Much like their north London rivals, Tottenham seldom sign players in the January transfer window. Yet this winter both clubs have splashed the cash. While it is Arsenal’s frenetic activity which has understandably drawn the most attention, Tottenham’s £23m deal for PSG player Lucas Moura carries its own sense of intrigue. Long considered to be […]
Football
Mourinho clutching at straws
The 54-year-old Manchester United manager has an enviable record of winning the domestic league in his second season in charge of every team he has coached since 2002. In pre-season this achievement was used as powerful evidence that Jose Mourinho would replicate the feat for a fifth time and bring the title back to Old […]
Premier League clubs playing it safe
The appointment of Alan Pardew as West Brom manager and the imminent arrival of Sam Allardyce at Goodison Park shows a dismal lack of creative thinking by the respective clubs’ owners. I’ve previously written about why the former England manager shouldn’t even have been considered for the Everton job, but the club have rapidly downgraded […]
Big Sam not the man
Past behaviour is widely considered to be the best indicator of future performance. It’s for this reason that Premier League clubs at the wrong end of the table consider replacing their manager with someone with a proven ability to drag the club away from relegation. The likes of Sam Allardyce and Tony Pulis have made […]
Everton unable to wake from nightmare start
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The decision by Everton’s billionaire majority shareholder Farhad Moshiri to spend £134m on new players this summer was designed to help the squad hold their own against the Premier League elite. In spite of the departure of Romelu Lukaku, the club’s fans hoped that after finishing seventh in […]
England stars running out of time before transfer deadline day
As we head into the first international break of the Premier League season, the pressure on both players and managers is already beginning to intensify. Many of the world’s most acclaimed coaches are employed by teams in the division, and with the ‘big six’ regarding qualification to the Champions League as a bare minimum, at least two managers […]