Tottenham Hotspur’s Togolese international Emmanuel Adebayor has threatened to cease national team duties in light of a protracted pay dispute, the Daily Mail confirms.
The 28-year-old Premier League forward says he is not the only Togolese player waiting for money owed by the Togo Football Association, who continue to refuse payment.
The dispute relates to money owed by President Ameyi to Togo’s players for a game played against Morocco earlier in the month.
“Players come to me to ask about their money. It is a shame. I asked the Moroccan Federation how much they paid our Togolese FA. They told me that they paid €35,000 to President Ameyi.”
“[I know] the president has the money because the Moroccan FA will not lie to me,” said the striker. Adebayor continued to add that he will “retire from international football,” followed by other disgruntled team-mates looking to make a statement.
After retiring from international duty in 2010 following the traumatic gunfire attack on the Togo national team bus months before, the Spurs forward resumed his international career after the Togo FA pledged to bolster team security.
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It now seems that the player could enter his second retirement due to events off the pitch.
Southampton manager Nigel Adkins has warned Arsenal off making a move for 17-year-old full-back Luke Shaw.
The Gunners have been heavily linked with the teenage defender, who has made an impressive start to life in the Premier League.
It has been rumoured that Arsene Wenger has outlined Shaw as one of his top January transfer targets, but Adkins is adamant that his young star will not be leaving the club:
“I’ve not read any of the newspapers,” he is quoted by The Mirror.
“I think Luke gets linked every week with Arsenal, doesn’t he?
“Luke is under contract, he is playing football for us in the Premier League, which is important.
“We are not looking to let him go anywhere if anyone wants to come in for any of our players, by all means speak to the chairman. He does the deals and all the best with that.”
Arsenal have a history of signing promising young players from Southampton, with bot Theo Walcott and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain swapping the South Coast for North London in recent years.
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Walcott was snapped up by the Gunners during 2006, after a handful of impressive displays in the club’s first-team.
After being suitably impressed by the striker, Wenger returned for Oxlade-Chamberlain in 2011, paying £12m for the youngster.
To say that Everton find themselves in unfamiliar territory at this stage of the season would be an understatement to say the least. The Toffees are perennial slow starters but have hit a rich vein of form in the first half of the campaign. A six match unbeaten run sees David Moyes’ men currently occupying fifth in the Premier League table and garnering genuine hope of Champions League qualification.
In stark contrast to their Boxing Day hosts Wigan find themselves struggling at the wrong end of the top-flight ladder and will hope to start their fight for survival with a win against Everton despite a seven year barren spell in the blue half of Merseyside. Roberto Martinez hasn’t seen his team record a victory since they beat Reading in November and that five game winless streak has seen them drop into the bottom three.
Team News
Marouane Fellaini serves the second game of this three match ban but Everton will have Darron Gibson available after they successfully appealed the red card he received in Saturday’s win at West Ham.
Wigan are suffering a defensive crisis with Antolin Alcaraz, Adrian Lopez and Ivan Ramis all definitely out, whilst James McCarthy is touch and go. However, they could have captain Gary Caldwell back after three games out.
What the managers said…
“It’s a shame we aren’t talking about how well Everton are playing at the moment. We decided to go 4-4-2 with the two boys up front and what we have done is won in another fashion. I have learnt you can’t just have one way of playing in the Premier League. As the season goes on, injuries and suspensions take their toll. And I think it was a good lift for us as well to win without Marouane in the team.” David Moyes on Everton’s win at West Ham (Liverpool Daily Post)
“It will be our second game against Everton and in the first one, it was the best Everton side we have faced. This Everton side tick every box. They have been able to get consistently good results in this league and that allows you to be fighting for the top four positions. At Goodison Park they are unbeaten and it is one of the hardest places to visit in the Premier League. We are well aware of all that, but we feel we can match Everton on our day.” Roberto Martinez feels Wigan can earn a favourable result (Yahoo Eurosport)
Pre-match statistic
Everton are unbeaten in their last 12 games at Goodison Park, winning eight and drawing four. Wigan haven’t tasted victory in this fixture in each of the last eight meetings
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Prediction: Everton 3-0 Wigan
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With the news that Arsenal’s Theo Walcott has finally signed ended his ongoing contract saga and signed a new three-and-a-half year deal, you would have thought such news would finally dampen the endless scaremongering and gloomy analysis cast towards the Gunners’ future prospects.
