Former Spurs player belittles Redknapp’s attempts to snare Given

Joe Kinnear today laughed off suggestions that Shay Given would leave Newcastle for Tottenham in January by saying: ”Why would he want to go to Spurs? This is a bigger club than Spurs.”

It’s normally supporters who attempt to elevate their own club and it was because of Tottenham and Newcastle fans’ inflated sense of their own importance that neutrals took so much pleasure from seeing the two clubs suffer earlier this season. However, that hasn’t stopped Kinnear jockeying for position with the team he spent most of his playing career at in the big club stakes.

Newcastle’s claim to being a big club is that they came second twice over a decade ago and that they have lots of fans, some who are so passionate that they take their shoes off to support their team. Tottenham of course won the Carling Cup, the same highly-regarded trophy that launched juggernauts such as Leicester, Blackburn and Middlesbrough on the path to greater glories earlier this decade, and nearly finished ahead of Arsenal two years ago.

The league table, which surely fans should consider the most important measure of a club’s prominence, shows Tottenham are the sixteenth biggest in the Premier League right now, while Newcastle are eighteenth. But which club do you consider the biggest? Let us know with a vote and comment below:

The bookmakers expect Mourinho to swap Milan for Eastlands

It looks like the folks at SkyBet agree with The Spoiler and its readers with the belief that Mark Hughes’ days are numbered after he received the managerial kiss of death earlier this week. They have opened a market on who Manchester City’s next manager will be and the list is loaded with big names. Here are the five leading contenders to take charge of the billionaires:

Jose Mourinho
It’s only five months since The Special One took charge of table-topping Inter Milan, yet he finds himself in the curious position of simultaneously being favourite to become the next manager of Manchester City and Manchester United. The former Chelsea boss became the first man ever to win the Premier League in his first season, but do City really want a manager who will turn their exciting young attacking talent into flair-free workhorses?

Frank Rijkaard
Two years ago, Rijkaard guided Barcelona to a La Liga/Champions League double, but his stock has plummeted since then and he was axed earlier this year after a run of just three wins in thirteen league games saw Barca finish utterly trophyless. The fact his inexperienced successor Josep Guardiola has instantly taken the Catalan club to the top spot while scoring seventeen goals in their last three home games makes you wonder where the Dutchman was going wrong.

Roberto Mancini
The Italian kindly ended Inter Milan’s seventeen year wait for the title by winning three in a row (the first of which was handed to them after Juventus’ enforced relegation and Milan’s points deduction) but his reward for such drastic over-achievement was the

Burnley end Chelsea’s quadruple bid on penalties

In case you missed it, here are some comments made by Chelsea assistant Ray Wilkins prior to tonight’s home penalty shootout loss to Burnley in which he explains why their Carling Cup policy is so much more effective than Arsenal’s:

“It’s all about winning trophies when you’re a big club.

“The fact we’ve won the Carling Cup twice in the last four years and Arsenal have won none justifies our policy.

“You enter a competition to win the competition. Why go into it if you’re not concerned whether you win it?

“Playing a young or weakened team undermines the value of the competition.

“And we have not and will not do that. We want to win it, big time.”

To recap: Arsenal’s kids eased past Wigan, who held both Chelsea and the Gunners in the league last season, while quadruple-chasing Luiz Felipe Scolari’s side, featuring Deco, Florent Malouda, Didier Drogba and substitute Frank Lampard, lost at home to a Championship side.

Abroad, a similarly shocking cup exit could prove enough to cost La Liga winner Bernd Schuster his job at Real Madrid.

Arsenal/Man Utd, 12.45pm, Sky Sports 1, Free Bets, Best Odds

As well as giving their site a makeover, our friends at chickendinner have been investigating Arsenal’s record with and without top-scorers Emmanuel Adebayor and Robin van Persie in order to ascertain whether or not the Gunners stand a chance of winning tomorrow. Here’s what they discovered:

» There has only been one league match this season that Adebayor hasn’t started - the away game against West Ham - and on that occasion he got them out of jail when he came on by creating the opener and scoring the second.

» As well as being the Gunners’ overall top-scorer with nine goals, Adebayor has made six league assists this season, a total that only Manchester United’s Dimitar Berbatov can match.

» It’s been over a year since Adebayor last missed a league game for Arsenal. The last two he played no part in were the first two games of last season - a 2-1 win against Fulham and a 1-1 draw at Blackburn. While Arsenal took points in both games, it’s worth noting that van Persie scored in both.

» Van Persie appeared in fifteen league games last season. Arsenal’s record with van Persie of 2.2 points a game was marginally better than their average of 2.17 without him, although they lost two of three league games against Big Four clubs with van Persie playing, compared to none of the three that he missed.

