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BBC News
17-06-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
Sell Amdouni and buy Ings? Fans on transfers
As the transfer window is now open again until 1 September, we asked you to tell us one player you want Burnley to sign, and a player you want to be sold this are some of your comments:Peter: There's quite a few we could sell. Top of the list would be Zeki Amdouni and Lyle Foster as neither are good enough for the Premier League. As for buying, any reasonably good striker as that should be the main priority!Zion: We need to sign a striker and a midfielder - somebody like Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall. Also, some new centre-backs are needed because we are probably going to lose Maxime Esteve and we have already lost CJ Egan-Riley is a big loss to a back five that achieved so much as a unit last year. I'm concerned about the disruptive effect of players returning from exile who were 'too good' to play in the Championship (Amdouni, Ekdal). We obviously need a striker and the Danny Ings link should be explored. Honestly, I'd be happy if we put up a fight but come back down because the Championship years are much more interesting and Sell Mike Tresor as he won't play this season. Buy anyone who doesn't want stupidly high wages.
Straits Times
08-05-2025
- Sport
- Straits Times
Portuguese title on the line as Benfica host rivals Sporting
FILE PHOTO: Soccer Football - Primeira Liga - Estoril v Benfica - Estadio Antonio Coimbra da Mota, Estoril, Portugal - May 3, 2025 Benfica's Fredrik Aursnes celebrates scoring their first goal with Zeki Amdouni REUTERS/Pedro Nunes/File Photo Sporting and Benfica lock horns in a Lisbon derby on Saturday that could decide the Portuguese league title with a game left in one of the closest races the country has seen in years. The Portuguese capital rivals both have 78 points, with Sporting top by virtue of winning the first clash between the teams 1-0 at the Jose Alvalade stadium back in December. If Sporting win on Saturday they will be champions, while if Benfica triumph by at least a two-goal margin they will reclaim the title with a superior head-to-head record. A one-goal victory for Benfica would mean the title being decided next weekend when goal difference could come into play, with Sporting currently three goals better off than Benfica. If the match is drawn, Sporting will retain the title by at least matching their rival's result on the final matchday. With third-placed Porto long out of the title race, trailing 13 points behind the top two and level on 65 points with Braga, the Lisbon rivalry between Benfica and Sporting has dominated the campaign and not only in the league. Benfica beat Sporting on penalties in the League Cup final in January and they will meet again at the iconic Jamor National Stadium in the Portuguese Cup final on May 25. It will be a clash of two coaches who took charge of struggling sides in mid-season and got them back on track. Rui Borges in late December replaced Joao Pereira, who lasted only 42 days after he was named Sporting manager following Ruben Amorim's move to Manchester United. Amorin left Sporting in comfortable position at the top but a series of bad results forced the club to make a quick change and hire the 43-year-old Borges from Vitoria Guimaraes. Sporting were already feeling the heat from Bruno Lage's Benfica, who was hired in September for a second tenure after Roger Schmidt was fired only four matchdays into the season. REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Times
22-04-2025
- Business
- Times
Relegation clauses are killing hopes of promoted clubs
When Burnley were last promoted to the Premier League in 2023, they splashed out on Zeki Amdouni, an attacking midfielder from Basel priced at €18.6million. Going down, their big investment was making a loan deal for Mike Trésor, an attacking midfielder from Genk, permanent. He was priced at €18million. So two competitions, a world apart, and a price difference of only €600,000. And it is unlikely to be that different this time, either. Without wishing to rain on Burnley's promotion party, the fight against relegation starts now, or the day the transfer window opens, and much of it is to do with salaries. Amdouni — on loan at Benfica this season — and Trésor fit a certain profile. They are players from unexceptional leagues in Europe who would take a gamble on coming to the Premier League in the hope it could provide a career stepping stone. Amdouni is now a Champions League footballer with a good shot at becoming a Portuguese title winner. In his case, it worked. It doesn't always work for Burnley, though, as this yo-yoing indicates. With another three promoted clubs going straight down again this season, one of the main contributing factors is a policy widely agreed to be best practice and good housekeeping by