All posts by h79snht.top

It’s that time of year again, folks. No, not the time of tedious Christmas specials and grotesque amounts of overly rich food, it’s nearly transfer window opening time, the period in which the rumour mill goes bonkers and every player who has had a good half-season is now going to be signed for £500 million.

One of the players who has been rumoured as ‘set to be on the move’ of late is Andre Silva. Linked with both Liverpool and Arsenal, among others, Silva is a striker currently playing for FC Porto. At just 21 years of age, the Portuguese forward would fit the profile of both clubs’ recent investment, so the rumour at least kind of makes sense.

He grabbed headlines against Leicester in the Champions League recently, too, and his stats were pretty impressive…

Considering his career trajectory so far, and the fact that not many people from these shores will have ardently followed the Primeira Liga, Silva is a relatively unknown quantity for many. Fortuitously, we have compiled a little fact file on the striker and it reveals a few reasons why two such enormous clubs could be after him…

Free Shots!

Shooting for the sake of shooting isn’t a good thing, let’s just get that straight. So, you can interpret this stat in a number of ways, depending on your mindset.

Silva has averaged more shots-per-game than any other player in the Portuguese top flight to date this term, averaging 4.2-per-match. In fact, no other player has averaged higher than 3.3-per-match.

Either he shoots too much, he’s got a good amount of self-belief or Porto have been creating barrel loads of chances. Without other information, it’s not all that helpful, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

Second top finisher

He may only be 21, but Andre Silva is the second top scorer in the Portuguese top flight. Having found the net ten times in 14 starts this season – including two goals last weekend and one on Thursday night vs. Maritimo – he is proving his ability at the top level.

For all the doubters of the quality in Portuguese football, prolific scoring of that calibre should not be ignored. Some moves may not have worked out, but for every failure, there has been a massive success.

Hat-trick hero

Having been a regular for the Portuguese national team throughout youth football, Silva made his debut for the European Champions’ senior team in September of this year. Early season form was rewarded with a place in the squad and he already has four goals to his name.

Three of which game in a thrashing of the Faroe Islands. An international hat-trick, that is. Okay, it is against the Faroe Islands, but it’s still a nice badge to have and a decent thing to stick on the CV.

International football has been a doddle for Silva, really, as he boasted prolific records at U-19 and U-20 levels too.

Turbulent development

Moving around as youth player is not uncommon. Andre Silva, however, seemed to try out a fair few clubs. Starting with Salgueiros, before spells at Boavista and Padroense followed, split by a brief return to Salgueiros.

Eventually, Silva ended up at Porto – whom he joined in 2011 – where he finished his development as a striker. He broke into the first-team for his debut late in 2015 having spent a couple of seasons playing for Porto B.

Way out

Andre Silva signed a new contract with Porto this year, but that isn’t necessarily bad news. As ever, signing a contract means that any buying club will just have to splash out a bit more cash.

In August of this year, Silva scribbled his name down to a five-year contract that puts his release clause up at €60m (£50.3m). So, should Arsenal or Liverpool fancy pursuing his signature, they know how much it’s going to cost them…

Victory over West Ham on Monday saw Manchester United start their New Year with a celebration, making their top four chances a real possibility come the end of May.

Jose Mourinho masterminded his team’s victory at the London Stadium with some inspired substitutions, Juan Mata and Marcus Rashford proving the difference from the bench – but where does that win leave their top four aspirations?

To guarantee the Red Devils finish inside the much coveted Champions League qualification positions, the club must continue making strides on and off the pitch over the course of the next few months.

Throughout his entire Premier League career, Jose Mourinho has never finished outside the top four when managing to last a full season at a club,  but will this record continue during his first year in the Old Trafford hot seat?

To ensure that impressive feat remains in tact, United must guarantee these THREE things occur.

Win more games against title rivals

In games against the current top four and United’s potential title rivals, the Red Devils have won just one of five – with three being played at Old Trafford.

Defeats to Manchester City and Chelsea have occurred while draws with Arsenal and Liverpool show how United must improve this record to have any chance of finishing in the heavily competitive top four.

Victories over their rivals could ultimately decide who plays Champions League football next season.

Strengthen in January

During the summer transfer window, United spent well to guarantee the side’s progression from a disappointing 2015/16 campaign.

Nonetheless, for the Red Devils to continue their progress over the coming months, Jose Mourinho must demand more funds to strengthen in the January window.

Players like Marouane Fellaini, and Marcus Rojo are not players good enough to match United’s grand ambitions.

