Posts Tagged ‘London Club’

Benítez under fire as Liverpool slump to sixth defeat in seven

• Liverpool manager says fans need to be ‘realistic’ after loss
• Benítez to appeal over red cards that left side with nine men

Rafael Benítez is facing renewed speculation over his future at Liverpool after his nine-man side collapsed to a humiliating sixth defeat in seven games. The 3-1 loss at Fulham, during which defenders Philipp Degen and Jamie Carragher were both sent off, was their fifth league defeat of the season. However Benítez last night dismissed suggestions that his job is in doubt and pledged to appeal against both red card decisions.

Liverpool had dominated a first half in which Bobby Zamora had put Fulham ahead and Fernando Torres equalised, but when Erik Nevland put Fulham in front for the second time and Torres was taken off, the London club eased to victory – Clint Dempsey scoring a late third for the home side.

Benítez said: “It’s hard to take the defeat. The first half was one-sided: we just made one mistake and conceded a goal. The second half they were more offensive and we made a massive mistake when we conceded the second goal. We worked hard with nine players, but it was very difficult. The red cards were two incidents in a few minutes when we were losing and they were difficult to take. The first one was a yellow card. The second one you can clearly see Carragher was kicking the ball.”

• Fulham 3-1 Liverpool: David Lacey’s full match report
• Chalkboards: Liverpool suffering from a lack of thrust
• Sportblog: Have your say on Liverpool’s latest setback
• Poll: Will Liverpool beat Lyon on Wednesday?

Benítez dismissed questions over his future at Anfield, saying people needed to be “realistic” about the run of results, and shrugging off boos from Liverpool fans after he substituted Yossi Benayoun. “We still have confidence: we just need to take our chances and not make mistakes like we did today,” he said. “You have to stay calm and keep working hard and find solutions. We also have to be realistic, and focus on three points from the next game against Birmingham.”

Liverpool now face going into the crucial Champions League match against Lyon on Wednesday without Fernando Torres and Steven Gerrard. Benítez said he would “have to see how Gerrard progresses” with his troublesome groin injury, while Torres is still not fully fit and was taken off after 60 minutes at Craven Cottage.

Benítez said: “We decided to play Torres against Manchester United last Sunday and it was a difficult decision because he was not 100% fit. He needed four days to be ready and is still not 100% fit. We decided to put him on the pitch today, but we had to protect him and that’s why we took him out. I don’t want to lose an important player for one month.”

Carragher insisted the referee, Lee Mason, was wrong to send him off. “I felt it was harsh,” the defender said. “I got a toe on the ball and I don’t know if the referee was in the best position to see that. And when Bobby Zamora said I got the ball that says it all really.” Asked if Liverpool’s crisis was hurting, he replied: “Yeah, it’s hurting a lot.”

Portsmouth expect to pay players on time this week

• Manager Paul Hart plays down transfer ban problems
• Club move closer to deal over money owed to Arsenal

Portsmouth are expected to pay their players tomorrow despite another turbulent few days on the south coast during which it emerged that the Premier League had placed a transfer embargo on Fratton Park for the club’s failure to meet around £3m in unpaid transfer fees.

The Professional Footballers Association is thought to have heard nothing from Hermann Hreidarsson, the club’s representative, to dissuade the players’ union that there will be no repeat of last month’s failure to pay the salaries. Yet it is understood that while Portsmouth – who play Wigan Athletic at Fratton Park on Saturday – may have reached an agreement with Arsenal over the instalment owed to the London club for Lassana Diarra, who joined in January 2008, negotiations are ongoing with Chelsea for monies owed for Glen Johnson.

The embargo has raised questions over the depth of finance available to the new owner Ali al-Faraj and the manager, Paul Hart, admitted he was unhappy over the ban. “It is disappointing,” he said. “These problems are here to be overcome, and I think we will overcome them. I found out on Tuesday morning, but I dealt with it. I’m led to believe this will be resolved.”

Hart has overseen a start to the Premier League season that has brought only a win and a draw, with Portsmouth yet to collect any points from their home games. He needs the embargo to be lifted so that he can add to his squad in January.

