Following Manchester United’s victory over Newcastle United at Old Trafford in the third round of the Capital One Cup, TheBusbyWay.com Editor Chudi Onwuazor interviewed Man United and England midfielder and scorer of the second goal, Tom Cleverley…
You’ve just scored your first United 1st team goal, the winner against Newcastle in front of the Stretford End, you must be dreaming!
Yeah definitely! Growing up as a United fan and to have not have scored for a while, to do it in front of the Stretty is a great feeling and I think it showed in my celebrations.
After the initial chance you missed, you must have felt a little pressure?
Yeah I know, I’ve missed a couple recently that have played on my mind. I’ve been working hard in training on my finishing and the gaffer gave me a little talking to at half time so it was nice to slot one in, in the second half.
Tonight you lined up along side Darren Fletcher, his first start in 10 months, I’m sure you, like everyone else, are happy to see him back?
It’s always good. He’s a good player and a good friend, it’s been hard to see what he’s been going through but he’s back now. He looks sharp, he looks fit and he’s a great player so he’ll add to our squad.
Newcastle gave you a tough game tonight so how do you feel the team performed?
We knew they would give us a tough game physically and we had a young defence who can be very pleased with their performance.
They posed a threat aerially but I felt we dealt with it well. Apart from the goal we conceded after we scored, we were pretty comfortable.
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Well the reward for the win tonight is a trip to Chelsea, any thoughts on that?
Well we would have liked a home draw at Old Trafford and with a busy schedule you don’t really want to be travelling down to London, but these things happen and we will go down full of confidence.
If it’s a young squad again we’ll hopefully put in a performance like tonight and win the game!
Already nearly a quarter of the way through the Premier League season, it’s time to assess what we’ve learnt about Martin O’Neill’s Sunderland.
The Wearsiders have tasted defeat and victory just once and a poor quality of pitch means they’re a game short on 18 of their rivals. I’d give Sunderland a D in terms of progress this year, but here’s a closer look at the good and bad revelations since August.
The Black Cats are still one of the most enigmatic teams in the league. Few sides beat them easily, but then they rarely dominate and win comfortably themselves. Transfer policy is also an interesting topic in the North East, a £10 million player who looked a bargain is struggling. While a much maligned £12 million man can’t stop scoring.
From Danny Rose to Lee Cattermole, this is an extensive guide to what has and hasn’t worked in the Premier League for Sunderland this year.
Click on Simon Mignolet to see the ten things we’ve learnt about the Black Cats so far this season
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If any Sunderland fans are heading to the Stadium of Light on Tuesday night, then don’t forget to download the FREE Screach App and vote for your ‘Man of the Match’
Aston Villa striker Darren Bent has distanced himself from any transfer talk as he was once again left on the bench by Paul Lambert yesterday, as reported by the Daily Mail.
Bent came on as a sub as Villa snatched a point at home to Lambert’s former club Norwich City, but despite being a regular passenger this season at Villa Park, Bent doesn’t feel a move is imminent:
“It won’t come from my side. I won’t ask for a transfer, of course I wouldn’t do that,
“Villa are a massive club and I always want to play for huge clubs.
“For me to ask for a move would be silly, especially at this stage of the season when there’s still a long way to go.
“Everyone would like an explanation about why things happen, but that’s not the manager’s style and I respect that.
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“I’m not going to go in and say I want to leave. I’m more than happy at Villa and to play my football here. The attraction is the size of the club, the history and a massive fan base. I’m prepared to give it as long as it takes.”
Steve Clarke has defended his decision to play Romelu Lukaku instead of Shane Long in West Brom’s defeat to Newcastle at the weekend.
Long, who has scored three goals in the Premier League for the Baggies so far this season, was left on the bench, much to the surprise of some onlookers.
This questioning of Clarke’s decision was heightened as Lukaku, who is playing for the club on loan from Chelsea, missed a host of chances before scoring West Brom’s only goal of the game.
In response, Clarke admitted that the Long did not deserve to get put on the bench, but reiterated that he has many good strikers at the club and thought it was the right time for a change.
“Romelu hasn’t played from the start for a number of weeks. I have a fantastic replacement in Shane Long. Shane has been fantastic for us and didn’t really deserve to be on the bench, but sometimes when you have so many good strikers, you have to make decisions,” he said.
“I thought it was the right change. We were the best team going forward, and we only lost because of a late deflection. We didn’t deserve it. If he’d scored the other two, he’d have put me even more right.”
“When you have a squad of players you can’t keep disappointing them all of the time. Romelu has been a good sub for us, and every now and again, he’ll get a chance to play. Yesterday he got that chance. Shane usually gets the nod and he’s normally the one coming off – because playing as a lone striker is a difficult shift – but I felt yesterday I wanted to reverse it.”
