EPL Talk » Roman Pavlyuchenko

Russian Football Now Podcast: Spalletti, Pavlyuchenko, and WCQ Preview

Chris Riordan — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 14:30:15 +0000

Former AS Roma manager Luciano Spalletti has long been linked with Zenit St. Petersburg.

In partnership with Russian Football Now, EPL Talk presents the second episode of RNF’s podcast.

An active week in papers sees former AS Roma manager Luciano Spalletti take an additional step toward the long-rumored more to Zenit. Meanwhile, Roman Pavlyuchenko gets priced out of his move to St. Petersburg, instead staying in London. While this was happening, the Russian National Team was gathering in St. Petersburg in anticipation of the week’s World Cup qualifiers, for which they look to be without Yuri Zhirkov, Denis Kolodin, and Andrei Arshavin (at least for the first match).

Russian Football Now’s podcast discusses all the plus runs down the Premier League table for you in this, their second full-length podcast.

Spurs Snatch Last Gasp Winner Against Liverpool

The Gaffer — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 20:20:01 +0000

The scenes of jubilation this evening were incredible to watch as Tottenham Hotspur’s Roman Pavlyuchenko scored a last minute winner to beat Liverpool 2-1 at White Hart Lane.

In just one week, Harry Redknapp’s reinvigorated Tottenham side have beaten Liverpool and Bolton, and staged an incredible comeback against arch-rivals Arsenal.

In the pouring rain, Tottenham Hotspur never gave up, which is one of the redeeming factors about Harry Redknapp’s side. After going down 1-0 to a sensational Dirk Kuyt goal in the third minute, Liverpool were completely in charge of the game as they hit the bar and crossbar, and had several other chances that were so close.

Liverpool continued to push forward but, against the run of play, Spurs pulled a goal back after a Jamie Carragher own goal which he headed in from a corner. Then in the last minute of the game, David Bentley unleashed a powerful shot that Reina tipped away, but Pavlyuchenko was able to sneak in the winner into the corner of the net.

The scenes at White Hart Lane were so wonderful to watch especially after all of the heartache the fans have suffered all season long after the dark days of Juande Ramos. One negative aspect of the fan’s behavior was how the Spurs fans booed Robbie Keane whenever he touched the ball. When Keane was substituted, the chorus of boos from the Tottenham fans was very noticeable, but thankfully the majority of Spurs fans gave him a standing ovation.

The win was a lucky win for Spurs. But in order to be lucky you have to create luck, and that’s what Spurs did. The win pushes Spurs up to third from bottom. It just goes to show how much of a difference a manager can have on a team.

Newcastle United Hits New Low In 2-1 Carling Cup Loss To Tottenham

The Gaffer — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 20:42:26 +0000

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse for Newcastle United, it just did. In the battle of the two bottom teams of the Premier League, Newcastle lost 2-1 at home tonight to fellow underachievers Tottenham Hotspur in the Carling Cup in front of their lowest attendance in years.

The performance by Newcastle was utterly pathetic, lacking any passion, character, pace and commitment. Newcastle looks like a team with nothing to play for and without the leadership of a permanent manager, which is exactly the situation they find themselves in.

At St James’s Park tonight, there were massive pockets of empty seats visible as United fans decided to stay at home instead of supporting their club. In 1992, 14,000 saw a first-round League Cup game against Mansfield. Tonight the attendance was 19,743. This at a club where their average attendance in the Premier League last season was 51,122. The lowest attendance since St. James’s Park was redeveloped, before tonight, was 33,000.

The attendance was so small that oftentimes you could hear the players shouting instructions to each other from the field.

Tottenham, for most of the first half, looked equally as apathetic until Roman Pavlyuchenko scored his first goal for Spurs with a header, and Jamie O’Hara soon followed up with a second for Tottenham. Michael Owen picked up his fourth goal of the season near the end of the match.

If it wasn’t for Owen, Newcastle would be in even deeper trouble in 2008.

Newcastle To Announce New Manager

Things will seemingly get even worse for the club who, according to newspaper reports, seem likely to appoint Terry Venables as Newcastle manager either on a permanent or temporary basis.