“I think what we’re waiting for now is all this to settle down and the investors to be settled in. Then we’ll reassess our situation. That’s what we’re waiting for — and that’s what needs to happen,” he added, before managing a joke about the club’s chaotic existence. “I think it’s nice to wake up in the morning and see if there is something else happening. It sort of breaks the day up.”

Wenger sees Henry returning one day to Arsenal

• Barcelona striker could be back at Emirates in future
• ‘Being a manager is a sacrifice,’ says Frenchman

Arsène Wenger has said that he can see Thierry Henry returning to Arsenal in some capacity but he has warned his fellow Frenchman that, if he wanted to become the manager, it would involve him sacrificing his life. Henry, the Barcelona striker, who made his name during eight seasons at Arsenal, has maintained a love affair with the London club. Wenger revealed Henry follows them so closely that he even watched their youth team last season via Arsenal TV.

Henry said on Thursday that he knew “one day I will go back for sure … maybe as a waterboy, who knows?” and Wenger believes that, like a number of his former players, he has the basic qualities to succeed him as manager. He name-checked Steve Bould, Tony Adams, Nigel Winterburn and Lee Dixon in this regard.

However Wenger, who knows a thing or two about the job’s all-consuming nature, having celebrated his 13th anniversary in the role this week, suggested that nothing could prepare anyone for its demands.

“I can see Thierry coming back because I believe at some stage the legacy here has to go to some people who have had a big influence at this club,” he said. “I have to stop one day and maybe it will be me working with them. All my former players have the attributes [to be the manager] but first of all it has to be a choice of life. Being a manager is a sacrifice of the rest of your life; not everybody is ready for that. Thierry loves the game; does he love to suffer? That’s what he has to show as a manager.”

Although Wenger has an interest in politics, he admits his mind is never allowed to wander too far from football. Even his recent habit of spending three or four days at a spa retreat at the end of a season does not always insulate him from people who want to discuss the game with him.

“No, you always speak about football,” he said. “If you go to put petrol in your car, usually you don’t think about football and then you meet 10 people who speak about the next game. If you go to the supermarket to buy fruit, you speak necessarily with people about football. You do not, of course, count that as working time but you still speak about football.”

Wenger joked that there was one “main bonus” of the job. “I don’t have the headache of telling the missus that I’m watching football,” he said. His side entertain Blackburn at home tomorrow, hoping to extend their run of five consecutive victories in all competitions. At the heart of their effort will be Andrey Arshavin, an increasingly influential player at Arsenal.

“He has a big challenge in front of him,” said Wenger, “because he made Zenit St Petersburg win and, if he manages to make Arsenal win, he will become an all-time great. I am convinced he has all the potential to do it.”

Frank Lampard rejects talk of Chelsea crisis

• ‘We have to improve for Sunday, it’s a big game,’ says Lampard
• Carlo Ancelotti and players know this is a work in progress

Frank Lampard has rejected suggestions that Chelsea’s form may be floundering in the build-up to Liverpool’s visit to Stamford Bridge but said the club must learn from their toils against Wigan and Apoel Nicosia over the last seven days if they are to win on Sunday.

Both games prompted angry dressing-room inquests, instigated by the players at the DW Stadium and, more notably, by Carlo Ancelotti in Cyprus, as they attempt to regain the momentum of the opening weeks of the campaign. Yet Lampard pointed to an impressive record to date this season – Ancelotti has overseen nine victories from 10 competitive matches in charge – as evidence that this is hardly a club in crisis.

“We’ve only lost one game all season,” said the England midfielder after the 1-0 Champions League win in Nicosia. “I don’t know what people mean by ‘not clicking’. What, all season? Look, we lost against Wigan at the weekend and didn’t play well at all. But we went to Cyprus, not an easy game, and won. So, it has clicked this season. We’ve been flying all season. You’re never going to get a season when you’re flying every match and, when things don’t go quite as well, you have to win games anyway. We did that.

