Capital One Cup - My Review

Capital One Cup – My Review

This seasons Capital One Cup has thrown up its usual share of shocks and excitement. From Leeds United dumping Everton out in the third round at Elland Road, to the incredible 5-7 encounter between Reading and Arsenal the round after at The Madjeski Stadium. It has been a real thrill to watch the tournament unfold. Without question the real show stealers have been Bradford City. The League Two side have had the fairytale tournament, starting in the first round with a 1-0 away win at Notts County, the second round proved to be even tougher with a trip to Watford, but The Bantams still prevailed and returned to Yorkshire with a 2-1 victory. After that came a 3-2 home win over divisional rivals Burton Albion, and with that win came the reward of a fourth round tie away at Premier League side Wigan Athletic. That tie ended 0-0 and it came down to penalties. In the end, the underdogs prevailed 4-2 in the shootout and that is when people were beginning to take notice of them.

Next up for Bradford was a visit to Valley Parade from 2011 cup finalists Arsenal. The Gunners were being widely tipped to run riot over the home side, but we witnessed something even more unbelievable instead. Bradford had scored midway through the first half and retained that one goal lead for most of the game and appeared on the verge of pulling off the shock of tournament until Arsenal scored right at the death and sent the game into extra time. It then seemed that despite it taking them almost an entire game, Arsenal might well finish this off in extra time, but the 30 minutes of extra time went by and the scores stayed level. It was time for the dreaded shootout! Bradford got off to the perfect start by scoring their first 2 kicks while Arsenal missed theirs. The Gunners eventually found their shooting boots at the third time of asking while Bradford missed their third but netted the fourth. Arsenal scored their fourth as well leaving Bradford with the chance of winning the tie if they could score the final penalty, but it was saved! But Arsenal still had to score their final kick to stay in the tie. Captain Thomas Vermaelen stepped up but hit the post and Bradford City booked themselves a place in the semi final winning the game 3-2 on penalties. An incredible night for the club and their fans, one which I don’t think any of them will ever forget.

After the unbelievable quarter-final, Bradford’s next challenge was two games against Aston Villa home and away. Villa had been struggling in the Premier League but despite that, they still had the favourites tag. The game at Valley Parade was just an thrilling an encounter between these two teams as the previous game with Arsenal was, the only difference being more goals were scored. Bradford came out 3-1 winners and left The Villians with a lot of work to do in the home tie a couple of weeks later. When the time came for that match to take place, Villa got a vital goal in the first half, but midway through the second half, Bradford did the unthinkable again and scored to give them a 4-2 lead on aggregate. Villa tried and tried, and eventually managed to score again to win the match 2-1, but it wasn’t enough. Bradford won the overall tie 4-3 and making a name for themselves in the process by becoming only the second team from the fourth tier of English league football to make it to a major cup final. Awaiting them were Swansea City who knocked out Chelsea in their semi-final, who would be hoping to win their first major honour in their clubs history. The stage was set for an exciting encounter.

Yesterday afternoon, Bradford and Swansea met in the final, and it was The Swans who came out victorious. 5-0 was the score when the referee blew his whistle to call time on the game, and while the score definitely showed Swansea’s dominance, nothing can be taken away from Bradford City and the effort they made in this tournament.  They’ve certainly given me and plenty of other football fans some entertainment over the past couple of months and given us plenty to talk about as well. The tie against Swansea was always going to be the toughest for them. When they played Wigan and Aston Villa, they were playing teams low on confidence due to their league positions. And their game against Arsenal was being played at a venue which certainly didn’t suit The Gunners at all and the pressure put on them by fans and media didn’t do them any favours and if anything it helped cost them the tie in my mind. With the final coming at Wembley and against a team full of confidence and doing well in The Premier League, it is no real surprise that the game turned out the way it did. Phil Parkinson and his team can be praised for starting from the first round of this tournament and being able to show the right amount of fight and determination to get as far as they have in the competition. I hope that the players, staff, fans and everyone else related to the club can forget the disappointment of losing the final and just feel proud of that fact that they made it there in the first place.

