Steve Clarke has indicated that star loanee from Chelsea Romelu Lukaku wishes to stay with West Brom.
Since joining the Baggies, Lukaku, who was an £18 million signing for Chelsea has started just three matches. However, he has managed three goals in those appearances and it is thought that he will play against Southampton tonight.
Though Chelsea are able to take back the 19-year-old in January’s transfer window, Clarke has insisted that Lukaku feels happy with West Brom and is wanting to continue improving his game at the Hawthorns.
“I haven’t spoken to Chelsea about what might happen but I speak to Lukaku and I know he’s happy. He’s in a better place now than he was when he came to us because he has played matches in the Premier League and has been a handful,” Clarke said.
“Lukaku has shown everybody that he’s a big talent and one for the future. He’s raw, he works hard on the training ground and he wants to be better.”
The Baggies play Southampton in a home match tonight, and Clarke has warned his team to be wary of the side.
“Nigel has had two successive promotions and done a great job for the club. They are a team we will treat with 100 per cent respect. We expect a really difficult game. Nigel’s teams always like to pass the ball. They are dangerous, can create chances and score goals,” he added.
West Brom are waiting on tests to see whether Shane Long and Claudio Yacob will be fit for tonight’s match. However, Chris Brunt and Billy Jones are now available to play.
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West Ham United are reportedly looking to tie up a deal for Swansea City defender Alfie Mawson, but they should forget about the 24-year-old and sign Aston Villa centre-back James Chester in a bargain £10m deal instead.
Sky Sports reported on Thursday that the Irons are in talks with the Welsh club to sign both Mawson and goalkeeper Lukasz Fabianski following the Swans’ relegation from the Premier League, and a potential deal relies on them agreeing on a transfer fee for the duo.
Meanwhile, The Telegraph reports that Aston Villa are under pressure to raise £50m from player sales over the course of the next two transfer windows, and Chester may be one of the players that is available.
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The Telegraph say that the Wales international could fetch up to £10m and is a target for Brighton and Hove Albion and Stoke City, but perhaps the Irons should be taking a close look at him too following another impressive Championship campaign.
The 29-year-old played every minute of their 49-game league season as they were beaten play-off finalists, and he captained the Midlands outfit when John Terry was absent through injury.
The Welshman excelled alongside the former Chelsea skipper and he showed the defensive qualities he brings having made 378 clearances, 71 tackles and 54 blocks, as well as winning 150 aerial duels, as per WhoScored.com.
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Decent on the ball with an 87% passing accuracy, Chester has the ability and experience to make a real impact in the Premier League again for West Ham, whose fans want the club to sign a £16.2m free-kick specialist to replace Manuel Lanzini, and it will be interesting to see if the £10m price tag could tempt them to make a bid.
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According to reports in the Sunday Mirror, Manchester United are in advanced talks to bring young Ajax forward Justin Kluivert, son of Patrick, to Old Trafford this summer, and Red Devils fans have been quick to have their say on the rumour.
The Sunday Mirror says that Jose Mourinho has kept a close eye on the 18-year-old’s progress with the Dutch giants, and he is now ready to agree a £10m deal for the teenager at the end of the season that would include various add-ons.
The attacker has scored six goals and provided a further two assists in 22 appearances in all competitions for Ajax this term, and the fact that he is able to play on either flank means he would be a versatile option for Mourinho next season.
Man United supporters took to social media to give their thoughts on the potential move for the Dutch youngster, and while one believes he is “100% not coming”, another said ‘rather have Griezmann’.
West Ham’s final home match of the season may have ended with Sam Allardyce lapping up the applause around Upton Park, but in truth, the Boleyn faithful is anything but behind their manager.
As the Hammers gaffer has often remarked, the Premier League is a results-based industry, and in terms of obtaining the points required to stay in the top flight, throughout spells at Bolton, Blackburn and West Ham, his track record is exemplary.
Yet the price it comes at, the East London fanbase is unprepared to accept. A club that produced some of the greatest English technical talents of a generation, such as Joe Cole, Frank Lampard and Michael Carrick, is now the Premier League’s leading representative of attritional long-ball football.
The Hammers boast one of the strongest defensive records in the Premier League – their 14 clean sheets is only bettered by four other sides, three of which constitute the division’s top four – but averaging just 1.1 goals per match at the more entertaining end of the pitch, it’s understandable that the subdued Boleyn boo-boys are calling for change in the dugout ahead of next season.
