Manchester City will win title if they keep getting referees as benevolent as Andre Marriner, who missed karate kick by Eliaquim Mangala on Samuel Eto'o
Manchester City beat Everton 1-0 at the Etihad on Saturday
Yaya Toure's penalty after James Milner went down settled the game
Andre Marriner gave City a penalty but booked Ross Barkley for simulation when he went down under a similar challenge late on
He also failed to send off Eliaquim Mangala for karate kick on Samuel Eto'o
If City get referees as benevolent as Marriner they will win the title
Manchester City will win the Premier League again this season if all referees are as benevolent as Andre Marriner was at the Etihad Stadium.
Marriner appeared somehow to miss what can only be described as a flying karate kick by Eliaquim Mangala on Everton’s Samuel Eto’o as the City man jumped in for an aerial ball.
Sometimes players are defended when they catch opponents but there can be no excuse in this case - it should have been a red card.
Andre Marriner was extremely lenient and if City get referees like him all season they will win the title
After a delay, Marriner did show Mangala a yellow card, which should mean the FA cannot act on the clear video evidence.
Next came the champions’ penalty when James Milner and Phil Jagielka came together just inside the Everton penalty area.
Milner went to ground and was scrambling to get to his feet to continue playing when Marriner awarded the penalty.
In the second half, Fernando challenged Gareth Barry with his boot at head height and despite appearing to catch Barry, he escaped with a yellow card. If there was contact then he, too, should have been dismissed.
Marriner’s final act was to caution Everton’s Ross Barkley for simulation after he went down under a challenge from Frank Lampard - there was clear contact so the caution was wrong.
All in all, a bad day for the referee but a good one for Manchester City
Silva may see action in Rome
Manchester City David Silva has advanced his improving fitness levels and could yet be involved in City's must-win Champions League game against Roma. The Manchester City midfielder has missed the last five weeks with a knee ligament injury but recently returned to first-team training. And the signs are increasingly positive the Spanish playmaker will play some part in the Rome showdown. Silva, 28, managed to complete a full training session on Sunday morning at the club's City Football Academy Campus. He was joined by skipper Vincent Kompany (hamstring) and striker Stevan Jovetic (dead leg). City will be without suspended midfielder Yaya Toure in the Olympic Stadium. Boss Manuel Pellegrini, meanwhile, is set to reveal the full extent of the knee injury star striker Sergio Aguero sustained in the weekend win over Everton. - See more at: http://www.sportinastorm.com/Premier-Le ... TgFGR.dpuf
Manchester City’s Sergio Aguero Fears That He Is Out For ‘A Month’; Misses Crunch Encounter Against AS Roma
Manchester City’s prolific striker Sergio Aguero is out of their crunch encounter against AS Roma. The sensational Argentine suffered a knee ligament injury in Manchester City’s 1-0 win over Everton. Aguero told friends that, he will be out for a month. The Argentine striker is already out of Manchester City’s encounter against AS Roma and fears that he would miss the next five Premier League games along with a FA Cup tie.
City will allow the swelling around Aguero’s knee to go down for up to 48 hours before he goes for a scan. Only then will they know exactly how long the striker will be out, but Aguero has privately expressed his fears after saying ‘he felt something strange happen inside’ the joint.
Although Manchester City’s boss Manuel Pellegrini has rubbished talks of Aguero carrying Manchester City, the Chilean manager could face heat if his team find goal scoring, difficult, over the next couple of matches.
‘We would prefer to play with Sergio but I don’t think he has carried us,’ said Pellegrini.
“It is one thing that a player can be in a very good moment as Sergio was,” said the Chilean. “But I don’t think he has carried us.
“Every big team must have important players like Sergio. I suppose Ronaldo is very important for Real Madrid, Messi is very important for Barcelona but neither of those teams are all about just one player.
“Remember, last season we played a lot of games without Sergio – and these are the same players and the same team. So I hope we can recover from this injury but we have a good squad and we will see how we can do it.”
Meanwhile Manchester City would give a late fitness test to captain Vincent Kompany and hope the David Silva would return for their penultimate encounter against AS Roma. Manchester City lie bottom of their group in the Champions League and have to win against AS Roma, whilst hoping that other results go in their favor, if City are to qualify for the next round.