There is no denying Swansea City have excelled this season. I’ll hold my hands up and admit that when they finished 11th last season and Brendan Rodgers left them to join Liverpool, I thought they were a certainty to be relegated as I didn’t think whoever would come in to the club would be able to do what Rodgers had done for them. But right from day one when they thumped Queens Park Rangers 5-0 at Loftus Road, they’ve gone from strength to strength and shown themselves to be a quality team in the Premier League this season. They also deserve credit for being able to go on the cup run they have and still managed to maintain a high standard in the league. A classic example of that going wrong was a couple of years ago when Birmingham City won the League Cup but suffered relegation in the same season. With 37 points achieved with 11 games to go, Swansea would seem to have Premier League safety secured this season and will now just be looking to finish as high in the table as they possibly can. Key players from last season such as Joe Allen and Scott Sinclair left the club, but new recruits for this season such as Jonathan De Guzman and Michu have managed to offer manager Michael Laudrup more and with European football coming to The Liberty Stadium next season, Laudrup can look to build Swansea into an established Premier League side than can start challenging for European places every season. Congratulations to Swansea City on their Capital One Cup victory and here is hoping next seasons tournament is filled with just as much action and surprises!

Premier League – Weekend Review

Things just don’t seem to be looking up for Queens Park Rangers at the moment. A 2-0 home defeat against Manchester United has left them 7 points from safety with 11 games to go. Their next 5 games are all against teams in the lower half of the table and if Harry Redknapp is going to get them out of trouble, he’s going to need to try and get maximum points from all of these games. If he doesn’t, I think it might well be lights out for QPR and their Premier League adventure. Fellow strugglers Aston Villa were beaten 2-1 by Arsenal at The Emirates Stadium. The Villians were 5 minutes away from grabbing a valuable point before Santi Cazorla’s 2nd goal put the game to bed. The four other teams around the drop-zone all played each other as well this weekend. Wigan leapfrogged Reading in the table after they picked up a huge 3-0 away win against The Royals. The home side certainly weren’t helped by Pavel Pogrebnyaks sending off, and Newcastle beat Southampton 4-2 at St James Park on Sunday afternoon to go 6 points clear of Wigan who are in 17th place tied on 24 points with Aston Villa, but The Latics gain the extra place because of their superior goal difference.

By the time all the action ended on Saturday, Manchester United were 15 points clear of rivals Manchester City at the top of the table, City played 3rd placed Chelsea at The Etihad Stadium on Sunday knowing they had to take maximum points if they were still in with a chance of catching United. Goals from Yaya Toure and Carlos Tevez secured the 2-0 win and 3 points cutting the gap at the top down to 12. Still a lot of work to do for City to close the gap and they will need to make sure they don’t drop anymore valuable points and hope that city rivals Uniteds upcoming opponents make them drop the points instead. The other action from the weekend included wins for Fulham, Norwich City and West Bromwich Albion. The Cottagers beat Stoke City 1-0 after an excellent Dimitar Berbatov finish on the stroke of half time. Norwich perhaps caused the biggest surprise of the day beating Everton 2-1 at Carrow Road and West Bromwich Albion once again showed why they are a force to be reckoned with at home with a 2-1 win against Sunderland. That result tied with Newcastle’s win on Sunday sees The Black Cats drop to 15th in the table just 5 points clear of the relegation zone. The last game to take place see’s West Ham United take on London rivals Tottenham Hotspur tonight at Upton Park. If West Ham win, they can climb a couple of places in the table helping solidify a mid-table spot, while if Spurs can pick up all 3 points, it allows them to overtake Chelsea in 3rd place and send them 4 points clear of rivals Arsenal ahead of the North London Derby next Sunday at White Hart Lane.