With the club now adding Walcott to the British quintet of Jack Wilshere, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Aaron Ramsey, Carl Jenkinson at Kieran Gibbs whose future’s have also been tied down during the course of this term, it would appear that the club looked to have finally learned from the mistakes made in recent history.
Yet in awarding Theo Walcott terms thought to be worth around £100,000 all in over a three-and-a-half year contract, all the Gunners may have done is simply ensured that the status quo of their current Premier League position resumes for a longer period of time. Because while they can’t control the extrinsic factors that inflate the wages top clubs are handing out to players in this league, they’ve played their own part in having to shell out the six-figure sum that Walcott is now earning at the club.
And let’s be under no illusions, regardless of the impact supporters feel he may or may not wield in Arsene Wenger’s side, there’s simply no way he should be earning the money that he’s now set to receive. For all his recent good form – which as proven within recent games, still continues to be patchy – would Walcott likely get a look in within the first XI of Manchester United, Manchester City or Chelsea?
The answer has to be an emphatic no for both Manchester clubs and even if he could creep into Rafael Benitez’s line-up at the moment, Arsenal are paying Walcott the sort of pay packet worthy of a title-winning player. So if the club have genuine designs at heading back to where their supporters believe they belong and challenging for Premier League titles, then they’ve just shot themselves straight in the foot.
Because say for argument’s sake they were to now pursue the signature of Napoli’s Edinson Cavani, a player whom many would regard to be within the ranks of Europe’s elite frontmen and certainly the type of player that could make a difference in hauling them back into title-winning contention. The Uruguayan is thought to be earning within the region of £75,000-a-week at the Stadio San Paolo – ironically the same amount of money Walcott originally rejected during his first round of contract talks.
Yet by backing Walcott with the sort of money they’re now currently paying him, Arsenal have set the bar a hell of a lot higher for themselves in terms of paying the wages for the quality they need to bridge the gap back to the two Manchester clubs. Would Cavani have ‘settled’ on a hypothetical pay packet of £120,000-a-week? Who knows, but he’s only going to have to take one look at what Walcott’s earning to demand a fair chunk more than that.
But should we really be all that surprised by the contract handed out to Theo Walcott? Because in truth, Arsenal had set the wheels in motion for rewarding players with contracts far beyond their actual worth long before Walcott’s wage demands reared their ugly head.
When Arsenal parted with £6.2million for Andre Santos back in 2011, few would have necessarily foreseen how bad that move was to eventually amount to, but equally few were in any doubt of the role he was set to play in the team; a squad player, capable of playing his part in all competitions, but nothing nearing a first-team banker.
Yet why did they agree to pay a potential squad player the wages equivalent to what an established first-teamer earned at the Emirates? Paying a 28-year old left-back whose best spell in Europe amounted to a couple of modest seasons in the Turkish Super League near on £60,000-a-week all inclusive, was an accident waiting to happen.
It was a horridly short-sighted decision that gave little thought for those, including Walcott, looking to earn their next contract. But when the England-man had substantially proved his worth last season, in relation to the other contracts being handed out at the Emirates, valuing Walcott’s worth to the team at barely 25% more than Andre Santos’ was never going to be enough. The money being handed out to Marouane Chamkah and Andrei Arshavin amongst others only adds to the trend.
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Yet they’re still not getting the balance right. In a desperate effort to prevent any repeats of the fiasco that Walcott recently brought to the club, Arsenal hastily tied down their aforementioned quintet of Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain et al on long-term deals. But for all his injury troubles, has Aaron Ramsey really earned a £60,000-a-week deal? Likewise, for all the progression Oxlade-Chamberlain has made, he was already under a long-term deal with no desire to leave. He made big strides last term, but did they need to hand him out better terms after just 12 months? Or is it just a further adjustment to an already skewed wage bill?
