Hughes readying January raids? | 07/10/2008 09:26 |
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'Mark Hughes to push for more from Man City's owners in January transfer window'
Mark Hughes will meet Manchester City's new owners in Abu Dhabi next month and declare his intention to take his spending beyond the £70m mark after admitting that "frailties" within his team need to be addressed when the transfer window opens in January.
Five weeks after the Sheikh Mansour-backed takeover of the club, and the £32.5m British transfer record purchase of the Brazilian forward Robinho, the initial euphoria generated by the two unforeseen arrivals at Eastlands has been replaced by the reality of the task facing Hughes and his backroom staff if they are to transform City into Champions League contenders.
Sunday's 3-2 defeat at home to Liverpool, after leading 2-0 at half-time, highlighted the deficiencies in Hughes's squad and renewed attempts to sign Blackburn forward Roque Santa Cruz and the Werder Bremen midfielder Torsten Frings are likely to be made in the New Year.
The Liverpool defeat was City's third loss in four Premier League games and, although Hughes's players dominated for lengthy periods, his squad clearly lacks depth.
Hughes said: "In the November break, there will be a chance to go over and put our plans and needs to the Abu Dhabi group. We hope we will be able to spend in January.
"We will get better, but we are still a team with obvious frailties and we will work to address them when the transfer window opens again.
"What we need to have is that consistent level of performance and that resoluteness to be able to see games out and take something positive from every game we play. At the moment we are struggling on that point, but we are a young team in terms of experience and development."
City can expect to be handed a tough route to the Uefa Cup knock-out rounds in the draw for the group stages. Placed in pot three, top seeds such as AC Milan, Valencia and Benfica could be paired with City, while Ajax will be viewed as a dangerous possible opponent in pot two.
Tottenham have been placed among the top seeds by Uefa, with Aston Villa and Portsmouth being position in pot four. Clubs from the same country cannot be drawn against each other in the group stage.
When the transfer window opens...
City targets
Roque Santa Cruz: The City manager has made no secret of his desire to land Blackburn’s star centre-forward. The Paraguayan would add substance as well as style to City’s front line.
Torsten Frings: One of the standout midfielders at the last World Cup; both Frings and Werder – a big club but not one of Europe’s giants – could be tempted if the money is right.
Stephen Warnock: Hughes is in the market for a full-back and is a confirmed admirer of his former Blackburn charge.
Hughes’ spending
Jo (CSKA Moscow) £18m
Ben Haim (Chelsea) £4m
Kompany (Hamburg) £5m
Wright-Phillips (Chelsea) £9m
Zabaleta (Espanyol) £5.5m
Robinho (Real Madrid) £32.5m
Total £74m
The Daily Mail
'Mega-rich Man City ready to rescue Thierry Henry as Mark Hughes eyes Barca striker to bolster his Middle Eastlands' stars'
Mark Hughes will try to prise Thierry Henry from Barcelona when the transfer window opens in January. Former Arsenal striker Henry is expected to leave the Nou Camp after failing to make an impact in Spain and Manchester City boss Hughes has asked to be kept informed of developments.
City desperately need a reliable forward to complement their attacking midfielders because Hughes and his staff feel Brazilian Jo, 20, will not come into his own for another year at least.
Henry, 31, has been at Barcelona for a little over a season but has never settled and is keen to return to England. Last night Hughes stressed City fans should be patient as he builds a team to challenge for honours.
City lost 3-2 at home to Liverpool on Sunday and Hughes said: ‘What we need is that consistent level of performance and that resoluteness to see games out and take something positive from every game.
‘We are struggling on that point. We are a young team in terms of experience and development but we will get better.
‘We are still a team with obvious frailties and we will work to address them when the transfer window opens.
'It’s not a problem that expectations are suddenly high. People are realistic in our development. We are only seven games into the Premier League season, which has been fragmented with the international breaks, and now we are into another one. It has been difficult to get the benefit of clear weeks to work on the team.’
Hughes will also try to buy a goalkeeper and a left back in January.