Andrew.

https://twitter.com/ADNU92

Blog Information

There are a few reasons as to why I started this blog. To try and show a professional approach to topics that can often divide opinion, to improve my skills as a writer and to have fun and connect with a worldwide audience. I’ve had a look at my view counter since my blog started last month and am fairly pleased with the start that I’ve made with regards to views. I’m still waiting for some constructive feedback to be left in comments as it would be useful to me to know what I am doing well and what I can improve on. I am looking for ways in which I can try and get my blog more attention but these days it can be difficult. I don’t want to be seen to join a website just so I can promote my blog and nothing else as that already creates the wrong impression and perhaps it then falls threat to internet trolls, I don’t know, but I’m not taking any chances for the time being. I am also in the unfortunate position where almost all my family don’t even like football and my friends who do like it aren’t all that keen on the aspect of it that I’m covering, so I’m getting no help from anybody else and having to try and do everything by myself.

I will admit with regards to certain topics I could write a lot more if I wanted to, but I think everybody knows you can only write so much about a certain topic before people start to get bored and lose interest in it so I try and limit myself when posting on a certain topic and by doing so, not running the risk of the post going stale halfway in. Another reason why I think the majority of my posts have contained more facts than opinions are that I’m just trying to show a professional touch with regards to the topics and not writing something that could likely anger somebody who feels very passionately about that topic. Everything I write is in my own words, I don’t copy and paste from any websites but I do use other websites such as Sky Sports and The Telegraph just to help source out information to help me make my articles as accurate as possible, because I am a normal person just like you and don’t have the power to attend manager press conferences and track down people who claim to have inside scoop as to what is going on at a certain club. I need to get my information from the same place as every other average person. I also do this with the hope of improving my writing skills, this is something I was ok at during school and since leaving 3 and a half years ago I hadn’t done much of this style of writing at all until I started getting into this, so right now it is trying to rediscover old territory in the hope that I’ll get better and when I get older I might be able to get better use from this skill.

I felt I had to share this information just in case people had doubts about what I was doing or weren’t keen on my work. I know it won’t be for everyone, but for those who it might appeal to, I do hope that you’ll enjoy my future work. I like to think I am improving with every post and believe me I’d post every day if I could but right now I cannot commit to that given that this is just a hobby and I’m not making any money from this. Maybe I’ll be granted more time in the future, but for now, please enjoy my weekly posts and let me know what you think of them.

Andrew.

https://twitter.com/ADNU92

Carragher Calls It A Day

Carragher Calls It A Day

On the 7th of February, 35 year old Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher announced that he would be retiring from football at the end of the current season after spending 16 years playing for the club. Carragher will be missed greatly by all Liverpool fans given the amount of time and hard work he has put in to try and make the club as successful as possible. The announcement itself doesn’t come as too much of a surprise given his age and a slight decline in his game time over the last couple of seasons, but at least with him announcing it this month, it gives Brendan Rodgers more time to consider possible replacements. While of course finding another centre half should be relatively simple, finding someone who cared as much for the club as Carragher will not be so easy. That is not to say whoever cares in won’t care for the club, but more drawing attention to the fact that Carragher had chances in his career to move to other clubs but instead decided to stay at Anfield and cement himself as a club legend and a real fans favourite. The local man won several honours during his time at the club including 3 League Cups, 2 Community Shields, 2 FA Cups, 2 UEFA Super Cups and 1 UEFA Cup, but undoubtedly the biggest honour was The Champions League in 2005 when Liverpool beat AC Milan 3-2 on penalties after the thrilling 3-3 encounter in Istanbul.

