West Brom defender Marek Cech could leave the club at the end of this season after revealing that new contract talks had stalled.
However, the Slovakia international insists he is keen to stay at The Hawthorns and hopes the discussions will resume soon.
He said:"My contract finishes at the end of this season but at the moment I am not thinking about it. We are concentrating on the Premier League and how we will do.
"At the beginning of the season we spoke about prolonging my contract but we didn't reach an agreement.
"Maybe we will return to it in the winter or maybe next summer, we will see. But now I am concentrating on my play in the Premier League after my injury. That is the most important thing.
"The club have a one-year option so they could take that up, but they don't have to. Everything is good at the moment but football can change very quickly."
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The Baggies signed the 27-year-old in the summer of 2008 since when he has gone on to play 55 games for the club.Subscribe to Football FanCast News Headlines by Email
Aston Villa will make a move for former Celtic winger Aiden McGeady if they are forced to sell England international Ashley Young.
Villa boss Gerard Houllier is reluctant to let Young leave the club, but with the 25-year-old refusing to sign a new contract, the Frenchman may have no choice but to sell him to the highest bidder.
Manchester United are thought to be ready to push through a £20million bid for the former Watford player in the January transfer window, while Liverpool and Tottenham have also shown an interest.
McGeady is currently with Spartak Moscow after his summer exit from Celtic but it's understood the £12million man – who is the most expensive Scottish footballing export – has found life tough in the Russian capital and may welcome the chance of a switch to the Premier League.
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Aston Villa eased their relegation worries with a 2-1 success against local rivals West Brom on Saturday and will be hoping to build on this away at Wigan next weekend.Subscribe to Football FanCast News Headlines by Email
It has emerged that Kenny Dalglish is targeting Aston Villa winger Stewart Downing as his first signing during his second spell as a manager of the Reds. New Liverpool manager Dalglish has been told by chairman Tom Werner that he has money to spend, but time is running out in the January transfer window to make changes to the Anfield club’s beleaguered squad. King Kenny is thought to be keen to do a deal for Downing as quickly as possible before he turns his attention to other targets, but any transfer is dependent on the exit of Ryan Babel.
Dalglish met with the Anfield owners for the first time this week to discuss possible Liverpool targets in January and it is thought that Downing was at the top of the list. The Liverpool manager is keen to add some width to his side, something that the Reds are severely lacking at the moment, and is a long-time admirer of the Aston Villa and England winger.
Liverpool will step up their pursuit for Downing once Babel’s exit from the club has been confirmed. The Premier League club have already accepted an offer from German club Hoffenheim for the 24-year-old, but the Dutch forward is yet to agree terms with the Bundesliga outfit, but will want to end his disappointing spell at Anfield sooner rather than later.
Downing himself is keen to move to Liverpool in an attempt to further his international career. The former Middlesbrough winger is desperate to be involved with England in Euro 2012 and sees a move to Anfield as a step forward in his career. However, it remains to be seen whether Aston Villa manager Gerard Houllier is prepared to let Downing leave as he tries to reverse the fortunes of the West Midlands club.
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Blackpool’s Ian Holloway suspected nothing would stop Manchester United as they battled their way back from 2-0 down at Bloomfield Road.
Hosts Blackpool led thanks to goals from Craig Cathcart and DJ Campbell and should have had a penalty when Rafael bundled over Luke Varney inside the area early in the second half.
But after being denied the chance to make it 3-0, Holloway’s worst fears were confirmed when the English Premier League leaders came roaring back.
Strikes from Dimitar Berbatov and Javier Hernandez pulled United level. But United were not merely content with saving their undefeated league record, and Bulgarian forward Berbatov struck again to seal a come-from-behind victory.
“No matter what you do they are not going to stop,” Holloway said.
“You’ve got to give them credit. The substitutions on the night, they’ve got such a great squad, their attitude and everything about them is fantastic. The tempo that they close you down (with) – my team are just not used to it.”
“Last time we faced that was Chelsea and they whooped us and Arsenal who absolutely murdered us.”
“We could have gone 3-0 up and it wouldn’t have been undeserved, would it?”
Speculation continues to mount that star man Charlie Adam – who had a transfer request declined on Monday – will be prised away from the promoted side. Holloway said that, such is the regard the Scot held in at Blackpool, that a tribute to a midfield lynchpin would not be out of place.
