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Fans Come Hard On Arsene Wenger After 10-2 Trashing

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7 years ago

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Arsenal
Arsenal       Arsene Wenger is under unprecedented pressure to end his storied 21-year tenure as Arsenal manager following their humiliating 10-2 aggregate defeat by Bayern Munich in the Champions League. Tuesday’s abject 5-1 defeat in the second leg was preceded by a fan protest and ended in front of swathes of empty red seats at the Emirates Stadium.
      Wednesday’s sports headlines spoke of “humiliation” and an “all-time low”, while the players who helped Wenger turn Arsenal into the superclub they are today said the time for change had finally come. “He looks like a lost man,” Ian Wright, Arsenal’s second-highest goal-scorer, said on BT Sport. “It just seems to be mounting up. You’ve got the fans, the protests. It’s imploding.”
     Though noisy, the pre-match protest was a low-key affair, attended by only around 200 fans, but the banners held and slogans chanted revealed the extent of the divisions within Arsenal’s fan base over Wenger. The protestors’ banners bore messages including “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH”, “STUBBORN. STALE. CLUELESS” and, in reference to the two-year deal for Wenger that is reportedly on the table, “NO NEW CONTRACT”. Some fans even chanted: “Arsene Wenger, you’re killing our club!”
     Wenger, 67, has said he will make an announcement about his future either this month or next. He is not thought to be under any pressure from above, with American majority shareholder Stan Kroenke said to be happy with Wenger given his repeated success in qualifying Arsenal for the Champions League. The retiring Kroenke, known as ‘Silent Stan’, was also the target of protests during the rout by Bayern, angry supporters urging him to “get out of our club”. But as Arsenal’s most successful manager, Wenger will be allowed to determine the timing and nature of his departure.
      While he refused to be drawn on his future in Tuesday’s post-match press conference, he gave an upbeat assessment of the club’s current health. “I think this club is in great shape, but we’re just going through a very difficult situation at the moment,” said the Frenchman. – Smirking Sanchez – The signs of stasis, however, have become impossible to ignore. Arsenal have gone out of the Champions League in the last 16 for the past seven seasons running and it is now 13 years since they last lifted the Premier League trophy. The signings of Mesut Ozil and Alexis Sanchez, coupled with back-to-back FA Cup successes in 2014 and 2015, hinted at a return to former glories, but the two players have come to symbolise the current malaise.
     Ozil has become a ghost-like figure, seemingly incapable of rising to the big occasion, and while Sanchez continues to produce the goods on the pitch, he is becoming problematic off it. The Chile forward was reported to have clashed with team-mates in training last week — reports Wenger denied — and was pictured supposedly smirking on the bench after being taken off against Bayern. Both he and Ozil are stalling over new contracts. Publicly, the players continue to put on a united front, with right-back Hector Bellerin declaring “the whole team is behind the manager”. But Britain’s football writers believe the Bayern embarrassment represented a thrashing too far in the story of Arsenal and Arsene.
     “Arsene Wenger must go” was The Sun’s stark verdict, while the Daily Mirror’s chief football writer John Cross, who published a biography of Wenger in 2015, said the Bayern rout “must represent the endgame”. With Arsenal having slipped out of the top four in the Premier League, and amid competition for places that is fiercer than ever, qualifying for the Champions League for a 19th successive season will be a battle. In the meantime, Arsenal return to the Emirates on Saturday for an FA Cup quarter-final against non-league Lincoln City. Wenger is chasing a record seventh triumph in the competition and, it seems increasingly likely, a glorious farewell.
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Iheanacho, Ndidi promoted back to EPL with Leicester City

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2 days ago

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April 27, 2024 3:14 pm

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Leicester City gained promotion back to the English Premier League (EPL) on Friday night.

The 2016 EPL champions were relegated last season. The Foxes’ promotion was confirmed following Queens Park Rangers’ 4-0 win over promotion-chasing, second-placed Leeds United.

Leeds United’s defeat means Leicester have an unassailable points haul that ensured they have picked up one of the two automatic promotion tickets.

