Leeds United’s recent defensive signing Diego Llorente has suffered a groin injury whilst on international duty with Spain, although the full extent of his setback is as yet unknown.
The 27-year-old arrived at Elland Road in the summer transfer window from La Liga outfit Real Sociedad but he is yet to make his debut for the Yorkshire club.
Adding to Marcelo Bielsa’s defensive options, the former Real Madrid youngster started for Spain against Portugal in a recent international friendly, adding to his previous five international caps.
Providing competition to the likes of Robin Koch and Liam Cooper at the heart of the Whites’ defence, Llorente may have been handed a chance when the Premier League returns next weekend, but the defender has now suffered a setback.
Diego Llorente injury latest
In an official statement on the Spanish national team’s website, the 27-year-old is said to have suffered a muscle injury in training and will miss out on the upcoming Nations League match against Ukraine on Tuesday.
MOT Leeds News went into further detail on the injury suffered by Llorente, adding an image of the defender as he appeared to be holding his groin.
It is not yet confirmed for how long Llorente could be ruled out and it is likely that doctors involved with Spain and Leeds will jointly provide an assessment.
Does Diego Llorente warrant the £18m spent on him by Bielsa?
The Spanish defender certainly has plenty of experience, having played for Real Madrid, Malaga and Real Sociedad prior to his arrival at Elland Road. He featured in 29 La Liga matches for the Basque outfit last season, with an average WhoScored match rating of 6.51.
One issue which could arise in the coming years for Llorente at Leeds is his frustrating pattern of muscle injuries during his career, and Bielsa will hope that his £18m investment is not one fraught with injury interruptions in the months and years ahead.
Do you think Llorente should be a starter for Leeds? Let us know your views in the comments section below…
After edging past Norwich in the FA Cup quarter-finals on Saturday, Manchester United turn their attentions back towards the Premier League as they take on Brighton away from home.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s side needed extra-time to defeat the ten-man Canaries, and having rested a few key players from the starting line-up at the weekend, the United manager is likely to revert back to a full strength team.
The Red Devils currently find themselves five points behind fourth-placed Chelsea, and know that teams like Wolves, Tottenham, Sheffield United and Arsenal have all got their own intentions of claiming Champions League football for next season.
With that in mind, here’s a look at the kind of line-up Solskjaer might put out on Tuesday evening.
With Sergio Romero taking the number one spot in the cup competitions, David de Gea is surely set for an immediate return to first-team action.
In front of him, the likes of Victor Lindelof and Aaron Wan-Bissaka are likely to take back their own places, with both Eric Bailly and Diogo Dalot set to drop out.
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And having gotten their first taste of starting a Premier League game together, Paul Pogba could return to the starting line-up to play alongside Bruno Fernandes – the duo inspired a 3-0 win against Sheffield United at Old Trafford last weekend.
Having been given a rare opportunity to shine by Solskjaer on Saturday, both Jesse Lingard and Juan Mata failed their respective auditions, before being hauled off in the second-half.
Their performances surely made an easy decision even easier, with Anthony Martial (hat-trick hero against the Blades) and Marcus Rashford sure to come straight back in.
The other big decision Solskjaer will have to make is who he starts on the right-hand side. Mason Greenwood hasn’t enjoyed the greatest of games since football’s restart with no goals or assists in three games, and Daniel James has not scored in the top-flight since last August.
But with Brighton having enjoyed a fine victory against Arsenal, Solskjaer may just go a little more cautious, and hand a chance to James and hope his pace can hurt the Seagulls on the counter.
Chelsea have identified their main target for bolstering their defensive line ahead of next season.
Frank Lampard has named Jose Gimenez as his ideal defensive signing for the summer, according to Football Insider. Defence has been an area of concern for the Blues this campaign, which saw them leak 54 Premier League goals – the worst record of any other top ten side.
The report claims Atletico Madrid have a £110million release clause in place for Gimenez, but Chelsea are hoping to sign the Uruguay international for much less. A fee of £60m has been branded ideal for Chelsea, who will push for his signature once the La Liga side have finished their Champions League run.
According to The Times, Lampard is willing to cash in on four senior defenders this window in order to stock up on funds to kit out his squad. Marcos Alonso, Emerson, Kurt Zouma and Andreas Christensen are all on the market and able to leave Stamford Bridge.
Roman Abramovich has allegedly granted Lampard a £120m budget to splash out on new recruits, on top of the money already spent on Hakim Ziyech and Timo Werner.