So this decision from Carragher then begs the question, where does he go from here? England Manager Roy Hodgson believes he has what it takes to become a top coach while his current boss Brendan Rodgers says he still has a chance to be involved with Liverpool in a backroom role if he wishes when he hangs up his boots in May. He still has plenty of time to make his mind up of course, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he decided to stay at Liverpool for a couple of seasons at least to get some experience working on the coaching side of things before perhaps moving to another club in a more advanced role. I’m not sure if I could see him becoming involved with a position in the media as there are fewer opportunities these days to get the right role, but if one came up in the near future and if took it up I’d be willing to see what he had to offer in that job.  So for the time being he has a few options to consider before making his decision after the season reaches its climax. One thing I think we can all agree on is that we won’t see Carragher quietly leaving the football world in a couple months time. It is clear from every time I saw him play for club and country that he loves the game too much to just leave and live in peace and quiet for the rest of his life. So while we won’t see him wearing his iconic Liverpool 23 shirt anymore, we’ve certainly not seen the last of Jamie Carragher completely.

Andrew.

https://twitter.com/ADNU92

P.S. Apologies for this week’s post being really short. I had hoped to have written a whole lot more but it has been a pretty hectic week for me in many ways and I’ve not had much time to do anything else. I’ve also not had a chance to see any of the FA Cup fixtures from this past weekend and only got to see part of one match from the Champions League last week so I would have tried to include these into my post but they wouldn’t have been great quality since I didn’t see much or any of them. I’ll do my best to do a much better post for next week and make sure this doesn’t become a habit. Thank you for understanding.

Is Bale The Best?

Is Bale The Best?

It is a question now being debated more than ever by pundits and fans alike. Is Tottenham Hotspur winger Gareth Bale one of the best players in the world? There is no doubt that the 23 year old Welsh winger has been in outstanding form for his club recently and has also come up big for his country this season as well and this has got people pondering about whether he is or isn’t one of the top players in the world just now and whether or not he’ll be a Spurs player next season. That last question would be better off being discussed at the end of the season in my opinion, but I see no reason why the first one cannot be talked about for the time being. He has in particular been compared mostly to Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi and I like some others find trying to compare those two hard enough because of how different they both are on the pitch, but the main reason why they are compared to one another so much is because of how key they have been to Real Madrid and Barcelona’s successes in recent years.

Having given it a fair bit of thought, I’m also struggling to compare Bale with Messi mainly because of things such as playing in different positions and playing for completely different clubs, but I think I’m able to do a much better comparison between Bale and Ronaldo given that they both play mainly on the wing and they’ve both got plenty of Premier League experience as well. It can sometimes be very hard to compare certain players because quite often they are being compared on several different things, a lot of the time people look for things like goals and assists to be the difference between players and sometimes it’s things like who has won more trophies or who has achieved more for their country, the options feel endless at times. If I were comparing career totals between these two for goals, assists, honours, international caps and career earnings, then Ronaldo would win hands down mainly because he’s got a 3 and a half year head start over Bale and he’s 4 and a half years older than him as well. But instead I’m going to try and compare them over what they’ve done so far this season, what I think their best attributes are and whether or not they’ve got the potential to get even better.

This weekend saw man of the match performances from both players in their respective games. Bale scored twice as Tottenham beat Newcastle United 2-1 at White Hart Lane on Saturday afternoon while Ronaldo scored a hat-trick and provided an assist for Karim Benzema in Madrid’s 4-1 victory against Sevilla on Saturday night at The Bernabeu. The Portugese winger managed all of this in an hour as he was substituted midway through the second half presumably to keep him fresh for the visit of his old side Manchester United on Wednesday when The Champions League returns this coming week. I watched both games and was thoroughly entertained by the way both players managed to be so instrumental in earning 3 points for their respective teams and once again get almost everyone talking about how good they are. While it is easy enough to just praise two players, credit also has to go to their teammates for the work they do that allows them to play the way they do. Both Ronaldo and Bale have similar positive and negative traits. Positives include both being very clever on the ball and are very pacy and can often be seen making runs down the wing even when a match is reaching its climax. Negatives include perhaps trying to maybe do too much sometimes and both have developed a bit of a reputation when it comes to going down to ground too easily after receiving a tackle from an opposition player. While we obviously don’t like to see their negatives on show very often despite it giving us something else to talk about it is clear that their positive points are what is going to be key in making sure their respective clubs achieve some sort of big success at the end of the season.