He said: ‘We made a statement of intent with the acquisition of Robinho. We are in a position where I am sure we will be able to attract the top players.’
And finally, the Independent tell us following Sunday's game which saw a nasty looking injury to a Liverpool defender...
'Resurgent Liverpool rocked by Skrtel blow'
After the euphoria of a win which reaffirmed their potential to mount a title challenge came the news Liverpool had feared yesterday. Martin Skrtel may face months out of the game after a scan showed he had damaged his posterior cruciate ligament in his right knee when he fell awkwardly late into the win at Manchester City on Sunday.
Boss making his plans for January | 05/10/2008 09:55 |
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"'City are a work in progress'"
Mark Hughes is not the type to humour those who might have been starting to think that stability at Manchester City is about to end after just a month and, having dismissed the prospects of a switch to Tottenham, the Welshman is looking forward to mapping out his latest transfer targets next month.
A goalkeeper, a left-back, central defensive cover, central midfielders and a striker could all be on the agenda when Hughes travels to Abu Dhabi in November’s international break to discuss potential additions with City’s new chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak.
Incredibly it is just four months since Hughes took over at Eastlands and after making some impressive additions in Vincent Kompany, Shaun Wright-Phillips and Pablo Zabaleta he must have been tantalised by the fact that the £32.5 million capture of Robinho was the only deal City were able to push through after the Abu Dhabi United Group’s takeover on Sept 1.
Hughes rejects the link to Spurs as “not really warranting a comment from me” and as he prepares his team to face Rafael Benitez’s in-form Liverpool he is adamant he is comfortable with his situation.
He said: “I haven’t been told, 'You need to finish here or do this the following year’. That’s not how they work. What they want is to empower people in positions of trust and expect them to do a good job. I have no problem with that.
“In November there will be a chance to go over, leading into the transfer window, and put our plans and needs to the Abu Dhabi Group. We hope to spend in January. We have weaknesses in the side, that’s obvious to everybody. We will try to address them.
“We’re not going to win week, in week out. That’s unrealistic in the short term. When we get the players we want and the quality of the squad is bigger and deeper that’s what we have to strive for and maintain.”
When the financial picture was different under Thaksin Shinawatra, Hughes missed out on Brad Friedel and the arrival of an experienced goalkeeper when the transfer window opens remains a strong possibility.
However, City’s present first-choice Joe Hart, 21, who won a first England cap against Trinidad and Tobago in June, has welcomed the opportunity to discuss a long-term contract.
That Albert Riera’s last appearance at Eastlands was for a side including Trevor Sinclair and Claudio Reyna says plenty about the changes that have taken place at City since the Spanish winger’s underwhelming loan spell in the Premier League in 2006.
His time at City was a major reason why few Liverpool fans were excited at the left winger’s £8 million arrival from Espanyol but Riera, 26, is already showing that he is an improvement on the player Stuart Pearce was in charge of 2½ years ago.
“Every game I’m getting better,” Riera said. “I know how the team plays and I’m new so I must adapt to the team but little by little I think that I’m making progress.
“I’m a better player now and I think I can progress more and this is the perfect team to do it. I enjoyed myself at Manchester City but the only thing I have in my mind now is Liverpool.”
Benitez maintains that even City’s billions could not tempt him to part with his “un-buyable” Spanish striker Fernando Torres and, despite an unbeaten start in the Premier League, Benitez remains cautious.
“I’m sure that we’re not at our peak,” he said. “We can improve.”
The Independent on Sunday
"From loan ranger to dazzling wide boy"
Many are the foreign players who appear in English football for a short spell, only to disappear again, often into obscurity. Rarer is one who makes a mark, leaves and then returns with another club. Albert Riera, expected to play for Liverpool away to his former club Manchester City this afternoon, is in that category.
He will, of course, find Eastlands much changed from the place he left in the summer of 2006 after a four-month loan from Espanyol. Had Middle Eastern money been available, the then manager Stuart Pearce would have had the option of signing the popular Riera on a permanent basis. Instead he was allowed to go back to Catalonia, with fond memories but no regrets.
