The midfielder was forced off in the first half against Leicester (Picture: Getty Images)
Mikel Arteta says the muscle injury Emile Smith Rowe sustained in Arsenal’s 3-1 win over Leicester City last weekend ‘doesn’t look significant’.
The 20-year-old was forced off shortly before half-time at the King Power Stadium and replaced by Martin Odegaard.
Smith Rowe has played a pivotal role in Arsenal’s attack in recent months, providing four assists in 12 Premier League games since his introduction into the first team at the end of December.
Arteta’s side head into their clash against Burnley in 10th position in the table (Picture: Getty Images)
And speaking ahead of the Gunners’ clash against Burnley at Turf Moor on Saturday, Arteta played down the severity of the midfielder’s injury despite not revealing whether he would be able to feature this weekend.
‘Emile had a scan yesterday, it doesn’t look a significant injury but he was in discomfort,’ said Arteta.
‘For the rest, hopefully everybody should be okay.’
The Gunners are currently down in 10th place in the table and eight points off the top four after losing 11 of their 26 Premier League games this season.
When asked whether his side can still secure a finish in the Champions League places, Arteta replied: ‘Well the aim is to go on and beat Burnley, we have been chasing [a top-four place] for a while but it is not in our hands.
‘The only thing we can control is our own results and performances. We are fully determined to do that better than what we have done in the past eight months.’
Mikel Arteta insists he wants to stay at Arsenal (Photo by Danilo Di Giovanni/Getty Images)
Mikel Arteta insists he’s happy and focused on his job at Arsenal, despite suggestions that he could be in line to become the next manager at Barcelona.
The Spaniard came through the ranks at the Camp Nou but he failed to make a first team appearance for the Catalans before joining Rangers in 2002.
The La Liga giants will hold presidential elections next week and the outcome could have a bearing on Ronald Koeman’s future, with the Dutchman in line to be sacked depending on who wins the race.
That has led to suggestions that Arteta could return to the club as manager but the Spaniard insists he’s happy at the Emirates.
Arteta insists he’s happy at Arsenal (Photo by Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)
‘There’s always going to be speculation,’ said Arteta.
‘When there are elections in Barcelona it’s a huge thing. Obviously I was raised there as a player and I’m always going to be linked.
‘But I’m fully focused on the job we have to do here which we have a lot to do. I’m really enjoying it.
‘Today and tomorrow I am the manager of Arsenal Football Club and I’m really enjoying it. I want to do much better than what I’ve done.’
Arteta signed a three-and-a-half year deal when he replaced Unai Emery in December 2019.
The Spaniard will have two years left on his deal by the end of the campaign and recent reports claimed Arteta had already held talks with the club over a contract extension.
However, Arteta has rebuffed those suggestions and he insists he’s focused on the remainder of the season.
Asked whether he’s held talks, Arteta said: ‘No, we are in the middle of the season we have a lot to play for.
‘At the moment it’s not a priority. I still have a contract here, I am happy here and it’s not urgent.’
The Red Devils are still owed a massive sum for the Belgian striker (Picture: Getty Images)
Manchester United have asked Inter Milan for either Milan Skriniar or Lautaro Martinez after the Serie A club failed to pay part of Romelu Lukaku’s transfer fee, according to reports in Italy.
The Belgian forward swapped Old Trafford for the San Siro back in August 2019 in a £74million deal which featured a host of bonuses and performance-related clauses.
Lukaku has been in fine form for the Serie A leaders this season, netting 18 goals in 23 appearances, and according to Corriere dello Sport he has triggered a clause which means Inter must immediately pay the remaining fee of the deal.
United could waive the fee they are due for Lukaku if they get Skriniar instead (Picture: Getty)
But Inter are still believed to owe United a fee of around £43.8m for Lukaku and, with the coronavirus pandemic having severely hampered finances, are unable to pay it off in one go.
Inter’s owners, Chinese company Suning, are also mired in debt woes and were forced to shut down Chinese Super League club Jiangsu recently, while the Italian side still owe around £179m to other clubs in unpaid transfer fees for the likes of Lukaku, Christian Eriksen and Nicolo Barella.
According to Corriere, that has seen United propose a solution to Inter to get around their money problems: they want one of their players instead.
Top of United’s wish list this summer is a new centre-back and they have been linked with Real Madrid’s Raphael Varane already, but it could be imposing Slovakian defender Skriniar they end up with.
The 26-year-old very nearly left San Siro last summer amid interest from Tottenham but stayed with Inter, winning back Antonio Conte’s trust and forming the bedrock of a defence that is top of the Serie A table.
