What you missed while driving for an hour and a half through the snowpocalypse…
- English Premier League roundup: Aston Villa 2-1 West Brom, Everton 0-0 Wigan, Fulham 0-0 Sunderland, Stoke City 0-1 Blackpool, West Ham 1-3 Manchester City, Newcastle 3-1 Liverpool, Bolton 2-1 Blackburn, Wolves 1-0 Birmingham City, Tottenham 1-1 Chelsea.
- NCAA Division I Championship roundup: Akron 1-0 Louisville. This is possibly the best thing to happen to Akron since they learned how to turn rubber into tires.
- Manchester City have rejected a written transfer request from Carlos Tevez.
- Stephen Hunt hopes that Wolverhampton’s 1-0 win over Birmingham will give them momentum heading into their Saturday match against West Brom.
- Sam Allardyce blamed Blackburn’s poor defending for their loss to Bolton; Rafa Benitez and Arsene Wenger were strangely absent from Allardyce’s rant.
- Arsenal may debut goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny against Manchester United today.
- Rio Ferdinand, 32, wants a four year contract extension so that he can end his career at Manchester United (although, technically, one could point out that his current deal – which has two years left on it – is already that deal).
- Newcastle striker Andy Carroll can move out of Kevin Nolan’s house now that the assault charges against him have been dropped.
- It just keeps getting worse for former Newcastle manager Chris Hughton: he’s now been linked with the not-quite-vacant-yet West Ham managerial post.
- Everton manager David Moyes doesn’t think that selling Steven Pienaar will raise enough cash to bring a striker to Goodison.
- Two goals from Bradley Wright-Phillips enabled Plymouth Argyle to beat Exeter 2-0 in the Devon Derby; they’re now unbeaten against their local rivals in their last 13 league games.
- Bayern midfielder Bastian Schweinsteiger has extended his deal with Bayern through 2016.
- Stuttgart have sacked manager Jens Keller after only two months on the job; Keller only picked up seven points during his tenure.
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If Rio can go injury free for 90 days (same as cash), give him the extension. He won’t, so that’s all that then.
Everton…you just get the feeling if Moyes had some money that he could really do something. As it stands, I think he’ll get the sack as the results get worse. He seems the perfect man for another gig with high expectations and little cash: Rangers.
Is Andy Carroll safe to be on his own? He’s not tried to throttle anyone while living with Nolan, so maybe keep him at camp Kevin?
Note to Man City: Don’t hire anyone from South America. They get homesick at your club very quickly, no matter how much money you throw at them. Tevez will leave, of that I have no doubt.
Big Sam is out at Blackburn…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/teams/b/blackburn_rovers/9283395.stm
And yet Roy Hodgson is still employed.
Results clearly don’t matter in terms of sacking. It’s all down to expectations and sanity (or a lack thereof). There are three managers in the EPL I would have sacked before Allardyce and Hughton…Mick McCarthy, Avi Grant, and Roberto Martinez.
Oh sure, it’s easy to say you’d sack the managers of the bottom 3 teams, but it takes real gusto and imagination to sack the manager of a mid table club.
New ownership at Blackburn likely has a lot more to do with Allardyce’s sacking than any results so far this season; ownership changes are one area where the “new direction” makes sense.