"In football, things can happen," he said in his polite, careful English after helping Liverpool to their straightforward 3-1 Champions' League victory over PSV Eindhoven on Wednesday. "I was very happy when I was there [City] and tried to do my best but now I'm playing for Liverpool.
"This is my team and I'll try to do my best on Sunday. That's all I have in my mind. Maybe if I'd stayed at Manchester City, then I'm not here now, so you never know in football. I'm happy that I'm here in this club. There was a change of coach at Espanyol and I was happy to return again because that coach wanted me. It's in the past and in football you must think only in the present."
Riera's footballing past began under the controversial Luis Aragones at RCD Mallorca on the holiday island where he was born. Bordeaux were next, with a run to the Uefa Cup quarter-final, before a first, unsuccessful spell at Espanyol.
Pearce took him to Manchester in the January 2006 transfer window for a run of 19 games which produced a winning debut in the Manchester derby and his only goal, against Newcastle, but disappointingly few other win bonuses: City lost nine of their last 10 games in falling from eighth place to finish 15th.
With a potential fee of some £3m deterring the club, Riera returned to Espanyol, where his reputation soared in a season that culminated in a Uefa Cup final appearance against Juande Ramos's Seville. Riera scored but Seville won on penalties.
Aragones remembered him the following autumn, awarding him the first of five Spanish caps, although he missed out on Euro 2008 last summer and the chance to become a European champion with Fernando Torres and Xabi Alonso. The presence of that pair at Anfield, with a Spanish manager in Rafa Benitez, was doubtless an incentive, not that any was needed, when Liverpool came calling towards the end of the last transfer window.
Thrown in at the deep end again with another debut at home to United, he excelled with clever feet, the ability to pick a pass or go past a defender on the outside and cross. His popularity was sealed by a 2-1 home victory and celebrated with a standing ovation when he was substituted.
Compared to his previous sojourn in the North-West, he says: "I am three years more experienced. I've played one [Uefa Cup] final and last year I was an international so I think it's normal that a player makes progress. I think I can progress more and this is the perfect team to do it with."
What he looks to have brought to that team is the genuine width that Yossi Benayoun, whom he has supplanted, never quite provided. It suits Benitez to play the hard-working Dirk Kuyt on the other flank, allowing Steven Gerrard the central role he craves whether or not Robbie Keane plays alongside Torres.
The relief of Keane's first goal against PSV was one of the bonuses from the midweek victory. Keane was relaxed about it, pointing out that his prolific partnership at Tottenham with Dimitar Berbatov took a while to form, and that the same applies to Torres, who supplied him with a magnificent cross for the goal.
Keane will still need a first score in the Premier League as soon as possible to fully remove the "monkey from his back" that he referred to in midweek and he may be denied the opportunity this afternoon, initially at least, for the temptation will surely be to bring back Javier Mascherano alongside Alonso, pushing Gerrard in between Kuyt and Riera in a 4-2-3-1 formation. On the other hand, all that rotation which was so much in vogue even a year or so ago is suddenly going out of fashion.
Luiz Felipe Scolari has in the main changed his Chelsea team only when injuries necessitate it, Arsène Wenger considered a radical shake-up after losing to Hull and then made a single change against Porto in midweek, and when Benitez did the same between the Mersey derby and the PSV game, one of his predecessors, Graeme Souness, said scathingly: "Maybe he's realised players don't get as tired as he thought they did."
City have had the disadvantage of a Thursday night Uefa Cup tie, albeit a comfortable one against Omonia Nicosia on their own ground, and may want to freshen the side.
Thanks to the frantic activity on the final day of the transfer deadline, Mark Hughes has broadened his options not only with Robinho but with the lesser known Argentinian right-back Pablo Zabaleta, a close friend and former Espanyol colleague of Riera, who says of him: "I'm looking forward to facing him. We're speaking every day and we are great friends. He plays right-back and I play left side so we will be facing each other all the time.
