Jermaine Beckford is confident of scoring goals in the Premier League after signing a four-year contract with Everton.
The 26-year-old striker was prolific with former club Leeds United after scoring 85 goals in 150 appearances during his time at Elland Road.
The unsettled striker was released by the promoted League One club at the weekend after signalling his intention not to sign a new contract ahead of the end of his existing deal this summer.
The former non-league striker had been heavily linked with a move to the Toffees and Beckford does not believe the step up to the top-flight will be too much to overcome.
"I've been fortunate enough to score goals at the clubs that I've been at and hopefully I will be able to do that here as well," he declared.
"I am excited by it. It's going to be a test, I know that, but I am looking forward to it.
"I want to test myself at the highest level and luckily for me, (manager) David Moyes showed an interest in me, showed some faith in me and hopefully I can repay that.
"I've been impressed a lot by him. He seems like the type of guy who will sit down and tell you where you're going wrong, what you're doing right and what you might need to work on.
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"It is a club I can learn from and it can help me develop into a better player.
"Fingers crossed, I can be really involved in taking this club where it wants to be."Subscribe to Football FanCast News Headlines by Email
Fulham midfielder Moussa Dembele has confirmed that Real Madrid have made an enquiry about him.
The Spanish champions are in the market for a creative midfielder this summer, with Tottenham playmaker Luka Modric the number one choice.
However, with the north London club standing firm on their valuation of the Croatia international, negotiations have been ongoing but a deal is yet to be agreed.
As such Jose Mourinho is thought to be weighing up other options, with rumours that Dembele could well be an alternative.
The Belgium international has blossomed at Craven Cottage and is being monitored by a number of leading Premier League clubs, but Dembele has revealed that Los Blancos have been in touch.
“I do not know if I will leave,” he told the Belgian newspaper Het Nieuwsblad, translated to English by The Guardian.
“Actually I can say nothing about it.
“There was contact between Real and my agent. They wanted information, but that was it. Everything is still.”
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Liverpool have been granted an extension in deciding whether or not to build a new stadium at Stanley Park by the local City Council.
The Reds have already been given planning permission for a new home, but are yet to fully commit to the venture, as the proposed costs are higher than first expected.
The Fenway Sports Group, who own the club, are still tossing up whether or not to move their side to a new ground, or stay at Anfield and look to increase capacity.
The deadline for the decision was initially the end of September, but The Daily Mail reports that Liverpool City Council have granted them more time to make their mind up, as negotiations continue.
Due to the sky high cost of building a new arena, an investment partner is needed to harbour some of the costs of building the stadium, with the naming rights granted in exchange.
Kenny Dalglish’s team would have to sign a 999-year lease on the proposed site in Stanley Park, but have stated that they will not rush the important decision.
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NEC Nijmegen won just their second league match in 10 appearances after recording a 2-0 victory over Excelsior in the Eredivisie on Sunday.
NEC entered the fixture on the back of five consecutive draws in all competitions but put relegation-threatened Excelsior to the sword courtesy of a second-half Niki Zimling brace.
NAC Breda slumped to their third consecutive loss when they were beaten 2-0 by mid-table rivals Heerenveen at Rat Verlegh Stadion, with Luciano Narsingh and Ousama Assaidi the goalscorers.
Roda JC came from behind to steal a point off Ajax in their 2-2 draw at Parkstad Limburg Stadion.
Goals from Miralem Sulejmani and Siem de Jong had third-placed Ajax ahead 2-0 after 35 minutes, but Mads Junker pulled a goal back before the interval and Anouar Hadouir netted the equaliser in the 82nd minute.
De Graafschap held Groningen to a 1-1 draw at the Stadion Se Vijverberg.
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Fourth-placed Groningen could have jumped into third with a victory on Sunday following Ajax’s slip-up, and took the lead after 32 minutes through Danny Holla.
But Rydell Poepon restored parity for the home side to ensure a share of the spoils.
Team GB opened their Olympics campaign on Thursday with an unconvincing 1-1 draw against African side Senegal.
Craig Bellamy gave Stuart Pearce’s men a perfect start when he opened the scoring on 20 minutes, but Moussa Konate denied the hosts all three points with a strike eight minutes from time.
Pearce admitted that not seeing the game out was a cause for frustration.