Yet, in my opinion, it doesn’t necessarily have to come to that. In British politics, the controlling elite has an endless tradition of compromising with the low classes when it comes to the relinquishing of power. In other words, Allardyce doesn’t need to stage a complete philosophical revolution at Upton Park in order to keep his job; he just has to show the fans that he’s taken their concerns on board.
There’s no better place to do that than in the transfer market. Allardyce was famed for his wheeler-dealing at Bolton Wanderers, but the transfer interactions of his three-term Hammers tenure haven’t been quite so impressive.
He may view the £15million capture of Andy Carroll as one of the deals of the century, but in truth, no other Premier League manager was prepared to pay such a mighty fee for the Liverpool outcast last summer. Likewise, £11million signing Matt Jarvis has never come close to repeating the eight-goal feats of his final campaign at Wolves and summer acquisition Stewart Downing is still yet to shake off the cobwebs of his haunting Anfield stay. Scratch even deeper, Alou Diarra, Razvan Rat and Modibo Maiga only make Allardyce’s transfer record for the Hammers even more troubling.
Compare that with the 59 year-old’s market escapades at Bolton. Yes, when he joined the Wanderers his first task was to make them as mean defensively as possible, but the Bolton side that recorded a 6th-place finish in 2005 and also reached a League Cup final – to date, the highest point of management Allardyce’s career – contained such Champaign-football alumni as Ivan Campo, Jay-Jay Okocha, Stelios Giannakopoulos and Fernando Hierro, all of whom brought international class to the Reebok stadium. That summer, Hidetoshi Nakata, the greatest technical talent Asia had to offer at the time, also joined the Bolton ranks.
To say Allardyce’s Bolton were football purists would be untrue, but to suggest long-ball football was the only weapon in their locker would be an equal fallacy. Rather, the Wanderers’ blend of quality footballers, mean athletes and dogged defenders made them a multi-dimensional side that could play in a variety of ways. It was an amalgamation of contrasting styles that achieved results and kept the fans happy, but perhaps most importantly, it demonstrated Allardyce’s ambition and astuteness in the transfer market.
And in many ways, ‘ambition’ is the key concern of the Upton Park support. As Allardyce has regularly discussed, there is and has never been an official ‘West Ham way’. The East Londoners have fought as ugly and dirtily as the rest of them to maintain their Premier League status in the past – the notion that they’re somehow unique a club with a unique philosophy is a complete myth.
But the absence of any ambition to evolve West Ham’s current style is the core of the fans’ discontent. Rather than making signings that can improve the Hammers going forward, Allardyce’s acquisitions have largely consisted of old cronies from his former stomping grounds, or players that strongly lend themselves to his attritional ideology.
In 2016, West Ham will move to the Olympic stadium. The ground’s 54,000 capacity will give them the fifth-largest crowd in the Premier League, yet it will be home to a style of football that wouldn’t look out of place in League One.
In the coming summer window, Sam Allardyce has a fantastic opportunity to get the fans back onside. Two solid Premier League finishes is a strong platform to build from, but now the Hammers gaffer must show his ability and ambition to evolve the first team to a different level, moving away from its growing one-dimensionalism. He needs to make quality signings that can bring excitement and class to Upton Park. A signing of the Jay-Jay Okocha variety would be the perfect remedy.
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The fans do not want revolution. They do not want change that can debase the club and harm it’s immediate future, purely for the sake of better entertainment on a Saturday afternoon – after all, there’s nothing fun about being relegated. They simply want evidence that there is a master-plan – ideas in place to suggest that they won’t be caught in an eternal purgatory of mid-table finishes and ugly, unexciting football.
Allardyce managed to encompass the best of both worlds at Bolton and a more recent example would be Stoke City’s slow yet sturdy transition under Mark Hughes this season, so it’s by no means an impossible task.
But it will all depend on the West Ham manager’s commitment to the issue. Thus far, criticism from the fan-base has been largely palmed off by Allardyce as unrealistic, uninformed demands. The coming window however, is the ideal occasion to show that has been listening to the voices from the terraces.
