Reading keeper Pereira extends stay despite other offers
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Daily Mail
17 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Aston Villa hopeful of completing the signing of Nice forward Evann Guessand - with the Ivory Coast star set to become Unai Emery's first major addition of the window
are working on the signing of Nice forward Evann Guessand and hope to complete a deal this week as they try to add extra competition to their attack. In what would be Villa's first significant move in the market this summer, Guessand would join Unai Emery 's men for about £28m. Villa have been looking for a new forward ever since Jhon Duran departed last January and seem to have settled on Guessand, who has been considered one of the most promising players in French football in recent seasons. He scored 13 goals and had 10 assists in all competitions last season and though he plays mainly through the middle, the 24-year-old can also operate on the flanks. Villa have insisted all summer that Ollie Watkins is not for sale but if they sign Guessand, it will be interesting to see whether clubs who admire Watkins make a serious move for him. Meanwhile, West Ham remain keen to sign Jacob Ramsey from Aston Villa with the midfielder currently keeping his options open over his long-term future. Though Ramsey is well-regarded by Villa boss Unai Emery, his status as a homegrown player means an eventual transfer fee represents pure profit in the club accounts – crucial in the current era of Premier League spending rules. Villa have been willing to listen to offers for Ramsey since the transfer window opened and are thought to value him at about £40million.
The Guardian
20 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Transfer trouble and boardroom bother: vexed Newcastle face a puzzled future
'If you want to understand Newcastle you first need to understand its place in the world – that is, a very long way from anywhere. The next major city is Leeds, two hours drive to the south … London feels very far away.' If Eddie Howe can only hope his prospective signings do not stumble across the Rough Guides introduction to England's northern cities, Newcastle's manager may also reflect that it was not supposed to be like this. The days when the club's recruitment strategy was often a victim of its geographical isolation were supposed to have ended four years ago when Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund obtained the keys to St James' Park. In October 2021 there was a sense of giddiness in the Tyneside air as Amanda Staveley, the then Newcastle director and minority owner who played a key role in convincing one of the world's richest sovereign wealth funds to buy the club from Mike Ashley, settled back into a sofa at the city's leafy Jesmond Dene House hotel and spoke of soaring ambition and trophies galore. Since then a series of leading players including Alexander Isak, Sandro Tonali and Bruno Guimarães have signed for Newcastle, Howe's team are in the Champions League for the second time in three years and are the holders of the Carabao Cup, their first domestic trophy for 70 years. Rather less positively, Isak is doing his utmost to force through a move to Liverpool, a slew of big names have turned Howe down in favour of relocating to London or Manchester this summer and Newcastle are seeking their third sporting director and second chief executive in three years. Oh and Staveley and her husband, Mehrdad Ghodoussi, are no longer around, after being ousted in a boardroom power struggle early last summer. Staveley subsequently spoke of her 'heartbreak' and 'devastation' at that departure, insisting rumours of a planned exit were 'absolute rubbish'. Thirteen months on, Newcastle's chair, Yasir al-Rumayyan, and the rest of the Riyadh-based Saudi ownership are perhaps realising that maybe she was more important to their Geordie project than they realised. Arguably almost everything that has subsequently gone wrong seems rooted in that parting of the ways. Crucially, Staveley and Ghodoussi were excellent communicators within a club where, at assorted levels, personal connections have since loosened and the Saudi ownership remain so remote that no representative of PIF has spoken to the UK football media. In contrast Staveley was big on the human touch, taking time to stop and chat to players, staff and, occasionally, reporters while also sending first-teamers regular text messages as she established rare trust with the instinctively wary Howe. Maybe Staveley sometimes over-promised. Isak's representatives certainly believe the striker was assured his £150,000-a-week wages would be boosted significantly last summer and the fallout is hurting Howe now. Yet given that Newcastle only narrowly avoided a potential points deduction and heavy fine after scrambling to comply with Premier League spending rules within hours of a key deadline last June, the club's decision to tell Isak he would have to be content with his current deal after all represented financial logic. Howe's problem was that a striker who would proceed to score 27 goals last season remained seriously annoyed. Indeed Isak, along with certain similarly sulky teammates, started the campaign badly and it took the manager's considerable man-management skills to talk them round. It did not go unnoticed that, after the Carabao Cup triumph, Isak's body language turned uninterested again. Even so, the Swede had three years on his contract and there was a – misplaced – sense that a supposedly 'laid-back' character would not 'rock the boat', let alone skip a pre-season tour of south east Asia, particularly as he was poised to be offered an improved contract this summer. Instead Liverpool's interest turned the head of a striker said to be disappointed that there is