Ratcliffe favourite opens door to Man United move as INEOS target free transfer to partner Mainoo
Luton Town midfielder Ross Barkley says he “wants to play in Europe again” having been linked with a move to Manchester United.
Barkley has been in brilliant form for Luton this season having joined on a free transfer in August, playing an integral role in their bid to remain in the Premier League.
Sir Jim and Sir Dave huge admirers
A report in February claimed United chief Sir Jim Ratcliffe had identified Barkley as a potential signing to bolster United’s midfield.
It was claimed that both Ratcliffe and INEOS director of sport Sir Dave Brailsford are both huge admirers of Barkley from their time together at Ligue 1 side Nice, and it’s thought he could be a replacement for Casemiro, who’s set to leave at the end of the season.
Barkley spent last season at Nice before joining Luton after four up and down seasons with Chelsea.
The 30-year-old may well be in the best form of his career having failed to live up to what were very high expectations for most of it having received rave reviews for his performances when he first broke into the Everton first team in 2013.
“I want to play in Europe again…”
Barkley is free to leave Luton at the end of the season having only signed a one year contract and admits his goal is to play in Europe again.
“I want to play in the Premier League,” Barkley told Sky Sports.
“I want to play in Europe again but I’m not really focused on that now.
Related video: Erik ten Hag emphasises need to replace Man Utd football director John Murtough (Daily Mail)
“I want to help the club stay in the league. I love the club. It’s helped me so much and I owe them a lot. So I’m focused on that and thinking about nothing other than helping them do that.”
Barkley is set to face Manchester City this Saturday as Luton travel to the Etihad Stadium and the midfielder believes he is a match for the best in the Premier League.
“I believe I can compete with the top players at Man City and Arsenal,” said Barkley.
“I feel like I’m confident enough to know what their strengths are and what their weaknesses are.
“I feel like I can exploit certain things but when we play Man City, they will have most of the possession so it’s about what you do out of possession. We need to be in the right positions and stick together going forward. Hopefully, I can make some things happen.”
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Xabi Alonso made Liverpool U-turn after director talks as Richard Hughes targets £120.5m trio
Xabi Alonso was ‘on the brink’ of agreeing to join Liverpool at the end of the season before talks with the Bayer Leverkusen director of football.
Alonso was Liverpool’s number one choice to replace Jurgen Klopp at Anfield before announcing in a press conference last month that it was his ambition to remain as Leverkusen boss for at least another season.
Bags packed for Liverpool
The German side are on course to win a sensational treble this season and despite interest from Liverpool and Bayern Munich, Alonso insists the BayArena is “the right place for me to be, to develop as a coach.”
Ruben Amorim has since replaced Alonso as the firm favourite to take the helm at Liverpool, but Football Transfers have revealed the Reds did indeed come close to persuading Alonso to join.
READ MORE: Five reasons Liverpool should be glad they dodged a bullet with Xabi Alonso…
They claim the former midfielder ‘was on the brink of a sensational return to Liverpool, before changing his mind’ after talks with Bayer’s director of sport, Simon Rolfe, as well as chairman Fernando Carro.
In those talks Alonso is said to have made it clear ‘that if he was to stay on as Bayer manager certain players were not to be sold in the summer’.
Florian Wirtz in particular is a player hugely admired by some of Europe’s elite teams, including Liverpool and Manchester City, but Edmond Tapsoba, Piero Hincapie, Alejandro Grimaldo, Jeremie Frimpong and Victor Boniface have also been linked with a move this summer.Related video: Why pick just one miracle? Alonso can't choose between Leverkusen or Liverpool (SNTV)
Richard Hughes targets trio
And that same report claims Liverpool, along with Arsenal and Bayern, ‘admire’ Grimaldo and are considering a move for the wing-back.
The 28-year-old – valued at £38.5m by Transfermarkt – moved to Leverkusen on a free transfer from Benfica in the summer and has played a huge role in the club’s incredible run this season, contributing an astonishing 26 goal contributions in all competitions.
But having turned their attention to Sporting boss Amorim, it’s no great surprise that Liverpool are now also being linked with a number of the Portuguese side’s star players.
And Football Insider claim new sporting director Richard Hughes has set his sights on £52m-rated centre-back Goncalo Inacio and Tottenham academy graduate Marcus Edwards, who’s previously been linked with a £30m return to the Premier League, with Manchester United and Spurs both supposedly keen.