United would also be keen to take Lukaku’s strike partner Martinez (Picture: Getty Images)
Another player United would be willing to take in order to write off the outstanding Lukaku fee is the Belgian’s strike partner Martinez.
The 23-year-old is considered one of the most exciting young forwards around and has been linked with Barcelona and Real Madrid in the past, continuing his fine form for Inter this season with 13 goals and seven assists in 24 league appearances.
Inter, though, would be loathe to lose either player and are hoping to reach a compromise with United over the repayment of Lukaku’s transfer fee which does not involve giving up one of their star men.
Matt Selt was thoroughly impressed with Stephen Hendry (Picture: WST)
Matt Selt was pleasantly surprised with how well Stephen Hendry played against him in his comeback match at the Gibraltar Open after not being impressed at all with what he saw from his good friend in practice.
Hendry was playing his first match back on tour in nearly nine years, retiring from the sport in 2012 but accepting a two-year wildcard to return at the start of this season.
That return was finally made in the first round of the Gibraltar Open on Tuesday night and, although he suffered a 4-1 defeat to Selt, the Scot looked good, making a break of 107 in the one frame he won.
Selt was clearly delighted to pick up the victory but was also pleased that his pal is playing well again on his journey back into professional snooker.
The two men are coached by Stephen Feeney and practiced together as Hendry prepared for his comeback and Selt says the difference in Hendry’s game between then and now is profound.
‘I’m not really one for beating around the bush, as many people will know and coming into this match I knew that if he played anything like he did against me in practice then there’s no possible way he could have won that match, impossible, Selt told a post-match press conference.
‘But since the last time I practiced with him his game has come on leaps and bounds. I don’t want to sound disrespectful to him in any way, that’s a seven-time world champion and it might sound condescending, but I’m actually glad he made that break in the second frame because I knew I was in with the game.
‘If I presented him with opportunities he was going to take them.
For me, being out there I feel how the game’s going I could feel under pressure, I felt he played pretty well there.’
‘I’ve practiced with him and I didn’t think his game was particularly strong, he’ll admit that himself, but after seeing the way he made that ton and the way he played throughout the match, he only made a couple of safety errors and I potted every long ball I went for. So his game at the minute, along with the leg up of his aura and presence, will stand him in good stead.’
Selt has not seen enough of Hendry on the match table to believe that the 52-year-old can fulfil the goal of his comeback, which is to make his way through World Championship qualifying and return to the Crucible.
‘As I say, coming into this I wouldn’t have given him a hope of qualifying for the Crucible but he’s clearly proved that he can get to at least the Crucible,’ said Selt.
Hendry can certainly still compete on Tour (Picture: WST)
‘He’s got one thing that you can’t buy, I don’t have, and lots of other players don’t have, that’s unbelievable amounts of bottle and he’s won absolutely everything in the game. So when the opportunity presents itself, and it will, to win a match, to get to the Crucible, he will take it.
‘It’s a bit early to say he can start competing for titles again, but if anyone can do it, after that performance I genuinely think he can and before the match I genuinely thought he couldn’t.
‘So although I’ve won the match, the score line is pretty flattering although I played pretty good, I was happy with the way he played. I don’t want him to embarrass himself and I thought it was quite the opposite.’
England’s batsmen had no answer to the spin bowling of Axar Patel in the third Test (Picture: Sportzpics for BCCI)
Whatever the outcome of the final Test between India and England in Ahmedabad this week, and a series-levelling win for the latter would certainly salvage some pride, you cannot escape the shortcomings of Joe Root’s side in conditions that favour spin bowling.
It has been a failure of the batting, too, not the bowling. England could have picked Shane Warne or Muttiah Muralitharan for the last Test and neither would have bettered the five for eight Root took with his zippy off-breaks. England’s spinners may not be as good as India’s so there is always the temptation to consider any age, other than the current one, to be golden. ‘O my Graeme Swann and Monty Panesar long ago’ I hear supporters cry. Well, let’s take a closer look.
Figures don’t tell the whole story but if you compare Swann’s average runs per wicket and his strike rate (29.9 and 60.1), it is not as good as that of Jack Leach (29.5 and 59.1). Swann is better on both counts than Moeen Ali (36.2 and 59.9) and Dominic Bess (32 and 66.3) but not markedly so. All, however, better Panesar (34.7 and 74.7) in at least one of the metrics.
The general perception, though, is that Swann and Panesar are much better bowlers, one that probably stems from the number of games England won when they did well.