To conclude, I am going to say that currently I think Ronaldo is the better player than Bale because despite the similarities, he’s given a bit more to Real Madrid this season than Bale has to Tottenham, but that might just be because they are a side who have just a bit more quality than the North Londoners. But at only 23 years of ages, Gareth Bale is certainly going to get much better and wherever he plays his football for the next few years, it’s going to be a real treat for fans to see him grow and fulfil his potential. And who knows, maybe in a few years time with a bit more experience Bale could become as good if not better than Ronaldo, but for the time being, the wingers focus should be entirely on making sure Tottenham have a good end to the season in league and European competition.

Premier League – Weekend Review

Manchester City did themselves no favours in the title race as they suffered a 3-1 loss at relegation battlers Southampton on Saturday. So while this was no doubt a huge win for The Saints, City would later regret not being able to come away with anything from the match as their rivals Manchester United defeated Everton 2-0 at Old Trafford on the Sunday and increased the gap at the top to 12 points. Some people are beginning to admit that they feel the title race is over and that it’s just too big a points difference between United and City. I’d still like to think it isn’t over, but if Man City don’t start performing to a higher level on a more consistent basis and continue failing to pick up key points, then United will be celebrating much earlier than initially expected. Not only are they in danger of losing the title, but 2nd place appears to be under threat as Chelsea and Tottenham closed the gap on City to 4 and 5 points respectively after wins over Wigan Athletic and Newcastle. Spurs initially took 3rd place after beating The Magpies 2-1 in the early kick off on Saturday, but a 4-1 win for Chelsea later in the day put them back into 3rd and left Wigan in more trouble at the wrong end of the table.

It would be fair to say only two teams fighting for survival had a good weekend. Southampton being one after their victory over the champions, and Aston Villa are the other as they ended the weekend just outside of the bottom 3 with a 2-1 win over West Ham United at Villa Park on Sunday. Villa seem to have developed a somewhat bad reputation as of late which involves giving away late goals and costing themselves a victory, and a late West Ham goal looked to make some people at the ground a little shaky, but they managed to hold on this time and pick up the precious 3 points. The same couldn’t be said for the other teams around them as Reading just fell short of a comeback in a 2-1 loss at Stoke City and Queens Park Rangers suffered a 4-1 thumping away at Swansea City which leaves them now 7 points from safety.

The other results from the weekend included a 1-0 away win for Arsenal at Sunderland. Santi Cazorla scored the only goal of the game to move The Gunners up to 5th and maintain pressure on London rivals Tottenham and Chelsea, and the final game on Saturday was a 0-0 draw between Norwich City and Fulham who both sit 6 points from safety in the lower half of the table. The last game of The Premier League weekend takes place tonight at Anfield as Liverpool host West Bromwich Albion. The two sides have already met twice this season, once in the league and again in The Capital One Cup. Liverpool won the cup tie 2-1 but West Brom won the league tie back in August 3-0 and it helped set them on their way to a great first half of the season. Both teams are still in with a decent chance of a Europa League place and they’ll surely be determined to take advantage of that with a win tonight. I predict a close tie, but I think tonight is Liverpool’s night and they will get the 3 points. Enjoy the game.

Andrew.

https://twitter.com/ADNU92

McDermott's Madjeski Magic

McDermott’s Madjeski Magic

A month ago Reading were second bottom in the Premier League with 13 points and 5 away from safety, now at the beginning of February, they sit in 17th place with 23 points and 2 clear of Wigan Athletic and Aston Villa below them after a 2-1 home victory over Sunderland on Saturday. While they are certainly not out of danger, the past month has seen a huge change in their fortunes and I feel most of the credit for that has to go in manager Brian McDermott’s direction. This is his first season managing in the Premier League and up until the New Year it wasn’t proving to be a very fun experience for him as his Reading side had only managed to pick up a dismal 10 points in their first 19 league games. But somehow since the turn of the year he has managed to revitalise Reading and has got them picking up points again. Credit should also go to the Reading board for sticking with him while they were struggling and giving him the chance to turn it around.