devotees of football's new financial religion: relegation clauses in players' contracts. Essential, we are told. Smart, realistic and — amen — sustainable. Luton Town's players dropped down to £15,000 a week when they were relegated last season; Burnley's went to roughly £20,000. And that, it is argued, keeps the ship stable. Yet it also makes relegation close to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Say you are a Premier League player at a mid to low-ranking club. Brentford, Crystal Palace, West Ham United, Everton. Not the star, not an outcast. Someone who gets in most weeks, on the bench for some. A steady Eddie. The sort of player a newly promoted club needs to compete: been around the block, bit of experience — chances are you'll be earning in the region of £50,000 a week. Then a club such as Burnley or Sheffield United come in for you. And the money, with Premier League status, would be roughly the same. Yet there's a catch. In the event of relegation, that £50,000 becomes £20,000 in the Championship. That's a bad deal. That's a £30,000-a-week bet — so £1.56million over the year — that a promoted club will stay up. And ten of the past 15 haven't. So you stay where you are, or you move sideways, because there is less risk. But, occasionally, there's a third option. The odd Championship club, such as Nottingham Forest under Evangelos Marinakis, gamble. Forest did not insert punitive relegation clauses into the contracts when they built their squad for the Premier League. Marinakis went against all the conservative instincts of modern football management. He was criticised, hit with points deductions; his methods were held up as everything that is wrong with the worst wanton owners. And now? Forest may well be playing Champions League football next season. One of the reasons they could attract players with reasonable first-team experience from Manchester United, Newcastle United and Chelsea on arriving in the Premier League was that relegation would have minimal impact on salaries. There would be a cut, but in the region of 10 per cent. Marinakis thought good players would keep Forest up and if they did not, he reasoned he would be able to sell. We'll never know if he was right. The Premier League did their best to discourage ambition and investment, but Forest appear to be having the last laugh now. Good for them, and no thanks to Richard Masters. Leicester City also did not have severe relegation clauses but Profitability and Sustainability Rules did for them and now, with relegation, salaries will drop by a minimum of 35 per cent, and more if the club do not return immediately. It will be much harder to come back this time. As for Leeds United, one of the reasons they could attract Jayden Bogle and Joe Rodon last summer was because, even in the Championship, they presented a better option than a promoted club with costly strings attached. Rodon could have gone to Southampton but, in the end, chose wisely. Leeds are not in the habit of inserting big relegation clauses into contracts, so expect that to be reflected in the business they can do this summer too. Of the promoted clubs, Leeds are most likely to be able to buck a depressing recent trend. And some will be angered by this. They have bought into football as a form of sweaty accountancy in which clean balance sheets are the goal and men such as Marinakis the enemy; as if Leicester needed to be protected from owners who had helped deliver the greatest season in English football history; as if it does not matter if the three that go up go straight back down again in perpetuity, so long as nobody loses money. But that's not what football is about. What Burnley have done to here under Scott Parker is fantastic, but if they approach next season with the same financial caution it is going to be incredibly tough to avoid a predictable fate. It was Norwich City's plan to be in the top 26 clubs in the country. Either in the Premier League, or in the play-offs, and contracts were adjusted accordingly. Norwich are now 14th in tier two; Luton may pass straight through to League One. There is more to the survival game than only the numbers; Marinakis's instincts were right. Slot is right not to punish Alexander-Arnold It is utterly preposterous, the notion that Liverpool should stop picking Trent Alexander-Arnold until he makes a public announcement about his future. Every day his contract remains unsigned is statement enough; equally every game he plays makes a statement too. He came on and won the day at Leicester City, just as his performances throughout this season have been largely exemplary. Alexander-Arnold has never given any indication of being distracted, never agitated for a move, never said a word that could be considered divisive or disrespectful. He has been outstanding for Liverpool, just as Liverpool have been for him. To drop him now with the club so close to the