Gimenez has been limited to just 26 appearances across all competitions this season, missing a total of 19 games due to numerous injury problems (via Transfermarkt). However, this hasn’t put the West London side off, who are eager to see this 25-year-old join their youthful team as they push for silverware next term.
Would you like to see Chelsea sign Jose Gimenez? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below…
So Newcastle fans are still having to wait anxiously to finally hear the news that Mike Ashley has left the building.
The club have been on the verge of a takeover for what feels like eternity now, and things appear to be only inching closer to completion.
Now, The Daily Telegraph journalist Luke Edwards has insisted that due to there being no official or unofficial notification from the Premier League, “nothing has changed yet”, and that the “takeover remains imminent”.
And after hearing Edwards’ clarification on where things stand at the moment, Newcastle fans took to Twitter to share their thoughts on it.
A couple of fans seemed to be very optimistic after Edwards’ update, suggesting that the news all but confirmed the takeover is going to happen soon.
If and when the takeover does official go through, it promises to be worth the wait.
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The Ashley nightmare will finally be over, and Newcastle fans will have something to celebrate. After suffering years and years of turmoil under his leadership, an extra few days or weeks shouldn’t be considered the worst thing in the world if it does eventually see him leave the club.
Leeds United may have a very busy summer ahead of them.
The Whites look to be headed to the Premier League, sitting pretty at the top of the Championship with just four games to go, and with a huge financial windfall headed their way if they do go up, it may soon be time for Andrea Radrizzani to get his chequebook out.
United haven’t had the best fortune when it comes to signing new players over the past couple of seasons, and the blame has to at least partially lie at Victor Orta’s feet.
The Spaniard has headed up the recruitment team at Elland Road for the past few years now, and while he has knocked it out of the park with some arrivals such as Liverpool-linked Ben White and their leading assist-maker Jack Harrison, there has also been a fair share of flops.
Two players that immediately spring to mind when you think of recent Leeds flops are Izzy Brown and Jean-Kevin Augustin. Both men arrived on loan but barely got a look-in due to their substandard fitness levels.
Augustin came in and was almost immediately criticised for not being up to scratch physically, and unfortunately, a string of injuries would hamper him, meaning that even with a three-month break he wasn’t able to get up to speed, eventually being sent back to RB Leipzig before the season even concluded.
Brown was a similar story, joining with a serious knee injury that he never really recovered from, playing just 11 minutes for the Yorkshire club last season, before returning to his parent club.
Now, both of these men are quite obviously talented, Brown has seven assists in 25 appearances this term, while the Frenchman has scored goals in the Champions League.
Unfortunately, the timing of these two deals turned them into poor transfers, and that is a trap that Leeds can’t afford to fall into again.
To put it bluntly, Orta and his team need to perform more due diligence on potential signings upon the club’s ascension to the Premier League because signing more big-money crocks after promotion could see United swiftly sent back to the Championship.
According to reports from The Sun, Manchester United will not pursue another left-back this summer, due to the emergence of Brandon Williams.
What’s the word?
Left-back has been something of a problem position for United this season with four players starting there in the Premier League but featuring on no more than eleven occasions each, and one of those in Ashley Young leaving for Inter Milan in January.
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However, it seems Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is now content with his options because Williams has managed to establish himself in the senior squad this season, the 19-year-old going on to feature eleven times in the top flight.
In fact, Solskjaer has been so impressed by Williams that United have changed their stance on bringing in another No.3 during the next transfer window, having previously searched for a signing to compete with first-choice Luke Shaw.
An insider has reportedly told The Sun…
“Ole has stopped looking for a new left-back. Brandon has done enough. There was an idea he could go out like Dean Henderson has, to another Premier League club or a team in the Championship.
“Ole loves Brandon’s attitude and he will be here next season. The bosses think he will save them £50m.”
The right decision?
Considering Shaw’s long list of injury problems, this season alone resulting in 17 games missed, it’s certainly something of a risk not to bring in an experienced understudy and instead entrust Williams to serve as back-up.
But Solskjaer has to give credit where it’s due and Williams has produced some really strong performances. He scored the first goal in United’s 3-3 comeback at Bramall Lane, was part of the defence that claimed a clean sheet at Stamford Bridge and received a Whoscored rating of 8.2 for his performance against Norwich.
