Reuters Soccer Blog

Sunderland’s Bruce can’t lecture Bent about loyalty

Much-travelled Sunderland manager Steve Bruce either has a very short memory or the biggest brass neck in football but either way his claim that his club had been let down by Darren Bent’s disloyal move to Aston Villa takes some swallowing.

“It’s hugely disappointing and the players, our supporters and the club as a whole have every right to feel massively let down,” he complained after Bent’s transfer.

Moving from a club in sixth place to one above the drop zone only on goal difference might look odd at first glance, certainly if Bent’s justification for the move about joining a “big club” is to believed, but Bruce is surely the last man to start bleating about loyalty.

As a centre half winning rave reviews with Norwich City back in the 1980s, Bruce told anyone who would listen that he wanted to go to Manchester United.

When he became a manager of Wigan Athletic, he was so loyal that he walked out after two months to go to Crystal Palace. It was Steve Bruce who left Palace four months into his first season to take over Birmingham City.

And surely that was…Steve Bruce who then left Birmingham in acrimonious circumstances to return to Wigan, who he then left to join Sunderland.

Should Alex Ferguson decide to finally retire anytime soon and Manchester United were to enquire about Bruce’s availability to succeed him, how would his loyalty to Sunderland’s “players, supporters and club as a whole” fare then?

Aston Villa’s Bent buy will flummox O’Neill

If eyebrows were raised when Aston Villa decided to spend up to 24 million pounds on striker Darren Bent then former manager Martin O’Neill’s forehead must have been pinned to his living room ceiling when the news broke on Tuesday.

The absurdity of the switch lies not in the inflated figure or Bent’s abilities on the pitch and in front of goal, but in the timing of Villa chairman Randy Lerner choosing to dig deep into his pockets.

O’Neill walked out of the Midlands club just days before the start of the season after being told transfer funds were scarce and the £18 million to be raised from the sale of James Milner to Manchester City would not be reinvested in the squad.

Just six months later, however, Villa have splashed a mammoth fee on a player who has been permanently on the fringes of the England squad while a further six million was spent last week in French midfielder Jean Makoun.

Lerner, who was not shy in ploughing in the pounds prior to putting the brakes on in 2009, issued a statement two days after O’Neill left saying he “no longer shared a common view as to how to move forward”.

O’Neill, he bemoaned, did not appreciate the need to bring wages in line with revenue.

Ireland may come to regret Reid freeze-out

Giovanni Trapattoni may have cause to regret his decision to leave Sunderland playmaker Andy Reid out in the cold when Ireland face France on Saturday and next Wednesday in their two-legged World Cup play-off.

Reid has been in sparkling form for his club this season in the Premier League, notching some fantastic goals, notably from free-kicks — an area Ireland need to improve on with the exception of Glenn Whelan’s thunderbolts from long range.

He has a range of passing that can unlock the best defences in the world and Ireland will need somebody with that capability against the more-fancied French at Croke Park and Stade de France over the next week.

But the Dubliner has been overlooked by Trapattoni ever since he fell out with the wily, no-nonsense Italian a year ago in the team’s hotel bar in the German city of Wiesbaden after Ireland’s qualifier with Georgia.

Reid has apologised profusely for failing to go to bed before a 2am curfew and, unlike, say, Manchester City’s Stephen Ireland, he has reiterated on many occasions his commitment to play for his country.

But while Trapattoni and his backroom team continue to court Ireland, Reid remains in exile. Of course with a lack of creativity in Ireland’s central midfield, Ireland would be a welcome addition, but surely his absence only reinforces the need for Reid’s recall?

The former Tottenham player has knuckled down since his move to the north east of England, lost lots of weight, looks fitter than ever, and has become one of the most improved players in the best league in the world.

Best. Premier League. Ever… ?

The Ballon d’Or shortlist was announced on Sunday, but what about the Ballon de Plage? Liverpool’s inflatable nemesis must surely get a category of its own in the end-of-season awards.