With regards to the squad, Reading signed 4 new players in January, defenders Daniel Carrico and Stephen Kelly, midfielder Hope Akpan and striker Nick Blackman. While Carrico is still settling in after his move from Portugal and Blackman only moved at the very end of January, Kelly and especially Akpan have both made impressive starts to their Royals careers having featured in the team’s most recent successful matches. Key performances and goals from existing players Jimmy Kebe and Pavel Pogrebnyak have also really helped them this month, but it would be fair to say that most of their points this month have come through the goals of striker Adam Le Fondre who’s got 5 goals in his last 4 games and believe it or not he’s actually got most of them after coming off the substitutes bench. Looking at their last 4 games, McDermott seems to prefer starting with a 4-5-1 formation playing Pogrebnyak as the lone striker and he often brings Le Fondre off the bench with 20 minutes to go for one of the midfield players to change to a 4-4-2 system in the hopes of grabbing some late goals and it seems until teams can find a way to stop Reading from doing this, they’ll keep scoring late goals and snatching more points. It is still too early to say whether or not they will go down this season as you can never tell when things like injuries and suspensions come into play, but all I can say is that if you were to have asked me the question “Will Reading stay up?” today and on January 4th, you would of gotten two completely different answers.

Premier League – Weekend Review

Manchester United had a 10 point gap at the top of the table ahead of rivals Manchester City on Saturday after picking up a 1-0 win away at Fulham thanks to Wayne Rooney’s goal 10 minutes before the end of play. The next day the lead was cut to 9 points after City’s 2-2 home draw with Liverpool. City took the lead through Edin Dzeko, but two wonder goals either side of half-time from Daniel Sturridge and Steven Gerrard gave Liverpool the lead, but The Reds couldn’t hold on and 5 minutes after Gerrard scored, Sergio Aguero scored another impressive goal from an audacious angle despite some dodgy goalkeeping from Pepe Reina. So while a 9 point lead is certainly a big one, given that last season United were 8 points clear in April and didn’t manage to win the title, City shouldn’t be ruled out of it at this point in the season. It is without question a big ask for any team to try and reduce that kind of deficit, but given the quality that City have and with the bonus of players returning from injury and African Cup of Nations duty, it should help make this tough challenge a little bit easier.

In the fight for survival, bottom side Queens Park Rangers could only manage a 0-0 draw at home to Norwich City. While QPR were solid at the back and did a good job keeping Norwich out, the absence of striker Loic Remy through injury didn’t help matters up front and Harry Redknapp’s men had to settle for a point. They sit 4 points behind Wigan and Aston Villa who also both drew on Saturday. Wigan were held to a 2-2 draw with fellow relegation battlers Southampton while Villa were incredibly unlucky not to grab all 3 points in a very entertaining match at Goodison Park against Everton where the score ended 3-3 after Marouane Fellaini rescued at least a point for The Toffees in the dying minutes of the game. It is still tight at the bottom, I’m hoping that some of the mid-table sides have some slip ups this month and next so that the teams below them can start picking up more points and make the battle to stay in the league more interesting with more teams involved. February is the shortest month of the year and while nothing is normally decided at this time of year, the results that teams get from now until March and April can help make or break a season.

Newcastle enjoyed their first back to back wins of the Premier League season after a late goal from new signing Moussa Sissoko helped them to a big 3-2 victory over Chelsea and help do some real damage to The Blues bid to stay in the top four. Sissoko scored twice in the game and it appears to have increased the pressure on Rafa Benitez. His Chelsea side now haven’t won in 5 games in all competitions. The lead on 4th placed Tottenham was reduced to just a point after Gareth Bale’s 20 yard strike earned Spurs a 1-0 win at West Bromwich Albion on Sunday. Arsenal beat Stoke City 1-0 at The Emirates from a deflected Lukas Podolski free-kick to leave them 4 points off 4th place. The final game of the weekend took place at Upton Park where West Ham United defeated Swansea City 1-0 thanks to a second half header from Andy Carroll. 13 games left until the season reaches its climax and now that all the transfer business has been wrapped up until the end of the season, now is the time for all the players to show their worth to their teams and play to the best of their abilities. Some big gaps have been established in different parts of the league table, but I am certain that because this is the best league in the world, those gaps are going to get smaller and smaller within the coming weeks.