The old adage that the league normally sorts itself out after ten games is one which usually stands up to close inspection and certainly does so this season, but with Liverpool languishing down in 12th under new manager Brendan Rodgers, there are legitimate reasons for the club’s fans to be concerned. Should results fail to live up to expectations and the side continue to flounder inconsistently, how long until patience begins to wear thin about the man at the helm’s vision?
Firstly, let me just say that I find all the talk involving the word ‘philosophy’ absolutely farcical. It seems along the way, in an attempt to make yourself sound more intelligent, that this word has been confused with ‘style’. Liverpool have a clearly defined style, there’s no doubt about that, but let’s not pretend it encompasses more than one principle, which is keeping hold of the ball and using possession as both a means of attack and defence.
Capitalism, Anarchism, Darwinism, these are philosophies, these are schools of thought cultivated over years of work, debate and ideas. Passing a football well, something most teams would aim to do given they have the right resources and players available, most certainly is not.
There’s also the fact that Rodgers has shown a worrying lack of flexibility in adapting to new players. His two summer purchases of Joe Allen and Fabio Borini were both targeted because they were familiar with the new manager’s style of play and methods, with the thinking being that it would take them less time than usually associated with a new player to settle into fresh surroundings. It’s proved the case with Allen, who has been superb thus far, but for Borini, the jury is still well and truly out over whether he’s up to the task.
This also applies to the players that Rodgers has marginalised at the club and shipped out. Andy Carroll was allowed to depart simply because he’s incapable of playing the sweeping, counter-attacking, one-touch football the club has adopted. Meanwhile, Stewart Downing and Jordan Henderson have been reduced to Europa League outings for the most part on occasions when the squad is rotated.
This hasn’t stopped Rodgers from complaining of a ‘thin’ squad repeatedly, but when you alienate some of the only senior players that you have, then it’s no wonder that results have been erratic. Is a new manager’s job not to solve problems, particularly in light of the club’s reduced budget and belt-tightening? At every turn so far, Rodgers has taken the easy option out. To paraphrase a well-known saying, it really is his way or the highway.
It sounds as if he’s already pleading for more time too, hailing the Newcastle draw as a dominant performance and stating last week: “I have signed a three-year deal here and the process will go on beyond that. Hopefully I can be here to keep building it. I am loving every minute here. I came for the challenge, but it is easier said than done. I just look at the stats over the last three years and it has been going the other way. Our job was to spin that around and, through a lot of hard work, get us on an upward spiral.”
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He’s argued that there’s ‘no quick fix’ and while I wouldn’t disagree, for the club has lacked stability for quite some time at every level which has only served to hasten the downward spiral that Rodgers talked about, the side wasn’t that bad last term under Kenny Dalglish.
It was unquestionably a cup side, capable of beating anyone on their day in the league and they did reach the FA Cup and Carling Cup finals, going on to win one with largely the same side. Ask yourself this, could you see the team doing that this season under Rodgers?
This is not to cast a wistful look back at Dalglish’s time in charge, because it became clear by the end of the campaign that the players had long since checked out mentally and gone on their holidays and some of the performances down the back straight were embarrassing, but they looked far more fluid, dangerous and intuitive going forward earlier on than anything we’ve seen so far this term.
Liverpool fans are often mocked for being paranoid and have an almost irrational sense of loyalty towards their club, rejecting even the faintest whiff of reasoned criticism. Of course, it’s a parody for the most part and there’s been a distinct lack of pressure placed on Rodgers so far from the fans. It seems they are willing to be patient for now just so long as it looks as if progress is being made.
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Integrating young players such as the exciting crop of Andre Wisdom, Raheem Sterling and Suso into the starting eleven is the sort of move that the fans want to see and it’s a commendable approach which has bought him time, but should the club finish in the bottom half of the table by the end of the season, something not out of the realms of possibility at the moment, then where do the club go next?
That in itself is the real crux of the issue here – just how long to you give Rodgers to implement his ideas on the squad if results aren’t improving on a consistent enough basis? Is one season enough? Two? Three? Most managers get a honeymoon period, and Rodgers has made all the right noises about the culture and tradition of the club which means he’s well-liked by most, but when that gives way, is the football really all that much better than what they were capable of producing under Dalglish? The fact that these questions have been glossed over so far remains troubling and provides food for thought in the future.
According to reports in The Sun, Manchester United goalkeeper Dean Henderson is the subject of a three-way tussle and is already in talks with Bristol City having been given the green light by Jose Mourinho to leave Old Trafford this summer.
