Report: Tottenham Hotspur left-back Danny Rose rejected Watford move on deadline day - originally posted on Sportslens.com

According to Football Insider, out-of-favour Tottenham Hotspur left-back Danny Rose rejected the chance to move to English Championship outfit Watford on Friday’s domestic transfer deadline day.

The Hornets were keen on the 30-year-old last summer after he was left out of Spurs’ pre-season tour to Singapore and told he was not part of erstwhile manager Mauricio Pochettino’s long-term plans.

However, their bid was knocked back as the North Londoners held out for £20 million.

Rose himself was at Watford’s training ground on summer transfer deadline day last summer, but the move fell through and he returned to Tottenham, featuring in 12 Premier League games during the first half of the campaign.

#WatfordFC transfer update

Rose has now departed TG after two bids rejected by Spurs. https://t.co/mQfS16IHc7

— Adam Leventhal (@AdamLeventhal) August 8, 2019

He joined Newcastle United on loan in January after falling out with head coach Jose Mourinho, and he featured in 11 league games for the Magpies.

Spurs’ longest-serving senior player isn’t in the plans of the Portuguese boss and he wasn’t given a squad number for the season as a result.

He is currently training with the youth team, and while Watford were keen on a reunion after he spent the 2008-09 campaign on loan at Vicarage Road, the player wasn’t interested.

Their offer didn’t impress Tottenham either, but the left-back was clearly not in the mood to leave for the Championship outfit, and will now remain in North London till January or next summer when his contract is due to expire.

Rose was also in talks with Genoa earlier in the summer over a move to the Serie A, while Newcastle decided against making a permanent move for him.

He currently earns around £60,000-per-week and is reportedly relaxed about his situation and will wait until January to reassess after not getting a satisfactory offer during the summer.

Rose would even be willing to see out his contract at Spurs, and he clearly isn’t as interested in playing regular first-team football like he used to.

While he knows his worth, refusing to comprise and accept the demands of Watford speak volumes.

Playing for England at next summer’s European Championships is clearly no longer possible for Rose, and it’s safe to say that he has played his last game for both the Three Lions and Spurs.

From being courted by the likes of Manchester United, Manchester City and Chelsea in the summer of 2017 to being courted by Watford three years later is quite the downgrade, and it will be interesting to see what happens next with his dwindling career.

From Sportslens.com - Football News | Football Blog

Should Liverpool go after Milan Skriniar in January? - originally posted on Sportslens.com

Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp could be forced to chalk out transfer plans for January already as the Reds sweat on the scan reports of Virgil van Dijk and Thiago Alcantara.

Both the players suffered injuries during the Merseyside derby clash with Jurgen Klopp saying after the match he doesn’t feel good about the situation of the Dutchman.

There are doubts that Van Dijk could miss the rest of the season with a knee injury, and if that happens it would come as a hammer blow to Liverpool’s title hopes.

The Reds can still cope up without Thiago, having won the Champions League and the Premier League title without the Spaniard in the last two seasons, but losing Van Dijk could be a devastating blow.

Not only is the Dutchman one of the best centre-backs in the league, but he is also a leader at the back. His absence means Liverpool are not only short of options, but the opposition will fancy their chances more.

Jurgen Klopp was reluctant to sign a defender despite offloading Dejan Lovren, as he felt Fabinho can do the job at the back if required. But without Van Dijk, surely he needs to buy a top-quality defender in the market.

And that’s why the Reds must prepare the ground to sign Milan Skriniar in January from Inter Milan.

Skriniar was heavily linked with a move to Tottenham Hotspur this summer, but Spurs failed to reach an agreement for him.

The Evening Standard reported that Spurs held talks to sign the 25-year-old and that the Slovakian was the club’s top defensive target.

The Sun claimed Spurs were willing to fork-out between £25m and £30m for Skriniar – but the Serie A giants kept a base price of £55m.

According to Charlie Eccleshare of the Athletic, Skriniar himself was interested in the move to Spurs.

Inter Milan need to trim their wage bill and could offload the defender at the right price, which means Liverpool can strike a deal if they can negotiate properly. They didn’t need him in the summer. But they could need him in winter.

Skriniar has been playing at a top-level for a few years now, and a move to Liverpool would be a step up in his career.

It would be wise to invest in the north of £40-45m for a player who is approaching the peak of his career, and therefore a move from Skriniar makes perfect sense for Liverpool.

While Spurs can rekindle their interest in Skriniar, whether they would actually do it remains to be seen following the arrival of Joe Rodon.

Liverpool could look for options elsewhere as well and unearth hidden gems which could turn out to be another Michael Edwards transfer masterstroke, but the Reds need an established quality player who could actually fill the void of Van Dijk.