Andrew.

https://twitter.com/ADNU92

Transfer Deadline Day - Final Review

The January transfer window brought a few ups and downs and some interesting signings to certainly keep an eye out for, but now that the deadline has passed and the window is shut, it is time to take a look back at some of the deals that took place during the later stages of Transfer Deadline Day and after that I’ll be giving my thoughts on whether or not I think a good decision has been made or if there perhaps should of been a bit more thought put into some of the moves made during the day.

Arsenal completed the signing of Spanish full back Nacho Monreal from Malaga for a fee believed to be around £8.5 million. The 26 year old is likely to provide cover on the left side due to Kieran Gibbs latest injury setback. Stoke City signed goalkeeper Jack Butland from Birmingham City for 3.5 million before instantly loaning him back to them for the rest of the current campaign. Everton signed young full back John Stones from Barnsley for a fee also believed to be £3.5 million and Queens Park Rangers completed a double swoop from Tottenham Hotspur signing winger Andros Townsend on loan for the rest of the season and central midfielder Jermaine Jenas on an 18 month contract.

The most publicised failed bid was without a doubt Peter Odemwingies proposed move to QPR from West Bromwich Albion. The two clubs couldn’t agree a deal for the Nigerian striker but he was seen outside of Loftus Road during the evening with the belief that West Brom had allowed him to travel to London for talks. He tried to enter the building but was denied entry by QPR out of respect to West Brom. It is believed that Odemwingie might well have been convinced by agents that a deal had been agreed but no move materialised before 11pm and the 31 year old remains a Baggies player. Another player who just would not budge was Celtics Gary Hooper who had 5 bids from Norwich City turned down, Celtic made a statement saying they weren’t looking to sell any key players regardless of the transfer fees due to their importance for the upcoming Champions League ties with Juventus.

Now is the part where I give my thoughts on some of the deals that took place throughout the day. I’m going to start with Aston Villas signing of defensive midfielder Yacouba Sylla. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I felt Villa needed a new central midfielder to toughen them up, but I also mentioned that it should be an experienced midfielder. Sylla is 22 and has just joined from a club in the French second division. Obviously it isn’t right to judge without seeing him play first, but I do think Lambert would of been better off looking for someone with more experience who knows exactly what kind of situation Villa are in and how to help get them out of it. Stoke City’s signing of 22 year old American winger Brek Shea has got me interested. Admittedly it is another player I don’t know too much about and despite missing most of the season through injury he does come in highly rated and has appeared for his country 15 times. I’m not quite sure how much he’ll feature this season as it might take him time to settle following a return to fitness and a move to a new country, but if reports are anything to go by, he could well be a key player for The Potters next season. The Arsenal interest in Nacho Monreal was not reported on until the early hours of the evening with the deal being concluded just before the deadline. Monreal is a 26 year old left back signed to provide cover for Kieran Gibbs who currently has a thigh injury. He joins from Malaga, the same club Arsenal signed Santi Cazorla from in the summer, and while he plays in a completely different position from the 28 year old attacking midfielder, fans will still be hoping that Monreal will come up big for the club when needed.

Unfortunately that is all the time I have for today. To sum it all up, Deadline Day had its good moments, but it was probably not one of the most memorable ones in history. Hopefully the next one at the end of the summer will have more action and excitement for us, but that is many months away. The clubs have bought and sold and now it is time to crack on with the rest of the season. Here’s hoping for a fun February!

Andrew.

https://twitter.com/ADNU92