By Daily Sports on November 1, 2016

HILLARY CLINTON SPOTTED IN ARSENAL SUPPORTERS PUB, CLUB FANS GO WILD

The US presidential elections is drawing very near and front runner Hillary Clinton of the Democratic party to her campaign to an interesting place. She popped up in an Arsenal fans pub in Miami, Florida draped with flags and banners of the London giants.

If she wasn’t there by coincidence, Clinton probably becomes Arsenal’s biggest supporter after she greeted fans at the Fado Irish pub.

UK's labor party leady Jeremy Corbin is a well-known Arsenal supporter.

Meanwhile Arsenal fans have rushed to comment on twitter, claiming Clinton as one of their own, while others say they are throwing their weight behind Clinton for associating with Arsenal.

Here are some tweets by Arsenal fans:

“Yep, that’s @HillaryClinton at our pub @fadomiami in our room!” “Hillary is a Gooner, Hillary is a Gooner”, “even Hillary knows the Gooner support is something else”.

One tweeter user however tried to put a dampener on the excitement by tweeting: “So was Bin Laden and Pierce Morgan. It’s not always a good thing”.

***

ON DROGBA’S PETULANCE

Some weeks ago, Ivorian football legend and ex-Chelsea star Didier Drogba reportedly refused to fulfil his contractual obligation for his Major League Soccer club, when he failed to show up for their match against Toronto FC last Sunday.

38-year-old Drogba was displeased with his being named in the bench rather than in the starting lineup for the fixture and opted out of the game all together.

Coach of the Impact Mauro Biello said after the match: “He didn’t accept that he would come off the bench and, in the end, he didn’t want to be in the 18.”

The incident speaks of the very human nature of superstars resistance to falling into the background of not-too-much relevance following years of being the revered and celebrated ones.

Also, it reflects the burden of relatively smaller football teams trying to cope with managing big stars who are brought in to boost the clubs’ profile and improve their fortunes by a combination of their name recognition and their talents.

Drogba’s frustration with starting just two of his club’s last four games is quite understandable. When you are brought in with the kind of profile he has and the hype with which he was snapped up by Montreal Impact, it is usually tempting to believe you are entitled to more starting berths in a team.

But the fact is that Drogba is 38 and not the flexible and free-scoring youngster he once was. He has a right to disagree with the coach’s decisions to leave him out more often than he would like, but it is rather self-disrespectful to do so by sulking to a point where you refuse to even appear with the squad.

It is also disrespectful to his teammates who have probably worked as hard as he has done and deserve a shot in the starting line-up.

But there may be a deeper issue underlying such incidents. Drogba’s petulance may very well just be a his way of reacting to the early signs of depression that sometimes catches up with stars who have had a stellar career rich in millions of admirers, fans and the general public. Giving up all the fame and fortune and settling down to being an ordinary person again is never an easy transition for many a sportsman.

While much research has been done on post-retirement depression, perhaps we could as well track the early symptoms in behaviors such as this and psychologists could be needed to play a role in helping hitherto undropable sportsmen of great fame to navigate the road to retirement when they take a huge step down to turn out for teams with smaller profiles than they've been used to.

Retiring players need to be encouraged to hire psychologists to help them wind down their careers.

For now, at least according to the president of Montreal Impact, the case involving Drogba’s no-show has been resolved.

Joey Saputo stated: “We met with Didier. The situation has been resolved to the club’s satisfaction.

“Didier has accepted to assume the role that the head coach sees fit while contributing to the success of this club moving forward.”

That’s the decent path for Drogba to tread.

***

3 THINGS WE LEARNED AFTER WEEK 10 EPL WEEKEND ACTION

Week 10's round of matches in the English premier league has come and gone. Despite the fact that no real movements at the top of the table was recorded, with Manchester City still holding their goal difference advantage over Arsenal and Liverpool, there have been some interesting points to note as the race gets hotter.

Here are 3 major highlights of the weekend action.

1. AHMED MUSA FINDING HIS FEET

After a start to his England career that could best be described as tentative, Nigerian international Ahmed Musa is hitting top form, coinciding with champions Leicester City’s revival of fortunes in the Premier League.

Many great players have been consumed by the pace of English football when they arrived in the EPL and not a few would have feared the worst for Musa after he looked visibly unready physically at the start of the season.

But in scoring the equaliser in an impressive away draw at unbeaten Tottenham Hotspurs, Musa showed some of the qualities that made Leicester cough out about £18 months to Russia’s CSK Moscow for his services. He flew with pace in to a Jamie Vardy cross and showed the sniping abilities that are a part of great strikers. Musa, who scored with a powerful shot in Leicester’s home win against Crystal Palace, is forcing impressively his way into regular first team football for Leicester’s manager Claudio Ranieri and Super Eagles of Nigeria coach Gernot Rohr.

2. MOURINHO’S PENCHANT FOR BEING IN THE NEWS COULD BE AFFECTING HIS PLAYERS

He just can’t stop courting controversy, can he? Jose had looked a little bit relaxed these days but then, perhaps because he’s Jose, something he says or does intuitively would get him into some trouble every now and then. Just as he was expecting the FA’s hammer to fall on him over his questioning of the choice of ref for his team’s match against Liverpool at Anfield recently, the Man. United boss was sent to the stands against Burnley after reportedly verbally assaulting centre ref Mark Clattenburg at Old Trafford last weekend.

You get the feeling as a player that all this could be distracting when your manager constantly falls out with people in authority.

The match against Burnley looked winnable even at half time when the score remained goalless but with Jose sent to the stands, the players could have well been affected psychologically. When such things happen in an apparently easy fixture at half time, it’s possible for players to begin to wonder if it’s not one of those bad days and that was what it turned out to be as United’s goals drought continues.

3. CONTE’S EXCELLING WHERE VAN GAAL FAILED

When immediate past Manchester United manager Louis Van Gaal tried to introduce the three-man central defence style of play in his early days at Old Trafford, the general consensus was that it won’t work in England. Many saw it as an outdated pattern that won’t suit the English league where opponents can pack some offensive punch from the wings.

Van Gaal struggled badly with the formation and reverted to the four-man back line. United lacked an exciting identity under Van Gaal despite his backing down from his ideal system.

Chelsea’s boss Antonio Conte has however shown the workability of the three-man centre back approach. After humiliations in the hands of Arsenal and Liverpool when he played with two centre backs and traditional fullbacks, Conte sought solace in a style that served him well for many years in Italy. With a 3-4-3 formation, Chelsea have looked solid and no one can say on the evidence of Chelsea’s resurgence that a three-man centre back system is not efficient in England.

Source Daily Sports

Posted November 1, 2016

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