The club should take their lead from Mauricio Pochettino at Tottenham and forge a real team ethosThe premise of Good Morning Transfers, a new Sky Sports segment that begins on Monday, is that the present transfer window is poised to be the biggest, best and most expensive of all time and viewers will naturally wish to tune in from 9am just to make sure they did not miss anything while they were sleeping. Related: Gianfranco Zola turns down new role at Chelsea and targets job as manager Continue reading...
Reds were ahead of the curve with £75m Virgil van Dijk transfer but champions could trump that for Harry Maguire as a duopoly emerges in the Premier LeagueThere are weeks of the transfer window still to go, an opportunity to keep spending money stretching ahead of Premier League clubs like the seemingly endless summer holidays of schoolchild memory, yet it is already clear that the prices being quoted are not only adult but in some cases X-rated.It was said when Virgil van Dijk joined Liverpool for £75m that in a short space of time the fee would look a bargain, and that time has now arrived. If Manchester City succeed in persuading Harry Maguire to reject Manchester United’s overtures and...
Zinedine Zidane identified the Belgian in 2010. Finally he has his man and Hazard will start despite the heftiest competition“I would take Eden Hazard with my eyes closed.” Zinedine Zidane’s words are not from this week or last; they’re not from last year, the year before, or even the year before that. Real Madrid’s manager said that in April 2010, almost a decade ago, when the Frenchman was just about to return to the Bernabéu as presidential adviser and Hazard was 19 and playing for Lille. He was also, Zidane said, “the star of the future”. Now, aged 28, he is Madrid’s present, not just their latest galáctico but their first for five years. He has been a long time...
The Premier League is obsessed with competitive spending, with the idea success can be bought. It just seems increasingly jarring and vulgar these daysIt was reported in December, quite casually, that 400 people had queued on Christmas night outside a branch of Next in Nottingham to be first in line for the 6.30am Boxing Day sale.Nobody objected to this. The people queueing were described as “bargain hunters”. It was as though this is all just fine, normal behaviour. Rather than, say, mass acquisitive hysteria, the shared conviction there is a some kind of happiness to be found in waiting six hours in the festive cold in order to pay marginally less for a cable-knit V-neck jumper that starts to look...
Chelsea want to keep the forward despite his request to join Bayern, but why not let a talented player develop in Europe?Callum Hudson-Odoi’s decision to lodge a transfer request this week after Bayern Munich’s £35m bid is a sign of changing times and a growing trend for young players at big Premier League clubs. Hudson-Odoi is trying to follow the path that has taken a lot of young English players abroad in recent years thanks to the success of Jadon Sancho at Borussia Dortmund and club partnerships with European sister clubs.Three or four years ago it would have been rare for a young player at a top Premier League club to request a transfer to go to a European club....