French teenager Francis Coquelin has signed a new long-term contract with Arsenal who have confirmed that the 19-year-old will spend the 2010-11 campaign on loan with Lorient.
The midfielder made three first-team appearances for the Gunners last season when he was a regular in the reserve side.
Coquelin told Arsenal's official website:"I feel really happy to sign a new contract. I've had two great years already and now I will carry on and hopefully it will continue going well.
"Arsenal is the right club for me because Arsene Wenger trusts young players and we can learn quickly at a high level. That's why I went there in the first place.
"The first six months were quite hard for me because of the language but now I have learned English, now I have my house, my friends in England, and I feel comfortable.
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"They have given me a new contract so obviously they are counting on me and I am really pleased with that. I will give that back by working hard."Subscribe to Football FanCast News Headlines by Email
Manager Mick McCarthy has again confirmed that Wolverhampton Wanderers cannot afford to buy Chelsea's England Under-21s ace Michael Mancienne on a permanent basis.
The 22-year-old, who can play in defence or midfield, impressed while on loan at Molineux last season, but McCarthy says that any return to the Black Country would not be on a permanent basis.
He commented:"I would like to see my quote where I said I would be prepared to pay £4million.
"I am pretty good at remembering what I said, but I am red hot at remembering what I haven't.
"We won't be buying Mancienne. They want to sell him – if they want to loan Michael out again, then that's a different matter altogether.
"I haven't discussed it with Chelsea. From my understanding, they want to sell him and he's asked for a transfer. They want to sell him rather than loan him.
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"I would be interested if they want to loan him out again, but that's up to them."Subscribe to Football FanCast News Headlines by Email
Roy Hodgson wasted no time in replacing Javier Mascherano over the weekend, bringing Portuguese midfielder Raul Meireles to the club from Porto in an £11.5 million deal. The 27 year old Meireles is an experienced campaigner who is coming in to the prime of his career, but can he replace Mascherano? The Argentine midfielder was a big player for Liverpool during his time at Anfield, but he certainly had his drawbacks and Liverpool might just have got a good deal this summer.
It remains to be seen where exactly in the midfield Meireles will play, because he is not an out and out defensive midfielder like Mascherano is. Raul Meireles is perhaps more comparable to a player like Michael Carrick, who whilst being good defensively, is also capable of passing and creative play. Meireles himself has stated he is not Mascherano, he is quoted in the Daily Express
“I am Meireles and not Mascherano and that will be clear to the fans. I hope one day the Liverpool fans will remember me for being successful.”
Meireles appears confident, and whilst he obviously believes he is a different player to Mascherano, comparisons will be inevitable this season. So far at least Roy Hodgson appears to be sticking to a 4-5-1 formation that Liverpool have used for the past few seasons, and Meireles and Gerrard are likely to be the first choice pairing in central midfield, with Joe Cole operating in front of them when he returns. Gerrard will not be staying back, so Meireles will have defensive duties and it will be interesting to see how he performs them in a league that is new to him.
Javier Mascherano became one of the worlds best exponents of the defensive midfield position during his time at Liverpool, but in the absence of Xabi Alonso last season Liverpool’s midfield desperately lacked creativity as Mascherano’s limitations became clear. The Argentina captain is undoubtedly good defensively, he is an excellent tackler, has superb positional sense and has a great engine. His passing abilities are limited though and he scored a paltry two goals in his entire Liverpool career. Mascherano is also an incredibly hot-headed player and his ability to get sent off is second to none, one particularly ridiculous dismissal was in a game against arch-rivals Manchester United in March 2008, when Mascherano persistently berated the referee and then was stunned to finally be shown a second yellow.
What Liverpool’s central midfield needed the most this season was some creativity, and Meireles may well be able to fill that gap. Whilst he might not be as strong defensively as Mascherano, he certainly offers more going forward and with Milan Jovanovic and Dirk Kuyt also offering defensive cover from the midfield, Liverpool shouldn’t be lacking in the defensive aspect of midfield. Meireles has forced himself into the Portugal team in recent years, and started in all of his country’s games at the World Cup, and this is no mean feat when one considers the quality Portugal have in midfield.