The Midlands club earlier put their foot at the door with a 5-0 win over Southampton on Tuesday night in a match where Wilfred Ndidi, the Super Eagles of Nigeria midfielder, scored a goal.

Ndidi, who will return to the EPL with Kelechi Iheanacho, his international teammate, also congratulated the club via a post on X.

“Congratulations to me, the boys, the staff the club and the amazing fans.. 2 more to go!!! We back!! 😁,” the 27-year-old midfielder wrote.

Enzo Maresca’s team tops the championship table with 94 points and is well-placed to win an eighth championship title.

The King Power side have a four-point lead with two matches left in the 44-game season.

Leicester can now claim the championship title on Monday with a victory at Preston if third-placed Ipswich fail to beat Hull City on Saturday.

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Sports

No talks with Peseiro over Eagles return, says sports minister

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2 days ago

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April 27, 2024 10:31 am

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John Enoh, minister of sports development, says there is no ongoing negotiation to return Jose Peseiro as Super Eagles head coach.

On Thursday, there were reports that the minister had contacted Peseiro and was negotiating a potential return of the Portuguese to the helm of Nigeria’s men’s national team.

Reacting to the claims in a statement signed by Diana Mary-Nsan, his media aide, the minister described the reports as “entirely false” and “fabricated to create sensation”.

The statement added that Enoh “does not interfere or influence critical decisions of the federations” and “ensures that the federations meet the required expectations and standards in the discharge of their duties”.

Peseiro exited the Eagles role in February after leading the team to a silver medal-winning campaign at the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) in Cote d’Ivoire.

The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) is yet to announce a permanent replacement for the Portuguese since then.

The federation had called for public applications from interested and qualified candidates to fill the role, but little has been let out after.

On April 19, Enoh announced that a new coach would be named within the next two weeks.

Finidi George was the Eagles’ interim head coach for two international friendlies against Ghana and Mali in March.

Finidi led the Eagles to a 2-1 victory over Ghana in his first game at the helm but lost 2-0 to Mali in the second game.

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Sports

Juventus ordered to pay Ronaldo €9.7m unpaid salaries

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2 weeks ago

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April 18, 2024 10:01 am

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Juventus must pay Portuguese star Cristiano Ronaldo 9.7 million euros ($10.4 million) in back wages for the 2020-21 season, the Italian courts announced on Wednesday.

The Court of Arbitration, to which Ronaldo appealed, “orders Juventus Turin to pay the sum of 9,774,166.66 euros”, plus interest and procedural costs, it stated in its decision.

The sum equates to the difference between the salary actually received by Ronaldo and that which he should have received after tax and other deductions.

Ronaldo, who spent three seasons in Italy with Juventus (2018-21) before joining Manchester United (2021-22) and then the Saudi club Al Nassr, was claiming 19.5 million euros but the arbitration panel reduced that by 50 per cent.

Contacted by AFP, Juventus declined to comment, but said it would be issuing a statement “shortly”.

According to the rankings drawn up by the American business magazine Forbes, the five-time Ballon d’Or winner was the world’s highest-paid sportsman in 2023, with $136 million, including $46 million in wages.

Juventus, who are listed on the stock exchange, recorded losses of 123.7 million euros in the 2022-23 financial year, which ran to the end of June, it announced in October.

No provision has been made in the accounts of Italian football’s most successful club, currently third in Serie A, for the payment of this wages backlog.

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Bodex F. Hungbo, SPMIIM is a multiple award-winning Nigerian Digital Media Practitioner, Digital Strategist, PR consultant, Brand and Event Expert, Tv Presenter, Tier-A Blogger/Influencer, and a top cobbler in Nigeria.

She has widespread experiences across different professions and skills, which includes experiences in; Marketing, Media, Broadcasting, Brand and Event Management, Administration and Management with prior stints at MTN, NAPIMS-NNPC, GLOBAL FLEET OIL AND GAS, LTV, Silverbird and a host of others

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