Thibaut Courtois has blasted Chelsea supporters for “booing and whistling” during Saturday’s 0-0 home draw with Leicester City. “I know we as a team didn’t have a good game, it was our third goalless draw, but we need the fans here at Stamford Bridge to get behind the team and not, when a player has a bad pass or a bad shot, start booing and whistling,” Courtois told Chelsea TV. “I don’t think we’re playing a bad season.” “It’s important that the fans must know that we want to play out from the back,” he added. “And they don’t have…
Author: David Folami
Manchester United are increasingly confident of winning the race to sign Alexis Sanchez from Arsenal, with sources saying that Jose Mourinho first raised the prospect of using Henrikh Mkhitaryan as leverage for a deal last summer. Speaking before the match, Arsene Wenger said: “He is being vague at the moment. His situation is not completely decided one way or the other. “Yes, don’t read too much into it because I don’t know what way it’ll go. You want to focus on the players who are on the pitch.” Manchester City had been regarded as the favourites to sign the 29-year-old…
Liverpool have not made an offer to move up their acquisition of Naby Keita to this month, RB Leipzig sporting director Ralf Rangnick has said. Leipzig do not want to lose Keita this month as they still remain in a battle to secure Champions League qualification for next campaign and find themselves in the round-of-32 of this season’s Europa League. Keita scored for Leipzig on Saturday as the home side defeated Schalke 3-1 to move to second in the Bundesliga. Director Rangnick has said there had been no contact from Liverpool about changing the existing agreement, reported to worth some…
Diego Simeone refused to say whether Atletico Madrid deserved to win a tight game on Saturday after his side held on to beat Eibar 1-0. Simeone said that it was a tactical decision to “take refuge” upon going ahead, and shrugged off questions about Atletico’s merit in taking all three points. “I will never speak about justice, whether I win a match or lose a match,” Simeone said after the game. “The result is what it is. “The situations in front of goal are important for us to know that the team is in good shape.” But Simeone was careful…
Everton’s squad can expect a rough up on the training pitch this week after Sam Allardyce promised to remove any unprofessionalism in their ranks following Saturday’s heavy 4-0 defeat at Tottenham. “It’s out of order,” Allardyce said. “[You have to] play your way back into the game and be professional about it. It shocked me. I haven’t seen it since I got here. I’ve got to cut it out, starting tomorrow. “Tottenham can beat anybody by a lot of goals but they should have had to work a lot harder than they did. “When you go two goals down after…
Petr Cech has taken the blame for Bournemouth’s equaliser in Arsenal’s 2-1 loss on Sunday, saying he “should have done better.” “Obviously, the first one I’m disappointed with because I thought I was going to cut the cross on time,” Cech told the Arsenal website. “Wilson arrived faster in front of me. It’s a matter of split seconds, but I think I should have done better on that.” “The second one had an element of luck,” Cech said. “It was a good long ball behind but it was everybody’s ball and it fell right in front of the player and…
Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain has said that he is benefiting from increased responsibility at Liverpool under Jurgen Klopp. “I just think I needed to be one of the players in the team that was one of the ones demanding to go and change the game — get assists and get goals,” he said. “I’ve really been encouraged and pushed to do that.” “I’ve been trying to push myself,” he continued. “I came here to do that and I knew it was time for me to change things and improve myself. I’ve just been focused on doing that. “The manager has been really…
Arsene Wenger has admitted that Arsenal were “lacklustre” in attack in Sunday’s 2-1 loss at Bournemouth, and lamented “very surprising mistakes” on the goals conceded. “We looked a bit lacklustre in the final third, not sharp enough to create chances,” Wenger told a news conference. “When you are 1-0 up normally you should create more to be dangerous and we paid for that.” “We made two very surprising mistakes that were not even forced errors, it was just a lack of decision-making, and overall you come out of the game thinking: how did we lose the game?” Wenger said. “When…
Christian Pulisic has droped his two cent on the Lionel Messi vs. Cristiano Ronaldo debate, arguing that the Barcelona star would make any team in the world better. “Nothing against Ronaldo because I’ve seen it first hand, he’s an unbelievable player,” Pulisic said. “It’s not an easy one [who is better], but I would say Messi because growing up he was always my favourite.” Pulisic is a rising star of the game, but the U.S international picked out Kylian Mbappe and former Dortmund teammate Ousmane Dembele as fellow stars of the future. “We’ve played against certain players, Mbappe, even when…
Mauricio Pochettino has said he is placing all his focus on the present and not paying attention to speculation that he may be offered a chance to coach Real Madrid next season. “Football will take me where football wants to,” Pochettino said. “[Former Argentina international] Jorge Grifa, who was like a second father to me, would tell me, ‘Don’t think too much, enjoy the present, be professional and responsible and let football take you where it wants to.'” Pochettino also said Real’s ups and downs this season are a part of football. “That’s football everywhere, not just in Spain but…