“The fact we got our noses in front and didn’t nail the game – and if we had moved the ball quicker we might have done – is a frustration,” Pearce told reporters after the game.
“It would have been nice to win and now we have to deal with the disappointment of conceding a late goal.
“As I know from my own experience as a player, the first game is always a nervous affair. There were a few nervous faces in the dressing room beforehand.
“There are big expectations on the host nation but it was fantastic to be applauded out by all the staff,” he concluded.
Team GB take on UAE on Sunday in their next game.
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With two games of the season played, it already looks like it will be another exciting and competitive season at the top and bottom of the Premier League. In terms of entertainment there is no doubt that the Premier League is the best in the Europe but with some poor quality games to start the season, has the standard of quality really dropped in recent years or is it just more competitive than ever?
Evidence of this decline can be seen as no Premier League players were selected in the FIFA team of the year when it was announced in January 2011 and it was dominated by Spanish players. With the recent departures of Ronaldo, Alonso, Mascherano and now Fabregas to Spain, the English league seems to be losing its world class players and English clubs are struggling to replace them. The only side that are recruiting superstars is Man City and they can only do this by offering extortionate salaries. Man United and Chelsea may sign one big name each summer but nowhere close to what Barcelona and Real Madrid do.
One of the reasons for this decline is that the English 50% tax system does not help attractive the top players and along with the credit crunch, which has made the Pound weak against the Euro, all English clubs have had to cut back on spending in recent years. Even big clubs like Man United and Arsenal have had to sell their top players in order to remain at the top of the game, with the exception of Manchester City.
There is now a smaller gulf between the teams at the top and bottom of the league but I think the standard of quality of the top teams has decreased rather than a huge improvement in the smaller teams. Premier League teams are being extra cautious in the transfer market these days and would rather recruit young English players than expensive European talent which although reducing the quality, has to be a positive thing for the national game.
Last season the Premier League was one of the tightest for years and this was probably due to the fact that the bigger teams have stagnated with less coming in money over recent years and also because of the improvement of the promoted teams from the Championship which I believe is not far off the Premier League in terms of quality.
Because of this increased competitiveness, it is difficult for even the best players in the league to really stand out. The ever increasing tactical side of the game has made it harder for even the best players to conquer organised defences who normally have a defensive midfielder protecting them. So players who leave England know they won’t be getting kicked every two minutes in the foreign leagues like they do in the Premier League.
There is no doubt that the Premier League is still graced with some of the finest players in the game and with players like Kun Aguero, Juan Mata and Sneijder likely to join Manchester United, there is obviously still an attraction to play in England.
Although the league may have declined in quality, this seems to have made the league even more exhilarating and is it hard to find a better league in the rest of the world. The standard of football may have dropped due to the lack of investment at the top of the game but instead of harming the league, it has actually brought the teams closer together and made it even more entertaining to watch.
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The Spanish League may have the world class players but the Premier League still has the passion, entertainment and excitement and for that reason it is still the best league in Europe, I for one would much rather watch a game involving Spurs v Liverpool than Seville v Athletic Bilbao. Obviously 600 million people worldwide agree.
After all the rumours, obituaries and tales of back-stabbing, Avram Grant has somehow kept his job at West Ham. The precarious nature of his position has not changed, the Hammers remain bottom and have played a game more than everyone else around them, however the Israeli will hope that he is now given some space to help save the football club.
With a Carling Cup semi-final second leg to come, this fixture hardly represents a chance to rest players, and Grant would take three points at Goodison Park at the expense of the cup dream.
Everton were excellent in patches during the Merseyside derby- the attacking impetus of Tim Cahill was most certainly a big miss, however with the Australian again missing out, David Moyes may feel that the decision to allow Nigerian, Yakubu away on loan was a premature one.
The Hammers need something here. Last weekend’s thrashing at the hands of Arsenal was dispiriting, and with a string of season defining fixtures on the horizon, a decent showing on Saturday is a pre-requisite.
Prediction: 1-1
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One of the strangest transfer rumours this summer, quite possibly the oddest since then Bolton centre-half Gary Cahill was linked with a move to Barcelona, has seen Liverpool striker supposedly targeted by AC Milan. The club’s new boss Brendan Rodgers remains open to the possibility of allowing Carroll to depart in time for next season on loan, but what that be tantamount to career suicide, for both the player and the manager?