"He's a very good defender and very focused defender trying to give always 100 per cent but I will try to better him. Of course he will try to kick me, but I will try my best and now I have in my mind to score as well."
Kuyt strike kills off Blues | 06/10/2008 09:14 |
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'Man City 2 Liverpool 3'
THIS was the type of fightback and victory that must make all Liverpool fans believe they really have a team to win the title.
What a win and what a game this was.
What a striker Liverpool have in Fernando Torres, who had the honour of claiming this famous club’s 1,000th Premier League goal yesterday.
And what character is running through the veins of this Kop side.
Rafa Benitez’s men were two-down at the break and seemingly out of the game.
City were attacking with flair and conviction, while Torres was not getting a sniff at the other end.
We know what boss Benitez can do in his half-time team talks, though.
We also know the character instilled in this great club to grab glory from seemingly the most desperate of situations.
Remember their most famous ever rise from the ashes in Istanbul in 2005. Then they were three-down to AC Milan, only to win the Champions League final on penalties.
Two goals here from Torres and an injury-time winner by Dirk Kuyt completed this ‘impossible’ and left a capacity Middle Eastlands with its belly as low as a sand snake.
Yet City had enjoyed a fantastic start, taking the lead after 19 minutes.
Shaun Wright-Phillips, the architect of so much that was good about the home team in the first half, got things going.
Charging down the wing, he cut the ball into the area and then retrieved it when Jo lost possession.
This time he fired it in to Robinho and Alvaro Arbeloa flipped a weak clearance straight to Stephen Ireland.
Inch-perfect
The home midfielder promptly whacked a volley back into the roof of the net.
It was 2-0 just four minutes from the break.
A foul by Albert Riera on Wright-Phillips gave City a free-kick five yards outside the area on the right.
Full-back Javier Garrido stepped up and curled an inch-perfect drive with his right foot into the top corner.
The stadium was jumping. Surely this was going to be the result from City that laid down a marker for them.
The big money spent in adding to the team was about to bear fruit and send them up into the Champions League places.
Wrong. It was then that everything fell apart.
City boss Mark Hughes looked concerned as soon as the second half got under way. His team seemed to invite the waves of red attacks that bore down upon them.
Liverpool could have had a penalty within a minute, when Richard Dunne pushed Kuyt. Referee Peter Walton waved away the appeals. They got their lifeline on 55 minutes. Captain Steven Gerrard, so often at the heart of the club’s great fightbacks, laid the ball out to Arbeloa. He fired it across the six-yard box, from where Torres bundled it in.
Goal 1,000 in the Premier League for Liverpool and few current players could be more fitting to have scored it.
At 24 and in just his second season with the Anfield outfield, Torres is already a cult hero. He hit 33 goals last season and already has five in the current campaign.
Yet how different things could have been had Robinho not missed a golden opportunity on 64 minutes to put City 3-1 up.
Wright-Phillips ran the ball the length of the field and crossed straight into the six-yard box, from where the normally brilliant Brazilian somehow put the ball over an open goal from just two yards.
Now it all went pear-shaped for City. Two minutes later, Pablo Zabaleta was sent off for a bad flying challenge that took Xabi Alonso off his feet.
City were in disarray and on 73 minutes Torres got between sub Gelson Fernandes and keeper Joe Hart from a Gerrard corner to head in at the near post.
Fernandes had been on the pitch just three minutes and Hart had made the sort of misjudgement that can cost so dear when you are up against teams as good as the Merseysiders.
Torres should have had a hat-trick when, with eight minutes to go, Robbie Keane found him unmarked at the far post. But his shot went sideways across the face of goal.
The Spaniard had his head in his hands, yet salvation was near.
Not, though, for Liverpool’s Martin Skrtel. He had to be carried off on a stretcher just before the finish after falling awkwardly.
That led to six minutes of injury-time and in the first up popped Kuyt to net his first Premier League goal since last November.