What’s the word, then?
Soccer Football – League One Play-Off Final – Rotherham United v Shrewsbury Town – Wembley Stadium, London, Britain – May 27, 2018 Rotherham’s David Ball has a penalty saved by Shrewsbury Town’s Dean Henderson Action Images/Jason Cairnduff EDITORIAL USE ONLY. No use with unauthorized audio, video, data, fixture lists, club/league logos or “live” services. Online in-match use limited to 75 images, no video emulation. No use in betting, games or single club/league/player publications. Plea
Well, The Sun says the 21-year-old stopper is a target for the Robins, along with Stoke City and Premier League new-boys Fulham, having obviously been told he could leave the Red Devils.
Mourinho already has David De Gea, Sergio Romero, Joel Pereira and Sam Johnstone – as things stand – at his disposal, which means that the former Shrewsbury Town loanee is ultimately surplus to requirements.
The report adds that United, whose fans want the club to sign a £65,000-a-week star to challenge Ashley Young at left-back/left wing-back, rate him at £1m, and it seems he will be on his way in the coming days and weeks.
How did Henderson do last season?
He impressed as the Shrews narrowly missed out on promotion from League One to the Championship having been beaten by Rotherham United in the play-off final last month.
The 21-year-old kept 19 clean sheets and conceded 38 goals in 48 league games for Town, and his impressive displays have caught the attentions of clubs in both England’s second tier and the Premier League.
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Is it the right decision to sell him?
It probably is, yes.
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While United already have the experienced De Gea and Romero available, both Johnstone and Pereira are both well ahead of Henderson in the pecking order, and it is difficult to see how he is ever going to make it at Old Trafford.
It will be interesting to see where he ends up before the transfer window slams shut on August 9, and he could even come up against the Red Devils next season if he replaces David Button at Craven Cottage.
Newcastle United boss Rafael Benitez has insisted that unsettled forward Aleksandar Mitrovic will not be allowed to join another Premier League club this month.
Mitrovic, 23, has been strongly linked with a move away from the Magpies after struggling for football during the 2017-18 campaign.
The striker, who is valued at £7.2m by transfermarkt.co.uk, has only made six Premier League appearances this term, and has been widely tipped to leave Newcastle before the January transfer window closes for business.
Brighton & Hove Albion are the latest club to be linked with a player that has scored 11 times in 33 appearances for the Serbian national team.
Benitez, however, has insisted that Mitrovic will only be leaving Newcastle if the club sign a replacement, and even then, he will not be allowed to move to a Premier League rival.
Benitez told reporters:
“I have been clear with him and his agent that he will only leave if we sign players, and not to a Premier League rival.
“I see Brighton are interested, but we are not selling any player to any other Premier League club – unless they want to come with £50m.”
Newcastle have been strongly linked with both Leicester City’s Islam Slimani and Feyenoord’s Nicolai Jorgensen as they attempt to sign a new centre-forward.
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Long since the days of the emergence of Raul, Guti and Iker Casillas have Real Madrid been longing for some home-grown talent to grace the side.
Javier Portillo came and went. Francisco Pavon hung around a bit too long. Roberto Soldado and Dani Parejo moved on due to lack of first-team chances. But now the La Liga leaders have their wish. And Jese Rodriguez is a definite keeper.
When club president Florentino Perez announced the world-record signing of Tottenham’s Gareth Bale, Jese could probably be forgiven if he felt that maybe he would fall into the same basket as the rest of Madrid’s youth products of recent years. But as the season has progressed Jese has more than proven his worth to the side.
The 21-year-old was snapped up by Madrid at the age of 14 in 2007. The 2010-11 season saw him gain his first taste of professional football, and he hasn’t looked back since. Jose Mourinho briefly acknowledged his existence, handing him his first-team debut in 2011-12 but he was quickly thrown back into the shark tank that is the Real Madrid Castilla side to gain more experience. A record-breaking season later (22 league goals in 38 games) and he is a firm favourite of Madridistas.
Since the turn of the year, Jese has seemingly overtaken both Isco and Alvaro Morata in the Los Blancos pecking order. Ancelotti’s recent preference to play 4-3-3, and the current untenable position of Luka Modric has made fitting in Isco, a preferred ‘no. 10’, quite tough. And Jese’s form has made it even tougher. With a total of eight goals and four assists in 18 games Jese is flourishing in his breakthrough season.