He’s a hardworking young player, if not somewhat overenthusiastic as his five yellow cards illustrate, and academy products always resonate well with the fans when they put in that level of effort.
Of course, while Shaw’s injury record makes it seem like a gamble, there’s another side to that argument. Because Shaw often does miss portions of the season, Williams won’t be just a benchwarmer and will get the experience he needs to develop quickly.
If the teenager maintains the progress he’s shown so far, this could be a wise move from Solskjaer.
Meanwhile, Paul Pogba’s transfer priority has been revealed.
The January transfer window is a rather bizarre beast.
Situated smack, bang in the middle of the Premier League season, it can bring out the best of clubs, as they go on the hunt for bargains who can salvage a season, or propel a winning team to glory.
However, it’s had its fair share of absolutely terrible signings too, with players ending up at clubs and roundly failing to make any sort of impact.
Three such buys are listed below, perhaps as a warning to those chairmen who wish to splash the cash when the turn of the year comes around.
At the halfway point of the campaign, sometimes its better to stick than twist.
Fernando Torres – Liverpool to Chelsea 2011
There seems to have been a revision in recent times of Fernando Torres’ horrendous spell at Stamford Bridge, one that suggests it was not as bad as history recalls.
After all, the Spaniard did help his side win a Champions League –memorably scoring in a semi-final away leg at Barcelona – and he netted too in a successful Europa League final.
The stats however will forever be mercilessly damning.
During four ferociously productive seasons at Liverpool, ‘El Nino’ fired home 81 goals in 141 appearances, marking him out as a worthy successor to Ian Rush, Michael Owen and Robbie Fowler before him.
Yet following a £50m switch to Chelsea in 2011 – the British transfer record not only shocking the nation’s mores to the core but also almost doubling what Manchester City paid for Edin Dzeko in the same window – Torres managed just 20 league goals in three-and-a-half years.
With such figures in mind it could be said they paid twice the going rate for half of the player they thought they were getting.
On Merseyside Torres was an explosive, lethal, and often unplayable phenomenon. He took on defenders as if they were training cones. He found the back of the net with unerring precision.
Whereas in the capital an inhibition took hold, as the pressure weighed on his shoulders and messed with his head.
“I don’t forget to score goals,” the striker said on enduring a barren streak. A 24-game drought suggests he did indeed misremember.
Wilfried Bony – Swansea to Manchester City 2015
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At the time City’s move for the Swansea front-man made a good deal of sense.
Though Manuel Pellegrini’s first choice duo of Edin Dzeko and Sergio Aguero were going about their business in typically prolific fashion, their back-up Stevan Jovetic was failing to hit any great heights.
Bony had scored more Premier League goals – 20 – in the calendar year of 2014 than anyone else while his combination of quick feet and powerful physique offered the title-holders another dimension to their attack.
Admittedly £25m – rising to £28m – was an awful lot of money to pay for a squad addition, but there was clear logic in the expense. Then he put on a sky blue shirt and City supporters soon realised the awful truth, which was that 25 pence would have been a premium.
Like Torres, Bony’s stats were pretty dire – just six league goals in 36 games before City very quietly released him to Stoke on a season-long loan – but even they pale to the memory of his ineptitude.
From this writer’s perspective he remains one of the very few strikers ever witnessed who had the ability to mark himself.
He would stand centrally, up against a centre-back, then maybe trot sideways for a change of scenery. There is more nuanced movement in a corpse.
As for his touch, the ball was routinely repelled by him, ricocheting off shin or thigh at a greater speed from which it had arrived. Clearly City were blinded by form, when talent should have been the true barometer.
Aged 31, the Ivorian now plays in Saudi Arabia.
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Few things better promote the prospect of a dud signing than an enormous sale gifting a club a fortune to squander.
Famously, Spurs took this to the extreme with numerous forgettable names bought from their Gareth Bale bonanza in 2013.
Five years later one of Bale’s former clubs followed suit after reluctantly parting with Virgil Van Dijk on New Year’s Day for a whopping £75m and lasting all of three weeks before wasting a chunk of it on an Argentinian forward whose only accreditation seemed to be that he occasionally shared a pitch with Kylian Mbappe at Monaco.
Carrillo’s seven months at St Mary’s consisted of ten bit-part appearances (three in the FA Cup), amounting to 624 minutes and all for the princely sum of £19m. He failed to score.