There has not been the explosion of joy on Merseyside that there was when Joe Cole signed, but the transfer of Raul Meireles may prove to be just as important for Liverpool this season. Hodgson is a canny and experienced manager, and he will have followed Meireles for some time when it became apparent that Mascherano no longer had a future at the club. As Meireles states he is not the same player as Mascherano, but he might just offer some different qualities that will improve Liverpool’s fortunes this season.
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Sir Alex Ferguson sat down with CNN’s Alex Thomas to answer questions submitted by CNN viewers as the Manchester United manager looks to win the Premier League trophy back off Chelsea this season.
Alex Thomas: Very early stages of the season. Mwate Kowa, a lady from Nigeria asks, ‘which team do you dread most in the Premier League and in the world’
Sir Alex Ferguson: Well the Barclays Premier League is such a difficult league, it’s almost tribalism, you can’t dismiss that impact when it comes to winning the Premier League. I always look at the team that wins the league the year before, you have to be the target to try to work on, it’s up the rest including us to do that and Chelsea are the champions, there’s no question about that. They’ve had a good start to the season and I look upon them as the main danger to us. The games that will matter will probably be the ones against each other, that will matter and last year we lost both of those games and therefore that decided the title I think.
AT: When it comes to later in the season and you’re competing in the latter stage of the Champions League, is it the games against the Barcelona’s and the Real Madrid’s that really get you and players excited?
Fergie: Well the Champions League is the most fantastic competition now. Since they changed it to the group stages to make it leagues, all the previous winners are in the pot, and of course, you expect great improvement from Real Madrid under Jose Mourinho, I expect that to be the case, Barcelona are still the most attractive team and they will be one of the main dangers, Inter Milan the most difficult to beat, so they’ve all got their different qualities, but it’s such an exciting tournament, you can’t help but look forward to it.
AT: An Arsenal fan who’s a student in Switzerland, Gold Emelium?, I hope I’ve got his name right, says ‘in all your 24 years in coaching at Manchester United, who would you regard as the best player you have managed?’
Fergie: Bryan Robson was an incredible presence in the dressing room and was loved by the players – tactically he was very astute. Roy Keane was a driving force in the dressing room, but they want the best footballers. // Paul Scholes is an unbelievable player, he will always go down as one of the best players of all-time here // you’ve had Cantona, you’ve had Giggs and Ronaldo, Rooney… Scholes as I said earlier on, these were fantastic footballers but to try and say who was the best of them all, it’s very difficult.
AT: When it comes to the make up of the current United squad, we have a question from someone in Nigeria, Solo Dilasottie?, who says ‘can you tell us more about one of your new signings this year, Bebe?’
Fergie: Yeah, well, we have a scout in Portugal where we asked him about this young player playing in second division in Portugal. There was a complication apparently in his contract which allowed him to leave to go to Guamaris and he’d only played three of four games and our scouts insisted that we should sign him. It was a bit of a leap into the dark really because we hadn’t seen him play, we sent down one of our scouts down with Antonio from Portugal to see him play in the last game before we signed him and then he comes up and says there’s something exceptional here, we’ll maybe seeing something really special, and so we took the gamble – we took the gamble, at that time, I think Real Madrid and Benfica were starting to move in, it was one of those instinctive things, you have a smell about something and you take it. So he’s joined us but physically, he wasn’t ready, hasn’t done a proper pre-season, so the last few weeks since he’s joined, we’ve been working on him physically. He’s now played one reserve game and he’ll be involved in the team tomorrow at Scunthorpe and you’ll see the progress now.
AT: Finally, one tongue-in-cheek question from a Liverpool fan in Thailand… Suti Srisakulchawla.. I hope I got that right
Fergie: He deserves that name!
“When will you officially set your retirement date Sir Alex?” he asks
Fergie: Well there’s no date simply because I think that, I’ve said this time and time again, people my age I think retirement is for young people, because they can do something else. When you get to my age then if your health is good, you like to work, simple as that.