For the last available published accounts, the Gunners possessed a wage bill £33million more expensive than Tottenham Hotspur’s. Yet over the last two season’s, the gap between themselves and their North London rivals has in fact shrunk, rather than increased. The continuous flow of Champions League football has been the overwhelming fuel behind that disparity. Their failure to manage it properly may well be driving force behind what brings it back down again.
Liverpool’s resounding 5-0 victory over a weakened Swansea side at the weekend at Anfield provided a small sign of hope that while a place in the top four by the end of the season looks a long shot, that with a reasonably straightforward fixture list between now and the end of the campaign, that the side still stands a chance.
With manager Michael Laudrup clearly trying to prepare his team for their big day out at Wembley next week as they head into the Capital One Cup final against League Two’s Bradford City as the overwhelming favourites, his decision to rest a number of key faces was at least understandable, even if the performance was unforgivable. Nevertheless, the manner of the hosts win saw them end a five-match winless streak and finally put to bed the statistical anomaly that has dogged their season so far – the fact that they had failed to win a game against a team ranked inside the top ten in the league all season and after Southampton’s surprise win over Manchester City the other week, they even became the last side in the top flight this term to do so.
Of course, that includes the recent 2-0 loss in front of their own fans to West Brom, which looked every inch the textbook away performance from a limited but resilient Baggies. While Brendan Rodgers’ side were far from their best, they should still have done enough to avoid yet another embarrassing defeat to a team they should be beating on home soil and it perfectly encapsulated their up and down campaign so far. In times of transition, an inconsistent nature will be rife and the side are already looking worryingly reliant on Daniel Sturridge to galvanise their fluid attack up front.
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Next up on the agenda are Russian champions Zenit St Petersburg in the Europa League and a testing but not insurmountable 2-0 deficit to overhaul, but should they fail to be inspired on Thursday and exit at the first knockout stage of the competition, it could have a positive effect in the long run on their top four hopes, with both Tottenham and Chelsea still likely to go further into the draw.
Liverpool sit nine points off Tottenham in fourth at the moment having played a game more than Andre Villas-Boas’ side and Rodgers sounded cautious on his team’s chances of clinching an unlikely turnaround in their league fortunes after the Swansea win, telling reporters: “I am an optimist, you have to be, but we’ll not get too carried away. I’ve likened us to a marathon runner just getting ready for the finish line, ready to make our move, and then we trip ourselves up.
“That is something we have to change going forward for the remainder of the season and finish as strong as we can.”
They are the words of a man refusing to throw in the towel in public but acutely aware that his side are in last-chance saloon territory. Of the club’s final 11 games, five of them are at Anfield and all against teams with plenty left to play for in Chelsea, Everton, Tottenham, QPR and West Ham. It could work both ways but with Rafa Benitez’s side still possessing the ability to implode at any given moment and Tottenham stretched by a relatively thin squad competing on two fronts, there could be just a glimmer of an opening.
When you throw into the mix that the club’s remaining away games are against Wigan, Southampton, Reading, Aston Villa, Newcastle and Fulham and it becomes increasingly clear that the vast majority of the team’s difficult away games this season are already out of the way and that a run, the sort required now to play themselves back into contention, is certainly possible.
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Under Rodgers’ guidance, the club do still look dangerously fragile at the back to the counter and any sort of physical battle, while the lack of leadership on show at times will have to be seriously addressed in the summer, but in a campaign where being the tallest dwarf might be just enough to tip them over the line, even with a sizeable point gap to overcome, they are worthy of consideration.
It’s difficult to ever truly tell when this Liverpool side has turned a corner and just when it looks as if they are starting to put a run together, they deliver a performance and result like the one against Aston Villa, or West Brom just last week, but with a kind fixture list between now and their last game at home to QPR on May the 19th, they at least stand a chance still of validating their undoubted progress in recent months.
Phil Jagielka has revealed he is yet to fully recover from a knee injury but will not let the pain stop him playing for Everton.
The centre-half had to take a painkilling injection ahead of the win over Stoke on Saturday and may have to do so again before the Goodison Park side travel to top-four rivals Spurs on Saturday.
