Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to say to myself: ‘Is there an opportunity here?’”I’m still very patriotic but it will be like a lot of other small countries. Yes, you can organise them and get team spirit but ultimately you need the real quality players who can lift you and that’s the main reason it wasn’t for me.”. Newcastle United have completed the signing of 18-year-old Jermaine Jenas in a £5m transfer from Nottingham Forest. James Park news conference Monday afternoon.Jenas arrived on Tyneside on Friday to discuss personal terms after Forest accepted the Magpies’ offer.Agreement was reached later the same day. The transfer was subject to the results of a medical, which were received on Monday morning to allow the deal to go through.Jenas’ arrival is timely for the Magpies, who could be without star midfielder Kieron Dyer for up to eight weeks with a stress fracture of the foot.Manager Bobby Robson’s spending since the end of last season now stands at £21million, following the purchase of Robbie Elliott, Laurent Robert and Craig Bellamy..

Behind the smile, the machine-gun chatter, the gestures of undying loyalty made to West Ham’s supporters, there must have been a disappointed man. Thursday came and went without the call from Manchester United that surely would have given Paolo Di Canio his first taste of the Champions’ League, so it was back to the less than exhilarating task of trying to keep West Ham in the Premiership. “Now that the Champions’ League deadline has passed, we hope it’s the end of the saga,” West Ham’s manager, Glenn Roeder, said.But Di Canio a contented footballer, happy to pursue his career in claret and blue, not red? “I think he would have been a sensation at Old Trafford,” the ITV pundit Andy Townsend said on Saturday night. “It would have been a great move for him.” Those are the words of an old pro alert to the collapse of a career defining opportunity.However, since many things in football are not what they seem, West Ham’s apparent willingness to part with Di Canio poses questions that Roeder may not care to answer Manchester United saw Di Canio as a brilliant supernumerary. At West Ham he is the central influence, the team subordinate to his capricious whims, his moods, his temperament.

When Sebastien Schemmel describes Di Canio as the most strikingly talented footballer he has ever played with and the leader in training, you have a sense of what Roeder may be up against. The manager must have his way otherwise all is lost.That Roeder does not always get his way is evident in West Ham’s defensive record. At Upton Park they have given up only seven goals, three fewer than any other club in the Premier League. On the road they have conceded 34, 11 more than the bottom-placed club Leicester City It makes their home form crucial. And it is at home that Di Canio delivers.West Ham’s staunch defending on their own patch was not lost on Blackburn’s manager, Graeme Souness, who insists that a growing crisis in the League will not force him to abandon proper principles of play. “We are not about to start lumping the ball upfield,” he said after Saturday’s 2-0 defeat kept Blackburn just one place above the relegation zone.