“Our performance against Apoel wasn’t great. In the first half we were in control of the game. Maybe we could have been a bit more forceful in the final third but we controlled the game. Second half, to be fair to them, they came out and gave us a tough game, really. We didn’t play our best but we got through, got the three points and we go home. We have to improve for Sunday, of course. It’s a big game. But Liverpool lost in Fiorentina, so they’ll be trying to improve as well.”

Liverpool achieved a league double over Chelsea last season – the London club taking solace by triumphing in the Champions League quarter-finals – with the 1-0 win inflicted at Stamford Bridge at the end of October ending an 86-match unbeaten run that bridged four managers. More significantly Xabi Alonso’s deflected winning goal subjected Luiz Felipe Scolari to his first defeat as Chelsea’s manager and, while the team initially appeared to recover, their aura of invincibility never returned.

There have been flashes of good fortune under Ancelotti – there were last-minute winners against Hull and Stoke in the league, albeit after contests Chelsea had dominated – but both the manager and his players are aware that theirs is a work still in progress. The Italian is still implementing his tactical approach and game plan and, while the team has generally adapted well, he has made his dissatisfaction obvious in the last week.

Lampard conceded lessons must be learned swiftly from the first two poor performances of the manager’s reign. “It was disappointing in Nicosia because we didn’t play as well as we know we can,” he said. “The manager said it was a good result. There were a few things that he wasn’t too happy about with the performance. I think that was pretty obvious, particularly the second half, and he said there were things we had to improve on. I think we all knew that anyway. We wanted to push on from the first half, really, and play as we had done but with a little bit more urgency. But we ended up giving the ball away quite a lot and inviting a bit of pressure.

“Things went a bit awry. We weren’t keeping the ball well enough or keeping our shape well enough. It was probably our fault that we didn’t keep the ball as well and play a bit more forcefully second half. We need to learn from that.

“But look at the results in Europe this week, for Liverpool and Milan. That just shows that games like the one at Apoel are never easy. And if you invite opponents on to you, give them a little bit of a leg upas we did, they become even more difficult. These teams are here on merit. They’re very organised. We’re just pleased we came away with a result. Winning was a bonus. All we’ve got to do is take the positives out of it and put the little things right that went wrong in the second half.”

Ancelotti ‘unworried’ about Fifa’s transfer ban on Chelsea

• ‘The club is appealing and we wait for a good result’
• Has not spoken to Roman Abramovich about the sanction

Carlo Ancelotti is confident Chelsea’s appeal against Fifa’s transfer sanction will be successful. The London club has been banned from signing any new players during the next two transfer windows – after the governing body found them guilty of inducing the teenager Gaël Kakuta to breach his contract with Lens two years ago – but have taken the matter to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

“The decision was a surprise for me. But now the club are appealing, and we have to wait for a good result for us,” said Ancelotti. “We hope that they overturn the decision. Now, the transfer embargo is not a problem because we have a very good team and very good players – but in the future, we’ll have to wait and see.

“Now I have to think about my job and about my players. I haven’t spoken to Roman Abramovich about it, but it’s not necessary for me to do that. I don’t have to speak to Roman about this situation.”

Chelsea have spent the summer tying up their top players, such as John Terry and Didier Drogba, on long-term contract extensions. But Ancelotti insists that was more about the future of the club than suspecting Fifa would hit them with a transfer ban.

“Getting players on long-term deals – given this decision – is very important. But that’s not about this decision,” added the Italian. “It’s more about the future of this club – to have John Terry, Frank Lampard, Didier Drogba and Ashley Cole in this team and at this club for years to come.”

Chelsea travel to Stoke tomorrow hoping to make it five straight wins in the league.

“We’re entering a very important period for us now,” said Ancelotti. “But I think we’re in a good situation to do very well. Up to October, we have a lot of matches and we have to do the maximum and the best. “After this period, we’ll know better how our season is going to pan out.”

Chelsea will be without the Portugal midfielder Deco, who injured his calf on international duty in midweek. Yuri Zhirkov is also still out with his knee problem.