Sunderland’s absurd winning goal at the Stadium of Light was symbolic not just of Liverpool’s woes but of a season that just keeps rattling along in ever more gloriously unpredictable style.

Here are a few reasons why this might just be the best Premier League season ever, or at least for quite a while.

1. Big Four? What Big Four? The worst thing about the Premier League, everyone said before the start of the season, was that you could always predict the top four. I wouldn’t put much money on it being the same old same old this time. Liverpool look especially vulnerable after losing four games already this season but the others have had their unconvincing moments as well.

2. Vaulting ambitions. Manchester City have serious aspirations to make the Champions League and there are a few others hoping to join them. Tottenham look to have a new confidence about them after spending a lot of money, and most of it wisely, and Aston Villa have beaten Liverpool and Chelsea.

Midweek Premier League special. Can you beat the panel?

Never let it be said that we at Reuters Soccer Blog shirk a challenge. Our attempts at score prediction on the opening weekend produced results that were modest at best but never fear, we’re straight back in for another shot (that’ll doubtless be blasted over the bar).

Once again, please send in your own predictions … they can scarcely be any worse than ours, and if you do especially well, we’ll gladly let you lord it over us here on the blog.

The six matches this week are as follows:

Sunderland v Chelsea: After Chelsea’s scare in the opening game of the season, and Sunderland’s positive start, the predictions for this are a little more circumspect. Mitch Phillips: 1-1; Owen Wyatt: 0-2; Patrick Johnston: 1-1; Mike Collett: 0-2; Paul Radford: 0-2; Kevin Fylan: 1-0. Late entries: Miles Evans: 0-2; Martyn Herman: 0-2.

Wigan Athletic v Wolverhampton Wanderers: What a result from Wigan on Saturday, eh? Hardly anyone expected them to beat Aston Villa, but I suppose when you consider how badly Villa finished last season it wasn’t such a shocking result. Wigan to make it maximum points from two? Mitch Phillips: 2-0; Owen Wyatt: 4-4; Patrick Johnston: 3-0; Mike Collett: 1-1; Paul Radford: 1-0; Kevin Fylan: 1-0. Late entries: Miles Evans: 0-1; Martyn Herman: 2-1.

Wednesday:

Birmingham City v Portsmouth: Birmingham came close to getting something from Old Trafford on Sunday so that should have done something for their self-belief. Maybe. Another bad day for Portsmouth? Mitch Phillips: 1-0; Owen Wyatt: 2-0; Patrick Johnston: 2-1; Mike Collett: 2-1; Paul Radford: 0-0; Kevin Fylan: 0-0. Late entries: Miles Evans: 2-2; Martyn Herman: 4-1.

Twitter might not be harmless fun for players

The days when the details of transfer negotiations were closely guarded secrets could be coming to an end with the advent of the ‘Twitter transfer’.

On Wednesday, U.S. national team striker Jozy Altidore all but announced a move to English Premier League Hull City on the micro-blogging site, keeping his fans updated while Hull remained silent.

Altidore, who is owned by Spanish club Villarreal, alerted followers to a potential move on Tuesday when he informed them he would be up early on Wednesday morning for a flight to England.

After details about his flight and weather on arrival he held back from announcing the deal but gave the game away by posting info of his first game.

“First match is against Chelsea subject to a work permit *wink* *wink* lol thanks for the support and love keep it coming,” he wrote.

While Altidore’s upbeat updates are unlikely to upset anyone, England striker Darren Bent apologised to Tottenham Hotspur chairman Daniel Levy last month about comments on Twitter relating to his move to Sunderland.

Newcastle poised for tense finale to relegation soap opera

England’s most popular soap operas thrive on a weekly recipe of misery, doom and gloom that is gobbled up by television viewers seeking some relief from their own trials and tribulations.

In that sense, the final weekend of the Premier League season is quite similar.