“I know Charlie Adam will go down in folk history and I might even start making a statue to him myself,” he said.
“Give me a pen-knife and a hammer and I’ll start carving it out of wood because I can’t afford a bronze one.”
Manchester United coach Sir Alex Ferguson believes the comeback marks another chapter in the club’s long and proud record of never-say-die victories.
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“We have come from two goals down and, apart from anything, it shows everyone what can be achieved by producing our best,” Ferguson said.
“In the second half, there was some great stuff. That team can achieve a lot.”
“You can never say never because this club never gives in. The history tells you that, and that is why the history is so great. We never give in. When we got the second goal I thought we would go on to win by more because at that moment we were playing really well.”
Birmingham City have signed defender Curtis Davies from arch rivals Aston Villa.
Davies, 25, joins the St. Andrew’s outfit on a three-and-a-half-year deal for an undisclosed fee, rumoured to be just under two million pounds.
The former England Under-21 international will help City manager Alex McLeish as he aims to steer Birmingham clear of the relegation zone.
Davies has been bought to provide cover the loss of Scott Dann after the defender’s recent season-ending injury.
Davies has been at Villa since August 2007 when he joined on a season-long loan deal from West Bromwich Albion, who he skippered and became their second-ever youngest captain.
He made 49 Premier League appearances for Villa, scoring three goals but has not featured once for Gerard Houllier’s side in the Premier League this season.
He recently had a three-month loan spell under Sven Goran Eriksson’s Leicester City, where he made 12 appearances for the Championship side.
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Davies will have to wait before making his City debut as he will not feature on Saturday when Birmingham host Coventry in the FA Cup fourth round.
The defender is also ineligible for the Carling Cup final, which City qualified for after a 4-3 aggregate victory over West Ham on Wednesday, because he represented Villa earlier in this season’s competition.
It is bound to be a bit of a circus with the media focusing all attention come Sunday at Stamford Bridge. New record breaking signing, Fernando Torres is set to make his debut for the Blues against his former club Liverpool which promises to be 90 minutes of drama. Torres, who had an exceptional scoring record against Chelsea when playing for Liverpool will be looking to reverse that form. He’ll be joined by other January transfer window signing, David Luiz is also available for his debut.
Liverpool come into this game on three successive victories and will be full of confidence with their new signing, Luis Suarez coming off the bench to score against Stoke City mid-week. Suarez hadn’t even trained with his new team mates before joining in on the action and he didn’t waste his opportunity although had some fortune.
With the Torres furore surrounding this game, the atmosphere will be tense and the game fast paced. Just like the games between both clubs in recent seasons from the Champions League and Premier League alike but what 3 players would I recommend to win you PickLive?
You can’t deny Torres’ goal scoring talent so he’s an automatic pick for this game like most people would choose. My other choice would be Frenchman, Nicolas Anelka who was form against Sunderland midweek, and a 4-2 victory that looked inspired by the new signings. Although Suarez would be an interesting pick, there’s no guarantee he will start this game so my third player would be Liverpool’s Steven Gerrard. It’s high profile games like this that high profile players shine and with Torres, Anelka and Gerrard as your picks, you’re bound to score maximum points. Disagree? Then go and register to PickLive, if you haven’t already and pick your 3 players of choice for the game and see if you can win the PickLive jackpot!
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Porto won a thrilling Europa League tie over Sevilla on away goals, despite the Spaniards claiming the second leg 1-0 on Wednesday.The Portuguese club claimed a 2-1 away win in the opening leg of their round-of-32 encounter and, while Sevilla went ahead in the 71st minute via Luis Fabiano at the Estadio Do Dragao, they could not find an overall winner.Porto looked to seal the tie just moments prior to the game’s only goal, when Hulk was one-on-one with Sevilla goalkeeper Javi Varas – in for the injured Andres Palop – but the Brazilian striker fired his shot wide of the right post.Fabiano capitalised as Sevilla hit Porto on the break, and defender Alvaro Pereira’s red card in the 72nd minute for a two-footed challenge gave the Spaniards an extra man and hope of progressing to the final 16.But the seventh-placed La Liga club almost immediately lost their numerical advantage when Alexis was shown a red card in the 77th minute, and Porto held on for an away goals victory.Sevilla will take little solace in holding Porto scoreless for the first time in 29 matches in all competitions this season, with the Liga Sagres leaders eight points ahead of defending champions Benfica and an enormous 23 points clear of third-placed Sporting Lisbon on the table.