Ousmane Dembele will be absent for the next four weeks with a left hamstring problem, with Barcelona saying the injury has nothing to do with the surgery he underwent earlier in the season. The France international resumed training in December and then returned earlier this month as a second-half substitute in the Copa del Rey game at Celta Vigo. He then started Barca’s league win over Levante and came on as a substitute in the return leg against Celta and against Real Sociedad on Sunday, when he sustained his latest injury. “After the game against Real Sociedad, Dembele had a…
Jupp Heynckes has called Manchester City’s Kevin De Bruyne “the best player in Europe” and questioned the money paid by Manchester United for Paul Pogba in 2016. “De Bruyne didn’t play that well last year but I would give the shirt off my back for him,” Heynckes told kicker in an in-depth interview. “You must have a player like him in his position. He is far and away the best player in Europe at the moment.” Pogba won the Europa League and League Cup in his first season at Old Trafford and has scored three goals and set up seven…
Louis van Gaal has said he made Manchester United continue paying up his contract by turning down the Belgium job as an act of “revenge” and says he still blames former players for his Old Trafford exit. Van Gaal was sacked two years into his three-year deal and would have had to give up a portion of his pay-off to take another job. “It would have been really great if I had become Belgium national coach, but I was so resentful and vindictive that I let that job go by,” Van Gaal told De Volkskrant. “It was stupid, really, because…
Arsene Wenger has said the future of Alexis Sanchez will most likely be settled within the next couple of days. Asked about his future at the postmatch news conference, he said: “Look, if Alexis goes we need to replace him. “When you look today we missed many players in our squad, and if players like Alexis go, we have of course to respond to it. “Will he go or not? I do not know, but at the moment it’s the transfer period and in this kind of period you try to use the players that are completely focused at being…
Ryan Giggs has been unveiled as the new Wales boss on a four-year deal that takes in Euro 2020 and the 2022 FIFA World Cup. The role is Giggs’s first role in management after three years as assistant manager at Manchester United — including four matches in caretaker charge after David Moyes’s sacking towards the end of the 2014 season. Craig Bellamy, Osian Roberts and Mark Bowen were also interviewed for the role by the FAW last week, but Giggs was given the job, with the terms of his deal to take over tied up over the weekend. In a…
Samuel Ortom, and respected Benue leaders have rejected President Muhammadu Buhari’s plan to create cattle colonies in the state during a stakeholders meeting on Monday, January 15, 2018. The governor, who’s always opposed the plan, said that the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Audu Ogbeh, who is proposing the idea, explained that the cattle colonies are a combination of several ranches. He said, “Like I told you the last time I came here, I did not understand what colonies meant. Today, I was privileged to meet him (Ogbeh) and he did explain to me that a colony is many…
Sen. Walid Jibrin, the Chairman, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Board of Trustees has said that the party was working to present the best presidential candidate from the North in 2019. “All of us as a party have agreed that the President of Nigeria should come from the North in 2019. “I enjoin you to support the North to bring and give us capable presidential candidate. “We are all doing what we can in the North with all the leaders to identify who is the best candidate to rule this country. “The best person that will take power from the ruling…
Nasiru El-Rufai of Kaduna State has said that the Federal Government has very clear plans to end herders/farmers clashes in the country. “We met with the Minister of Interior, there are very clear plans to curtail these issues, I don’t want to speak about security programmes on radio and television, but I want to assure everyone, the President and other security agencies are doing their best.’’ He stressed that the recent donation of $1 billion from Excess Crude Account by state governors were for the purchase military equipment to support the armed forces in securing the country. “The Nigerian armed…
Aisha Alhassan has debunked reports that she’s planning to dump the All Progressives’ Congress (APC) to join former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, who has decamped to the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). She said, “Politics is all about interest, and nobody forced me to leave PDP to join APC, so no want will force me out of it. I will continue to work for APC and that’s why I travelled out to Taraba, to campaign for our party’s candidate Sanusi Jambawaile. “I know many may wish to see me leaving APC, but let me assure them I will remain in APC!…
Three Nigerian billionaires have been ranked among the 23 richest persons in Africa by U.S based business magazine Forbes. Cement king, Alhaji Aliko Dangote occupies the first position with a net worth of $12.2 billion. This is his seventh year in a row. The 60-year old billionaire owns nearly 88 percent of Dangote Cement through a holding company. Telecom don, Mike Adenuga came in 5th on the ranking with a net worth of $5.3 billion. The Globacom CEO is currently in a bid for embattled 9Mobile and has been tipped as winner by unconfirmed reports. If this does happen, Globacom…