Clarke says that he thought that how the side played and the team’s performance was positive adding, “Because of the result it’ll be looked at as a negative, but I thought in terms of the performance and the way we played it was a positive.”
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David Beckham has ruled out the possibility of him moving to Australia after the press claimed a move may be on the cards this week.
Beckham was as surprised as the rest of us when he heard about the gossip from down under and was quick to dismiss it to keep his loyalty in America.
The MLS season is now over and quite often the star players chose to move on loan to a European club in order to keep match fit over the winter, with the likes of Robbie Keane, Landon Donovan, Thierry Henry and even Beckham himself doing so in recent years.
But a move to Australia is simply nonsense according to the former England captain.
“No. Definitely not true,” Beckham told American reporters.
“Bruce (Galaxy coach Bruce Arena) told me that this morning – the first I’d heard about it. Like I said that’s the first I’d heard of that, this morning.”
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There are no knee-jerk reactions to Arsenal anymore. The idea that a large section of the support are fickle is not only arrogant but extremely deluded. The loss at Swansea on the weekend compounded Arsenal’s problems. It revealed one of the lowest points during Arsene Wenger’s time at the club – possibly even lower than the 8-2 loss at Manchester United last season.
The problem is, and Wenger alluded to this recently, it’s not always about just buying good players. There’s a problem at Arsenal that means everyone sits back and admires the view, no matter what that view may be. Now, Arsenal are a sports club and one who are active, so to suggest everyone with some relevance is just sitting on their hands is probably wide of the mark (and I’m hoping it’s wide of the mark). But there is something wrong. There is a losing and defeatist mentality at the club.
I don’t care where Swansea are in the league, I don’t care how well they’re doing, I don’t care who their manager is. When you’re a club who boast profits, sit in a state of the art stadium, have the highest ticket prices in Europe, share a table at the very top of the European game alongside Barcelona, Manchester United and Bayern Munich, you can not be losing at home to Swansea.
The worrying thing is, it seems that no amount of decline can push the club into action. But a change is needed, and a significant one at that.
In terms of Arsene Wenger, so much of his present and future at the club is based on what he did 10 years ago. People who say he’s the right man for the job and the only man for the job are those who don’t know any different. What kind of arrogance is it to suggest no one else could handle Arsenal’s current situation and get them into the Champions League every season other than Wenger? For starters, it only takes a manager with a good bit of tactical sense to see that playing a formation with the wrong players doesn’t work. It only takes someone with desire to try something new to play Andrey Arshavin through the middle – his natural position. A huge concern is that the manager and this Arsenal team are failing to get the best out of Santi Cazorla. I have no time for those who look down on La Liga and the small but tricky players. Cazorla is the best player at the club right now, and yet people are lumping him into a category of failed purchases.
The players keep changing every year but the results and defeats and the manner of the defeats remain the same. Who becomes accountable? No one, according to those who see nothing wrong with Wenger or the way the club is run. I’m not totally convinced that having Eden Hazard and Fernando Llorente in the team would make a whole lot of difference. Would Javier Hernandez have had the same debut season in the Premier League if he played for Arsenal? It’s not spiteful jabs at a manager, but it is questions that need to be raised, especially considering the way Arsenal are tumbling down the league.
Wenger looks tired, and not just from losing. He looks tired from losing his best players, from not having the adequate resources to keep the club at the top. I’m totally behind the idea that the board are starving the manager of the means to go out and properly revitalise the squad. However, I do believe the manager can be doing a lot more with what he has in terms of playing personnel.
People have rightly spoken about Gervinho as the worst signing under Arsene Wenger. That’s not knee-jerk and it’s certainly not a case of short term memory; everyone is fully aware of players like Mikael Silvestre, Igor Stepanovs and the pointlessness of Amaury Bischoff. But those players were cheap; Gervinho, on the other hand, was picked up for a fee which went into double figures.
With Arsenal, maybe it’s a case of the board and manager not complementing each other. Champions League football is achieved, yes, but how disappointing if you believe that to be the mark of success.
Wenger managed to get the best out of world class players during his successful years. Price isn’t the only measure of how good a player is or can be, but Robert Pires, Thierry Henry and Dennis Bergkamp were good footballers who were up to the standard of Arsenal and their demands. With the manner in which the market has morphed into this current monster, the Arsenal board simply aren’t giving the manager enough to go out and find these players any more.
Wenger has a responsibility to the new stadium, but Arsenal are not in poor financial health. I fail to believe that a busy and ambitious transfer window would cripple the club, as Ivan Gazidis has implied in the past. But if the board want to stand by Wenger and allow him to manage and eventually leave of his own accord, they must change their policy on running the club.
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It never should have come to a point where Wenger would be forced out of the club. It hasn’t quite reached that extreme yet, but there are plenty who believe his time is up. Wenger can still offer much to Arsenal, but it will come with the altering of his managerial approach. It might be fair to say that most Arsenal supporters do not want a change in manager, but rather a change in his ways.