But that potency required an essential ingredient, runs on the board, something England have not had since the first Test in Chennai when Root’s double hundred enabled them to post over 500. Since then 164 has been the team’s best total; that doesn’t win many T20 games, let alone Test matches.
Jack Leach has enhanced his reputation during England’s tour of India (Picture: Sportzpics for BCCI)
Those low scores reached a nadir in the pink-ball Test, where England made 112 and 81. The pitch for that match was very tricky, the groundsman having taken the toss out of the equation by preparing a surface that turned sharply from the outset.
Even so, judging from the make-up of their bowling attack (four seamers including Ben Stokes) England misread it, an error that might have lost them the Test had it been a high-scoring affair, but not as things panned out.
England were found wanting in so many ways, not least in making five changes from the previous match. To expect Jonny Bairstow to come in and replicate his batting form from Sri Lanka after returning from the depths of a Yorkshire winter, was Trump-like wishful thinking.
England’s rotation policy, which looks better on paper than on the park, seems to ignore such prime considerations as form, the form of the opposition and the playing environment. It appears to be change for change’s sake and micro-management gone mad.
Only Joe Root has had any real success against India’s attack (Picture: Sportzpics for BCCI)
Bairstow got a pair and looked like a novice but he was not the only one as Axar Patel and Ravi Ashwin caused the kind of panic one does not expect from a team playing their fifth successive Test in sub-continental conditions. Much was made of the speed of Axar’s bowling (56-62mph) which is brisk for a spinner but no greater than several before like Anil Kumble, Bhagwat Chandrasekhar or Derek Underwood.
What makes Axar tricky, especially in the age of the Decision Review System (DRS), is the wide angle he bowls from. It means the ball is almost always heading for the stumps which means with DRS the batsman has to play at it with the bat as his only defence, the pad being an lbw risk these days. This makes him especially challenging when some balls are skipping on and others are gripping and turning.
If that is the specific threat England’s batsmen have to counter then the other, which they may struggle to put right overnight, is a cultural one — they just don’t pick up length as well or as quickly as India’s batsmen.
In England, where the ball seams and swings more than other countries, judging line is more important than judging length as you don’t want to play at anything you don’t need to when the ball is nibbling about. Players therefore learn not to follow the ball when it moves and to play late if possible. By contrast, India’s batsmen grow up learning to be proactive in getting close to the pitch of the ball in order to smother any spin. Either that or to rock right back so they have time to adjust to it — foot and wrist work being key.
In lockdown, Root practised hard on both to just reward for he has been England’s best player by far this winter. Without the captain’s runs, 759 and counting, the horror show would have been unimaginable.
As for advice as to how England’s batsmen might get enough runs on ropey pitches I leave that to the wise words of my old captain at Essex, Keith Fletcher. Asked why Essex had been able to beat Kent in a Championship game on a shocking pitch down at Folkestone in 1980, upon which the scores went 130, 88, 76 and 68, Fletch responded: ‘That’s easy, we had more clouting louts than them.’
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The Portuguese ace has been a sensation in the blue half of Manchester this term, following a £62million arrival from Benfica.
Dias has been instrumental in a fantastic 21-match winning run for Pep Guardiola’s side and the defender is leading the race to be named Player of the Year.
United have conceded 32 times in 26 matches this term and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is desperate to sign a centre-back of Dias’ stature to tighten his defence.
And Dias has admitted his game has been influenced by United heroes of the past such as Ferdinand and Vidic.
Ferdinand and Vidic won it all at Old Trafford (Photo by Alex Livesey/Getty Images)
‘When I was a kid watching the Premier League was my dream weekend, I’ve watched many games with you, Vidic, Kompany, John Terry, an infinite list,’ said Dias.
‘From there you start learning and I learnt a lot from what I hear and what I see and just by watching I started to understand the league and the way you play.
‘The thing that makes the big difference is how competitive it is.
‘Here you get the challenge every game and I think that’s what makes the league different and if you’re successful it’s because you can solve it many times.’
City suffered last term following the retirement of Vincent Kompany.
But the Blues have the best defensive record in the Premier League this term, leading many to compare Dias to Kompany.
The Portuguese defender is reluctant to talk up the comparisons, though.
‘Lots of people are comparing me to Vincent, ‘can I be the replacement?,’ said Dias.
‘I understand why people do it but honestly for me you cannot compare me to Kompany because of all that he has done.
‘He won almost everything, if not everything, and for how long he was here you cannot compare him to anyone.
‘Obviously things are going well for me, I have a lot of ambition and am here to win as are all my colleagues but I’ve just arrived and I have to make my own path.
‘I think that’s the best way for me to show respect for me and for everyone else to show respect for what he did for this club.’