still no sign of a much-vaunted new training ground at a club where a long-awaited, and much-delayed, decision as to whether Newcastle will revamp St James' Park or build a new stadium has again been postponed. Sign up to Football Daily Kick off your evenings with the Guardian's take on the world of football after newsletter promotion At a time when, given the constraints of profitability and sustainability rules, the art of selling is just as important as buying players, moving Isak to Liverpool for £120m-plus this month makes sense, permitting Howe to restock a talented but slender squad. The real puzzle is the lack of honest springtime conversations with Isak that might have allowed Newcastle to force an auction involving Liverpool, Arsenal et al before using their handsome profit to source an elite replacement. Instead Liam Delap, João Pedro, Hugo Ekitiké and now, perhaps, Benjamin Sesko have slipped through the net, preferring to move to London or Manchester. Newcastle, though, is not exactly Siberia and might have proved an easier sell had the Saudis swiftly appointed a successor to Darren Eales, who announced his resignation as chief executive 11 months ago after a blood cancer diagnosis. Eales finally seems poised to be replaced by the Canadian former Real Madrid executive David Hopkinson, but Paul Mitchell's abrupt departure 'by mutual consent', announced in late May, dictates that Newcastle have spent the transfer window without a sporting director. Mitchell, who succeeded Dan Ashworth last July, left without signing a player after kicking off his tenure by declaring that the transfer strategy was 'unfit for purpose' and the manager needed 'to evolve'. An uneasy truce with Howe eventually ensued but, less than 24 hours after Mitchell and the manager met Rumayyan for a post-season planning summit, his impending exit was announced. Throw in the enduring silence from Saudi Arabia and it is easy to understand why a footballer's agent might tell his client that, although Howe is clearly a brilliant coach, Newcastle look a bit dysfunctional right now. Geography may no longer be the main reason why top players steer clear of Tyneside.
Daily Mail
20 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Ex-Arsenal star reveals he squared up to Thierry Henry and used to get BLACK EYES from his team-mates as he lifts the lid on Gunners' fighting culture under Arsene Wenger
A former Arsenal star has lifted the lid on the aggressive atmosphere in Arsene Wenger 's squad of Invincibles - and revealed how he once squared up to Gunners legend Thierry Henry during a particularly heated clash. The French manager oversaw one of the north London club's finest eras during his 22-year tenure, with Wenger's squads achieving two double-winning seasons and their unmatched, unbeaten season in 2003-2004. In the early 2000s, the squad with replete with players whose names would pass into Arsenal folklore, including Henry and his compatriot Patrick Vieira, Dennis Bergkamp and Martin Keown. But as ex-winger David Bentley revealed on a recent podcast appearance, with the squad's competitive spirit came a fighting attitude that saw players even come to blows with one another after training sessions. Bentley came through the Arsenal academy before linking up with the senior side in 2001. Although the player spent a number of seasons on loan - first at Norwich City, then at Blackburn Rovers - his entry into the first-team dressing room was a baptism of fire, with the then-teenager thrust into a heated atmosphere at the club's Colney training ground. 'You talk about personalities. No chance,' Bentley told Undr The Cosh podcast. 'You've got Ray Parlour - loves it, lunatic, beautiful man. 'Then you've got Martin Keown, Dennis Bergkamp's an animal - he'd kick the c*** out of everyone. 'Giovanni van Bronckhorst - I used to come up against him and I'd come away with black eyes and bloodied eyes, he used to elbow the life out of me. 'Fights. Pascal Cygan against Kolo Toure was the best fight I've ever seen on the training ground. Two animals going at each other. To try to break them up we needed the whole team. Vieira stamping on me.' But Bentley was quick to admit a moment of his own hot-bloodedness, when going toe-to-toe with France superstar Thierry Henry. The pair were playing against one another in a highly competitive seven-a-side training game organised by Wenger, and Bentley described how, during a heated exchange, he saw red with Henry. 'I squared up to Thierry Henry, ripped off my gloves, (said) "Come on, let's have it." What they did - Wenger, (assistant manager) Pat Rice and the coaching staff - was put on seven-a-sides everyday. 'The dressing room was more concerned about winning the seven-aside tournaments than the game on Saturday. It was hell for leather and it was just slide tackles and fighting. Especially in the last game, that's where I squared up to Thierry, bless him. I would have got a good hiding as well!' Bentley also reminisced about a close encounter with Keown, after he ribbed the star over his age. 'Worst thing I could have done,' Bentley added. #The ball then came in, and I was shielding it, he grabbed me by the neck and threw me from behind. 'My shirt was ripped, and I'm going "Gaffer! Pat!" and they'd say, "get on with it!" Bentley was adamant that the high-intensity atmosphere was critical to Arsenal's unbeaten success - and over 20 years later, current manager Mikel Arteta has appeared keen to create his own unique culture within his title-chasing squad. The current Gunners manager has raised eyebrows with his unusual coaching methods, which have included playing You'll Never Walk Alone in training sessions ahead of facing Liverpool, and hiring sleight-of-hand illusionists to pick his players' pockets at a team dinner to teach them the lesson of alertness.