Andy Carroll has flattered to deceive for the majority of his 18-month stay at Anfield so far, since his staggering £35m move from Newcastle in January 2010. If you’re bored of the mention of the exorbitant fee by now, you’re not alone, but no Carroll story is complete these days without a brief nod to the lunacy of the price paid. However, this fee can often distort people’s views when talking about Carroll – he’s unlikely to ever fully justify being the joint-tenth highest transfer of all-time, but that doesn’t mean that he isn’t a decent player and capable of more.
Lest we forget, he scored in an FA Cup semi-final, FA Cup final and at Euro 2012 over the past few months as an out-of-sorts Liverpool side slowly but surely began to play to his strengths. By all accounts, he’s lost his taste for the nightlife recently too, a factor that so worried Fabio Capello and saw him dumped from the international scene just when it looked like he was going to be the long-term focal point for the national side. My point is that there is clearly a player there, a very good one too when on form and there aren’t too many like him about – to casually cast off such an unusual and clearly threatening talent would seem an extremely odd move for Rodgers to make.
The whole talk about Carroll leaving the club on loan this summer came about when Silvio Berlusconi’s son, Pier Silvio, stated he liked what he saw of Carroll at Euro 2012 and urged his father to ratify a move, if it suited the club financially. Here’s what he had to say: “This is a new era for Milan. We will continue to get younger while maintaining the culture. Milan still has its superstars. As a future target I’d like Andy Carroll. I must admit that, for his body build, and after seeing his header in the Euros, I would like to have Carroll at Milan” with reports indicating from Italy that Berlusconi Snr is ‘seriously considering; taking his son’s advice.
This led to Rodgers stating just a few days ago: “It’s something I would have to look at, I have to be honest. Andy’s always going to be linked with clubs, whether he was here or not. He knows exactly where he stands, but I have had no enquiries about him. There are many things to going on loan. Is it going to be beneficial for the club, that’s the most important thing? Sometimes a player going out on loan – in general, not just Andy – can benefit the club in the long term. It gets them game experience and they come back a better player, a more confident one. Certainly more so than if they’ve been sitting on the bench for the majority of the season. I’m not going to sit here and say I will never let anyone go on loan, then come in here in two weeks and a player’s gone, and you’re saying ‘you said you wouldn’t let them go’.”
This would seem to indicate that Carroll is not in Rodgers’ first-team plans for the coming campaign, despite his marked improvement towards the back-end of last season. Assuming that Rodgers adopts a similar 4-3-3 formation that he did last season with Swansea, this may mean that he wants Luis Suarez to take the central role that Danny Graham played for most of last season for the Welsh outfit.
The 39 year-old Ulsterman likes his number nine to be both strong on the ball and mobile off it, but do you really want Suarez playing with his back to goal for most of the game? Is that not a monumental waste of his creative talents? Carroll may not be as mobile as Graham, but he’s certainly better in the air, can bully defenders more and his work-rate has come on in leaps and bounds the past few months and with the right service, he’s a serious goal threat.
It may be the temptation to play it long which is hindering Carroll’s cause. England with Peter Crouch in the side suffered from this very same disease. Crouch isn’t particularly great in the air, but whenever a defender or midfielder was pushed for space and time on the ball, they’d play the easy ball further forward to Crouch, hoping he’d do something with it. Crouch’s strength was on the deck, but that didn’t matter and it was just an example of those players passing on responsibility of actually doing anything of note when in possession – a collective lack of ownership over their own and the team’s performances.
Perhaps rather than what Carroll is actually capable of, Rodgers fears that having such a big target man and useful outlet will prove too tempting to ignore for some of his new side and could compromise his new passing ‘philosophy’ at Anfield. However, there must still be a case for keeping him at the club as a useful plan B even if he’s not going to be a regular guaranteed starter under Rodgers.
Liverpool are hardly blessed with strength in depth up front either at the moment. Dirk Kuyt has left the club after six years and moved to Fenerbache in Turkey, while Craig Bellamy cannot be relied upon to either play or perform consistently due to a chronic knee complaint, which leaves just Carroll and Suarez. Even if the club do complete a deal to bring Fabio Borini to the club over the course of the next few days, there’s no pressing nor convincing argument to allow Carroll to move elsewhere in the short-term.