title would be childish and ungrateful — and Arne Slot does not seem like a man who is either. Slot will also know by now whether he sees Conor Bradley as Alexander-Arnold's successor. Bradley has started 11 matches this season, coming off the bench in 14 more, so an extra game or two before the end of the campaign is unlikely to tell the head coach much he doesn't already know. Until the title is won, Liverpool should start their best team — with Alexander-Arnold at right back. After that, they can shake hands. It's a fair exchange, and no robbery. Barrott fails to prove credentials In the face of much evidence, Sam Barrott appears to be on a fast track as a Premier League referee. Taking charge of Crystal Palace against Bournemouth on Saturday, he sent off Palace's Chris Richards for two bookable offences having already let off Alex Scott of Bournemouth despite an almost identical sequence of events. It was the embodiment of the inconsistency that drives managers, and supporters, mad, with absolutely no rationalisation for the courses of action taken. Given his youth and the encouragement he is receiving, Barrott could well be the next Stuart Attwell, which is not the endorsement it might sound. Wells needs perspective Contract talks between promotion-chasers Bristol City and their striker Nahki Wells have stalled. Wells has started 17 games in the Championship and scored ten goals, but feels the club have dragged their heels over a new deal, with his present one expiring at the end of the season. Maybe his agent thinks he could do better too. Yet Wells is 34. He has never scored a goal, or started a game, in the Premier League, and has broken the 20-goal barrier only once, across all competitions for Bradford City in League Two in 2012-13. Meanwhile his head coach at Bristol City, Liam Manning, is very keen for him to stay — even if the club win promotion through the play-offs. How much better does Wells, or his adviser, think it will get? Rivals' pain is Reading's gain Reading's April 22 deadline for a sale passed and the EFL, as expected, granted an extension. Understandably so. The alternative would have been to expel the club from League One over the owner Dai Yongge's disqualification, which would have been incredibly harsh on the club's supporters, particularly if a takeover deal is only days away. With Rob Couhig's £25million buy-out imminent, why destroy a club with a 153-year history? Even by EFL standards that would have been spiteful. And yet, Reading are in the mix for promotion from League One. They sit in seventh place, level on points with Leyton Orient. So what about the fans at Orient; or for that matter, supporters of Wrexham, Wycombe Wanderers, Charlton Athletic and Stockport County, who could all meet Reading in the play-offs? And what about followers of Bolton Wanderers and Huddersfield Town, whose league positions could be greatly altered if Reading's record was expunged? As it stands, neither would be able to overhaul Orient. Yet scratch all games with Reading, and the table would look very different. Orient would drop six points, Bolton three, Huddersfield one. Huddersfield would leapfrog Bolton to sit two points off Orient and three points would separate the three clubs. Then there are those at the bottom. If Reading were summarily relegated, that would save two of Cambridge United, Crawley Town, Bristol Rovers and Burton Albion. Reading's scrapped record would move Bristol Rovers four points clear of the relegation places and put Burton three points behind them. So, in being fair to Reading's fans — which seems the right thing to do — the EFL has potentially disadvantaged supporters of 11 other League One clubs, and perhaps some litigious owners. Very soon this will be a matter for a government regulator, and these judgments will be made by civil servants who do not have to possess feeling for the game or those around it at all. Good luck everybody and, as always, enjoy the choices you have made. Romero's new horizons
The Guardian
12-03-2025
- Sport
- The Guardian
Time running out for Liverpool to make themselves serial winners
It's the 94th minute at Estádio da Luz in October. Benfica are winning 4-0 and Atlético Madrid are in utter disarray. Zeki Amdouni runs the ball into an entirely unpatrolled Atlético area, gets a free shot from 14 yards and misses a glorious chance to make it 5-0. Nobody cares. Least of all Liverpool, even though this miss will effectively end up, five months later, knocking them out of the Champions League. Of course, we're in the realm of the absurd here, although when it comes to the new Champions League format this is a system with margins exactly, and absurdly, this fine. By virtue of this one goal not scored – and of course you could pick out many others – Benfica end up finishing 16th in the 36-team group phase rather than 15th: a position from which they, rather than Paris Saint-Germain, would probably have ended up facing Liverpool in the round of 16. Naturally there were still a few bones of resentment as Liverpool made their exit on Tuesday, a certain bafflement at a format that allows a club to top the group table and still get drawn against one of the best teams in the world. Arne Slot himself lamented that Liverpool had been 'so, so unlucky'. Luis Enrique's verdict was: 'Both teams deserved to go through.' And the way Uefa is going, maybe one day soon they both will. For all this, there was also a certain magnanimity there, a recognition that Paris had been the superior team over the two legs. 