Yossi Benayoun cut a ball back for Torres, whose shot hit the back of Keane’s ankle.
The Irishman, still to score for his new club in the league, had begun this match on the bench. He ended it inadvertently helping set up the winner, as the ball fired off his boot and across for Kuyt to stab home.
Liverpool have now won five and drawn two in the title chase as they carry on from where they left off in a strong second half to last season.
This time the dawn looks far from false.
The Times tell us...
'England axe leaves Michael Owen fearing worst'
Capello hands recalls to Wright-Phillips and Crouch
Michael Owen’s future as an England player looked bleaker than ever last night after Fabio Capello excluded him from the squad for the World Cup qualifying matches against Kazakhstan and Belarus. The forward has scored three goals in his past four appearances for Newcastle United, not to mention 40 in 89 matches for his country, but Capello has indicated that the 28-year-old’s strike rate is “not enough” to merit a recall.
Owen has been concerned about his place in Capello’s plans since being left on the bench for the Italian’s first match in charge, against Switzerland in February. Since then he has featured for only 45 minutes, as a substitute against France in March, and was left out of the squad for last month’s victories away to Andorra and Croatia.
Capello tried to explain that omission with reference to the forward’s fitness after his return from injury, but this time, having recalled Shaun Wright-Phililps and Peter Crouch, the England manager left no doubt that this was a football decision before matches at home to Kazakhstan on Saturday and against Belarus in Minsk four days later.
Speaking before confirming his 23-man squad last night, Capello said: “He [Owen] is in good form and fit, but it is not enough only to score. It is not enough to play for 89 minutes and then score. I accept goals are very important, but not only the goal. I decide not because I like or dislike players but who I think is best at the moment.”
Form was clearly behind the recalls of Wright-Phillips, who is back to his best after rejoining Manchester City from Chelsea, and Crouch, who has scored four goals in his past three matches for Portsmouth. David Beckham’s role appears increasingly peripheral but he retains his place, with David Bentley making way for Wright-Phillips.
Paul Robinson, the Blackburn Rovers goalkeeper, and Joe Cole, the Chelsea forward, miss out through injury, along with the Manchester United duo, Owen Hargreaves and Michael Carrick. Cole’s absence was a surprise, given that Luiz Felipe Scolari, the Chelsea manager, played down the player’s foot injury immediately after the 2-0 win over Aston Villa yesterday.
Cole’s injury means that Capello will be unable to keep the starting lineup that earned a hugely impressive 4-1 win away to Croatia last month, with Steven Gerrard certain to return to the team after injury. Gerrard’s role is not yet clear, but it will not be at the expense of Frank Lampard, who excelled in Gerrard’s absence in Zagreb.
Another who will firmly expect to be involved is Wayne Rooney, having recovered from an ankle injury to score in his third consecutive match for United, against Blackburn Rovers, on Saturday. Sir Alex Ferguson, the United manager, has suggested that Capello might consider restricting Rooney to one of the two matches, but the forward said: “I feel fine. I just have to be careful with my ankle. It has been a bit weak over the last couple of weeks, but I will be fine for the England games.” Rooney is expected to be partnered in attack against Kazakhstan by Emile Heskey, the Wigan Athletic forward having impressed Capello with his form for club and country this season.
The squad
D James (Portsmouth), R Green (West Ham United), S Carson (West Bromwich Albion); W Brown (Manchester United), G Johnson (Portsmouth), J Terry (Chelsea), R Ferdinand (Manchester United), J Lescott (Everton), M Upson (West Ham United), A Cole (Chelsea), W Bridge (Chelsea); D Beckham (Los Angeles Galaxy), T Walcott (Arsenal), G Barry (Aston Villa), J Jenas (Tottenham Hotspur), F Lampard (Chelsea), S Gerrard (Liverpool), S Downing (Middlesbrough), S Wright-Phillips (Manchester City); E Heskey (Wigan Athletic), P Crouch (Portsmouth), W Rooney (Manchester United), J Defoe (Portsmouth).
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