Joe Calzaghe v Roy Jones Jr, Setanta Sports 1, Free Bets, Best Odds

Joe Calzaghe is 7/2 to win what could be his final ever fight by knockout at Madison Square Garden on Saturday night so our brothers at chickendinner have been looking at the stats to see what chance there is of that happening. Here’s what they found out:

Will there be a knockout victory?

» Calzaghe has won two of his three fights on foreign shores by knockout but he required a split decision to overcome Hopkins in Nevada earlier this year.

» Five of Calzaghe’s last six fights have gone to a decision as have each of Jones Jr’s last three since he lost successive fights by knockout in 2004.

» Calzaghe has won just one of his last three fight’s against Americans by knockout (33%) whereas the overall percentage of his victories that have come by knockout is 71%.

» None of Jones Jr’s 52 previous fights

Arsenal boss moves the goalposts to defend his team

Tony Pulis yesterday responded to Arsene Wenger’s criticism of Stoke’s aggressiveness by reminding the Frenchman that the only player sent off in the Potters 2-1 win last Saturday was wearing an Arsenal shirt. So in his latest desperate attempt to defend his team, Wenger replied by boasting:

“You can look at the fair play table. Who is top? Arsenal Football Club”

The problem with that claim is that, unless Arsenal have received a fax with updated standings, the last accessible version of the Fair Play Table reflects only the first six games. At that point, the Gunners had picked up just six yellows but in the five games since they have collected twelve yellows and one red.

When you consider that Chelsea, third in the last published standings after being handed eight yellows, have received just five since, there is a strong chance they will top the table when it is next updated.

Of course there is a method to Wenger’s rambling though. If he merely stated the facts, that Arsenal have got dirtier as the season has progressed, they might not receive as much sympathy from whoever referees Saturday’s game with Manchester United.

Stoke boss quotes Abraham Lincoln in website riposte

“Most Managers up and down the country are very protective of their Football Clubs and that protection is usually at its height in “after game interviews”, where we defend our team’s performances and our players’ mistakes in every way possible - from blaming referees not seeing players’ indiscretions and so on. We have every angle covered.

In Stoke-on-Trent on Saturday evening Mr Wenger talked openly about Arsenal’s encounter with Stoke, as being a “typical English encounter”. He commended my team’s organisation, my team’s commitment and confessed that on the day Stoke City thoroughly deserved to win the game. Very open and very honest.

Over the weekend Arsenal have been criticised by the media over their commitment to not only our game, but also previous games they have been involved in.

In London 48 hours later and 150 miles away from Stoke-on-Trent, Mr Wenger changed tact and has tried to rewrite history.

Moody striker is not convinced by Scolari’s tactics

To most spectators it would appear that Nicolas Anelka is enjoying one of the best periods of his career: Chelsea are top of the league, he’s joint top-scorer and he just scored a hat-trick but bizarrely he is unhappy with his role at Stamford Bridge.

In May, the Frenchman moaned about being forced to play on the wing under Avram Grant but despite the fact he has been playing up front in Didier Drogba’s absence, Luiz Felipe Scolari’s tactics aren’t good enough for him either:

“My relations with Scolari? I would say they are ‘polite’.

“He asks me to wait for my chance, then to play, then to score. I obey him even though I would prefer to play 4-4-2 than 4-3-3.

Tigers star tells compatriot Scolari that he’s going down

Excluding the final two games of the 2005-06 season when Chelsea had already won the title, the Blues haven’t lost consecutive Premier League games since March 2003 but Hull’s attacking midfielder Geovanni is certain that Hull will beat them tomorrow. He said:

“Big clubs should be wary of us because we are going to continue to surprise them.

“Chelsea will be next after Arsenal. The Blues have a tremendous squad but they just lost to Liverpool, which is a blow for their morale, so let’s take advantage of it.

“Scolari is a top coach and I do not doubt he will be a success at Chelsea, but I feel sorry for him because we are going to beat his team.”

Is Geovanni right? Will Gary Lineker again be forced to patronisingly congratulate tiny Hull on Match of the Day tomorrow night? Let us know what you think with a comment below.

Will he be as successful as Jol or as useless as Santini?

As well as having Chris Hughton and David Pleat (three times!) in as caretaker manager, Spurs have had seven full-time managers prior to Harry Redknapp in the twelve years that Arsene Wenger has been in charge of Arsenal.

Here are how those managers rank in order of points accumulated per league game as well as their league win percentage at the club:

The big question is: how does Redknapp compare with those former Spurs bosses? Give us your prediction with a comment below on where ‘Arry will rank (1-8) on points per game at the end of his White Hart Lane tenure. The answer will probably be revealed on October 25 2009!