and valuing the importance of the players themselves are key aspects of the new Barça manager’s mind-set Gerardo ‘Tata’ Martino has imposed a very specific style of football in Argentina and Paraguay, the only two countries where he has managed until now. Here we present a series of quotes from interviews in the […]
Barcelona coach Martino’s ideology shaped by Old Boys’ network
… Newell’s had won the Apertura championship in 1990-91, playing brilliant, vibrant football but, exhausted, they had stuttered badly in the Clausurachampionship and were even worse in the Apertura in 1991-92. In the whole of 1991 they had won only nine of 38 league games. The Clausura had, at least, begun with a 2-0 win over Quilmes but the humiliation against San […]
Ancelotti’s Real Madrid shows signs of shedding histrionics
…. Throughout the entire evening, though, there were also increasing indications that Real are themselves aiming to return to a more historic, less histrionic approach. This was a Madrid arriving with all of the old class but very little of the recent bombast. Many would naturally put that down to the simple contrast between the […]
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