Rafael Benitez has accused Sir Alex Ferguson of being scared of Liverpool and talking too much about other teams.
The Spaniard, who is preparing for the Champions League showdown with Chelsea tomorrow, could not resist another swipe at the Manchester United manager as the Barclays Premier League race reaches boiling point.
Benitez was responding to claims from Ferguson that the loser of the quarter-final between the sides will be United's biggest challenger for the title because they will only have one competition to contend with. Benitez will have Steven Gerrard fit following a minor groin problem and Sami Hyypia [knee] and Yossi Benayoun [hamstring] available for the first leg with Chelsea.
"It is not mind games, I think it maybe is that he is a little bit scared [of us]," Benitez said.
Liverpool took over at the top of the table on Saturday evening with a late winner by Benayoun at Fulham. But less than 24 hours later, United produced a comeback victory over Aston Villa with the decisive goal coming in the fourth minute of injury-time from 17-year-old Federico Macheda. That grabbed the initiative back for the Old Trafford club, but Benitez has come out fighting.
"I do not have a problem with United. Clearly one of us, either Chelsea or us, will end up focusing just on the Premier League after this," he said. "I think Sir Alex will be supporting Liverpool in this tie because he knows we are the bigger threat now.
"If we continue in the Champions League maybe he will think we are tired. If we are not in this competition then he knows that we will be a [bigger] threat in the Premier League.
"If Chelsea are not in the competition, then he knows they will then be a threat also in the league. But he will lose anyway, whoever goes out, because they will still be a big threat to United.
"You have to prepare well for every single Premier League game, it is tough (to be in the Champions League as well). So he will clearly be supporting us tomorrow and next week.
"I would like to be worried about both competitions, it means we will continue to be successful. We just concentrate on our team, while he likes to talk too much about other teams."
Benitez claims he was unmoved by United's late heroics against Villa, saying: "We knew there would be situations like this, with us one point ahead, or one point behind. And everyone knows five minutes [of injury time] at Old Trafford is a very long time.
"I watched the game, but once United scored their second you felt they would win the game.
"He [Ferguson] is in the driving seat now and in a better position, but there is still a long way to go and we have confidence. We are pushing them and we will push them until the end."
But before Liverpool can lock horns again with United, they must face a Chelsea side who knocked them out of this competition in the semi-finals last season. A John Arne Riise own goal in the first-leg at Anfield ultimately put Liverpool out, Chelsea winning 4-3 on aggregate after the second leg at Stamford Bridge .
Benitez said: "It is not a good time for either of us to be playing the other. It is a big challenge for both teams. They have a good team with experience and a manager with experience. This game is 50-50.
"I have great respect for a massive club and a very good team. We are both playing in big competitions. We are both big teams.
"We have beaten them twice this season in the league, it will give us confidence, but this is a different competition and it will be down to just one or two mistakes.
"Keeping a clean sheet is important in the first game for both teams, I would prefer to play at Anfield second, but that is not the case so we must get on with it."
Source:the times
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Paul Casey has power to master Augusta
Paul Casey's victory in the Shell Houston Open on Sunday did more than enable the Englishman to leap from twelfth to sixth in the world rankings. And it did more than allow him to demonstrate that with his power and the way he hits the ball so high, he should now go on and win a few more times in the United States.
More than Luke Donald, Ian Poulter and perhaps more than Justin Rose, Casey has the raw power to take on the backbreakingly long courses the professionals play these days.
By winning on the PGA Tour in the US for the first time, Casey surely has laid to rest once and for all the ghosts of the remarks about “properly hating” Americans that he made in November 2004, remarks that have haunted him since. Of all the Europeans, Casey is perhaps the most American, the one most at home in this country, where he lives most of the year with Jocelyn, his American wife, whom he married late last year, and is coached by Peter Kostis, an American.
“I've lived here for 12 years. I am very comfortable here,” Casey said yesterday. “For me that chapter is done. It is closed. All I have about America are good feelings.”
