The club vs country row rumbles on throughout the season, but with the World Cup fast-approaching, football fans are taking more of an interest in how the national teams will shape up.
England were in action over the past 10 days, taking on the Netherlands and Italy in international friendlies before Gareth Southgate names his squad for the major tournament in Russia.
Southampton fans have taken a break from discussing their club’s situation, which is centred around a relegation battle and potential managerial appointment in the summer once Mark Hughes sees out the season.
A handful think that former Watford boss Marco Silva should swerve the Saints for Everton, but right now, a group of supporters are focusing on who from the squad should receive an England call-up.
Ryan Bertrand was the only Southampton player to make it into Southgate’s senior squad for recent friendlies.
On Reddit, a handful of Saints fans gave their thoughts on which players deserve a chance.
Comment from discussion Which Saints players do you think deserve to be in the England squad?.Comment from discussion Which Saints players do you think deserve to be in the England squad?.Comment from discussion Which Saints players do you think deserve to be in the England squad?.Comment from discussion Which Saints players do you think deserve to be in the England squad?.Comment from discussion Which Saints players do you think deserve to be in the England squad?.Comment from discussion Which Saints players do you think deserve to be in the England squad?.Comment from discussion Which Saints players do you think deserve to be in the England squad?.Comment from discussion Which Saints players do you think deserve to be in the England squad?.
Marcus Rashford is one of the Premier League’s most exciting young players, yet there are worrying blockades to his development at Old Trafford.
On the one hand, only Romelu Lukaku has made more appearances for Manchester United in all competitions this season; on the other, that’s translated to just the tenth-most minutes on the pitch of any Red Devils player – less than Lukaku, Jesse Lingard and Juan Mata, three attackers the youngster is essentially competing with for a place in the starting XI.
Then there’s Anthony Martial and Alexis Sanchez, two players who are older than Rashford and cost the club money to bring to Old Trafford.
Albeit still aged just 20, it feels like Rashford has reached something of a crossroads. While he could bide his time with United and remain patient with his development, he would probably be in the starting XI every week at most other Premier League clubs. So, what’s the best scenario for Rashford as an individual, rather than United as a club?
Football FanCast lay out three suggested solutions…
Solution A – Stay at United
For all the concern over Rashford’s limited involvement, particularly since the turn of 2018, he’s still made phenomenal progress at first-team level for a 20-year-old and is probably much further along the development curve than he expected when Louis van Gaal gave him an emergency debut in the Europa League three years ago.
Likewise, Jose Mourinho is clearly fond of the youngster – the Portuguese has never been the type to give chances to young players just for the sake of it – so although game-time has dried up of late, it appears the England international is still in his manager’s long-term plans.
Lingard too, is testament to how young players can still come good if they wait patiently for opportunities and are given games at the right time. There’s also the Michael Owen argument – why exactly should Rashford be playing regular football at such a tender age, when it could eventually bring a premature end to his career?
Solution B – Leave United this summer
There will be almost countless takers for Rashford should he decide to leave the club this summer, as recently suggested by Jamie Redknapp, and Paul Pogba has shown that talented youngsters are more than capable of forging careers for themselves at other major clubs even if they can’t get game-time with the Red Devils.
Any club outside the Big Six would find room for Rashford in their starting XI each week and the youngster has already proved what a handful he can be at this level, in terms of both direct dribbling from the left flank and scoring goals as the central striker.
While training with the very best around is important, there’s nothing quite like getting minutes on the pitch – and even if Rashford does have to drop down a level this summer, maybe joining a club like West Ham or Everton, provided he maintains the level of potency we’ve already seen from him, he’ll surely return to the top end of the Premier League sooner rather than later.
In that regard, he can take inspiration from Lukaku; unloved at Chelsea, he moved to Goodison Park and scored the goals to earn a massive switch to United.
Solution C – Go out on loan
It’s the compromise everybody seems to have overlooked amid all the talk about Rashford leaving his boyhood club this summer. Going out on loan has been a common tactic to get young players game time for decades now, but there appears to be an assumption that Rashford too good to be loaned.