Thomas Tuchel revealed he ‘fought’ to sign N’Golo Kante for PSG (Picture: Getty)
The thought of signing for Paris Saint-Germain and teaming up with Thomas Tuchel never crossed N’Golo Kante’s mind, so contended was he with life at Chelsea, the France international has revealed.
Kante had been a mainstay of Chelsea’s midfield under three different managers before Tuchel’s arrival, but was unsettled during Maurizio Sarri’s reign when the Italian attempted to reinvent the player in a more attacking role.
Despite struggling to get to grips with the tactical demands of the former Napoli coach, Kante insists he never thought about leaving Chelsea amid PSG’s interest.
He said: ‘I knew in the past there was some contact with Paris Saint-Germain when he was the manager, but it was not something I wanted. It did not happen because I was happy at Chelsea and I stayed here. I haven’t spoken to the manager about it!’
N’Golo Kante was man of the match in Chelsea’s 0-0 draw with Man Utd last Sunday (Picture: Getty)
Despite his admiration for the World Cup winner, Tuchel has used Kante, in part due to his ongoing fitness struggles, sparingly during the early stages of his reign.
Kante has, however, started three of Chelsea’s last five matches in all competitions, thriving in the ‘double six’ role alongside the likes of Jorginho or Mateo Kovacic.
‘It’s a position I have played many times, here, at Leicester and in the national team,’ Kante said when asked if Tuchel was using him in his best role.
‘It’s not only the best way for me to play but for the team. It is good for me to play with someone who stays when I go forward, or I stay when he goes forward.’
On overcoming his injury problems, he added: ‘When you play constantly, many games in a row, you think it’s normal. When injury comes, you play two weeks, and then you get injured, it’s not the best. You don’t feel like you are giving the best to the club or your team-mates. You can learn from these times to appreciate more the time you are fit, when you can play and train with your team-mates.
‘When I have been injured it’s a period of reflection of what you can do better. I realise now it’s better to take more time to recover. I speak with the medical staff to get the best out of me for the team. This is something I have learned.
‘I am happy now to feel good. We have played so many games in a short time, so injury can come back, but we try to prevent more injuries. I have learned when you are not ready, take more time because that will help the team more.’
Stephen Hendry looked good on his return to snooker (Picture: WST)
Stephen Hendry feels his game is not good enough right now to come through qualifying for the World Snooker Championship, but believes it could well be by the time the event rolls around next month.
The 52-year-old played his first professional game for nearly nine years on Tuesday night as he made his long-awaited return from retirement.
The seven-time world champion was beaten 4-1 in the opening round of the Gibraltar Open by Matt Selt, but there was plenty to be encouraged by as Hendry looked good, making a break of 107 in the one frame he won.
Selt played superbly to come away with a comfortable-looking win, but the performance has only encouraged Hendry as he chases his goal of returning to the Crucible.
The World Championship qualifiers run from 7-14 April and the King of the Crucible says that gives him enough time to prepare for a return to the scene of his unmatched success.
‘I’m happy that when I had a chance I scored, that’s what snooker is all about these days, scoring heavily when you get in,’ Hendry told WST.
‘Things to work on, right at this point in time my game’s not ready to qualify for the Crucible. But in a month’s time…a month ago I never would have competed in this match but it’s steadily improving.
‘I’ve seen all the attention on social media and in the press about my comeback, it’s been built up quite heavily so there was atmosphere there, even though there was no people there. I’ve got to pay credit to my opponent, though, because Matt played brilliantly tonight.’
Hendry identified his long-potting and safety play as the two areas he needs to work on most, because his potting when in the balls appeared to be excellent.
His slightly loose safety game was heavily punished by the in-form Selt who pounced on every opportunity handed him, but that has only encouraged Hendry to tighten up more thoroughly
‘I was quite happy, I didn’t miss anything easy, I need to cut out unforced errors,’ said the Scot.
‘My safety has to be tighter and my long game has to be better.’
Despite achieving everything in the sport, Hendry was understandably nervous returning to the baize after such a long spell out, but was happy to do so.
‘I really felt the nerves when I put my suit on in the hotel room,’ he said. ‘That’s when it really hit me, which is a good sign because without nerves you can’t perform.
‘But it needs to be more nerves of excitement and expectation rather than nerves of not knowing what’s going to happen. I was generally quite happy.
‘I don’t think there was any surprises, the table played nicely, not as fast as I thought it would be actually, but it was beautiful to play on.
‘Obviously I’ve watched enough of these matches working for TV, so you kind of feel you know what to expect getting out there.’
