Mario Balotelli reckons a change in lifestyle is the reason for his recent good form. Stoke and Spurs both clinch Europa League wins as ten-man Fulham taste defeat, while Alex McLeish reveals he’s unhappy with Aston Villa’s defending right now and could ring the changes unless an improvement is made. Here’s some Friday morning Scribbles, folks:
With four goals in his last four games, Mario Balotelli has been making headlines for all the right reasons so far this season. While the likes of Carlos Tevez and Edin Dzeko have thrown much publicised sideline strops, the Italian has appeared almost angelic in comparison. Speaking in the third person yesterday, he revealed that a change in off-pitch lifestyle has brought about a significant improvement on the field of play:
It is the real Mario who is coming now and it isn’t the same Mario as last year. That is partly because I am training well and feeling good and getting better all the time. But it is also things being good away from the pitch. This is down to me because it’s me that changed my life…I don’t live in town any more. I try to stay at home more. Maybe I’ll stay in with my family, my brother or girlfriend. They weren’t here last year. That’s definitely helped.
Carlos Tevez will attend a club disciplinary hearing today to discover his Man City future. Reports suggest City may not even charge the player with refusing to come onto the pitch against Bayern Munich, as it is alleged no one on the bench that evening can corroborate Roberto Mancini’s version of events. According to Edu, director of football at Tevez’s old club Corninthians, the club are willing to sell him in January for a cut-price £20m.
Laurent Koscielny is satisfied with his burgeoning central defensive partnership with Per Mertesacker. In light of Thomas Vermaelen’s absence through injury, the Frenchman has been able to forge an understanding with the new boy at the heart of the Arsenal defence and feels it is developing strongly as the games go by:
Personally, things are getting better and better with Per. He is a very experienced player, he is an international player, he knows what the very high level is about. We know that the English league is very different than the other European leagues and there is always time to adapt. Soon he will become a key player in this team.
Koscielny might not have too long left as an automatic starter, though; this morning brought news that Vermaelen will return to full training today and can be expected to return to action in a fortnight’s time. In other Arsenal injury updates , Kieron Gibbs and Carl Jenkinson both look likely to miss out in this weekend’s home clash with Stoke- Andre Santos should slot in at left-back, but Wenger has a dilemma on the other side of the back-four. Ironically, Koscielny could move there, having occasionally played in the position during his time in France, though Johan Djourou has stated his case for taking the role instead.
Stoke’s European adventure shows no signs of letting up anytime soon. Tony Pulis’ side coasted to a comfortable 3-0 win over Maccabi Tel Aviv last night. Goals from strike pairing Kenwyne Jones and Cameron Jerome, plus one from Ryan Shotton had the Potters in pole position just after the half-hour mark. Pulis rang the changes from last weekend’s win over Fulham, as the likes of Robert Huth, Thomas Sorenson and Salif Diao joined the three goalscorers on the first-team sheet- Jerome was contentiously sent off before the end of the first half but the Potters were in cruise control by then.
Harry Redknapp continued to utilise his first-team squad for Europa League matches last night. Only two players –Kyle Walker and Jake Livermore- survived from the starting XI at Newcastle, with Livermore dropping back to central defence alongside Sebastian Bassong due to the club’s injury crisis in the heart of the back-four. The likes of Sandro, Danny Rose and Aaron Lennon all returned from injury, while Jermain Defoe partnered Roman Pavlyuchenko up front- perhaps an indication of Redknapp’s thinking ahead of the trip to Blackburn, with Emmanuel Adebayor and Rafael Van der Vaart both rested. A superb twenty-yard free-kick from Pavlyuchenko was enough to see off Rubin Kazan 1-0 at White Hart Lane.
Martin Jol paid the price for leaving out the likes of Bobby Zamora and Clint Dempsey for Fulham’s trip to Wisla Krakow last night. With Danny Murphy nursing a knee problem, the Cottagers lost 1-0 after playing with ten men for over an hour due to Moussa Dembele’s red card. Of the players available, only John Arne Riise and Chris Baird failed to appear, sitting on the bench for the full ninety minutes.
Alex McLeish has revealed he is ready to ring the changes at the back for Aston Villa if his players don’t improve on set-piece defending. Big Eck was furious with his side’s defending at Man City in the 4-1 Etihad defeat last weekend and speaking to the Birmingham Mail yesterday, admitted:
I’m not going to point the finger at anybody here and now. But I’ve told the players that if you don’t pick up men when you’re supposed to then it could cost you your place in the team. Quite simply if that continues it will be difficult for me to keep players in the team if they aren’t going to adhere to the instructions. I have told the players that. It wasn’t a case of anybody bottling out or chickening out of challenges or being out-jumped- it was down to organisation. We told players exactly what to do but for some reason there was confusion. We won’t be allowing them to hide behind those excuses anymore. I won’t accept it.
