The 10 most improved players in the Premier League this season

Football | The Guardian

The 10 most improved players in the Premier League this season

Eden Hazard, Gylfi Sigurdsson, James Milner and Callum Wilson have stepped it up this season

By Martin Laurence for WhoScored

Étienne Capoue can be a frustrating player at times. He has real quality, which he showed occasionally in his unsuccessful spell at Tottenham, but this is his longest run of consistently strong performances in the Premier League. He has forged a solid midfield partnership with Abdoulaye Doucouré at Watford and has even overshadowed his fellow Frenchman, the club’s player of last season. Capoue’s total of 53 tackles and interceptions is second only to Idrissa Gueye (54) in the league this season and, having fallen out of favour under Marco Silva, he is now among the first names on Javi Gracia’s teamsheet. Rating: 7.13, up 0.38 on last season.

Continue reading...

more info...

Chelsea fullback Alonso tips 'great' Barkley to fill England void

Tribal Football - Football News, Soccer News, Transfers & Rumours

Chelsea fullback Alonso tips 'great' Barkley to fill England void

Marcos Alonso believes Chelsea teammate Ross Barkley can fill England's creative void in midfield.

Alonso was on the field for Spain in Monday night's loss to the Three Lions, in which Barkley was instrumental for the visitors third goal.

Read more on Tribal Football

more info...

Mark Walters: ‘It wasn’t just fruit – people threw darts and a pig’s leg’

Football | The Guardian

Mark Walters: ‘It wasn’t just fruit – people threw darts and a pig’s leg’

The former England winger discusses the racism he faced when he joined Rangers and why having ‘all the badges and every award going’ never landed him a top coaching job

Mark Walters cannot help smiling about the time Mo Johnston, his then teammate, received a bullet in the post. “I said: ‘Mo, you’ve taken the pressure right off me!” he recalls of the death threat sent to Johnston after the striker, a Catholic and former Celtic hero, joined Rangers in 1989. “We had a good laugh about it,” says Walters. “I had all sorts thrown at me – bananas, darts, a pig’s leg – and I had letters from the Ku Klux Klan telling me where I should go and what I should be doing with myself. But I never got a bullet! Unless you’ve been in a professionals’ dressing room, it’s hard to explain the humour.”

Laughing off or blocking out hatred had been Walters’ modus operandi since long before he joined Rangers in 1987, when he became the only black player in the Scottish Premier League. He encountered abuse that may seem almost unbelievable today but says it was, in one respect only, easy to ignore because racism is boring and paying attention to it would not have helped him to fulfil his ambition of becoming a successful footballer. He achieved that, playing for his hometown club Aston Villa before winning three Scottish titles with Rangers, a cap for England and the FA Cup with Liverpool.

Continue reading...

more info...

Jake Clarke-Salter: ‘I was with players I played with on PlayStation. Crazy’

Football | The Guardian

Jake Clarke-Salter: ‘I was with players I played with on PlayStation. Crazy’

Chelsea’s defender, on loan at Vitesse Arnhem, draws comfort from Sergio Ramos after three red cards in his fledging career

As the referee reached for his back pocket less than half an hour into Vitesse Arnhem’s Europa League qualifier against Basel in August, it was easy to imagine what was going through Jake Clarke-Salter’s mind. The Chelsea defender’s previous loan, at Sunderland last season, was overshadowed by back-to-back dismissals and now another red card – and a harsh one, too – was about to be shown in his direction. Holding his head in his hands, Clarke-Salter had only one thought: “Not again.”

Pulling up a chair at St George’s Park ahead of England’s Under-21 game against Scotland on Tuesday, Clarke-Salter talks about “a massive learning curve” as he reflects on those red cards and his loan experiences, starting two years ago at Bristol Rovers, where he ended up having a metal plate inserted in an arm after a painful fracture-dislocation of his elbow.

Continue reading...

more info...

Watch: 'What a goal!' - Weir screamer puts Man City ahead

BBC Sport - Football

Watch: 'What a goal!' - Weir screamer puts Man City ahead

Caroline Weir's stunning half-volley puts Manchester City ahead against West Ham in the WSL.

more info...

Terminally ill fan 'over the moon' at free tickets from Walsall manager

BBC Sport - Football

Terminally ill fan 'over the moon' at free tickets from Walsall manager

Walsall FC manager Dean Keates said he wanted to help Dave Williams "take his mind off treatment".

more info...

How many world-class players does the Premier League actually have?

Football | The Guardian

How many world-class players does the Premier League actually have?

Harry Kane? Eden Hazard? Mo Salah? England’s top division is unmatched for riches but our definition of world class suggests few of its players are of the very highest standard

This time about a year ago, before Mohamed Salah at Liverpool began to push his way to the front of the queue for the nation’s attention, a debate was taking place over whether the increasingly reliable Harry Kane was good enough to be regarded as genuinely world class. Now the same thing is happening in reverse to Alexis Sánchez. By the time the Chilean left Barcelona for Arsenal his credentials as one of the world’s elite were impeccable. Last month a journalist in Santiago made contact asking for information on why Sánchez was failing so badly at Manchester United.

Genuinely world class. The first word ought to be superfluous, though in football discussions it never is. No one quite knows the parameters here. Some would argue you have to be good enough to hold down a place in a notional World XI, to take part in a pan-galactic match against Planet Zog. Others think that might be a bit harsh, and suggest that any pan-galactic contest would surely be organised along World Cup lines and would therefore require a squad of 23 players, perhaps even a couple more. So you could envisage the criterion as being enough players to form a trial match between the best two sides in the world.

Continue reading...

more info...