Everton are still involved in the battle for a place in next season’s Champions League, as they trail fourth-placed Chelsea by four points, and Jagielka is desperate to do all he can to help his side secure a place in Europe’s top competition next season.
“It’s not quite healed up yet but it will get there and I can play without any problems,” Jagielka told the Liverpool Echo.
“I’ve got to have an injection to take a bit of the pain away because there’s still a bit of scar tissue but it’s part and parcel of being a footballer.
“I’ve been desperate to get back training and playing with the lads. It’s a boring time being on your own, especially being injured.
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“I’ve been there before and so it’s been nice to get back amongst it this week, even more so to play.”
Boss Malky Mackay says he is already working out who to splash his £25m summer transfer kitty on after leading Cardiff to promotion.
The club’s Malaysian owners promised the City boss this allowance if they achieved promotion to the Premier League this season. Now that this objective has been reached following Tuesday’s 0-0 draw with Charlton, he is busy drawing up his wish-list.
“We’re going to plan properly and that’s started already and we’ll now put that into action,” he told BBC sport.
“We’ll make sure the departments we’ve opened up at the football club and the structure we’ve implemented keeps striving forward.
“Change is constant and if you don’t go with it, you’re left behind.”
Cardiff will become the second Welsh side in the top flight next season as they join Swansea in the division and it will be the first time they are back up with the elite since 1961.
Mackay did admit his side would face a “huge challenge” of avoiding relegation next season. However, the manager has the proven ability to transform a club. Within the past two seasons, Cardiff added 20 players and the manager altered their training, scouting and sports science techniques.
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“We’ll continue that to make sure we give ourselves the best chance we can in the Premier League” he said.
To suggest that Atletico Madrid’s prolific hitman Radamel Falcao might already be searching out an English phrasebook might seem a little premature, but with interest in the Colombian reaching almost feverish levels on these shores, there’s every chance that the 27-year-old could find himself plying his trade in England next term.
With a reported release clause of near on £52million and alleged wage demands in excess of £200,000, Falcao is of course a target for only a very select few in the European game.
But with Barcelona’s interest having cooled and Atletico reportedly holding no designs on selling up to local rivals Real Madrid, bar a potential move to Paris Saint-Germain, the path is seemingly paved for the former-Porto man to try his hand within the Premier League.
With the likes of Chelsea, Manchester City and even perhaps Manchester United interested in acquiring the Colombian’s services, it’s likely that Falcao will have no shortage of suitors come the summer. But far from simply analyzing what team would benefit the most from his unique set of striking gifts, what club offers the best move for the player himself?
Certainly, from a financial perspective all three of the aforementioned trio – a term used loosely, given the very tentative authenticity of United’s rumoured interest – would have few problems in financing Falcao’s extortionate wage demands.
With the notorious bargaining skills of Jorge Mendes as an agent, no club is likely to be able to bring the 27-year-old to their haunts without laying out a significant financial package. But with Roman Abramovich said to be a huge fan of the player and Manchester City’s de facto owner Sheikh Mansour presumably determined to regain his side’s Premier League crown, Falcao isn’t likely to find personal terms an issue with any of his English suitors.
Differentiating quite where Falcao would be better off from a purely sporting perspective, however, isn’t quite as easy a feat.
Chelsea have long been mooted as arguably the most likeliest destination for Falcao, should he move to England this summer. With the club in need of a consistently world-class striker and current incumbent, the faltering Fernando Torres, reportedly an attractive makeweight for Atletico manager Diego Simeone, a move to Stamford Bridge seems to make sense all ways up.
Yet for as logical as such a move may seen, there are enough variables floating around West London to ensure that the one time-River Plate striker would have plenty of food for thought before agreeing to sign on the dotted line for the Blues.
With Rafa Benitez set to step down from his interim managerial role at the end of the season, there is a strange uncertainty to the future direction in which the Stamford Bridge ship is set to sale. One would imagine that Abramovich would be keen to explain to Falcao in detail who he’s likely to be plying his trade under, yet even with May now fast approaching, we’re still no closer to discovering who is set to take the managerial reigns at the club this season.