Manchester City will direly miss Sergio Aguero, as the prolific striker has been Manchester City’s leading light. Aguero, has already scored 14 goals so far in this campaign and has been a driving force for Manchester City, who suffered a slump in form, recently.
With Chelsea dropping points over the weekend against Newcastle United, Manchester City are now just three points behind the Blues. Aguero’s injury could be a major concern for Manchester City as both Edin Dzeko and Stevan Jovetic, have failed to impress in this campaign so far.
Ian Herbert: New Manchester City academy will accept its duty of care to young footballers
Of the 10,000 boys in the academy system, only one to two per cent will make it
We will be discovering more today about the side of Manchester City which has been obscured by the cheap narrative about oil-rich sheikhs coming in with their money and killing our football. The club will open its new football academy to the world.
We can expect the level of investment and detail to be impressive. All will be revealed. But it is the more subtle appreciation of the complex psychology of young footballers which strikes you most.
The club realised several years ago that developing football skills was only a part of the story if the individuals in possession of them did not have the right frame of mind to go with that. Even as they prepared to celebrate the opening of the City Football Academy (CFA), there was another reminder of the wasted opportunity that comes when everyone focuses on the skill and no one thinks about the psychology.
Michael Johnson (above) was nicknamed FEC (“Future England Captain”) in the City dressing room in 2008, when his languid midfield skills suggested he might be one. If you had told him then that in December 2014 he would be investing to convert an unprepossessing corner property at Didsbury into a restaurant, he would have pictured it as a side-line to his main project in life. It is his main project in life: his first venture into the public domain since he announced his retirement after City cancelled his contract two years ago.
Stephen Ireland at City in 2008 City have come to feel that the generation of Johnson, Stephen Ireland and Joey Barton was a missed opportunity. Yes, they came through the ranks and played first-team football but not to the potential we would have seen if City had been more concerned to keep them on the straight and narrow.
That’s changed now. The teenage scholars the club take on are educated at the local St Bede’s private school – the most recent batch achieving GCSE grades 10 per cent above the national average last summer – and the CFA adds another dimension to the mission of developing something more than football. City will become the first club in the country to house their scholars, with four live-in house-parents – one couple and a mother and daughter. They believe that will help with some of the problems which can occur among the cohort of hyper-competitive young boys with money to burn and too much time on their hands.
City are becoming surrogate parents as well as employers and what impresses most about Mark Allen, who heads the academy, is his obvious realisation of how subtle and complex that task can be. How – as those of us with children know – strict discipline is not always the answer, shouting never is, and that the respect of a teenager is a very hard-earned thing. “I think shouting is something that is done very little here,” Allen says.
City will kick out scholars who have the talent but lack the attitude: 10 in that category have gone in the past few years. It feels like a club where young players are also considered to be people who are entitled and encouraged to grow.
“I don’t want them to miss out on things because they are playing football,” Allen says. “The more rounded the person, the better they are in life.”
Perhaps not entirely intentionally, it seems to have helped that the scholars mix with members of City’s women’s team, who occupy the same CFA building, altering the alpha-male environment for the better.
Taking away some of the big football wages would also help. Allen supports the idea of it being mandatory for high-earning young players to put a substantial amount of that cash into trust funds. Joey Barton is another graduate who didn't reach his potential at the club
Of course, the elephant in the room for all the boys is that a tiny percentage will make it in the game. I wonder whether City do enough to confront the teenagers with this truth. “I think any elite environment is elite because it’s difficult,” Allen says. “And that’s what you are looking to build in players – that character, that resilience, that mental toughness.” It’s a difficult one. How do you make a young player determined when you are telling him he will probably fail?
The father of a boy who was on the fringes at City before the club let him go says I am right to wonder. “They let him down gently and helped us find a club,” he tells me. “But it’s the not knowing which is the problem. You and he just want to know what your chances are but they just don’t tell you anything. It’s like they want to hold on to the possibility for as long as they can.”
The journey into this world took me back in my mind to the family of Reece Staples, a 14-year-old of such prodigious talent that Nottingham Forest paid Notts County handsomely for him in 2009 and who – with echoes of Johnson – was pictured beneath a Nottingham Evening Post banner headline as “the next big thing” in 2006. Staples’s life spiralled into chaos after the club released him two years later when his football progress hit a brick wall at 18. He died on a police station floor, aged 19. His family still hadn’t entirely come to terms with that when I last saw them, after the inquest into his death.