Inter Milan survived a late penalty attempt to escape with a 1-1 draw away to Brescia in the Serie A on Friday.Brescia captain Andrea Caracciolo levelled the match at 1-1 after Samuel Eto’o opened the goal-scoring for the visitors, but saw his late penalty saved by Inter custodian Julio Cesar.The visitors had a slight glimmer of hope when Caracciolo was then sent off in injury time, levelling the proceedings at 10 men apiece after Ivan Cordoba saw red, but it was not to be as Inter stumbled in their pursuit of Serie A leaders AC Milan.Inter temporarily narrow the gap between themselves and their city rivals to four points, but Milan will almost certainly widen it to seven when they host bottom-placed Bari on Saturday.Brescia stay second bottom on the table, but could remain two points away from escaping the drop zone if Lecce fall at home to Bologna on Sunday.Eto’o nabbed his fourth goal from three league games in the 18th minute, the Cameroon international flicking on Andrea Ranocchia’s header at the six-yard box following Wesley Sneijder’s corner.The visitors had looked dangerous for much of the match and by rights should have been two goals ahead by the time Caracciolo found an unlikely equaliser in the 85th minute.It came from a dreadful defensive error, with Cordoba inexplicably nodding Alessandro Diamanti’s corner kick forward into the path of the Brescia skipper, who gleefully headed beyond Cesar.The Inter substitute then gave Brescia a chance to win it when he pulled down Brazilian substitute Eder in the area in the 89th minute, but Caracciolo was unable to convert with the resultant spot kick.There was still more drama to come as Caracciolo joined Cordoba on the sidelines after earning a second caution for time-wasting, though Inter could not capitalise in the dying stages.
Whilst I fully understand that in a civilised society we have to have rules and regulations, since when has the FA had the right to run a dictatorship to the degree that they are legally entitled to suppress freedom of speech that our armed forces have fought and died for in the past and present?
If they put as much energy into tackling the total incompetence of their officials on the pitch, perhaps the football managers in the Premiership and other leagues would not be commenting about how bad they are. Perhaps if the FA took off their dark glasses they could see what the rest of us can see – continuous incompetence and inconsistency by their officials. Surely these managers and the public can’t all be wrong!
It is about time somebody challenged the FA or are they really the little tin gods they seem to think they are? They are a disgrace to football and it is about time they took their heads out of the sand and dealt with the problem.
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I accept there can be mistakes but not the school boy mistakes that the current officials are making. Where else in this country are you penalised for telling the truth? What Mr. Ferguson and Mr. Grant said and also Mr. Wenger and a few other managers was nothing but the truth and echoed by countless thousands of supporters. The only people who don’t seem to agree are these arrogant tin gods at the top of the FA – their rule is “agree with us and keep your mouth shut or be penalised”.
Perhaps football would be improved if we could get rid of the current ruling body and put someone in charge who knows a bit more about the game and who is prepared to deal with the standard of referees and linesmen.
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To redress the problem we need less bureaucracy and more action, and once this is sorted the rest of the Football governing bodies such as UEFA might take note and clean up their act as well.
1. When Two Tribes Go To War – It’s been a long time since I genuinely looked forward to an England match, and by “a long time”, I of course mean seven months, and by “looked forward”, I mean without a sickening sense of fearful foreboding, dread and embarrassment. However such is my frequent opining for the return of semi-regular home internationals (to at least help restore some atmospheric intensity to the never ending charade of semi-dutiful bored attendance and Mexican waving that accompanies almost every friendly Wembley visit – and yes I’m aware this wasn’t a friendly, or at Wembley) that I thought I ought to at least try and muster some half baked enthusiasm for this all-British competitive showdown.
And early on, the signs were good. We were treated to some good old fashioned pantomime anthem booing and things seemed set for a rollicking good derby with passions high and stakes even more so, with the home side clinging tenuously onto their dwindling hopes of qualification and the visitors locked in an epic leadership struggle with the mighty force of Montenegro (Hoo-Rar!)