With talk of Jose Mourinho’s return to the club now dampened and such a small shortlist of real, renowned European names there for the club to look at, would Falcao feel quite as keen as linking up with, say, a David Moyes like manager? Certainly, should the Blues fail to qualify for the Champions League, they would face an almost impossible task in attracting a player to the club who remains so desperate to play in the competition.
Although if stability is one of the most off-putting factors regarding a potential Falcao switch to Chelsea, then it seems difficult to believe how Manchester City offer a striking foundation of solidarity for the Colombian to become part of.
After a season in which City have so meekly surrendered their Premier League title, there are no guarantees that Roberto Mancini will be there to commandeer his side for another campaign and even fewer clues as to who might feasibly replace him. Either way, should Falcao find himself likely to be offered identical personal terms from both clubs, he’s probably quite likely to find himself offered a similar level of question marks from Chelsea and Manchester City as well.
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Yet if stability isn’t a guarantee at either club, then a wealth of attacking talent most certainly is. Plump for either club and Falcao can look forward to having the likes of Juan Mata and Eden Hazard or David Silva and Yaya Toure supplying him the goods to feed upon. But while Mancini would surely fire Falcao straight into the starting line up at the Etihad Stadium, it’s at Stamford Bridge where you feel a more natural home awaits the prolific marksman.
With Fernando Torres widely accepted to be the one who makes way for Falcao should he arrive at the club, although Demba Ba would have a role to play, the Atletico man would be the indisputable main man down at Chelsea. With the likes of Sergio Aguero, Carlos Tevez and Edin Dzeko plying their trade at City, regardless of how well Falcao may or may not link up with one of the feted trio, he’s not going to be afforded the autonomy that he will do at Stamford Bridge.
Even if City decide to sell another of the aforementioned trio, at Chelsea, he’s not going to have to play beside another out-and-out striker or face anything in the way of the sort of competition he would do up at the Etihad.
Either club would offer Radamel Falcao a superb base in which to push on during the prime years of his career, but for all the questions that are still to be answered at Stamford Bridge, it’s Chelsea which perhaps offer him the better pick.
After their disappointing defeat to Crystal Palace in the Championship Play-off semi-finals, it seems Gus Poyet might have managed his last match for the Seagulls. Poyet, along with his assistants Mauricio Taricco and Charlie Oatway, were suspended by the Brighton board via a text message on Wednesday evening. Despite initial reports suggesting it was due to comments made by Poyet about the club’s budget, it fails to explain the suspensions for Taricco and Oatway.
It is now suggested that the trio were suspended for alleged breach of contract, with rumours that Poyet told his players on Tuesday that he couldn’t guarantee his future at the club. With a host of clubs linked with Poyet, it seems Brighton have taken a big step towards losing the former Chelsea player as their manager. But whose dugout could the Uruguayan be standing in next season? Click below to reveal the 5 teams he could be managing.
Click on the Goodison crowd to see Gus’ 5 options
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Peter Odemwingie says that he is “delighted” to have joined Cardiff from West Brom.
The controversial Nigerian attacker completed a deadline day £2.5million switch to the south of Wales from the Midlands after falling out of favour at the Hawthorns.
Odemwingie became the newly promoted club’s eighth signing of the summer, and is seen as a player that can add experience and attacking flair to their squad as they look to avoid an immediate return to the Championship.
Speaking to the club’s official website, the 32-year-old revealed that he was very happy to have finalised the move.
“I’m delighted to complete my move to Cardiff City. I’m looking forward to this fresh start at a Club that is really going places, a team that’s progressing fast,” he said.
“I’ve seen a little bit of the City and I know that my wife and I will really enjoy living in Cardiff. I can’t wait to get started – this move makes me very happy.”
Odemwingie fell down the pecking order with West Brom following his antics during the January transfer window.
The versatile forward drove to QPR’s Loftus Road stadium in a bid to push through a late move to the London club, despite not having permission to complete a move.
Cardiff fans, will Peter Odemwingie prove to be a good addition to your squad?
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