What wouldn’t those devastated people have given for their boy to get the opportunities that City will provide? Jose Angel Pozo, who came on against Everton on Saturday
Would he have taken up some of the activities that Allen wants the boys to try – guitar classes, advanced driving lessons, business studies – to fill those empty hours after training?
Football is not to blame for every tragedy. But Reece wasn’t the only one. Carl Ansell (formerly of Wolves) is one more of many plunged into an abyss when the football merry-go-round cast them off. No wonder. Of the 10,000 boys currently in the academy system, only one to two per cent will make the grade.
City have not yet found all the answers to a football talent industry which sees only one in six of those who sign contracts at 18 stay in the game for longer than three years. The underlying problem is that big clubs take on far too many, in the relentless quest for the next big thing. But they are making a serious and significant start.
The players whose talents will one day absorb us must be children first. The wider football world would do well to recognise that.
Watch on Tottenham are targeting Southampton's 25-year-old France midfielder Morgan Schneiderlin, team-mate Jay Rodriguez, 25, and Napoli's Spain centre-back Raul Albiol, 29, as they look to bolster the squad in January. (Daily Mirror)
Spurs are also set to move for Celtic defender Virgil Van Dijk, although the 23-year-old is also wanted by Arsenal, Manchester City, Newcastle, Southampton and Swansea. (Daily Express)
Leicester City have had a £7m bid rejected for Croatia striker Andrej Kramaric, 23, who is also wanted by Chelsea and Tottenham. (Daily Express)
Sunderland head coach Gus Poyet remains keen on signing Liverpool's out-of-favour Italian forward Fabio Borini, 23, in January. (Daily Mirror)
Newcastle boss Alan Pardew wants to sign Chelsea's third-choice goalkeeper Mark Schwarzer on an emergency loan. (Sun)
QPR boss Harry Redknapp hopes to bring in some Major League Soccer players on loan in January with LA Galaxy's Robbie Keane, 34, top of his list. (Setanta)
Arsenal are set to beat Manchester United to Exeter City's 14-year-old academy player Ethan Ampadu. (Daily Star)
Arsenal had hoped 22-year-old midfielder Jack Wilshere would be back from an ankle injury in late January, but they will receive a setback with the news he will now be out until March. (Sun)
West Brom goalkeeper Ben Foster says the club's players are "battling" to keep manager Alan Irvine, who has come under pressure after one point from the last five games, in his job. (Daily Star)
Southampton boss Ronald Koeman will face Manchester United counterpart Louis Van Gaal when their teams meet on Monday and the fixture will see the resumption of a feud between the two Dutchmen. (Telegraph)
Switzerland is set to bring in a new law which would allow them to prosecute those guilty of corruption, including members of world football's governing body Fifa whose headquarters are based in the country. (Times)
Former Newcastle United midfielder Nolberto Solano, 39, wants to prove himself as a manager in English or Scottish football, and the Peruvian has targeted vacancies at Motherwell and Hartlepool United. (DSSC)
Crystal Palace winger Yannick Bolasie, 25, says his "360 and a flick" piece of skill in the 0-0 draw with Tottenham was inspired by Ronaldinho. (Daily Mirror)
Andy Carroll insists there is no reason why West Ham cannot be competing in Europe next year, after his two goals in the 3-1 win over Swansea lifted them to third in the Premier League to continue their impressive start to the season. (Talksport)
And then there were two. Match of the Day presenter Gary Lineker feels it is down to a straight fight between Lionel Messi, 27, and Cristiano Ronaldo, 29, for the Ballon d'Or. He tweeted : "A hat-trick for Messi. A hat-trick for Ronaldo. No goals for Neuer. The Ballon d'Or is a 2 horse race."
Hatem Ben Arfa has not had the happiest of loan spells at the KC Stadium, but the 27-year-old Newcastle midfielder has used Instagram to deny a rift with Hull manager Steve Bruce. (In French)
Arsenal supporters booed manager Arsene Wenger as he boarded a train at Stoke following his side's 3-2 defeat at the Britannia Stadium. (Guardian)
Stoke striker Peter Crouch, 33, celebrated scoring in the 3-2 win over Wenger's side by crowd-surfing at a Kasabian concert. (NME)
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