Guarantee Zlatan Ibrahimovic remains fit

Where would Manchester United be without the goals of Zlatan Ibrahimovic?

The Swedish striker has scored 18 goals for the Red Devils this campaign and any chance of securing a top-four spot rests solely on the shoulders of the former PSG forward.

Despite being 35-years-old, Ibrahimovic has shown no signs of ageing in the Premier League as he continues to be a nuisance for opposition defenders on a regular basis.

As the European leagues come back from their winter breaks, and the Premier League is over its bruising Christmas schedule, we are well and truly into the second half of the season now. And this year there is a very different scenario all over Europe.

Last year, Paris Saint-Germain won the French Ligue 1 title by 31 points, finishing on a goal difference of +83 and Juventus won Serie A by nine points despite giving the rest of the league a head start. Bayern Munich ran away with the Bundesliga crown, too.

This year, not only are PSG not winning the league in France, they’re three points behind leaders Monaco who are only ahead of second-placed Nice on goal difference. In Italy, Juventus are leading again, but only by one point (albeit with a game in hand), and the same can be said for Real Madrid, who lead La Liga in Spain by a point, though they too have an extra game to extend their advantage. In Germany, too, Bayern Munich are only one defeat away from finding themselves level on points with newcomers RB Leipzig.

And the question is, how did it come to this?

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Last season, Leicester’s victory in England prompted a sort of bizarrely misplaced jingoistic glee: a league title won by a club whose rightful place really was to be fighting against relegation showed that English football really is the most competitive in the world. And that opinion had plenty of fertile soil to grow in given results from around the continent.

Easy victories for big established clubs helped the narrative, too: why would you want to watch PSG, Juventus or Bayern Munich walk the league when you could watch the big boys falter and lose to Leicester City? Even Spain wasn’t immune – Barcelona may not have had it all their own way in the end, but they were battled only by the two clubs who contested the Champions League final. Hardly an unexpected turn of events.

The bit where that school of thought falls down, though, is probably the bit where Leicester won the league by 10 points themselves. The Premier League wasn’t competitive either, and the fact that everyone expected Leicester to crumble doesn’t mean that it wasn’t comfortable.

But if this season is different, the question is why? Why are all the top leagues in Europe so competitive this season? (Including the Premier League, even if Chelsea are top by a bigger margin than any other league in Europe’s top divisions).

I don’t know the answer, but here is a thought.

How much has a shift in the tactical makeup of the game changed things this season? How important is individual excellence in a game that now seems to be about attacking as a well-drilled unit, hunting in pressing packs, and playing out from the back?

Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi still lead the way this season in Spain’s goalscoring charts, but Ronaldo’s 12 goal tally is only one better than Iago Aspas at Celta Vigo and equal to Jermain Defoe’s haul at Sunderland. Messi has 14, only one more than Anthony Modeste of Cologne in Germany. Does this show that the importance of individual performances are being tempered, while tactics and teamwork become more important?

There’s more evidence for this than a glance at a list of top scorers, but most of it is fairly anecdotal and requires a bit of thought and imagination.

Think about the best teams so far in each league, and what they’ve done this season: Real Madrid and Sevilla lead the way in Spain, but Cristiano Ronaldo isn’t hitting the ridiculous tally he often does, and Sevilla don’t have a player who lifts them above their level. Last year we saw Jamie Vardy and Riyad Mahrez do that for Leicester, and Hatem Ben Arfa managed it at Nice.

In Germany, it’s the same story at Leipzig. In France, ditto with Nice and Monaco. In England, how many of Liverpool’s typical starting XI would break into Manchester City’s this season? That’s always a loaded question for football fans, but if you’re going on name and reputation alone, it’s probably not that many. And yet no one could – in seriousness – be more impressed with City than Liverpool. The key is teamwork. Whilst Philippe Coutinho and Sadio Mane are excellent individual players, they are playing in a team where you just can’t think about individual parts. You have to think about they all fit together, and that means few standout geniuses. The struggles of PSG, Bayern Munich and Manchester United so far this season bear that out. All have players capable of individual brilliance. None have shone properly, though all remain competitive.

And one final thought is this: how can Chelsea play so badly at the start of the season and then so well for the rest of it once they changed system? The answer surely has to have something to do with how the whole functions, not the individual parts.

Cristiano Ronaldo is coming to the declining point in his career and Lionel Messi is finding it hard this season, too. All of the best teams in the top leagues are being challenged by upstarts, many with no standout ‘best players’ but with great partnerships and tactical abilities instead. There will always be room for stunning individual players and performances that change games, but are we finally coming to a point where the team around them matters ever more?