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2. My Captain, My Captain – To add a little extra spice to proceedings, and possibly to help distract the viewers at home from the aggressive and seemingly ubiquitous attempts to get us to buy a Vauxhall (which included that most staunch facet of fooballing culture – the avant-garde visual medium of Trompe L’Oei) both teams were led out by recently adorned controversial captains. In the white corner we had the evil man-beast come Thundercat (England’s Lion-O) for the 21st Century (depending on your position) John Terry, recently re-employed after a high profile debacle that involved someone going behind a team-mates back (oh the ironing!) and in the red corner we had 20 year old Wenger-boy Aaron Ramsey, a bold and futurist approach from Gary Speed, though he probably shouldn’t agree to play golf with Craig Bellamy any time soon.
3. Jumping Jack Flash – Unfortunately for the spectacle, if not for us English, any hopes of a battle royal were scuppered by a lightning start for the Three Lions and the suicidal flying spider monkey tendencies of James Collins. Once the Welshman had brought down Ashley Young with an assortment of arms and legs the result threatened to descend into a Rugby score, which despite being a medium the hosts are clearly more comfortable in, is a recklessly irresponsible approach to a football match. This could’ve been a spring board to spur Wales on, but before you had time to say “Conversion Lampard” England were two up courtesy of some attractive route one football from the Johnson/Young/Bent triumvirate. At this point satisfaction was tempered slightly by the realisation (or confirmation) that Wales weren’t really very good, and that even super Gareth Bale and his unstoppable hoof and run routine wouldn’t have made that much of a difference anyway.
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4. Times They are a Changing – The most pleasing aspect to this game, from a jaded, cynical and bitter England fan’s perspective, is that the team Capello sent out was – for once – a genuinely fresh and exciting one, of sorts. Despite all the pomp and bluster about a new dawn, looking to youth and trying new faces, Don Fabio has rarely actually risked his chips in any meaningful way since the debacle that was South Africa 2010. The most depressing defeat of recent times was not the shambolic last 16 display against Germany, but the toothless capitulation against France at Wembley three months later. There we were, playing debatably the only team more inept and embarrassing than us in the summer, a team who – through a combination of federation and manager – had put virtually their entire World Cup squad on the naughty step and filled their positions with young, enthusiastic newcomers and rising stars looking to prove themselves after their baffling omission from the tournament, and we lost. Badly. We were completely outplayed by a team legitimately involved in purging themselves whilst we continued to trundle on under the illusion that the emergence of Adam Johnson had solved all our problems and that squad filling with defenders that play for Wolves but not actually playing them constituted “changing things.” Transitionally, very little that Capello’s done this season has been a bold tactic of choice. Calling up Johnson and more recently Jack Wilshere weren’t exactly hard calls to make. Every man woman and dog had already edited them into their FIFA or PES squads by then anyway. All the talk of change seemed an illusion. England were the same old rubbish and Gareth Barry was still playing.
However on Saturday, for once, things did actually look different. Again most likely more by necessity than choice. Had Steven Gerrard been fit for example, he’d almost certainly have taken one of the spots occupied so authoritatively by messes Wilshere and Scott Parker (henceforth to be know always as “Scotty” Parker apparently. Evidently I didn’t get the memo.) and long has it been evident that Capello would happily call on Owen Hargreaves at a moment’s notice, if only his joints didn’t keep falling off. But nevertheless this was a huge step forward, with three ostensibly central midfielders employed across the park and what seemed – in the first half at least – to be a genuine, non-rubbish attempt to play quick footed possession football. Wilshere even claimed they’d been made to watch Barcelona beforehand. That’s more like it. Aim for the stars lads, not Peter Crouch’s head.
5. New Kids on the Block – And in the end it was this endeavour that paid off, and the less glamorous, non-super dooper big four club players that won the game. In addition to the excellent Senor Scotty (winning what is scandalously only his fifth cap and precluding me from using the excellent line “he cannae take it cap’ain!”) the Aston Villa duo of Young and Bent caused the Welsh constant problems in the first half. And if Parker’s scant cap collection isn’t enough to underline the unflinching predictability of England’s team selections for over a decade, Darren Bent was starting his very first competitive game for his country, despite being on the radar as one of the Premier League’s highest scoring Englishmen since 2006 (when the Walcott debacle deprived him of a place) and collected his third international goal in the process. Things they are a changing. Slowly. Veeeery slowly.
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You can follow Oscar on Twitter here Twitter/oscarpyejeary, where you can help him guess what excuses every member of Saturday’s starting XI will give for suddenly and inexplicably becoming injured at the same time.
Look out for Conor Coady in an England shirt in the not too distant future…