Casey arrived at Augusta National late yesterday to prepare for his fifth Masters, one for which he will now begin as a favourite as a result of his success in Texas. Initially, he asked Craig Connelly, his caddie, to get his clubs ready for a session on the range.
Then Casey changed his mind about practising. He saw an umbrella being blown over and decided that after four days of wind in Houston he did not need to practise in it in Augusta as well.
The victory was obviously a very emotional one. Tears were rolling down his cheeks as he was interviewed on US television on Sunday night. “I'm not sure how I can explain how it feels yet,” he said. “It's a little bit like how my first win in Europe felt, which I can remember very vividly. First win in Europe, first Ryder Cup experience, and now first PGA Tour win. Three fairly major events in my life, in my golfing life. I think I need to give it a couple days to let this one sink in.”
Less than one day later, Casey was still not able to express himself as well as he would have liked. “This was something I have wanted for some time and I think perhaps I have wanted it too much,” he said. “I have felt good enough to be able to win in the US. I am not arrogant enough to say I am going to win. I think that is why I was so emotional. I wanted it so much. I do cry quite a lot, though I didn't cry at my wedding.”
Casey became the sixth Englishman to win a tournament in the US following in the footsteps of Tony Jacklin, Peter Oosterhuis, Lee Westwood, Nick Faldo and Luke Donald. His victory was a reminder of just how much English golf has improved since 2001 when Westwood was the only golfer from that country in the top 100. Now there are seven in the top 50, Casey being joined by Westwood, Rose, Donald, Poulter, Oliver Wilson and Ross Fisher.
“I think I'm finally getting to the stage where I'm starting to have belief in myself,” Casey said. “I was twelfth in the world coming into this week and now I am sixth. It's time to start believing that maybe I can be in the top five. I don't worry about prize money and that sort of thing. I look at the world ranking points. They tend to be a better barometer of how I am playing.”
Gary Player will play his 52nd and final Masters this week. Player, 73, from South Africa, first played at Augusta in 1957, aged 21, won for the first time in 1961 and collected two more Green Jackets in 1974 and 1978.
Source:the times
More than Luke Donald, Ian Poulter and perhaps more than Justin Rose, Casey has the raw power to take on the backbreakingly long courses the professionals play these days.
By winning on the PGA Tour in the US for the first time, Casey surely has laid to rest once and for all the ghosts of the remarks about “properly hating” Americans that he made in November 2004, remarks that have haunted him since. Of all the Europeans, Casey is perhaps the most American, the one most at home in this country, where he lives most of the year with Jocelyn, his American wife, whom he married late last year, and is coached by Peter Kostis, an American.
“I've lived here for 12 years. I am very comfortable here,” Casey said yesterday. “For me that chapter is done. It is closed. All I have about America are good feelings.”
Casey arrived at Augusta National late yesterday to prepare for his fifth Masters, one for which he will now begin as a favourite as a result of his success in Texas. Initially, he asked Craig Connelly, his caddie, to get his clubs ready for a session on the range.
Then Casey changed his mind about practising. He saw an umbrella being blown over and decided that after four days of wind in Houston he did not need to practise in it in Augusta as well.
The victory was obviously a very emotional one. Tears were rolling down his cheeks as he was interviewed on US television on Sunday night. “I'm not sure how I can explain how it feels yet,” he said. “It's a little bit like how my first win in Europe felt, which I can remember very vividly. First win in Europe, first Ryder Cup experience, and now first PGA Tour win. Three fairly major events in my life, in my golfing life. I think I need to give it a couple days to let this one sink in.”
Less than one day later, Casey was still not able to express himself as well as he would have liked. “This was something I have wanted for some time and I think perhaps I have wanted it too much,” he said. “I have felt good enough to be able to win in the US. I am not arrogant enough to say I am going to win. I think that is why I was so emotional. I wanted it so much. I do cry quite a lot, though I didn't cry at my wedding.”
Casey became the sixth Englishman to win a tournament in the US following in the footsteps of Tony Jacklin, Peter Oosterhuis, Lee Westwood, Nick Faldo and Luke Donald. His victory was a reminder of just how much English golf has improved since 2001 when Westwood was the only golfer from that country in the top 100. Now there are seven in the top 50, Casey being joined by Westwood, Rose, Donald, Poulter, Oliver Wilson and Ross Fisher.