And if that’s true, is there hope for football yet? Can we start to hope that even the teams with all the money and the players can be challenged by a team with the tactics, the work rate, and the team ethic?

And even if we can’t, wouldn’t some competition be nice at the very least?

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Oumar Niasse’s nightmare at Everton has come to an end (for the time being) after joining Hull City on loan for the rest of the season.

Since signing for the Toffees from Lokomotiv Moscow last February for a reported £13.5m fee, the striker has made just five Premier League appearances, and they were all last season under former manager Roberto Martinez.

In the current campaign, Niasse has not featured once for Ronald Koeman, who later ordered him to train with the Under-23s.

In an interview with The Guardian in October, the Senegal international, who played for just 45 minutes in Everton’s pre-season fixtures, revealed that he no longer had a locker in the dressing room.

Now, though, has the chance to get minutes under his belt and revive his career at the KC Stadium.

Meanwhile, the Tigers have also swooped for Evandro, who has joined from Porto on a two-and-a-half-year deal for an undisclosed fee.

After the news was announced, fans took to Twitter to wish Niasse well, while some Everton supporters used the opportunity to rejoice in offloading him.

Make no mistake about it, Zlatan Ibrahimovic is one of the greatest strikers in the modern game and the Swedish icon has remained consistent throughout his career, from his days with Inter Milan, Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain.Now at Manchester United, the veteran has cleared any concerns of him not being able to cut it in the Premier League as he took his tally to twenty goals for the season and continued a fantastic personal record in the process.

As shown in the clip above, Zlatan Ibrahimovic has scored twenty or more goals for the last ten consecutive seasons across European football, with his impressive record for Manchester United standing at 20 goals in 33 games so far.

With a few months remaining in the season, there’s every chance the 35-year-old can continue his excellent run into the latter stages of the season and he’ll be crucial in Manchester United’s attempts to return to the Champions League.

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Manchester United had hoped to make another big wave in the transfer market last summer after lodging a lucrative move for Bayern Munich’s Thomas Muller, according to reports cited by ITV.

What’s the word?

Links between Thomas Muller and Manchester United never seem to go away but many would have expected the Red Devils’ interest in the German World Cup winner to have cooled last year, following the capture of Paul Pogba and Zlatan Ibrahimovic, as well as the breakthrough of Marcus Rashford.

However, despite splashing an incredible £89m figure on Pogba, United had ambitions of sealing another huge deal before the start of the current season and saw an astonishing €100m (£85m) bid for Muller rejected by Bayern Munich.

Where Muller would have fitted in at Old Trafford is highly-debatable but would have most likely seen the German play on the left-side of attack, creating a deadly force alongside Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Paul Pogba.

What was said?

Confirming Manchester United’s renewed interest in Muller in comments made to Sport Bild, Bayern’s chief financial officer Jan-Christian Deesen revealed a genuine offer was made:

“There really was such a thing. A fax came from England. For us, however, selling Thomas Muller was never discussed. If a player fits here, we would be stupid to go for the short-term prospect of a record profit only to weaken him.”

Could a move happen this summer?

It’s certainly possible, although Manchester United seem to have their sights firmly set on Atletico Madrid’s Antoine Griezmann. If that deal were to reach a dead end though, renewed interest in Thomas Muller would make sense.

A move could also finally emerge successful at the end of the season as Muller has struggled to find form for Bayern Munich this season, with Carlo Ancelotti often overlooking the German World Cup winner altogether when selecting his starting XI.

With the World Cup scheduled for next summer, Muller needs regular football to cement his position in Germany’s audaciously talented international squad and a transfer, alongside promises of regular football, could see a move take place.

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Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur are both chasing Paris Saint-Germain midfielder Adrien Rabiot but could face competition from Real Madrid, according to varied reports.

What’s the word?

Arsenal have been linked with a move for young French midfielder Adrien Rabiot for a while and it appears a move could materialise this summer, with The Daily Mail reporting the 21-year-old is ready to consider offers from other top-sides.

First making a breakthrough into the first-team in 2012, Rabiot has impressed for Paris Saint-Germain in the following five years and also made his international debut for France in a friendly against the Ivory Coast in November.

With his vast success in France, winning four consecutive Ligue 1 titles, two French Cups and three French League Cups, Rabiot could seek new challenges elsewhere- but Arsenal will face competition from Real Madrid for his services.

What was said?

Addressing the reports linking him with a move across Europe, he told Europe 1:

‘I am under contract until 2019 and I do not think I am in a rush. Honestly, I am not thinking about that. If there are offers from big clubs, that obviously demands that they are considered.’