READ MORE: Five Sporting players Ruben Amorim should bring with him to Liverpool
Carragher explains why Haaland ‘is not world class’ as ‘bully’ victim discovers Real Madrid ‘problem’
Liverpool legend Jamie Carragher has claimed Manchester City striker Erling Haaland “is yet to become a world-class player”.
Haaland’s form in front of goal since joining the Cityzens has most certainly been world class, netting 82 times in 90 appearances.
Erling Haaland is not world class – Jamie Carragher
Football is a fickle game, though, and after a few below-par performances against top opposition, the Norweigan hitman has come under fire.
He failed to make an impact in the 0-0 draw at home to Premier League title rivals Arsenal and was likened to a “League Two player” by Manchester United legend Roy Keane.
Keane has since double downed on this claim after an anonymous showing against Real Madrid on Tuesday, with ex-Chelsea defender Antonio Rudiger giving him a tough time.
The latest big name to jump on the bandwagon is Keane’s Sky Sports colleague Carragher, who has said if Haaland wants to be a “world-class player”, he must have more to his game than “one, all-encompassing trait”.
READ MORE: The ridiculous stats of Erling Haaland: More Champions League knock-out goals than Neymar
The former England centre-back told The Telegraph: “Erling Haaland is the ultimate luxury footballer. He is undoubtedly one of the world’s greatest goal-scorers, but is yet to become a world-class player.
“To be truly world-class you need more than one, all-encompassing trait. Think of the best Premier League strikers of the last 20 years – Thierry Henry, Luis Suarez or Harry Kane – and they had or have a major influence on the biggest matches whether they scored or not.Related video: Guardiola defends Haaland form and City approach to tiredness (Dailymotion)
“All of them could play for any side in the world and contribute more than an impressive strike-rate.
“In general play, Haaland is not at the same level as these strikers yet, his three most recent games against top class centre-backs confirming that for all his brilliance inside the penalty area, he is a work-in-progress out of it.
“Virgil van Dijk, William Saliba and Antonio Rudiger bullied Haaland, the much-hyped showdowns between top defenders and a goal machine nothing of the sort. They were a mismatch rather than a match-up.
“If his sole interest is breaking goalscoring records, he has no need to change anything.
“If he has serious ambitions to win the Ballon d’Or and play for Real Madrid, he may have a problem. He must add more to his game to make that leap and to seriously challenge his rival to the title of best player of his generation, Kylian Mbappe.”
Straight to the comments! Is Erling Haaland world class? Well, of course he is. Join the discussion anyway…
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Premier League cultural shift under way as ticket prices spark outrage
It tells us something about the mental state of the Premier League that Financial Fair Play is such a big talking point at the moment, because the simple fact is that neither clubs nor fans are particularly interested in cost control measures except when it suits them.
Those rare clubs who aim for fiscal responsibility and self-sustainability all eventually come under fire for being ‘unambitious’. Those who end up in financial difficulty or under investigation from football’s various powers that be always end up blaming either the owners, the authorities, or both.
Adversarial English culture hurt protests’ strength
There is a transparent hypocrisy behind this: on the whole, demand spending, then wail about how unfair it is that they must suffer the consequences when their clubs go too far and wind up in danger.
Of course, we’re well aware that fans are not, in fact, one amorphous blob of unified consciousness; the two ends of that reaction/counter-reaction routine do not necessarily cross over in a Venn diagram. That many are willing to protest for cheaper season tickets – as Liverpool fans are just the latest to do, but far from alone – tells us there are thousands who take these things very seriously indeed.
But there are plenty more who do not really seem that bothered about where money comes from or where it goes, as long as it improves their own team – and preferably as long as the fans aren’t asked to pay for it.
This is in contrast to some other countries, where fans are more likely to come out against their own clubs if they feel they are behaving unethically or irresponsibly, with rival supporters nodding along in agreement with the cause. There is a recognition that the overall state of the game is more important than club loyalties.Related video: 'We just have to be Liverpool' - Klopp sympathetic to ticket price protest 'whistles' (SNTV)That still exists here, but it has been a difficult battle for organisations like the FSA to put that across to the majority of more casual fans. (By genuine coincidence, the FSA published some enlightening and helpful numbers while we were writing this piece).