In terms of the board, they are the ones calling the shots but remaining hidden behind their man on the front lines. If the board are not taking money out of the club, what exactly is the reported £70 million doing just sitting in the vaults? Saving for a rainy day? It doesn’t get much rainier than this.
Sam Allardyce has revealed his interest in signing Blackburn Rovers defender Martin Olsson to cover West Ham’s injury crisis at the left-back position.
The move would reunite Allardyce with Olsson, who played under the current Hammers boss while he was in charge of Blackburn.
The 24-year-old has been at Ewood Park for seven years and established himself as Rovers’ first choice left-back under Allardyce.
The Swedish international has been a first-team fixture this season too, making 21 appearances and Big Sam is keen to sign the £2million rated player to fill the void left by the injured George McCartney and Joey O’Brien.
“If they have made Martin available I would definitely be interested because I worked with the lad at Blackburn when I was there for two years,” Allardyce told The Daily Mail.
“I had a really good time developing him into what I consider to be quite a good player.
“But whether Blackburn are wanting to sell anybody in their plight to get back into the Premier League I don’t know.
“We’ll need to find a left back as quick as we can. Joey O’Brien has a tight hamstring and George McCartney is out for a number of weeks. So our left back area is a little weak at the moment.”
Olsson had looked set to leave Rovers after their Premier League relegation in the summer, after his agent revealed the player would refuse to play in the Championship.
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But the versatile defender, who can also play at left-wing, opted to stay put in Lancashire.
The Monday night fixture witnesses a fascinating duel between two clubs desperate for a win. If it is anything like the last time these two met in the Capital One Cup at the Madjeski stadium then the fans are in for a treat.
Arsenal managed to knock Reading out of the cup competition in injury time 7-5 that night, after coming back from 4-0 down. They weren’t so lucky midweek as they were booted out of the same trophy by minnows Bradford City.
It comes as the latest blow in a string of disappointing displays for the Gunners resulting in Ivan Gazidis making a public apology to the fans.
Reading are not exactly doing themselves any favours at the moment either as they too lost midweek leaking 3 goals in a comprehensive defeat to Sunderland.
The Gunners should have Olivier Giroud back in the fold following a recovery from a back problem. Laurent Koscielny has resumed training too after a thigh injury. Theo Walcott’s injury situation is due to be assessed too. Andre Santos and Abou Diaby remain out.
The Royals could be heavily boosted by the return of their two key talismans up front in the shape of Jason Roberts and Pavel Pogrebnyak. They may not be able to start but both could feature at some point at the Madjeski. For Jimmy Kebe and Jem Karacan the game appears to have come too soon and Sean Morrison alongside Alex McCarthy are definite misses too.
The game should be a nervy encounter with the gap growing further and further from safety for Reading and Arsenal are at risk of losing touch with the top four.
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Arsenal have played Reading 10 times in all competitions and won every single time so they would expect to keep that unblemished record on Monday.
Bacary Sagna says he wants to end Arsenal’s long wait for silverware before he moves on from the club, Sky Sports understand.
The Gunners haven’t won a major trophy since beating Manchester United on penalties in the 2005 FA Cup Final, while Sagna has yet to taste success during his five years at the Emirates Stadium.
With another 18-months to run on his current deal the 29-year-old full back has yet to commit himself to a new deal despite ongoing talks with the club over an extension.
Inter Milan and Paris Saint German have been linked with Sagna recently and speculation is rampant that Arsene Wenger will allow him to leave the North London club in the summer.
However, the French international refused to comment on his immediate future instead declaring his wish to lead Arsenal to a cup triumph before he eventually leaves the club.
“Honestly, I’m under contract with Arsenal and I give everything so long as I am under contract with my club,” he said.
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“Before leaving, because I will leave here one day, I would like to win something with my club. I don’t want to answer yes or no now because in football you never know what will happen.”
Even the greatest managers fail sometimes and despite all his trophies at Old Trafford, Sir Alex Ferguson isn’t perfect. For every Eric Cantona, Jaap Stam and Ruud van Nistelrooy, there’s a whole host of signings that Manchester United fans will try desperately to erase them from memory.
Old Trafford can be an unforgiving place for a player, especially considering the Reds often have to pay over the odds for signings. The pressure can be difficult to handle and individuals often face levels of unwarranted criticism. Rather like Ernst Stavro Blofeld, failure simply isn’t tolerated at Manchester United and that hunger for success has clearly worked, especially seeing as the Reds have overhauled Liverpool’s number of titles.
That feat isn’t thanks to any of the people listed below however, some of whom were so bad, it’s not implausible to suggest they were planted by Liverpool to try and destroy United’s legacy. See what you think of United’s worst XI signings from the Premier League era:
Click on William Prunier to unveil the XI
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