‘Clubs like Real Madrid, they are truly great clubs but, truly, the most important thing is the present and I am concentrating on what I am doing right now, that is the best thing to do.’

What about Spurs?

As well as battling Real Madrid for Rabiot’s services, Arsenal will also face competition from just around the corner in North London as The Daily Mirror states Tottenham Hotspur are considering a fresh move for Rabiot’s signature.

Two years ago, Spurs had a loan bid for Rabiot turned down by the French giants and Mauricio Pochettino is ready to revisit the situation again this summer- although this time a permanent transfer could be on the cards.

With two-years left on his PSG deal, any interested party will have to pay a pretty sum and that could be decisive when discussions about a transfer come around.

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According to reports on talkSPORT, Everton striker Romelu Lukaku is set to end any speculation regarding his future by signing a new five-year deal with the club this week.

What’s the story, then?

Well, the Belgian striker’s agent, Mino Raiola, held talks with the Merseyside outfit last month over a new long-term contract extension, and talkSPORT are now claiming that a deal will be completed later this week, with the signature of Toffees chairman Bill Kenwright all that is now needed.

Lukaku moved to Goodison Park from Chelsea in the summer of 2014 following a successful loan spell, and he has quickly gone on to prove that he is one of the best finishers in the Premier League.

How big a boost is this for Everton?

It’s a huge one.

Lukaku was heavily linked with a move back to former club Chelsea last summer, and manager Ronald Koeman – and the supporters – would have been relieved that no transfer materialised.

The prolific attacker has continued to go from strength to strength and became the club’s all-time Premier League top goalscorer when he netted his 61st top flight goal for the club in their 3-2 defeat to Tottenham Hotspur at White Hart Lane on Sunday – taking his tally to 18 for the season.

Does this show that the club is going places?

Definitely. Keeping your best players – as a club like Southampton have struggled to do in recent seasons – could be the first step on the ladder as Everton and Ronald Koeman look to challenge for a spot in the Premier League’s top four in years to come.

According to reports from Mirror Football, Gareth Southgate is facing a bit of a selection crisis ahead of next week’s international break, when England will face Germany in a friendly before hosting Lithuania in a World Cup qualifier at Wembley.

Ahead of Euro 2016, the strike-force was arguably the Three Lions’ strongest department, but it’s steadily depleted over the course of 2016/17. Jamie Vardy, Daniel Sturridge and Marcus Rashford have all struggled to match their tallies from last season, whilst captain Wayne Rooney and Premier League top scorer Harry Kane look set to miss next week’s outings due to injury.

With that in mind, the English strikers in the Premier League appear to be on relatively even terms ahead of Southgate’s next squad announcement – none particularly standing out as undisputed options. So we’re hoping our readers can do the England gaffer’s job for him, by voting for which strikers should and shouldn’t be included in the next Three Lions selection.

Let us know by giving each centre-forward a thumbs up or a thumbs down!

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Liverpool are no longer interested in Borussia Monchengladbach’s Mahmoud Dahoud and Goal report that Jurgen Klopp’s midfield experiment this season has prompted this U-turn.

What’s the story?

Last summer the Reds were widely linked with the 21-year-old playmaker on the back of his impressive Bundesliga season, but a deal failed to come to fruition as Gladbach lost both Granit Xhaka and Havard Nordtveit to Arsenal and West Ham respectively, leaving them somewhat reluctant to sanction a transfer.

Reports had since suggested that Liverpool remained keen on the silky starlet, but now Goal have stated that Klopp’s changed his mind in regards to the Syria-born player, with Jordan Henderson, Georginio Wijnaldum and Adam Lallana’s performances having been key.

It’s understood that Henderson’s use of the ball from deep, Lallana’s chance creation and goal output and Wijnaldum’s ability to knit the two together have prompted the re-think, with RB Leipzig’s Naby Keita mooted as a more attractive proposition now.

How Does Dahoud rank?

Well, the stats (via Squawka) somewhat back up Goal’s claims. With Dahoud failing to top any of the Reds’ current options in the aforementioned areas. Indeed, his pass accuracy, total passes, chances created, assists and goals scored-per-game tallies fail to top the trio of Anfield stars’ returns, albeit he has made more interceptions – a count seen as vital in Klopp’s counter-pressing style of play.

Although abandoning their pursuit makes some statistical sense, beyond Henderson, Wijnaldum and Lallana, Liverpool have very few options, with only Emre Can of sufficient quality to step in easily – although there is an argument for pushing Philippe Coutinho central from his left-wing berth.