Skriniar could be one of the many options in the market, but they are other defenders as well who could be an equally smart addition. The likes of Conor Coady and Caglar Soyuncu could offer Premier League experience, while Dayot Upamecano and Pau Torres could be interesting options for the Reds as well.

From Sportslens.com - Football News | Football Blog

The Atlanta Braves are on the cusp of a major postseason upset. That’s due in no small part to first baseman Freddie Freeman, who entered the season as one of the game’s best hitters but has reached a new level in 2020 — even after overcoming COVID-19 this past summer. In fact, few hitters have ever improved as deep into a career as Freeman has.

Freeman homered in the first two games of the National League Championship Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers, and went 2-for-5 with two RBIs in Game 4, to help the Braves take a 3-1 lead. It’s the kind of hitting the Braves need to overcome the Dodgers, who entered the NLCS as the favorite to win the World Series. (The Dodgers’ chances to win have fallen from 54 percent to 14 percent in our model; the Braves, who entered the series with the lowest World Series odds of the remaining teams, increased their odds from 12 percent to 39 percent, as of Friday afternoon.)

The good news for the Braves is that the already great Freeman has managed to improve his hitting skills more than most major league players in this shortened season, particularly his power and contact rate. Freeman, long a good fastball hitter, can hit fastballs at an elite level, as the Dodgers and starting pitcher Walker Buehler learned in Game 1.

This year, Freeman had the fourth-best batting average versus fastballs,¹ and the sixth-best average against fastballs that traveled 95 mph or faster.² And rather than see his bat slow down as he enters his 30s — which is generally around the time hitters reach the downslope of the aging curve — Freeman has been about four times more efficient against fastballs this season compared to last season. He posted a career-best batting average against the pitch (.478), though he faced about one-third as many fastballs in the shortened 2020 season as he averaged in the nine seasons prior, and he covers nearly the entire strike zone with above-average hitting.

Entering this season, one of the few pitch types Freeman hit unevenly, from a runs-created standpoint, was the split-fingered fastball. Though his performance against the pitch fell below league average in five of his first 10 seasons, he’s above the average this year. Dodgers pitcher Tony Gonsolin threw Freeman a low-and-inside splitter in Game 2, and Freeman was able to bring his hands in and crush the ball for a two-run home run, giving the Braves an early 2-0 lead.

So what changed? Freeman stands at 6 feet, 5 inches, but he’s always had a compact, whip-like swing. Indeed, Freeman doesn’t appear to have changed his swing much at all from his first hit in the majors. That swing has produced consistent results for more than a decade: Since his first full season in 2011, Freeman ranks ninth among position players in wins above replacement.³ Instead, Freeman is simply hitting the ball harder. His year-over-year average exit velocity gain of 2.7 mph ranks 16th out of 485 qualifying major league hitters this season. He’s also lifting more batted balls into the air, enabling him to hit for more power. His year-over-year ground-ball rate of decline of 6.7 percentage points ranks 28th in the majors. Freeman also ranks 30th in year-over-year slugging gains. All three improvements rank among the top decile of qualifying players.⁴

The quality of batted balls he’s lifted into the air were bettered by only two players, according to OPS, this season: José Abreu of the White Sox and teammate Marcell Ozuna.

Freeman has also added contact ability. He’s cut his swinging-strike rate by 3.1 percentage points in the regular season, tied for the 14th-best improvement in the majors. Freeman’s strikeout rate was a career-low 14.1 percent this season, and it’s been even lower in the postseason (7.3 percent through four games of the NLCS). Freeman is crushing pitches he swings at in part because he’s been more selective. His swing rate on pitches out of the strike zone is a career-low 24.1 percent.

It’s also possible that Freeman is simply healthier this year after having surgery last fall to remove bone spurs in his elbow. Freeman told MLB.com that this year was “the first time in nine years I haven’t had any pain in the offseason.” His increased exit velocity and decreased ground-ball rate could also mean that Freeman has improved his ability to hit the ball more out in front of the plate, which is where peak bat speed and power are found.

In all, Freeman has simply been better, and at a point in his career when players rarely improve. While it’s challenging in some ways to evaluate a shortened season, some skills like walk rate, strikeout rate, contact rate and groundball rate stabilize with 250 or fewer plate appearances. (Freeman made 262 regular-season plate appearances this year). Ideally we’d like a larger sample to compare stats like OPS, but it’s possible that Freeman has made historically rare improvement this season. Since 1900, only nine qualified major league hitters have improved their OPS more than Freeman has from their 10th to 11th major league seasons — and none of those hitters had a better 10th career season to improve upon. And while this season was just 60 games, it was the second-best 60-game stretch of non-overlapping games of Freeman’s career within a season, in terms of WAR.

Having enjoyed an MVP-caliber regular season, his torrid hitting has continued into the postseason when the Braves need it most. And to finish off the Dodgers, the Braves need Freeman to keep playing as well as he ever has.

Check out our latest MLB predictions.