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Yet, it actually makes perfect sense; if Rashford is as good playing week-in, week-out as most United fans think he will be, then proving it elsewhere is probably the best chance he has to dislodge the likes of Lukaku and Sanchez from the starting XI on a permanent basis. At Old Trafford next season, he’ll still only get the odd cameo outings here and there – not enough to really show he’s as dependable as those team-mates.
Once again, clubs will be queuing up to sign Rashford on loan if he’s made available, and choosing the right club to loan him out to could help United’s Premier League campaign as well. A club like Everton, for example, could take plenty of points off United’s divisional rivals with the England attacker – who Transfermarkt value at £45million – leading the line.
So what’s the best solution for Rashford as an individual, rather than United as a club? Let us know by voting below…
As reported by The Scottish Sun, Rangers goalkeeper Wes Foderingham has been ruled out of Sunday’s clash with Celtic, while defender Bruno Alves is also a major doubt.
What’s the story?
Rangers visit Celtic Park this weekend hoping to stop the Hoops win the league title at their expense.
Having not defeated a Brendan Rodgers side since he arrived in Glasgow, the Gers have a massive task ahead of them and losing two first team defensive players in the build-up is not ideal.
The Scottish Sun report Foderingham could be out for the rest of the season, likely leaving the inexperienced Jak Alnwick as his replacement in Sunday’s massive clash.
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How much will he be missed?
Foderingham has made a number of crucial saves for Rangers this season and at Celtic Park in December made two outstanding saves to keep the scores deadlocked at 0-0.
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Losing his shot-stopping ability is undoubtedly a blow, even if other areas of his game have been found lacking at points this term.
Throwing the relatively untested Alnwick into a high pressure situation like Celtic Park on Sunday could be a massive weak spot for Graeme Murty’s side, who will be giving it everything to try and stop the Hoops’ title party.
When a club has won the Premier League and the Carabao Cup, it is unlikely that fans would find many negatives.
However, it appears that Manchester City’s following are different as they have listed the mistakes that were made throughout the campaign.
Pep Guardiola’s side wrapped up the league title with around a month left to go before the end of the season as they took an unassailable 16-point lead.
City, who have lost just twice in the top flight so far, blew their opponents out of the water early and never looked back.
The FA Cup proved to be a sticking point for the North-West outfit, though, while the Champions League remains their Achilles heel.
Guardiola failed to guide his team beyond the quarter-final stage as they were thumped 5-1 on aggregate by Liverpool.
It was a hugely one-sided tie as Jurgen Klopp’s attacking stars ran riot to send the Merseyside outfit into the semi-finals of the elite competition.
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City were roundly mocked by their rivals for falling to Liverpool, and that failure has has stuck with the supporters.
In a discussion on Reddit, fans discussed what the club’s biggest mistakes were this season.
Comment from discussion What is a mistake from this season that needs to be avoided in the future?.Comment from discussion What is a mistake from this season that needs to be avoided in the future?.Comment from discussion What is a mistake from this season that needs to be avoided in the future?.Comment from discussion What is a mistake from this season that needs to be avoided in the future?.Comment from discussion What is a mistake from this season that needs to be avoided in the future?.Comment from discussion What is a mistake from this season that needs to be avoided in the future?.Comment from discussion What is a mistake from this season that needs to be avoided in the future?.Comment from discussion What is a mistake from this season that needs to be avoided in the future?.Comment from discussion What is a mistake from this season that needs to be avoided in the future?.Comment from discussion What is a mistake from this season that needs to be avoided in the future?.
West Ham United would have known the tough task they faced to get any kind of positive result when they welcomed rampant Premier League champions Manchester City to the London Stadium on Sunday, but they also knew that they needed points themselves.
The Irons came into the clash against Pep Guardiola’s men just three points above the relegation zone following Southampton’s 2-1 win against Bournemouth at St Mary’s on Saturday, and it had certainly put a bit more pressure on them to produce what should haveat least been a committed and top-drawer performance against a classy Citizens side.
The Irons needed to match or even try and beat their opponents in terms of effort and work rate, even if they knew they didn’t have as much quality.
That is what they did earlier in the campaign where they were seven minutes away from grabbing an unlikely point against City at the Etihad Stadium, and David Moyes and his players had a blueprint to work from following that impressive display.