With Manchester United already polishing the trophy again after sealing a third consecutive title last week, neutral television viewers are salivating at the prospect of watching the suffering of fans of Middlesbrough, Newcastle United, Hull City and Sunderland as their clubs desperately scarp for top flight survival.

Like the inevitable rubber-neckers at road traffic accidents, there is something cruelly compulsive about the raw emotions of relegation D-Day.

For those poor fans at Villa Park, the KC Stadium, Upton Park and The Stadium of Light, fingernails will be whittled down to nothing as their sides hover between survival and exile from Planet Premier League and all its hype and glamour.

Sadly, there is usually one club that the majority of neutral voyeurs want to see fall off the cliff — and this year they play in black and white stripes.

Ipswich back in spotlight with Keane appointment

Roy Keane is back, with a new gig as manager of Ipswich Town.

Whatever else the appointment will do, this seems a surefire way for Ipswich to reacquaint themselves with the spotlight. Keane generates a huge amount of interest in Britain and considering he’s already engineered one successful promotion campaign, with Sunderland, it could be a good move from a purely footballing point of view as well (assuming he has some money to spend).

Ipswich, of course, have had a few very high profile managers. The list includes Alf Ramsey and (for a brief spell) Jackie Milburn, as well as Robson, and that’s just the footballing royalty.

Will Keane’s stay be as fleeting as Milburn’s or will that legendary charisma help him do for the club what Ramsey and Robson managed? Ipswich were one of the biggest clubs in England when I was growing up, in the age of Robson, Arnold Muhren and Frans Thijssen.

How exotic those two Dutch names seemed then, eh?

FILE PHOTO: Then Manchester United captain Roy Keane tackles Ipswich Town’s Hermann Hreidarsson during their Premier League match at Portman Road August 22, 2000.

Anyone remember the score?

England’s north east goes from hotbed to wasteland

Things are looking grim in the north east, England’s fabled “hotbed of soccer”. 

The phrase, if you are interested, was used for many years to describe the passion for football in the region before a scholarly book by reknowned journalist Arthur Appleton “Hotbed of Soccer – the story of football in the North East” was published in 1960 and told a mainly successful story.

If a similar tome was being written today, I’d suggest a more apt title might be “The Frozen Wasteland of Soccer — Under-Achievement, Broken Dreams and Very Few Trophies in the North East.”

A suitable sub-title? “Staring Relegation in the Face in 2009.”

With the end of the English Premier League season fast approaching, Newcastle United and Middlesbrough occupy two of the three relegation places with only seemingly-doomed West Bromwich Albion beneath them.

Sunderland, the region’s other major power, may appear to be safe in 14th spot, but they are only three points above Newcastle and five ahead of Boro.

One online betting service on Tuesday was offering odds of 25-1 that all three north east clubs will go down — and who knows, if West Brom launch the kind of miraculous escape they managed in 2005, that could still happen. (more…)

If Keane could not command respect, who can?

Roy Keane quitting as Sunderland boss was not a huge shock but I’m surprised by reports many of the players were happy about his departure.

The former Manchester United midfielder seemed an inspired appointment by chairman Niall Quinn two years ago despite having no managerial experience — apart from playing under Brian Clough and Alex Ferguson.

The trophies he won as a player, his burning desire for success, a refusal to accept second-best and the sheer force of his personality seemed ideal qualities to galvanise Sunderland into becoming more than England’s best yo-yo club.

The Irishman made his mark early on by leaving three players behind when they were late for the team bus to an away game and proved up to the job on the pitch too as he led Sunderland to promotion back to the Premier League.

However, just as in his days as a rampaging midfielder for club and country, he seemed to struggle with players who weren’t up to his standard and he was exasperated by those who were not 100 percent committed.

You would think that the likes of Anton Ferdinand (8 million pounds) Pascal Chimbonda (£5m) and Andy Reid (£4m) would be delighted that such a man considered them worth bringing to his club for seemingly inflated prices but they have hardly paid him back with sparkling performances.