No one set of fans are especially better or worse than another for this; there is simply something baked into English culture – from the tabloids to our legal system to our politics to our football tribes – that everything has to be adversarial, at all times, and whoever argues best or loudest or longest gets to win. In this climate, co-operation for mutual benefit is for losers.
But things may well be changing. Some fan groups genuinely are willing to repeatedly challenge and question their own clubs, while there have been significant successes when it comes to causes that have seen different sets of fans coming together – the Twenty’s Plenty campaign being a notable example. We’ve seen encouraging signs of cross-club cooperation in recent weeks, with Spurs, Newcastle, and Liverpool fans liaising on banners and protests to keep the issue in the public eye.
Premier League fan groups were also key to Football Supporters Europe’s campaign to keep ticket prices in UEFA competitions capped.
That’s great to see, because up until now, fans’ general isolation from one another has made their position weaker. Blanket agreements to cap home ticket prices may be an easier pill for clubs to swallow, if only fans showed a genuine desire to push for them, as they have successfully with away prices. Instead, their unwillingness to join forces meant clubs could simply shrug and say ‘but we have to raise prices to keep up with that lot up the road’.
Meanwhile, there are actually some clubs who wish things were different, but feel trapped in a game with transparently stupid rules, but where the only chance to succeed is to play along. For them, it is very much a case of hate the game, not the player.
The Premier League’s aims are at least along the right lines in terms of setting a spending cap pegged to a percentage of revenue. Football’s problem, demonstrably, is not an absence of wealth in the game; it is that money is so freely and poorly spent out of all proportion with necessity. If the guy next door has a Jaguar, you have to get a Ferrari.
That’s because if club owners were interested solely in making money, and not ego and glory, they would never, ever have bought a football club in the first place; there are far better investments one can make if that is your aim.
But…for all the glumness of these complaints, we also get it. Yes, we’d all be quite happy in a Seat Ibiza in reality, but Ferraris are more fun – and most of us will never get the chance to actually own an Italian sports car. The next best thing? Watching an Italian sportsperson who nominally represents you.
There’s a reason that lots of people are prone to letting football clubs subsume more of their identity than is necessarily helpful – and sport, at its very core, is not about sharing and caring. It’s about the glory of winning and (avoiding) the abject misery of losing. It’s not surprising that over time, that morphed into full-on Logan Roy, free market, greed is good, ‘we won the transfer window’ revelry in matters off the pitch as well as on it.
It’s genuinely fantastic as long as you don’t look past the gloss of it all, and god knows you can’t spend your entire life joylessly tut-tutting at everything. It’s easy to despair at fans for their lack of interest in balance sheets, but nobody falls in love with the game because they would spend Saturday afternoons eagerly watching the results come in on the Companies House website.
But those who do campaign tirelessly for these things are an ultimate benefit to the game, and their increasingly willingness to start working with each other only makes that even more the case
Man City v Luton next? Championship players to Premier League champion slayers XI
Little Luton Town vs mighty Manchester City.
A club that was playing non-league football a decade ago against a club backed by the wealth of an entire country a very, very, very rich individual.
This fixture might’ve looked like the biggest mismatch in Premier League history at the start of the season, but the Hatters have a real chance of survival with just six games to go and managed to take a shock lead against the title-holders back in December.
Is a huge upset on the cards? Probably not, but here’s an XI made up from players who helped a newly promoted side overcome the reigning champions.
Goalkeeper: Brian Jensen
The 2009/10 season saw Burnley make their Premier League debut, with title-holders Manchester United the visitors for Turf Moor’s first top-flight fixture in over thirty years.
Robbie Blake gave the Clarets a surprise early lead but the Red Devils had a chance to equalise with a penalty before half-time. Brian Jensen kept out Micheal Carrick’s spot-kick and the Danish ‘keeper continued to frustrate Alex Ferguson’s men to keep a clean sheet and earn his side all three points.
If you fancy a goalkeeper challenge, try naming the Burnley ‘keeper who played for the newly promoted Clarets in a 1-0 win over champions Manchester City in the 2014/15 season.
Straight to the comments! Let us know…Related video: Doesn't matter playing first or last in title race, just have to win - Guardiola (Dailymotion)
Right-back: Michael Gray
Former England international Michael Gray will have to start at right-back for this side, with his goal against Manchester United in the 1996/97 season helping Sunderland to a 2-1 win against the champions.
Despite the shock result, the reverse fixture at Old Trafford turned out to be the more memorable of the two, thanks to Eric Cantona’s famous goal and subsequent celebration in a 5-0 win for the home side.