Alberto Aquilani has been moved about on loan to both Juventus and AC Milan over the past two seasons while the club had to put up with inferior replacements such as Jay Spearing and Christian Poulsen and they are in danger of letting the same thing happen all over again with this Carroll situation.
The giant Geordie is far from the complete player and there are still technical deficiencies in his game which may hinder his long-term future under Rodgers, but I thought the entire point of bringing in a new young and vibrant manager with a fluid set of principles was that he would get the best out of the existing talent at the club, rather than give up on it before a ball has even been kicked in anger. Is it not his job to find solutions to problems such as this, rather than simply getting rid of them altogether?
It’s clear that Rodgers is not under the same pressure to play the likes of Carroll, Downing and Henderson as Kenny Dalglish was, but he’s simply far too useful an option to simply let go to Sam Allardyce’s West Ham or wherever next season. How is Carroll expected to learn and adapt to a new style of play at Liverpool if he isn’t even there in the first place? Rarely when players are loaned out do they come back and prove themselves, especially when they are somewhat proven already and have cost the sort of figure that Carroll did.
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If Rodgers wants to sell, then that’s another matter entirely, but Carroll’s stock has never been higher during his time at Anfield, and a loan move merely signifies that the player has no real sell-on value. He may not quite fit the system or the style of play, but even as just a hugely expensive plan B, Carroll deserves another season at Liverpool to prove himself.
Do you think Carroll should be given another chance at Anfield next season?
There’s something special about the way Mick McCarthy, Jez Moxey and Steve Morgan go about their business in the summer. As the supporters of clubs around us are taking to the message boards to complain about their lack of activity and ambition, Wolves fans, yet again, have the feeling of great satisfaction.
The new season was still over a month away when Wolves completed the signing of centre-half Roger Johnson, the third new addition to our squad this summer. Johnson, 28, needs no introduction as everyone has taken note of his fantastic performances in the Premiership over the last two seasons with Birmingham. With reports this week suggesting we paid as little as £4m for him, it is simply a case of yet another piece of brilliant from the Wolves board.
Jamie O’Hara has also joined the club on a permanent basis this summer. After a string of fantastic performances during his loan spell in the latter half of the season, the management team moved quickly yet again in order to ensure we captured his signature. Once again there are reports that Wolves may have paid just £3.5m for Jamie – which in today’s market is an absolute steal for a player of his quality. Add to this the signing of former-Swansea goalkeeper Dorus de Vries on a free transfer, and it has already been an extremely successful transfer window for Wolves.
The refreshing thing about our football club is that those at the top of the hierarchy are so sensible. McCarthy, Moxey and Morgan don’t go out and spend money recklessly on older ‘big shots’ looking for their final payday. They don’t just look for the right player; they look for the right person. Everyone that has been brought to the club in recent years is well known for their passion and desire just as well as their footballing ability. The likes of Matt Jarvis, Kevin Doyle and new-boy Jamie O’Hara prove this. They bleed Wolves blood, and it is so important that they do. There is a real feeling of togetherness at the football club, right from the top of the club down to the supporters – it feels very special and everybody knows we are a club moving in the right direction.
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Atletico Madrid returned to sixth place in La Liga with a 3-0 win over Mallorca on Monday, despite going down to 10 men.
Juan Valera met a Jose Antonio Reyes corner to head the hosts in front after 13 minutes at the Vicente Calderon.
Uruguay front-man Diego Forlan made it 2-0 in the 34th minute, collecting a Tiago through-ball and rounding Mallorca goalkeeper Dudu Aouate to slot home his seventh goal of the season.
Atletico were a left a man short from the 70th minute when captain Antonio Lopez received a straight red for tugging down Emilio Insue inside the box, preventing the striker from running through on goal.
But Cameroon striker Pierre Webo failed to convert the resulting penalty, with his spot-kick saved by David De Gea.
Any hope of a comeback for Mallorca receded further when midfielder Jonathan De Guzman saw red for a late tackle on Juanfran.
Reyes then wrapped up the scoring in the 90th minute.
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Finding himself unmarked at the back post, the former Arsenal and Seville man shot low beyond Aouate to make it 3-0.
Atletico move back to sixth at the expense of Athletic Bilbao, while Mallorca remain ninth.