Venables hasn’t managed in more than four years since he was sacked by Leeds United in March, 2003. At Leeds, his managerial skills were pathetic. The last person Newcastle needs now is another Londoner trying to sort the club out. Newcastle fans and players are sick of Dennis Wise and Mike Ashley, and Terry Venables will be no different.

The only thing Venables will be able to do is to schmooze the British media.

Newcastle, if they do decide to hire Venables, will drive the value of the club down even more than now.

Pavlyuchenko Gets The Wrong End Of The Stick From Ramos

The Gaffer — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 10:40:26 +0000

New Spurs striker Roman Pavlyuchenko may face punishment from Tottenham because he’s not learning English quickly enough according to the Russian newspaper, Tvoi Den.

If the newspaper report is true, it’s a bit unfair on Pavlyuchenko. He’s only been with Spurs since September 1st and, in that time, he also played in Moscow for Russia aganst Wales. Plus, the criticism seems very hypocritical given that Juande Ramos is not learning English fast enough either.

The newspaper reports that Pavlyuchenko was substituted at halftime against Wigan because he wasn’t following the orders from Ramos because he didn’t understand a word that his manager had said in the pre-match team talk.

Sure, the sooner Pavlyuchenko learns English the better, but he’s only been with Spurs for just over three weeks. Ramos has been with Tottenham since October 27, 2007.

Is Today The Day The Premiership Changed Forever?

Paul Bestall — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 20:17:57 +0000

I got up this morning expecting another tense, dull day to be spattered with the occasional factual transfer as the transfer window creaked shut getting excited about nothing much in particular. A day spent scouring the BBC and Sky Sports transfer vidi-printers and tutting at bored 14 year old’s just texting and e-mailing rubbish to fill the gaps as the frustration grew as the day shortened, the last couple of transfer windows have been very dull affairs, so I was not expecting much. Silly me.

What I didn’t expect was that Manchester City would, as of 9.30am, became the richest football club in the world with the end of Thaksin Shinawatra’s short reign as owner and start throing money around like water. I never expected the Royal Family of the United Arab Emirates to buy any club, never mind Manchester City and immediately tell manager Mark Hughes to spend, spend, spend in an unprecedented scenario. The new owners, Abu Dhabi United Group are the investment & financial arm of the Royal Family and have almost 1 trillion pounds available to them, or 10 Roman Abramovichs. This is football investment on an unbelievable level and has completely changed the entire landscape of world football in a few short hours.

If that wasn’t enough, they then offered a British record transfer fee of £35 million pounds for Dimitar Berbatov, which Tottenham accepted, then announced they’d bid £30 million for David Villa and a further £25 million for Mario Gomes. As I type this, Marca in Spain is reporting that they’ve also bid for Robinho and several other high profile signings but other than the 3 strikers that ADUG spokesperson Sulaiman Al-Fahim confirmed earlier today, nothing is concrete fact. Manchester City can now afford to buy anyone at any club with no worries at all, but the one thing that holds them back is the lack of Champions League football, a key point that will probably see Berbatov choose the red side of Manchester over the blue. Ferguson will be determined to finalise the transfer he sees as vital to enabling United to try and become the first club to win back to back Champions League titles and I expect Berbatov to be a United player by midnight.

The majority of players they need to push on to go for a top four spot would seem to be loathe to swap Champions League for a season of UEFA Cup football so they may not get the players they need by the time the window shuts at midnight but don’t rule out some massive deals being prepared for the next transfer window. Also key to their forward recruitment though is that City are in a position to attract these players in January when they’ll need them, so Hughes knows he needs to keep City in and around the top 8 come the turn of the year. Additionally, the due to Manchester City deal, I expect this to push DIC forward to purchase Liverpool, now that their royal rivals have trumped them to buying a Premiership club first, something that will not be going unnoticed back in the U.A.E.

One man who won’t be a Manchester City anymore is Vedran Corluka who confirmed his protracted move to Tottenham, originally completed on August 10th, this morning to join Pavlyuchenko at Spurs Lodge. It’s been probably the worst kept transfer in football so no surprises that he now joins up with his best friend, Luka Modric. A canny pair of signing for Ramos to add a bit more depth to the squad. All in all, today could be the most important day in the history of the Premiership so far and with 3 hours to go until the window closes, who knows who else is going to switch sides and which football club is going to be bought next by midnight.