“I think I'm finally getting to the stage where I'm starting to have belief in myself,” Casey said. “I was twelfth in the world coming into this week and now I am sixth. It's time to start believing that maybe I can be in the top five. I don't worry about prize money and that sort of thing. I look at the world ranking points. They tend to be a better barometer of how I am playing.”
Gary Player will play his 52nd and final Masters this week. Player, 73, from South Africa, first played at Augusta in 1957, aged 21, won for the first time in 1961 and collected two more Green Jackets in 1974 and 1978.
Source:the times
Lewis Hamilton’s reputation risked by people who drove him down the road to chicanery
There are two ways that the Lewis Hamilton cheating saga can affect his future with McLaren Mercedes, which is now on a knife edge. Either Hamilton and his father Anthony, who manages him, can find a way to forgive and rebuild, or the trauma of what happened at the Australian Grand Prix will weep poison into the relationship and it will eventually fall apart.
The more we have found out about what caused Hamilton to lie to the stewards in Melbourne and then repeat those lies four days later to try to cheat Jarno Trulli, the Toyota driver, out of third place, the more it is possible to sympathise with Hamilton and particularly with his father's deep, deep anger about the affair. In short, Hamilton Sr, who is likely to be seeking advice on what to do next, believes the team recklessly sold his son's reputation as a fine, upstanding sportsman and budding icon in a tawdry and ham-fisted bid to gain a championship point to which they had no right.
There is no doubt that Hamilton himself should carry some of the blame. He has told us that he was “misled” and “instructed” by Dave Ryan, the now suspended McLaren team sporting director, to lie to the stewards and he did as he was told. He should not have done so and he knows it and the world champion would give almost anything to turn back the clock.
Having said that, we now know much more about the forces that were bearing down on Hamilton on that fateful Sunday evening in Melbourne. As always with errors of judgment of this magnitude, passions were running high at the critical moment. When Hamilton passed Trulli under the safety car three laps from the end of the race after the Italian briefly went off the track, Ryan made a mistake. He told Phil Prew, Hamilton's race engineer, who talks to Hamilton on the radio during races, to tell Hamilton to give the place back in the mistaken belief that Hamilton might have broken the rules.
But Ryan was wrong and he quickly realised, after Hamilton had moved across to let Trulli by, that what he had in fact done was to give third place on the podium to Trulli on a plate. And this is where the rot started because Ryan was determined to rectify his error in the stewards' room and he recruited Hamilton to assist him, as Martin Whitmarsh, the McLaren team principal, explained on Sunday. “I think Davey carried some guilt because he had made a mistake and was very hard on himself,” Whitmarsh said. “In the heat of the moment with the stewards, [he] unnecessarily caused Lewis, and led Lewis, to mislead the stewards and one event fell into another.”
In this way Ryan had repaired the damage caused by his initial error but the cost was about to spiral out of control and this is where Anthony Hamilton can feel so betrayed. A senior team manager at McLaren - the man who “ran” the team, according to Whitmarsh - had persuaded or induced Hamilton to lie and had done so at the risk of ruining his reputation for good.
In the long run, the general public will forget which teams Hamilton drove for, just as they have in the case of greats such as Nigel Mansell, Damon Hill or Sir Jackie Stewart. But they will remember Hamilton the man and they will remember that he was a champion and that he was also caught cheating, just as Michael Schumacher is widely remembered for at least three acts of gross bad sportsmanship. Whitmarsh, Ryan and everyone else involved will all be forgotten but not Hamilton.
And Hamilton is no ordinary Formula One driver. He is a remarkable young man with maturity well beyond his years and he is ambitious in every way. Not content to be just a great driver, Hamilton wants to set an example to millions of others such as him from poor backgrounds. He revels in the chance to meet iconic figures such as Nelson Mandela, he enjoys the comparisons made with Tiger Woods and he dreams of going on to do great things after his driving career is over. But all this depends on reputation and it was never part of his game plan to lose that.