Centre-back: John Wark
The maiden Premier League season saw a disaster of a defence from reigning champions Leeds United. The last-ever winners of the old First Division managed to lose to all three promoted teams the following campaign, with Ipswich Town veteran John Wark scoring twice in a 4-2 win for the Tractor Boys.
Leeds also went down 4-1 to Middlesbrough and 3-1 to Blackburn Rovers.
Centre-back: Alan Stubbs
Blackburn Rovers ended up on the wrong side of a champions vs newbie tussle three years later, losing out to Bolton Wanderers early on in the 1995/96 season thanks to a late winner from Alan Stubbs.
Rovers had famously pipped Manchester United to the title a few months earlier but started the defence of their crown in dreadful fashion, losing four of their first six games.
READ MORE: Top 10 run-in moments in Premier League title race history has obvious No. 1
Left-back: Stuart Pearce
Brian Clough’s final season at Nottingham Forest ended in relegation to the second tier but one the iconic manager’s former players took the club back to the promised land at the first attempt. Forest’s first year back in the top-flight saw Frank Clark guiding his men to an incredible third-place finish in the 1994/95 season, with one of the highlights a 2-1 win at Old Trafford that saw captain Stuart Pearce bag the winner.
Right-wing: Steve Stone
Steve Stone was playing for Forest that day and nearly a decade later he scored his own winner for a promoted side against Manchester United.
Stone was a Portsmouth player in the 2003/04 season; the club’s first ever Premier League campaign, having not competed in the top tier for fifteen years. Harry Redknapp led the south coast outfit to a solid 13th place finish, with a 1-0 win over the Red Devils in April helping them to safety.
Central midfield: Mario Lemina
Fulham’s return to the top flight for the 2020/21 season ended in relegation, but the Cottagers did pick up an impressive three points at Anfield before slipping back into the Championship.
Liverpool held the Premier League crown at the time, following the Reds’ remarkable campaign the previous year but six consecutive home losses left Jurgen Klopp’s men eighth in the table come March. Fulham inflicted the last of those defeats, with on-loan midfielder Mario Lemina scoring the only goal of the game.
Central midfield: Steven Davis
Strange to think that Nathan Jones’ Southampton was the only side to knock Manchester City out of a cup competition last season, but the Saints did actually have form for upsetting the odds in this fixture.
The opening day of the 2012/13 campaign saw newly promoted Southampton visit the Etihad to play the newest name on the Premier League trophy, with Roberto Mancini’s men still high on that ‘Aguerooooo’ moment. City ran out 3-2 winners but the reverse fixture at St. Mary’s in February ended in defeat for the champions, with Steven Davis scoring in a game that marked Mauricio Pochettino’s first win in English football.
Left-wing: Robert Snodgrass
Leicester City’s title win in 2016 was perhaps the most astonishing feat in Premier League history, but their hopes of retaining the crown took a knock on the first day of the 2016/17 season.
Hull City seemed like easy prey for the Foxes as the newly promoted side faced struggles on and off the pitch, with no manager, a depleted squad and fans protesting against the owner. However, the Tigers emerged victorious at the KCOM stadium after Robert Snodgrass struck in the second half to make it 2-1 to the home team.
Striker: Glenn Murray
Claudio Ranieri’s triumph with Leicester saw the former Chelsea boss seize the Premier League crown from his old club, with the Stamford Bridge outfit putting up one of the most feeble title defences in recent history.
Chelsea hadn’t lost to a promoted side since Charlton in 2001, but third-season Jose Mourinho syndrome kicked in and resulted in Bournemouth (making their top-flight debut) inflicting an eighth defeat of the season on the champions.
Substitute Glenn Murray scored the only goal of the game, with the striker finding the net after being on the pitch for just two minutes. Two weeks was all it took for Mourinho to be out of a job after that result.
Striker: Teemu Pukki
If Luton need any inspiration, Norwich City might just be the unlikely source, as the Canaries remain the last promoted side to defeat Manchester City.
Early on in the COVID hit 2019/20 season, Pep Guardiola’s men travelled south to Carrow Road in fine fettle, having picked up ten points from their opening four games, scoring fourteen goals along the way. However, a coupon-busting 3-2 triumph for the home team saw star striker Teemu Pukki grab the decisive goal as the champions slumped to their first loss of the campaign.
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