'The best game of football I was ever involved in,' Slot said. And of course magnanimity is much easier to come by when you are 15 points clear in the Premier League and in a cup final at the weekend. All the same, given the standard and given the stakes, it's worth asking: just how much did this defeat mean? In an age when everything must be ranked and contextualised and GOATed, how does this failure affect the way a great Liverpool team will be remembered? There will be some for whom this in itself is the wrong question: a forlorn attempt to devalue Liverpool's season by measuring it against an unattainable standard, the idea that winning a 20th championship and drawing level with Manchester United is somehow insufficiently excellent. Let them eat league title! And yet you only had to study the body language of Liverpool's players afterwards to know that this was no ordinary defeat, no ordinary setback. Mohamed Salah, a player who may well be on his way out of Anfield this summer, was utterly inconsolable. So too Darwin Núñez, whose missed penalty was the turning point of the shootout. Strictly speaking, Liverpool didn't need to win the Champions League this season. But you could see, in the bruised aftermath, just how good a chance they had. The talk now will be of emotional recovery. Newcastle await at Wembley this weekend and yet, if this group of players has learned anything from the relentless campaigns of previous seasons, it is the art of dusting themselves down and picking themselves up for the next challenge. In truth, the real question is where Slot's squad stand physically after a long, gruelling season and 210 minutes of high-intensity European football. 'There's a lot of tired legs in there,' Andrew Robertson said. And of course there are potential implications here that go beyond this week, beyond even this season. If the 2019-20 Premier League title was the culmination of a project, then their 4-2 aggregate defeat against Atlético Madrid in that season's Champions League – a game naturally overshadowed by the pandemic it helped to spread – also offered a slightly unflattering portrait of what was coming around the corner. Liverpool dominated the Anfield leg of that tie, controlling long periods and yet conceding three goals through mistakes, lapses in concentration, a vulnerability to the counterattack and, ultimately, pure fatigue. And while they still won the league by 18 points, these were – by pure coincidence – the same traits that would torment them the following season, when a haunted, injury‑plagued squad finished 30 points behind their 2019-20 tally. Sign up to Football Daily Kick off your evenings with the Guardian's take on the world of football after newsletter promotion Obviously a certain quantum of Covid-era weirdness needs to be factored in here. But there were also tangible signs of the decay to follow. The 2019-20 squad was the eighth oldest in the Premier League and used the third fewest number of players. This season's squad is the fourth oldest, and only Nottingham Forest have used fewer players. Cohesion, nous, experience, familiarity: these are all good traits to have, title-winning traits. But there is also the sense of a team coming towards the end of its cycle, that may need to be remade much sooner than people assume. The last stalwarts of the first great Jürgen Klopp team are chugging towards the end. Robertson is 31, Alisson and Salah 32, Virgil van Dijk 33. Even Trent Alexander-Arnold, at 26, already has nearly 400 games under his belt, and may well end up leaving in the summer. That tension, that sense of teetering on a fraying thread, has helped these players to produce some of the finest football of their career. Perhaps this explains why Salah was so distraught afterwards: a player who knows his Champions League record is not as good as the players he aspires to emulate, and who is running out of chances to put it right. There are contracts to sort, a summer of recruitment and disposal to plan, a title defence to be mapped out. It feels ridiculous to argue that the clock is running out for a team that hasn't even won the league yet. But in a game moving and morphing at relentless speed, where stasis is severely punished, there is always a little less time than you think.