They also knew following their 4-1 collapse against Arsenal previously, and with a trip to Leicester City before they host Manchester United and Everton in their final two matches, that they could still need another win to secure survival.
Moyes’ line-up against the Citizens never suggested to the team or the supporters that they were going to get anything from the game however, and the decision to bring in Patrice Evra for Arthur Masuaku was strange given as though the former is nowhere near as fast as he once was.
Even so, when you know you aren’t as good as your opposition, you need to have a plan, be organised and work hard, and it was just never the case during the whole 90 minutes with the players on the pitch perhaps beginning to feel that the London Stadium faithful are turning against Moyes.
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As was pointed out on Match of the Day 2 by Alan Shearer, too many of West Ham’s players were simply jogging about and happy to let their opposition not only have possession, but also break forward with the ball relatively unchallenged.
It wasn’t good enough when you are getting to the crunch stage of the campaign, and matters were hardly helped by the fact that Andy Carroll walked straight down the tunnel when he wasn’t part of Moyes’ triple substitution when the score was 4-1, coupled by the fact that Javier Hernandez came on and putting in a rather half-hearted 24 minutes.
Moyes and Carroll had a heated exchange on the training pitch the following day, while according to club insider @ExWHUemployee on Twitter, the Mexico international also raised concerns about his situation to his manager.
While the Scot must take some of the blame for such a lacklustre display, the majority of the players that were out on the pitch need to take a long, hard look at themselves, too.
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And that includes captain Mark Noble, whose comments post-match were rightly slammed by his own fans on Twitter.
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It seemed clear that some of those individuals weren’t playing for Moyes – as they weren’t for Slaven Bilic at the beginning of the campaign – and if that is the case then that is dangerous for the Irons in what is going to be a hugely important end to the season.
The former Manchester United manager needs to lay down the law and prove that he is an authority figure in training this week, and he has already done that by fining Carroll following the duo’s altercation on Monday – forcing an apology from the centre-forward.
The 55-year-old needs to reunite his squad and have them all working from the same page away against a Leicester side that already look to be on their holidays, and three points at the King Power Stadium could give them what they need to preserve their Premier League status for at least another year.
Liverpool fans were left stunned last week when Jurgen Klopp’s right-hand man Zeljko Buvac suddenly left the club.
The 56-year-old has worked alongside Klopp as his assistant manager since the pair were at Mainz.
The duo have known each other for around 20 years, but prior to Liverpool’s Champions League semi-final second leg against Roma, Buvac was given a leave of absence.
The official line from the club is that his position in Klopp’s backroom team has not been affected, but the Bosnian will not return for the remainder of the season.
Speculation has been rife regarding the possible reason behind Buvac’s exit, with The Mirror recently claiming that Buvac left following a huge bust-up with Klopp.
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The publication claims that the assistant manager was approached by Arsenal regarding a potential coaching role, but decided to keep it a secret from the Liverpool boss.
Twitter account Anfield Express has since claimed that Buvac is back in Merseyside, and the fans have made it clear what they want to happen.
Rangers fans are excited about the possibility of signing Swansea City striker Oliver McBurnie this summer after he was linked with a move to Ibrox earlier this week.
The Light Blues have already announced the signing of Scott Arfield and Allan McGregor over the last few days, the start of what is expected to be a busy summer of transfers as Steven Gerrard looks to build a squad capable of challenging for trophies in Scottish football next season.
McBurnie spent to the second half of this season on loan at Championship side Barnsley, impressing enough to be voted as the club’s Player Of The Year, scoring nine goals in 17 appearances for the side.
With a strong record of scoring for Swansea City’s U23s side too, he appears to have the ability and future potential to be a massive success at Ibrox, especially considering he is a massive Rangers fan himself, regularly taking to social media to cheer on his team.
Fans took to Twitter to share their thoughts on the potential signing…
Loris Karius might feel – and with some small justification – that his football career hangs by a thread.
The massively high-profile nature of his dressing down in Kiev coupled with the fact that he cost his entire team a shot at immortality will bring with it mental scars.
