Fabio da Silva

Following the conclusion of the English Championship season, Cardiff City’s Russell Slade has had a number of meetings with the head chiefs of the club including the chairman, Mehmet Dalman and with the owner of the club Vincent Tan.

These talks that have been held were established with the purpose of discussing the summer plans as well as the transfer budget that will be given to Russell Slade so he can improve his squad and hopefully earn a promotion spot into the Premier League.

Vincent Tan and Mehmet Dalman have already been very clear in their desire of pushing Cardiff City back to the Premier League but in order for this to happen, Russell Slade and his team will have go through a consistent season with positive results but they are aiming to make it happen in the next season which kicks off on August 8.

Cardiff City has been linked with a number of players that might be signed in the summer including: Johnny Russell, Nathan Byrne, Albert Ellis and Daryl Murphy just to name a few of the players who are linked with the English Championship League club.

Russell Slade was given the permission to sign at least 3 players in the summer and they are expected to be: a winger, a forward and a central midfielder as those are the positions in the squad of Russell Slade that have seemed to be in most need of having an upgrade.

The 32 year old forward of Ipswich Town, Daryl Murphy scored 27 goals for his club in the previous season and Cardiff City displayed interest in signing but the English Championship League club seems to be no longer keen on signing the veteran forward as Ipswich Town want at least €4 million and Cardiff City has started searching around for another player who can be signed at a cheaper price.

Queens Park Rangers earned their promotion spot to this season of the Premier League after having finished in the 4th spot of the English Championship League as they qualified for the play-offs and eventually had to play against Wigan Athletic in the semi-finals. QPR defeated Wigan Athletic and advanced to the finals where they emerged as the victorious side after claiming a 1-0 triumph over Derby County in the finals.

This was enough for QPR to progress from the Championship League and into the Premier League.
Their promotion to the Premier League has not been a memorable one as QPR is located in the bottom spots of the top tier league of England and relegation is edging closer and closer for the team of Chris Ramsey.

The captain of Queens Park Rangers, Joey Barton believes that one of the main reasons of why his squad has been performing so disastrously in comparison to how they did in the Championship League is due to a poor pre-season and not being able to sign good enough players.

Joey Barton said: “The thing that you have to do in between getting promoted and getting back to the Premier League is to have an incredible pre-season and recruit really well.For all the effort in the world, sometimes you come up short.’’

Even though Joey Barton is the captain of QPR, Barton himself is uncertain if his squad will be able to survive for another season in the Premier League as the upcoming opponents of QPR are not going to be east for the team of Chris Ramsey to secure points.

Liverpool, Manchester City, Newcastle United and Leicester City are the remaining opponents of QPR and they have to collect points in order to continue competing in the Premier League for another season.

Cardiff City manager Russell Slade has risked the wrath of the supporters by suggesting that they should not expect play-offs this season.

After getting relegated to the Championship last season, the club have been struggling to live up to the early-season expectations. Even after the appointment of Slade midway through the campaign, results have not improved. The club are now struggling in the 16th position with no victories in the last five matches.

This poor run of form is threatening to pull their club in the opposite direction with relegation becoming a distinct reality.

The club are only six points away from Millwall in the final relegation spot, but Slade says that he is confident that the club will not be pulled into a relegation battle at the end of the season. There were a number of departures from the club during the January and it appeared to be a sign of the club accepting defeat in their efforts to return to the Premier League at the end of the season. After falling 16 points behind the final play-off spot, Slade has accepted defeat stating that Cardiff will now try to end the season on a high. The acceptance came after the 0-0 draw against Brighton, who are struggling at the bottom of the table.

“I wouldn’t say it’s gone but it’s looking unrealistic.We’ve got to put some real consolidated run together to get us up there.It doesn’t mean it’s impossible. It can happen, teams have done it before.At the minute we don’t look like we’re capable of doing that. We need to be picking up wins. I think we have enough ability, collective togetherness, character and desire to look upwards and get us up to the top half of the table. All I can say is to finish as high as we can and accumulate as many points as we can,” said Slade.

Marcelo has been in line with Brazil’s tradition of attacking full-backs and it was not surprising that he started in all but one of Brazil’s World Cup 2014 matches.

The arrival of Dunga as the replacement for Luiz Felipe Scolari has had disastrous consequences for the Real Madrid left back. Marcelo has since not featured for the Brazilian national team since Dunga became the new coach in July 2014. When quizzed about his absence, Dunga stated that the 26-year-old was not offering enough solidarity in the defence since he is concentrating much on attack.

