Aston Villa’s £15m signing from Brentford got back on track at Stocksbridge Park Steels and has the pace and eye for goal to reach the Premier LeagueAs Scott Hogan would no doubt testify, it sometimes takes rejection to change the course of history. “We wanted to sign him, 100%,” says the Rochdale manager, Keith Hill, “but he just wasn’t ready.”Almost six years before he completed his move from Brentford to Aston Villa for a fee that may eventually rise to £15m, Hogan’s career was already at a crossroads. The Salford-born teenager had just been released by Rochdale after failing to be offered a professional contract despite some impressive performances for the youth team. Related: Non-league to Premier League: Jamie Vardy...
Jesus is finally available for Manchester City, Klopp faces a choice between Origi and Sturridge and Costa may have to bide time for return to Chelsea starting XIAs Manchester United prepare to visit the Britannia Stadium, examining Stoke City’s record against the league’s best sides this season offers an indication of where Mark Hughes and José Mourinho should both be looking for improvement. Stoke’s record against the elite is awful: five of their six matches against the league’s top six sides have ended in heavy defeats. They have lost 3-1 at Arsenal, 4-2 at Chelsea and 4-1 at Liverpool, while they were thumped 4-1 and 4-0 at home by Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur respectively. Good enough to take the...
In the seven years since David Sullivan and David Gold took charge, the club have signed 32 strikers who have managed 128 goals in 643 gamesHaggling with Brentford over the asking price for Scott Hogan, testing Sunderland’s sense of humour with a £4m offer for Jermain Defoe, steeling themselves for bids for the mutinous Dimitri Payet, waving goodbye to Simone Zaza and preparing to point Jonathan Calleri to the exit, how West Ham United savoured the majesty of Andy Carroll’s scissor-kick strike in Saturday’s 3-0 victory over Crystal Palace. For a team who had to wait until 27 November for a striker to score this season, Carroll’s wonderfully acrobatic goal lifted the mood at the London Stadium and provided a...
Manchester City resemble the girl with a curl in the middle of her forehead, N’Golo Kanté’s return to Leicester shows Wilfred Ndidi what needs to be done and David Moyes regrets catching the bullet dodged by Mark HughesThis time last year Southampton paid £4m to sign Charlie Austin from Queens Park Rangers. It was a while before he made an impact, but he certainly made an impact during the early part of this season, scoring nine goals in 19 games. But Southampton’s form has tailed off since Austin suffered a shoulder injury last month. They have lacked a cutting edge and have won only three of their past nine games in all competitions, sinking into the bottom half of the...
Moments such as the West Ham star refusing to play are when people in other team sports must wonder why footballers find it so hard to maintain professional decencyThere is a passage in one of Sir Alex Ferguson’s latest books that seems deliberately designed to chop West Ham down to size and no doubt, as intended, would have pricked a few egos in the way he does better than anyone. What, Ferguson wanted to know, was “the West Ham way” and why did the club persist in applying this label when in all his years at Manchester United he had never come against a team from Upton Park that he was afraid of. West Ham, he pointed out, had not...