Considering Liverpool Director of Football Strategy Damien Comolli formally held a similar position with French Ligue One club Saint-Etienne, it was perhaps inevitable that the Reds would be linked with some of their players. The Reds were in fact linked to both winger Dimitri Payet and holding midfielder Blaise Matuidi before Comolli’s arrival and links with the pair have only intensified since his appointment. Yesterday Saint Etienne denied that Payet would be leaving in January, but rumours over Matuidi have continued to surface. The 23 year old, who made his debut for France back in September, has been linked constantly with Arsenal over the last two years, and he has in fact stated recently that he would prefer a move to the Premier League because he believes it would better suit his style of play.
Of Angolan descent, Matuidi was born in Toulouse before growing up on the outskirts of Paris. He started to play for a local club CO Vincennois before being picked to attend France’s famed Clairefontaine youth academy. During a three year stay, he moved clubs to US Créteil-Lusitanos before joining Ligue Two Troyes in 2004. Troyes would be the club where Matuidi made his name and after impressing in the reserves, he made his debut for the first team in a league match against Gueugnon. He played twice during the 2004/05 season before returning to the reserves. After his breakthrough campaign, he was given a starting role as Troyes started the 2005/06 season in top flight, helping the team stave off relegation, although he did have a penchant for picking up yellow cards, with 11 in all.
Again Troyes struggled to fight off relegation in the following campaign but Matuidi continued to impress. Signing a four year professional contract before the season started, the young French midfielder tried to keep Troyes up single-handedly. In a big match against Sedan in April, with Troyes trailing 2-1, Matuidi scored 2 goals in the last 15 minutes to help the struggling Ligue One club to a 3-2 victory. He then went on to score another in a 3-0 victory on the final day of the season, although his efforts were not enough to prevent Troyes from being relegated. The three goals in the last two months of the campaign were an even more remarkable achievement considering Matuidi has only ever scored 6 league goals in his entire career.
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STELLA WDM RESULTS
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TOP TEN LIVERPOOL MOMENTS OF THE DECADE
As we come closer to the end of 2010, I thought it might be good to look back at the last decade and see all the memorable moments Liverpool have had during that time. Of course, the most immediate memory is the Champions League final in 2005, but there are also individual memories such as Gerrard’s goals against Olympiakos in 2005 on the way to the “Miracle in Istanbul,” and the “Gerrard final” of 2006 where Stevie dragged the team to win the FA Cup. Also I have shared memories of instances that occurred under Gerard Houllier’s tenure such as the Golden Goal winner in the UEFA Cup final in 2001, Gary McAllister’s injury time free kick in the Merseyside Derby and John Arne Riise’s goal against Manchester United that nearly broke the goal post in two.
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Just a short comment David – for some reason, the link to the second page of your articles (“Continue Reading on Page 2 . . .”) never seems to work.
Hi Voland, if that link doesn’t work, there is a page ‘2’ button just above the comments section.
Andy Carroll for Liverpool!!
I agree this guy is a big target man, he would be a perfect partner for Torres and would be very good playing up on his own , he is young he is English and he is only going to get better I think we should snap him up before his price sky rockets
no more second rate, so called good french young players!!! sick to the back teeth with average 5-8 mill pound players coming with a so called ” great young player with talent” or good pro with the experience behined him” had enough of crap being brought to Liverpool.
You need to earn the right to play for lfc, not get given a 4 year deal when your injuried!
buy quality better players with good injury records and get less dross in, in terms of numbers of bodies and get 3 -4 quality players in.
mata
llorente
coentrao’
a. young
seems like a gud buy..cant b worse than poulsen…
sell poulsen and get matuid…
I would prefer Moussa Sissoko of Toulouse,he’s younger than Matuidi and more versatile. Cost more though.
I think sunday’s game showed what we need. The left wing remains a clear issue. A winger with genuine pace, the temerity to beat a man and dare i say it, a final ball on their left boot would add so much to our team. Hodgeson is slowly creating a team that has energy in abundance in midfield and some actual guile would surely only improve that (as long as they aren’t incapable of the defensive side of the game as well!). Ashley young and Juan Mata are regularly named as possibilities but for me the exciting name is Hazzard.
Also bringing Dirk further forward again reemphasised the pressing need for more options up front. I don’t mind what kind of striker roy brings in (personally i’d like a big physical presence who presents a threat in the air – what a player crouch would be if he didn’t have a head like a fifty pence piece!) but options are a must!
5’7”!?! Our team needs to get bigger and more athletic, not smaller than it already is!
I know people will keep knocking me for bringing it up again, but I don’t care – the simple fact is that we need more size, athleticism, pace and technical ability in our team! Any transfer not providing at least some of all of those components, should have to be EXCEPTIONAL in a couple of the others to make up for it, and he doesn’t sound exceptional enough to build our midfield around
7 million pound seems like a bargain. we must sell Poulson but keep Lucas then we’ll have a young & strong DM rotation/partnership. Commololi should be able to pull this off
Pls everyone who do you think is better matuidi and steven defour. Both captain @ their club, same age, both midfielder and both are linked with liverpool @ almost same price. I’ll go for steven defour
Defour will be great buy for us, but is he keen to join us right now (i dont think so)…maybe next season after we come through this hard season end at the top of the table 🙂
I would love to see Andy Carroll , Lassana Diarra and Ashley Young sign in January we could sell Poulsen£3-4m and Babe£8ml, then try to conivince Juventus and Galatasary to take up their option to buy on Aquilani£13.5m and Insua£4.5m
defour is a central midfielder which we already have…what we need is a combative defencive midfielder like mascherano..poulsen was supposed to be his replacement but he’s no gud so i’ll prefer matuidi over defour…
That is nice to definitely find a site where the blogger knows what they are talking about.