As of 25th February, Jese averaged 0.81 goals per 90 minutes in La Liga whilst Bale was only averaging 0.75 goals. He also averaged 0.65 assists every 90 minutes played, placing him second in such La Liga statistics just behind Bale at 0.68.
Bearing in mind the majority of his appearances have been late cameos from the bench, this makes his statistics appear evermore impressive. Each of the three occasions he has completed a full game, he has scored in.
In a recent interview with el Larguero Jese revealed his lofty ambition to claim the coveted Ballon d’Or prize in just four years. Some may regard this as arrogant. Besides, he has received not wholly inaccurate comparisons in his style of play to Cristiano Ronaldo.
This may seem premature but, the young man from the Canary Isles, relishes the similarities. He plays predominantly from the left side as a right-footed attacker. He has phenomenal acceleration, excels in one-on-one situations and has a penchant for cutting in onto his lethal right foot. He even has a short sharp backswing which partially mirrors that of Ronaldo.
Ancelotti said in a recent interview that, “Jese isn’t a surprise anymore. He is already an important player for us.” Spain coach Vicente Del Bosque admitted that Jese remains in his thoughts prior to the announcement of his World Cup squad.
But Jese remains grounded and is eager to get as much game time for his club and to carry on making it more difficult for the manager. Carry on at his rate and it will be tough for Del Bosque to keep him out.
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The recent return of Gareth Bale to fitness and goal-scoring form has limited Jese’s opportunities to just two substitute appearances in the last three games. Prior to this, and during Cristiano Ronaldo’s three-match suspension, Jese had scored in two of three league starts.
But for now Jese remains very much the next best choice after Madrid’s two multi-million pound stars. Jese’s rapid rise from Madrid B to the first team gives hope to young hopefuls who may have found themselves marginalised in previous regimes. But Jese is no ordinary product of the academy. He has the potential to get to the top, and he knows it.
When Tottenham Hotspur make their seasonal trip to the Emirates next month for the first installment of this term’s North London derby, whatever the outcome on the pitch, they will have taken something of a beating, off of it.
On November 17th, supporters will be desperate to see Andre Villas-Boas’ side steal a march on Arsenal in the race for Champions League football and beyond. But for however much Spurs may try and match the Gunners on the pitch this term, off of it, there is simply no competition. And until that is rectified, Spurs are potentially hitting a glass ceiling in their development that is getting harder to break through with every passing season.
Although Arsenal went and eventually succumbed to Roberto Di Matteo’s Chelsea 2-1 at home, towards the end of last month, it wasn’t all doom and gloom in the red half of North London. Indeed, the match against the Blues represented the first ‘Category A’ game of the season at the Emirates, a price bracketing for the most desirable games of the season, with a minimum price tag of £62.
The Mirror reported that matchday income from the game – a few hundred seats short of a sell out – was near on, a staggering £6million. Spurs fans are set to contribute to at least matching that figure next month.
And no one should be under any illusions of quite how gloomy that reality check is for the Lilywhites. The most recent published accounts this year (which encompass the 2010/11 season) showed that Spurs made a relatively paltry £43.3million from matchday revenue, over 27 competitive matches played – working out at about £1.6million a match. If we include the fact that this figure includes Uefa Champions League matches, you can expect that number to shrink slightly when the next accounts are released. For those wondering, Arsenal made over double what Tottenham did for the same time period in matchday revenue – a cool £93.1million.
The elephant in the room here is of course Tottenham Hotspur’s dire need for an increase in stadium capacity, in order to compete with the likes of Arsenal and beyond. At just over 36,000, White Hart Lane simply cannot compete with a cash cow like the 60,000 seater Emirates Stadium – in both purely spectator terms and the holy grail of corporate hospitality.
With White Hart Lane selling out every week, Spurs have nearly hit the ceiling in terms of squeezing any more money out of their hallowed old ground. Their cheapest adult season ticket increased a further 5.79% to £730 this season, hopping above Liverpool as the second most expensive in the land. Even with 30,000 fans waiting for the chance to snap up one of 23,500 season tickets on a waiting list that seemingly refuses to budge, it appears difficult to see how much further the club can push prices up.