Interview transcript provided by CNN International.
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Netherlands head coach Bert van Marwijk has dropped Manchester City's Nigel de Jong from his squad for the upcoming European Championship qualifiers, following the midfielder's leg-breaking weekend tackle on Hatem Ben Arfa.
De Jong has come in for criticism for the challenge which broke both bones in Newcastle United loanee Ben Arfa's lower left leg, having previously been under fire for a reckless tackle on Spain's Xabi Alonso in the World Cup final.
Van Marwijk told Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad:"I've seen the pictures back. It was a wild and unnecessary offence. He went in much too hard.
"It is unfortunate, especially since he does not need to do it. The funny thing is that the referee did not even show a yellow card for it. Apparently, there are other standards.
"But I have a problem with the way Nigel needlessly looks to push the limit. I am going to speak to him.
"I just told the players. I told them that I saw no other option. In the future I will agree with Nigel to talk.
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"Now I want the staff and the players to concentrate on the next two important qualifiers."Subscribe to Football FanCast News Headlines by Email
Alex McLeish admitted he was disappointed with the performance of some of the Birmingham City players he gave a chance to during Tuesday's Carling Cup last 16 victory over Brentford.
The Blues were indebted to Kevin Phillips after his 92nd minute effort set up extra time against the League One outfit.
The Premier League side eventually progressed on penalties after a side that showed seven changes from the weekend struggled to gel.
"Although they train with each other every day, it's sometimes very difficult and you can see there wasn't great cohesion out there at certain points of the game, so that's what can make these games difficult," explained McLeish.
"The first half was okay. We knew Brentford would be really organised and they got bodies back behind the ball and the first half was very even, but we thought maybe we could tire them in the second half and move the ball about.
"But there was just a lack of that imagination and creativity that really made it look as if we wouldn't score, although getting the substitutes on made a difference.
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"Kevin did what he does best, we're in the hat and that's what counts.
"We're in the quarter-finals and it's all part of the development of the club."Subscribe to Football FanCast News Headlines by Email
It’s been all change at Aston Villa over the last few months, with Gerard Houllier taking the reins at Villa Park after the summer departure of Martin O’Neill. With any shift as seismic as that at the helm of a football club, it is bound to take time for the team to recover and the new manager to instil his own footballing philosophy into the side. Although Villa’s start to the season hasn’t been disastrous, it hasn’t perhaps quite lived up to the expectations of a club and supporters that have become accustomed to challenging for the Champions League places. So with this in mind, does Houllier need to remove the dead-wood from O’Neill’s regime in order to propel his Villa side up the table?
The immediate problem facing Houllier was that he was installed as manager after the summer transfer window had closed. Therefore he was essentially ‘stuck’ with the team as it had been under O’Neill, with the only real change over the summer months being a swap deal with Manchester City, with James Milner going to Eastlands in exchange for Stephen Ireland. This has led to a stagnation of fresh faces coming into the club even before Houllier took charge. Therefore, in January, the Frenchman will surely be looking to bring in players, not only to begin to make his own mark on the club, but also to provide some competition for places within the squad.
The problem Houllier has is that it appears, with money fairly tight, that Houllier is going to have to sell in order to bring in the players he wants in January. But with the Villa squad fairly thin on the ground as it is, who would go? And would it be wise to shake the squad up in January?
With the partnership of Richard Dunne and James Collins looking fairly solid at the back, Curtis Davies must surely be one of the names in the hat for a January departure. Possessed with undoubted talent, Davies felt, under O’Neill, that his career ‘hasn’t just stalled – it had stopped’, and wanted whoever took charge to be fair and wished to be given a chance to prove himself. Houllier has granted him his wish, just not at Aston Villa. Davies has been shipped out on loan to Leicester City, and after impressing in his one month loan spell thus far, he could well be in line for a permanent move to Sven Goran Eriksson’s side in January.
