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Player Focus: Is Wayne Rooney Worth All That Money?

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Player Focus: Is Wayne Rooney Worth All That Money? Working out precisely what happened between Wayne Rooney and Sir Alex Ferguson towards in the end of last season is a baffling task. Although Ferguson subsequently claimed Rooney had demanded a transfer, there were rumours about a year ago that Ferguson felt he was past his best and had begun to inv...

Team Focus: Meulensteen Dismissed Just as Recovery Began at Fulham

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Team Focus: Meulensteen Dismissed Just as Recovery Began at Fulham Perhaps the attempt is futile. Maybe we should just accept that there is no logic to what Shahid Khan has done at Fulham, that sacking two managers in a season, lurching from one style of football to another, is just a thing that rich men do and that to try to spy deeper meaning is pointless. Perhap...

Team Focus: Crystal Palace - A Team on the Rise Under Pulis

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Team Focus: Crystal Palace - A Team on the Rise Under Pulis When Tony Pulis took over at Crystal Palace in November, they lay bottom of the Premier League with just four points from 11 games. They seemed doomed, but Pulis nonetheless gathered the players at their Beckenham training ground and told them that he had never been relegated and had no intention of...

Team Focus: Belief at Sunderland Gathering Under Poyet

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Team Focus: Belief at Sunderland Gathering Under Poyet About 20 years ago, I was drinking in a pub in West Jesmond when I was accosted at the bar by a grey-haired, grey-stubbled man who worked on the Hoppings, an annual fair that was held on the Town Moor in Newcastle each year. Learning I was from Sunderland, he sucked through the gaps in his teeth and...

Player Focus: Contrasting Conversion Rates of the Premier League's Top Strikers

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Player Focus: Contrasting Conversion Rates of the Premier League's Top Strikers Last week, discussing Cardiff CityCharles Reep and Egil Olsen's theory that it takes roughly nine chances to score a goal was highlighted. In the Premier League this season, it’s been taking 9.91: or, to put it another way, 10.03% of all shots go in. Cardiff, as a team, fall short of that aver...

Team Focus: Cardiff's Need to Solve Goalscoring Woes

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Team Focus: Cardiff's Need to Solve Goalscoring Woes Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was rueful after his Cardiff City side’s 2-0 defeat at home to West Ham United on Saturday, a result that leaves them in the relegation zone, just a point above Sunderland and Crystal Palace. It’s so tight at the bottom – six points separating the bottom 11 sid...

Player Focus: Is Juan Mata a Mourinho Player?

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Player Focus: Is Juan Mata a Mourinho Player? Juan Mata, it seems generally agreed, is not a Mourinho type of player. That is all but self-evident: why else, after all, would the player who was Chelsea’s player of the year in each of the last two seasons find himself so on the periphery? It’s true that he has made 11 Premier League ...

League Focus: 3 Conclusions from the Premier League Season So Far

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League Focus: 3 Conclusions from the Premier League Season So Far Proactivity and reactivitySince the success of Barcelona and Spain and their approach based on radical possession, teams seem to have become more aware of the advantages – and disadvantages – of holding possession. Although it’s true that, at the very highest level, the most succes...

Team Focus: Hit & Hope Aston Villa in Panic Mode

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Team Focus: Hit & Hope Aston Villa in Panic Mode Take two teams. Put on the shirt of one of the teams, walk to the centre circle and blindfold yourself. Tell the teams to walk out onto a pitch and stand around. Take a bag of balls and start kicking them around. Half would go to your own players and half to the opposition. So long as you didn&rsquo...

Player Focus: Fernandinho - Breaker and Maker of Play

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Player Focus: Fernandinho - Breaker and Maker of Play When Manchester City brought in Fernandinho to replace Gareth Barry, the instinct was to think that although they’d upgraded, his pairing with Yaya Toure might cause defensive issues. The classic modern midfield partnership, after all, tends to feature an out-and-out holder, a ball winner who ...