Real Madrid’s Carlo Ancelotti, though, does not seem to have any problems with Marcelo’s attacking instincts. The defender continues to remain as part of the first-team plans at the Santiago Bernabeu. He has already featured in 21 matches across three different competitions. Even though he is yet to score this season, Marcelo has already contributed six assists which is an impressive figure for a defender.After the embarrassing 7-1 defeat against Germany in the World Cup semi-final, Brazil have been focusing on a solid foundation at the back. Dunga has recalled a number of former players like Kaka and Robinho since taking over.

His first competitive matches do not start until the summer when Brazil play in the Copa America.”How many times did Marcelo go into attack [at the World Cup]? Twenty. How many goals did he score or create? None. How many times were we caught out with balls going over our defenders’ backs? Three or four.You don’t have to be a genius [to see the problems]. It’s not that I don’t like players who attack. But you need to score to win. It’s not a question of Marcelo, it’s everybody. You have to be efficient,” said Dunga while explaining the continued absence of Marcelo.

It seems like the time of the manager of Cardiff City, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is reaching its end as the Norwegian coach is going through serious pressure and after picking up successive defeats in the Championship League, rumors are making their way through websites and newspaper all over the globe claiming that Gunnar Solskjaer could be sacked within the next few days.

Cardiff City faced successive defeats in the Championship League against Norwich City and Middlesbrough and has been struggling trying to keep themselves away from the bottom spots of the English League. Last season Cardiff City managed to perform in the top tier league of England at the Premier League but suffered relegation and was dropped but the head officials of the club want to return to the Premier League, this objective will not be achieved if they continue on losing matches.

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer knows that his time at Cardiff City is ticking down as the Norwegian revealed details about the current situation of the club.

The Norwegian manager said: ‘’If you don’t get results of course you are under pressure. We didn’t expect to be sitting where we are after seven games. We knew there were some tough fixtures in there but we expected more of a return than one point from four games. You have to be confident. I’m responsible and I should get better results than this; [better] than what we’ve had in the first seven games. I won’t sleep a lot after this because the performances and where we are in the league hasn’t been good enough’’

Vincent Tan is the owner of Cardiff City and he will be having meetings and personal discussions with Ole Gunnar Solskajer where the future of the Norwegian manager is going to be examined and it will later revealed to the public if whether or not he will remain in charge of Cardiff City for the remainder of the season or if Tan decides to appoint someone else as the new coach of the Championship League team.

Fabio Da Silva has claimed that he believes that Cardiff city have enough quality in the ranks to be able to achieve promotion in the first attempt. The club were relegated from the Premier League after just one season in the top flight. Fabio, who spent last season on loan at the club, made the move permanent from Manchester United in January 2014. This is the first time he will not be with his brother Rafael Da Silva during the pre-season. Despite this, Fabio is hoping that Cardiff can return to the top flight as soon as possible.

Cardiff looked like being able to survive in the top division midway through the campaign, but their season was thrown into a lot of confusion after Cardiff owner fell out with manager Mackay. This led to Mackay being sacked despite results having been acceptable. The arrival of the inexperienced Solskjaer meant that the club were unable to prevent relegation. The off-season, though, has been promising so far after the club has made key signings like Federico Macheda. The Italian striker, who comes on a free transfer from Manchester United, says that the presence of Solskjaer was crucial in coming to Wales.

The Italian striker has proven to be a good goalscorer at this level and his presence may help Cardiff achieve their dream of promotion back to the top flight. “I believe in the plan they have for our future here. Everyone in the team wants us to bounce back and I really hope we will bounce back this season. When I’m back home in Brazil I always play [football] with friends. I still keep on working so I feel great. Every game I have to impress the manager and work hard every day because that’s what pre-season is about,” said Fabio Da Silva.

Manchester United defender Fabio Da Silva, who is on loan at Cardiff till the end of the season, says that he is concerned by the fact that the team are conceding a lot of goals. Cardiff are fighting against relegation after having come from the championship only in the summer. After sacking manager Malkay Mackay a few months ago, it looks like they will be unable to avoid relegation and stay in the Premier league next season. The club are still in the relegation zone with only just over five matches left in the season.

They could have got a result in most of the matches in recent times had it been for better defending. In the last five matches alone, they have conceded 14 goals. This alarming dip in form in defending is something of a worry for Fabio, whose performances with Cardiff will be assessed by Manchester United at the end of the season. Poor performance from Cardiff will reflect badly on Fabio, who is widely believed to have this opportunity as the last chance to establish himself at Old Trafford. The exit of Patrice Evra in the summer is widely expected to open the doors for a new left back.