Where does he go from here? He can rationalise that his team might still have lost, but the two-goal margin is hard to ignore: without his mistakes that game could have ended 1-1 after 90 minutes. Or will he have a choice over what happens next. Mentally, will he ever be the same again when he steps over the white line? Will Liverpool want to keep him? And even the notion of selling him is built upon the idea that there is a club who actually want to buy him.
There had been calls for Jurgen Klopp to sign a new keeper in January, but since Karius took hold of the number one spot those cries died down and he was in the process of showing the world that he was a competent goalkeeper. But now those dissenting voices are back with a thousand vengeances.
At the moment, it feels as though it’s hard to overstate the importance of this simply because the coverage has been so wall-to-wall, on social media and beyond. It’s a heartbreaking tale on a human level and an extraordinary one on a footballing level. Though in the end, all that happened is that he made a few mistakes. The mental toughness needed to get over what happened isn’t available to every human being, but if Karius has it you’d imagine he’ll be back.
That’s really what Liverpool have to judge now: whether their keeper has the mental fortitude to come back from the depths, and whether he had the talent to be the club’s long-term number one in the first place. If he has both of those things, he’s worth persevering with.
Or at least, you’d imagine that’s what Jurgen Klopp will think.
The noises coming out of Anfield haven’t been good for Karius. Unsurprisingly, new goalkeepers have been linked. And yet, with Klopp, you just never know.
New players would have been linked after the Europa League final two years ago when Alberto Moreno made high-profile errors which helped Sevilla regain their crown in Switzerland. More recently, Dejan Lovren has made blunders in red and cost his side goals only to find himself in the starting line-up for a Champions League final.
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Both of those men were given another chance. Liverpool could still be doing with a replacement for Lovren, but the arrival of Andy Robertson in the starting XI has relegated Moreno to second-choice. And whilst most Liverpool fans wouldn’t mourn his departure on a footballing level, few are calling for his head even as a replacement. You get the feeling Lovren could go the same way, though the Croatian’s performance in Kiev was, on the whole, quite impressive.
Klopp appears to be a coach who likes a rehabilitation. He’s a player’s manager – a motivator who knows which buttons to push to get the best out of his men. Karius, if he is to be given a second chance, couldn’t ask for a better manager than his compatriot who has already shown that some of his error-prone players can be fashioned into functional players who can at least play their part in a squad that can make it all the way to a Champions League final.
This feels different somehow. The scale of the errors, the enormity of his footballing wrongdoing and the worldwide stage on which he did it perhaps means that Karius’s own head might be the main reason he can’t be salvaged. But if there’s any manager in world football you’d want helping him, it’s surely Jurgen Klopp.
Aston Villa fans are desperate to keep a hold of Jack Grealish this summer, even if it means turning down massive transfer fees from the likes of Manchester United.
The Red Devils have been linked with a move for the Villa stand-out this week, with The Sun reporting that he is on their radar after his impressive season in the English Championship.
Grealish was instrumental to their promotion bid and while the Villans ultimately fell short in the play-off final against Fulham, retaining the midfielder will be key if they are to mount another challenge next term.
It may not be as easy as that of course, with financial realities to consider.
If there is one man Villa fans want to keep though, it’s Grealish, believing if a team is built around him then he can inspire his boyhood heroes to greatness.
Supporters took to Twitter to share their thoughts on a potential exit…
Germany defender Marvin Plattenhardt is currently being linked with a move away from Bundesliga club Hertha Berlin in this summer’s transfer window.
Everton are believed to be interested – as reported by Sky Sports News – and the Merseyside club’s supporters have been quick to reveal their feelings on the potential deal.
Plattenhardt is currently with the Germany squad at the 2018 World Cup, and he will enter this summer’s international competition off the back of a fine season at Hertha.
Indeed, the left-back, who is valued at £13.5m by transfermarkt.co.uk, registered eight assists in 38 appearances for Hertha last season, with seven of those assists coming in the Bundesliga.
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Everton could well be in the market for more than one left-back this summer when considering that Leighton Baines is being linked with a move away from the club.
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Watford are also said to be interested in Plattenhardt, but Everton will fancy their chances of beating the Hornets to the defender’s signature.
The Everton fans clearly want the deal to occur this summer, and a selection of the Twitter reaction can be seen below: