Jul 12

Luka Modric to travel with Tottenham on South Africa tour

• Croatia midfielder departs on pre-season tour
• Chelsea’s improved bid dismissed by Harry Redknapp

Luka Modric will fly to South Africa on Wednesday with the Tottenham Hotspur squad for their three-game pre-season tour with the uncertainty over his future at the club set to be prolonged into next month.

Chelsea’s second bid for the Croatia international, which was worth £27m, has been dismissed as “pretty poor” by Harry Redknapp, with the club’s hierarchy having effectively rejected the offer out of hand simply by reiterating that Modric is not for sale. The player is only one year into a six-season deal worth £45,000 a week but is determined to move to Stamford Bridge during the transfer window.

Yet Redknapp is convinced the player, whose relationship with the chairman Daniel Levy appears to have fractured beyond repair, will remain professional even if his desire to move is frustrated. “I wasn’t in the meeting between the chairman and Luka, but my relationship with him hasn’t changed,” said Redknapp. “No matter what happens I will always think very highly of Luka. He’s as good as gold: a great boy and not a troublemaker in any shape or form. He’s the last lad in the world that would ever cause a problem. He’ll just get on with his job, and let’s see what happens. But we really don’t want to lose him because he’s a key player for us.”

Modric trained as normal at Chigwell on Tuesday having learned that Chelsea’s second bid, an improvement of around £5m on the opening offer, had been unsuccessful. His suitors will return with a third offer, though, even aside from Spurs’ clear reluctance to sell, the logistics of completing any deal would most likely ensure no resolution is possible until next month. Spurs depart for Johannesburg and play Kaizer Chiefs on Saturday and Orlando Pirates on Tuesday, with a third match on 23 July. Chelsea, meanwhile, depart for their own two-week tour of Malaysia, Thailand and Hong Kong on Sunday.

Redknapp has suggested that the situation would not be altered even if Modric hands in a formal transfer request. “I wouldn’t think that would have any effect on it, really,” he said. “We don’t want to sell him. I still think £27m is a pretty poor offer for a player of that ability. What’s the point of offering £20m-odd for Luka? I may as well go to Manchester United and offer £15m for Wayne Rooney. It’s nowhere near what I would value him at, but he’s not for sale. There’s nowhere to go with it. That’s the end of it. The chairman has made his stance clear: he’s not for sale. I don’t think anything will tempt him to change his mind.”

Ledley King will miss Spurs’ trip to South Africa after undergoing arthroscopic surgery on his left knee, leaving him at least three weeks away from rejoining the first-team squad in some capacity. William Gallas could be omitted as he is suffering from a calf injury, while Giovani dos Santos is currently at the Copa América and Sandro is en route back from Argentina.

The midfielder will require surgery of his own after rupturing the meniscus in his right knee, an injury that will rule him out of the beginning of the Premier League campaign. Sandro is also suffering from a calf muscle strain. André Villas-Boas’ first game in charge of Chelsea saw his new side defeat Wycombe Wanderers 3-0 in a behind-closed-doors friendly at Cobham, with Fernando Torres among the Premier League club’s scorers. The Londoners’ new manager fielded different teams in either half, opting to replace Didier Drogba with Torres at the break, with the Spain international duly registering the home side’s second goal.

Yossi Benayoun had opened the scoring against the League One side with Slobodan Rajkovic adding a third before the hour mark. There was game-time for many of the senior squad, including John Terry, Florent Malouda, Ashley Cole and Nicolas Anelka, with Chelsea employing variations of a 4-3-3 formation. Torres, who managed only one goal in 18 appearances last term following his £50m move from Liverpool, scored only seven minutes after his introduction. The side’s first public pre-season friendly is on Saturday at Portsmouth.

Tottenham HotspurChelseaTransfer windowDominic Fifieldguardian.co.uk

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Apr 06

Chelsea 0-1 Manchester United: Five things we learned

Wayne Rooney just loves to be hated and Michael Carrick is back in business for Manchester United

1 Wayne Rooney relishes playing the pantomime villain

Wayne Rooney came into this match with an impending Football Association ban hanging over him and with his every glance at a television camera sure to be scrutinised, though focusing in on the striker must have felt near impossible at times. The forward was a blur of energy, tracking back to hack clear Chelsea attacks, then breaking down field at such pace as to leave his opponents gasping. The hosts had feared he might react like this. “All the controversy might just spur him on a bit,” Frank Lampard had said in the build-up. Rooney seemed to relish the abuse here, the goal he side-footed accurately beyond Petr Cech from Ryan Giggs’ glorious pull-back his ninth in 14 club games. Once again, revelling his role just off the main striker, he looks the player England hoped they would take to South Africa last summer rather than the snarling bundle of aggression who wilted at the finals.