If Fabio performs well at Cardiff, he could very well be playing along with his brother once again.
“We can’t continue to concede that many goals. We go to West Brom trying to stop that, it’s a massive, massive game. We’ve got the quality to stay up, you see it every day in training. We continue to work hard and fight to stay up. We take positives from our performances against Everton (a 2-1 away defeat) and Liverpool (a 6-3 home defeat). We need to continue that and get the points we deserve,” said the defender ahead of the West Brom match.

A couple of Manchester United players have been reported to be close to making their way to Cardiff City. Those two players are Fabio da Silva and Wilfried Zaha.

It’s not shocking news at all. Both these players weren’t having enough playing time at Old Trafford and an away move by them was always a possibility. However, no official statement has been released yet either by United or Cardiff.

According to the reporters, Zaha is likely to be placed on loan, while Silva’s move would be permanent.

Zaha had been signed by United about 12 months ago, but, he hasn’t been given even one starting opportunity in the Premier league so far. He would definitely be happy with a loan move to Cardiff as he would not lack playing time at the Wales club.

Apart from paying the salary of the player, Cardiff would pay an additional amount of 1.5 million Pounds to United to have Zaha till the end of the ongoing season.

The 21 years old English forward is understood to go through medical test in about two days’ time. However, he would not be able to represent the Bluebirds in their upcoming league game against United because according to the rules of the EPL, a player who has been placed on loan can’t take on his parent club.

As far as Silva is concerned, he too was a loan candidate initially, but, because of the fact that his contract at Old Trafford would finish next summer, Moyes thought that getting transfer fee for him would be a better option.

Silva has spent almost 7 years at Old Trafford till now. He has played only 22 league games in that duration He had spent the entire last season at Queens Park rangers playing on loan.

Manchester United is picking up their momentum and starting to earn themselves positive results in the Premier League as well as the Champions League as they are one of the last 16 remaining teams battling it out in the European competition.

They could use some boosts of new arrivals for their tough journey that waits for them in 2014. The Premier League team received a number of complaints when they only made a move for Marouane Fellaini during the summer and some are with the list of injured players that just keeps on increasing week after week, some new players might just be the element they need to climb back up in the English league and battle against the best in the Champions League.

The former Everton player Fellaini will be out of the pitch for around a month as he is the latest player that joins the list of injuries.

Everton Ribeiro made a successful campaign with Cruizeiro and the 24 years old winger has already expressed his desire to play alongside Wayne Rooney and Robin van Persie. According to his agent, Manchester United has already made contact and held talks with the club as well as the player as they are hoping to snatch him up.

Another player that seems to be on verge of leaving his respective club is Xabi Alonso as Carlo Ancelotti stated in a press conference not too long ago that he has other important players on his team and the Spanish player is just what Manchester United needs to stick together the midfield which has been suffering and receiving a lot of complaints in this season.

Wesley Sneijder was another big target for Moyes in January but the former Inter Milan player already said that he is happy playing in Galatasaray and has no intentions of leaving anytime soon.

Manchester United’s Brazilian full back Fabio da Silva has revealed that he could be ready to quit the English giants in search for first team football.

According to an interview the Brazilian gave to an English media outlet, he is considering his options after being limited to very few opportunities to first team action and he could be seeking a move away from the club in the January window or next summer as he seeks to fulfill his ambitions and get regular playing time.

Speaking in the interview, the Brazilian youngster stated that he thinks the time has come for him to weigh up his options and he could leave the club in the next window or next summer, whichever is suitable for him. He stated that there are some clubs already showing interest in his services but Fabio da Silva also admitted that he is not looking to rush into a decision and will take time before he decides on his next move.

The 23 year old Brazilian spent last season on loan at Queens Park Rangers and suffered relegation with the London club and has so far, failed to nail down a first team spot under David Moyes as well as former manager Sir Alex Ferguson after arriving at the club with twin brother Rafael in 2008.

He has fallen behind the pecking order at left back at United with Moyes preferring Dutchman Alexander Buttner as back up to Patrice Evra and is also tracking Leighton Baines as cover for the Frenchman and this has led Fabio da Silva to consider his options.

He might feel aggrieved that he has failed to nail down a regular spot at left back whereas Rafael is a starter on the opposite flank and he might think it’s time to go separate ways.