He may have cost the equivalent of Van Dijk’s leg but even in a differing position he’s not fit to lace his boots.
Liverpool fans reacted with all kinds of emotions to reports that Manchester City will not face a ban from the Champions League following a Financial Fair Play investigation.
The reports come from The Athletic who have stated that City will escape the ban and only receive a fine. It was reported that many within the sport expected the club to be hit with a European ban after the reports from Der Spiegel.
The German news outlet released various chapters detailing the corruption at the Premier League champions. Der Spiegel touched on how City have been covering up millions which should have been calculated by Financial Fair Play.
Some of the Liverpool faithful are not shocked by the news, whilst others have vented their anger, as some even mocked the club.
One fan said that “UEFA bottled it”, whilst another supporter said it is an “absolute joke”.
The Reds are of course the holders of the Champions League right now, and one fan even mocked the club saying “I love seeing them get knocked out in the quarters”.
This is just another story that has caused tension between the two giants after the controversy last weekend was followed up by the Joe Gomez and Raheem Sterling incident.
Here’s what the fans have had to say this time around…
Tom Heaton kept a clean sheet against Newcastle United, putting an end to a six-game run without one.
The England international certainly played his part in the 2-0 win, making five saves throughout the match to ensure there was no late resurgence from the Magpies.
Following the victory, Dean Smith was full of praise for his goalkeeper, which Aston Villa’s official Twitter page posted about.
It was not only the manager that Heaton was getting applause from though, as many fans were delighted with how he performed during the game.
This recognition was well deserved, as some of his saves were highly impressive, including his diving stops to keep out Federico Fernandez’s header and a curling effort from Allan Saint-Maximin.
One fan went as far as to say the 33-year-old “could easily be at a better club”.
There has even been the suggestion made that Heaton is the best of the 12 signings Villa made during the summer, while another suggested he is pound for pound the best signing in the Premier League.
This is quite a compliment for the Villa man, considering Tyrone Mings has played well enough to earn a first England call-up, while Wesley has gone on to become the club’s undisputed striker, starting all 13 of their Premier League games.
There have also been comparisons made to former Villa goalkeepers, such as Brad Friedel and Jimmy Rimmer.
That he is already so highly regarded, despite having played just 12 times for the club can only be a good sign for his future at Villa Park.
In other news, Villa fans were impressed by another man’s performance against Newcastle.
Everton will be looking to continue their winning ways as they visit Brighton & Hove Albion this Saturday. The Toffees registered just their third win of the Premier League campaign last week, as they beat West Ham United 2-0.
It was also the first time they had won a league fixture since September 1, having lost four matches on the bounce in the top-flight. Now, in their trip to the south coast, Marco Silva must look to build on their positive performance against the Hammers if they are to stay away from the drop zone.
The Toffees are now up to 15th ahead of the match, and with the Seagulls in 16th, a defeat at the Amex Stadium would be crushing.
Everton kept their first clean sheet since August last week, so it is a great disappointment that Yerry Mina is a doubt. As a result, Mason Holgate is expected to come in for his first start in the league, whilst Lucas Digne and Michael Keane are fairly irreplaceable right now.
At right-back, Djibril Sidibe was handed his first Premier League start because of the suspension to Seamus Coleman. The Monaco loanee put in an 8/10 display against West Ham and could have secured a regular spot in the team as a result.
In midfield is where Silva’s problems really occur. The Portuguese admitted to having a “good headache” ahead of his selection, with Fabian Delph and Morgan Schneiderlin both returning to fitness.
However, Tom Davies and Andre Gomes controlled the game last week and have the makings of a potentially formidable partnership for the Blues. Silva shouldn’t change too much of his winning team, and the balance of Gomes’ technique and composure with Davies’ all-action presence should serve him well on the road.
On the forward line, Alex Iwobi stepped into the number 10 role and was excellent in doing so. The Nigerian scored a 9/10 and should keep Gylfi Sigurdsson on the bench despite his sublime goal.
Theo Walcott may have had his best performance in an Everton jersey against West Ham, providing an assist for Bernard and smashing the bar from a magnificent volley in the second half.
Bernard’s goal against the Hammers was his second of the season, while Richarlison came in as the sole striker last week and he should remain there, despite not scoring since the visit of Wolverhampton Wanderers.
The former Watford man seems to be more threatening than Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Cenk Tosun these days, registering an assist against West Ham, while Moise Kean is still adjusting and could produce something off the bench.