2 Chelsea can be exposed down their right side

With David Luiz ineligible it is on occasions such as this that Chelsea miss Alex, absent since the end of last year with a knee complaint, if only because the Brazilian’s presence in the centre of defence would allow Branislav Ivanovic to venture out to right-back and help plug a pressure point. José Bosingwa is a Portugal international of pedigree and an attacking threat down the flank but, too often, he is exposed defensively. Given that Ramires, asked to play on the right of midfield, is happier in a central berth and tends to wander infield, Bosingwa can easily become isolated. So Michael Carrick’s wonderfully raked pass, gathered by Giggs on the gallop as if this was a throwback to the early 1990s, was always likely to leave the Portuguese floundering. Chelsea never recovered their shape and, within seconds, they had been breached.

3 For Fernando Torres, the nightmare is merely prolonged

This club yearns for Fernando Torres to come good. They dismiss the £50m price tag as irrelevant, keen as they are to remove the burden of expectation the Spaniard carries into every game, yet every scoreless occasion merely chips away at the World Cup winner’s confidence. The statistics are damning: this was a 12th scoreless game for club and country, his worst sequence since 2005, and he is now 617 minutes without a goal since moving from Liverpool. There were the same flashes of promise that have flared in most of his games for Chelsea, the odd gliding run, a turn or a shimmy to suggest his quality, and a thumping header that drew the best from Edwin van der Sar. But he remains a shadow of his former self. There were other occasions when he looked lost, stripped of all confidence as if wallowing in the memory of how good he once was.

Nemanja Vidic and Rio Ferdinand disapproved of one tumble and confronted him, sandwiching him like bullies in the school playground. He was even booked for diving at the end.

4 Welcome back, Michael Carrick

There were some outstanding performances from Manchester United players here – Giggs and Rooney were all industry and effervescence. , and Ferdinand – for a player making his first appearance in two months – was commanding and reassuring. Yet it was Carrick, all calm authority at the base of midfield, who quietly dominated this contest. There had been interceptions, astute tracking back to snuff out Lampard’s threat, and even tackles before he made the pass from right to left which found Giggs and sliced Chelsea apart. This felt all rather out of character. Carrick has been prone to drift through games, struggling to impose himself on big occasions, but this was an illustration of the class he can exude. The new contract handed him this season by Sir Alex Ferguson seems astute on this evidence.

5 United can flourish over the season’s final week

Much has been made of Chelsea’s near full strength squad, with Yossi Benayoun on the bench here and Alex possibly available for selection again next week. Carlo Ancelotti had made great play of confidence flooding back into his side as players return to fitness and swell his options. Yet a glance down Manchester United’s squad list should strike fear into their closest rivals. Antonio Valencia, Ferdinand and Park Ji-sung are back and busy again in this line-up. Nani, scintillating at times this term, and Paul Scholes only made the bench here alongside Dimitar Berbatov, a player who has scored three domestic hat-tricks this season. Therein lies the real depth. Another Treble should not feel outlandish.

Champions LeagueChelseaManchester UnitedDominic Fifieldguardian.co.uk

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Feb 07

The day Liverpool played Carlo Ancelotti at his own game – and won | Richard Williams

Kenny Dalglish already has an emotional hold on the dressing room, but Steve Clarke could be the man to turn Liverpool into an interesting football team again

When Carlo Ancelotti left Milan for Chelsea, he could hardly have imagined that the challenge in England would include a rendezvous with his old friend catenaccio. But that was what he confronted when Liverpool turned up at Stamford Bridge on Sunday. A mere 24 hours after the Premier League had indulged itself in an orgy of goals and delinquent defending, he faced opponents who had double‑locked the back door.

These days players in England are seldom invited to perform in a line-up featuring three central defenders and two wing‑backs. A defensive line of four is almost compulsory in the Premier League, as it is around the world. Even the tactically eccentric Diego Maradona abandoned his experiment with a three‑man back line before arriving for the World Cup in South Africa last summer, although Napoli and Udinese have been employing it to some advantage in Serie

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