The media often glibly call for heads to roll in a crisis such as this. Whitmarsh has demonstrated fairly comprehensively that Hamilton was under the influence of Ryan and Ryan alone and that is why Ryan alone has paid the price. But the affair has inflicted permanent scars on the image of arguably McLaren's greatest ever human asset in Hamilton and this has happened under Whitmarsh's watch and that of his chairman Ron Dennis. No doubt they will think about this a little more in the coming days.
Source:the times
The more we have found out about what caused Hamilton to lie to the stewards in Melbourne and then repeat those lies four days later to try to cheat Jarno Trulli, the Toyota driver, out of third place, the more it is possible to sympathise with Hamilton and particularly with his father's deep, deep anger about the affair. In short, Hamilton Sr, who is likely to be seeking advice on what to do next, believes the team recklessly sold his son's reputation as a fine, upstanding sportsman and budding icon in a tawdry and ham-fisted bid to gain a championship point to which they had no right.
There is no doubt that Hamilton himself should carry some of the blame. He has told us that he was “misled” and “instructed” by Dave Ryan, the now suspended McLaren team sporting director, to lie to the stewards and he did as he was told. He should not have done so and he knows it and the world champion would give almost anything to turn back the clock.
Having said that, we now know much more about the forces that were bearing down on Hamilton on that fateful Sunday evening in Melbourne. As always with errors of judgment of this magnitude, passions were running high at the critical moment. When Hamilton passed Trulli under the safety car three laps from the end of the race after the Italian briefly went off the track, Ryan made a mistake. He told Phil Prew, Hamilton's race engineer, who talks to Hamilton on the radio during races, to tell Hamilton to give the place back in the mistaken belief that Hamilton might have broken the rules.
But Ryan was wrong and he quickly realised, after Hamilton had moved across to let Trulli by, that what he had in fact done was to give third place on the podium to Trulli on a plate. And this is where the rot started because Ryan was determined to rectify his error in the stewards' room and he recruited Hamilton to assist him, as Martin Whitmarsh, the McLaren team principal, explained on Sunday. “I think Davey carried some guilt because he had made a mistake and was very hard on himself,” Whitmarsh said. “In the heat of the moment with the stewards, [he] unnecessarily caused Lewis, and led Lewis, to mislead the stewards and one event fell into another.”
In this way Ryan had repaired the damage caused by his initial error but the cost was about to spiral out of control and this is where Anthony Hamilton can feel so betrayed. A senior team manager at McLaren - the man who “ran” the team, according to Whitmarsh - had persuaded or induced Hamilton to lie and had done so at the risk of ruining his reputation for good.
In the long run, the general public will forget which teams Hamilton drove for, just as they have in the case of greats such as Nigel Mansell, Damon Hill or Sir Jackie Stewart. But they will remember Hamilton the man and they will remember that he was a champion and that he was also caught cheating, just as Michael Schumacher is widely remembered for at least three acts of gross bad sportsmanship. Whitmarsh, Ryan and everyone else involved will all be forgotten but not Hamilton.
And Hamilton is no ordinary Formula One driver. He is a remarkable young man with maturity well beyond his years and he is ambitious in every way. Not content to be just a great driver, Hamilton wants to set an example to millions of others such as him from poor backgrounds. He revels in the chance to meet iconic figures such as Nelson Mandela, he enjoys the comparisons made with Tiger Woods and he dreams of going on to do great things after his driving career is over. But all this depends on reputation and it was never part of his game plan to lose that.
The media often glibly call for heads to roll in a crisis such as this. Whitmarsh has demonstrated fairly comprehensively that Hamilton was under the influence of Ryan and Ryan alone and that is why Ryan alone has paid the price. But the affair has inflicted permanent scars on the image of arguably McLaren's greatest ever human asset in Hamilton and this has happened under Whitmarsh's watch and that of his chairman Ron Dennis. No doubt they will think about this a little more in the coming days.
Source:the times
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