The statistics, in this case, have been written on the wall for a long time, but it’s putting them into context that appears slightly more difficult.
Tottenham cannot progress any further without some form of serious investment, most likely from foreign shores. And although it may not necessarily be in the guise of a Manchester City style buy out, the sort of capital the club need to raise to fund their Northumberland Development Project, still constitutes an enormous amount of investment. Daniel Levy and ENIC may well be looking for a naming rights partner to raise the money, but with The Telegraph’s Paul Kelso reporting an asking price of £400million spread over two decades, today’s economic climate renders that a very giddy amount of money indeed.
Some fans may shrug their shoulders at the level of investment and you can suggest that Spurs aren’t doing two badly for themselves at the moment. They’ve finished fourth twice in the space of three years, had a tasty little Champions League run and they’re looking to make another assault on European qualification this year.
The catalyst is however, in terms of need for development and the need for survival, the dark realm of Premier League wages. Some fans still seem to protest that Daniel Levy has stashed a chunk of their Champions League money under the sofa somewhere. What they don’t often consider though, is the extra £24million swell in wages, from 2010 to 2011. For all the jiggery-pokery of the summer transfer window and the smokescreen of Luka Modric, Tottenham Hotspur in fact made an initial net LOSS of £545,600, during the summer. Yes, that doesn’t factor in the Roman Pavlyuchenko sale in January, but this isn’t some form of Levy-defending propaganda. The club are operating upon their very limits.
With the new Premier League domestic television rights alone, securing up to £3billion to be shared around with clubs, Daniel Levy can afford to push the boat out on handing players like Gareth Bale a lucrative new contract. But such is the nature in the way broadcasting money is split between clubs, everyone is afforded a similar financial reprieve. Spurs have simply chosen to spend a chunk of theirs on securing their most valuable asset.
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Perhaps in some ways, the best way of analyzing your own strength is upon the strength of those around you. There was a school of thought with some Spurs supporters, that the club was only ‘two or three players away from challenging for the league’ last season under Harry Redknapp. If we accept that the notion doesn’t involve the weakening of the squad by selling any players, that means that in wages and transfer fees, the club would have had to find that money from somewhere to acquire those players. Spurs made a £7million operating loss last year, just for a bit of added context before we finish.
From the last available accounts (2010/11 season), Tottenham Hotspur finished fifth. The difference between their wage bill and Arsenal’s, who finished one place above, was £33million. The difference between third placed Manchester City’s wage bill and Spurs? An increased £83million. And to wrap up, the contrast between Spurs and second placed Chelsea’s wage bill was £98million.
Although 2011 champions Manchester United’s was a little lower, you get the point. The cost between bridging even one place in this league can be phenomenal and Spurs are running out of room for financial maneuver. Yes Financial Fair Play will help, but they cannot make serious developments without the construction of a new stadium. A fourth placed achievement this term would represent a stunning achievement and have fans celebrating and three points on Saturday would go a long way to achieving that in the short term. In the long term however, it would be the announcement of a naming rights partner, that the club needs just as much.
Do you feel Tottenham have hit a glass ceiling in being able to move further up the league? How do you feel about the implications of a foreign naming rights partner? Let me know how you feel on Twitter: follow @samuel_antrobus and bat me all your views.
Liverpool have not yet won a trophy under manager Jurgen Klopp, but they have come very close.
Since the German coach took over at Anfield in October 2015, the Merseyside outfit have reached three finals, but lost every one of them.
The most recent was the Champions League showpiece against Real Madrid in Kiev.
Hopes were high after the team blasted away Manchester City and Roma in the quarter-finals and semi-finals respectively.
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However, it turned out to be a difficult night for the team as Mohamed Salah was injured half an hour into the contest.
After tussling with Sergio Ramos, the attacker dislocated his shoulder and was forced off the pitch in tears.
Loris Karius was also emotional after the final whistle due to his mistakes that led to goals from Karim Benzeman and Gareth Bale.
In the end, Liverpool lost 3-1, but their performances this season have given fans plenty of optimism.
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Manchester City ran away with the Premier League title, but the Reds managed to beat Pep Guardiola’s side three times over the course of the season – once in the league and twice in the Europe.
We asked you whether the Merseyside outfit could push for the title next season, and even though the club finished 25 points adrift of City in the table, plenty of Liverpool fans think that the club will take that next step.