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Another who could be on the list for a January move is Steve Sidwell. Having never fully settled since his move from Chelsea in 2008, Sidwell was rumoured to be on his way to Fulham over the summer before the transfer collapsed. Now Houllier is in charge and looking to bring in new players, the move to Fulham may be reignited, but with a central midfield which is sparsely populated and injury-prone, can the Frenchman afford to let Sidwell go?
With Houllier looking to mould the Aston Villa side in his own image, January is his first chance to make a real impression. But Houllier would be wise to tread carefully, the balancing act between new and old can be a tricky one to master and could be a risk mid-season, especially with a squad that is thin as it is. So although clearing out some of Martin O’Neill’s dead-wood may be good for himself and the team, his January purchases need to be astute in order to give his new side the foundations they need to launch an assault on the European places in the New Year.
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Sunderland defender Titus Bramble faces at least six weeks on the sidelines after being told he needs to have an operation to repair damaged cartilage in his knee.
The 29-year-old former Ipswich Town and Newcastle United star picked up the injury in training last week.
Bramble, who moved to the Stadium of Light in the summer, has made 13 appearances for the club so far.
Meanwhile, Fraizer Campbell is making good progress from the cruciate ligament injury he suffered in the game against Manchester City in August.
The former Manchester United striker said of the time he sustained the injury:"When I went home after the game it didn't feel too bad. The scan wasn't too bad, either. But when I had it the doctor said I would be out for six months and it really hit me that night.
"That was probably the lowest point of my career but I just had to sweep it under the carpet and get on with it. You don't get better by dwelling on things.
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"Things are going okay. I'm making slow steps towards my goal. An injury like this sometimes makes me sit back and realise how much I love going out there and playing football."Subscribe to Football FanCast News Headlines by Email
Tottenham striker Peter Crouch believes Spurs boss Harry Redknapp is the ideal candidate to replace Fabio Capello when the Italian steps down as England manager.
Crouch has been scoring thick and fast under Redknapp and has admitted he doesn't want the 63-year-old to leave White Hart Lane and wants him to stay as long as possible. But the former Liverpool player has said he would like him to move to one destination – Wembley – as there is 'no one better' suited to the job.
The former Portsmouth manager has taken Spurs into the last-16 of the Champions League and may have another top-four finish on the horizon. And, although he has 'great respect' for Capello, the 29-year-old feels Redknapp would suit him better, as he brings the best out in him and his personality is more suited for the England job.
"He's similar to Rafa Benitez in the way he'll treat you, whereas Harry will speak to you and put an arm round you," said Crouch
"Harry will talk to you whether you've had an awful game or a good game, whereas maybe Capello is a bit more aloof.
"Every country has a different mentality. With Harry he knows how to get the best out of me.
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"He'll talk to me and be honest with me whether I've had a good or a bad game. Harry's way suits me."
Tottenham face title-holders Chelsea at home on Sunday. They can recall Aaron Lennon, Luka Modric and Alan Hutton, after the trio were rested against FC Twente midweek and Peter Crouch may be partnered with Jermaine Defoe up front. Rafa van der Vaart (hamstring) has not yet recovered, but Younes Kaboul is in contention to start following his thigh problem.Subscribe to Football FanCast News Headlines by Email
Paul Scharner has warned the Baggies that they must hold on to their star names next month, or risk being relegated.
The versatile Austrian has helped the club bounce back from a poor run to record back-to-back Premier League wins against Everton and Newcastle, which has moved Albion into the top-half of the table.
Roberto Di Matteo’s men have done a lot better than many outsiders anticipated in the summer following their promotion and Scharner feels the sale of any key players could lead to their downfall in the New Year.
Scharner said:“It’s true we have exceeded expectations but I am very happy that we surprised everybody.
“Hopefully we can continue what we are doing.
“Hopefully we won’t stop when we reach our target (of staying up) and we will keep on going until the end of the season.
“It looks like we can stay up. I never got relegated with Wigan and that’s why I came to West Bromwich, to help them survive.
“That’s the main target and we’re on course at the moment.
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“But, if we want to reach our targets, it is important that we all stay together until the end of the season.”
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