Koeman to fans: Lay off Lukaku
RONALD KOEMAN has urged Everton fans not to give contract rebel Romelu Lukaku a hard time at Goodison Park this afternoon.
The striker, below, left the board and management fuming this week when refusing to commit his future, questioning whether the club could provide a suitable platform for his talent and ambition.
And Koeman said there will be plenty in the ground for the visit of Hull City tempted to let him know their feelings about rocking the boat just when it looks like the club are progressing.
“Everybody can make mistakes but every player who is starting needs the support,” he said.
“I don’t think they should [boo] if the player shows his commitment in his football.
“Everyone needs to understand ambitions and his commitment maybe looks different in his quotes in the press but he is young and we can see this.”
Hull defender Curtis Davies certainly intends to give him a hard time, however – even if his Fantasy League hopes take a big hit. Davies is the runaway leader of the Hull squad’s table.
Much of that is down to Lukaku, whose goals have helped Davies rack up the points in Hull’s in-house battle.
Davies has had time to perfect his dream team during an injury break which kept him sidelined for six weeks before making it back on to the bench for the 2-1 win over Swansea. Head coach Marco Silva is expected to name an unchanged back four but Davies is pushing for his first start since the end of January today. Davies is more than happy to give his team-mates a chance to cut his Fantasy League lead by halting the Belgian, who has seven goals in his last five games. “Hopefully we can stop Romelu Lukaku. He’s a massive player in Fantasy Premier League and he was my team captain last week,” said Davies.
“I’m going to have to do a number on him, or I might just take him out of my team.” REPORTS IF THEY were handing out trophies for champing at the bit, forget Sizing John – Mauricio Pochettino would be Prizing Harry with a Gold Cup for his determination to get fit again.
At the end of Cheltenham week the only thing stopping striker Harry Kane from rushing out on his damaged ankle ligaments today is the fact Spurs don’t play Southampton until tomorrow.
“He wants to play today,” Pochettino laughed. “I had to tell him we don’t play today, the game is on Sunday. He’s like a horse!”
In all seriousness, Kane is adamant he could be right as rain after the international break, though his boss is understandably cautious.
“We need to assess it day by day,” he said. “He’s positive. He’s talking about after the international break, three or four weeks. That’s good but we need to be careful with his injury.
“If not four weeks, it’s five weeks or whatever. But he’s positive and if you’re positive it can affect the recovery in a big way.”
Burnley, Swansea, Watford and Bournemouth are the four games immediately after the international break. Then come the crunch fixtures.
Chelsea in the FA Cup semi-final is five weeks and six days after he picked up the injury against Millwall last Sunday. Then Arsenal falls exactly on the seven-week marker. The clock is ticking.
Thankfully for Pochettino, it is an alarm clock and the struggling understudy is now more awake to the situation.
Vincent Janssen managed his first goal from open play against Millwall and that should gee him up even further after he was read the riot act a few weeks ago. “After the goal he is OK, he is motivated, confident, feeling a little bit of relief,” said Pochettino.
“We are happy with him. It’s true that in some period of the season his form was down. He needed a wake-up to be reminded the possibility of playing could arrive. The wake-up call is more private, inside the training ground than in public. So far, from the beginning of the season, some players have needed wake-up calls in private – in my office. “Players are training hard every day to try to find their best form, but every weekend they do not find too much possibility to play. “Always we say they need to be professional, but they are only human and it is very tough to come in every day and it’s very complicated.” Claude Puel is finding life more simple, and the Southampton manager has labelled England new boy James Ward-Prowse ‘the perfect son-in-law’.
Saints pair Ward-Prowse and Nathan Redmond have been called up by England boss Gareth Southgate for the international games against Germany and Lithuania next Wednesday and Sunday and Puel believes Ward-Prowse’s attitude makes him marriage material, saying: “He is the ideal son-in-law.
“He is fantastic. I looked at an interview when he was 10 or 11 and he was in the same spirit as he is now. He is the prototype for the academy. It is not just about making professional footballers but also developing men.”
Puel revealed the novel way he broke the good news of their England call-ups to Ward-Prowse and Redmond.
“I told them the news by calling them into the office saying I had a problem with their attitudes in the training session and to know their opinion as to why,” said Puel.
“After I said, ‘I don’t understand why you have been called up to England, but OK’.”