Stuart Pearce has expressed concern about England’s decision to call up Tottenham Hotspur midfielder Harry Winks to the senior team.

The 21-year-old was selected by manager Gareth Southgate after the initial squad was announced due to the withdrawal of Fabian Delph.

Winks came onto the scene just last year when he was given some minutes by Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino.

In total, the midfielder has made just four Premier League starts for his club and he has only featured more recently for Spurs due to injured Mousa Dembele and Victor Wanyama being out of the picture.

In terms of international outings, Winks has been capped twice at England Under-21 level.

Pearce, who was in charge of the Young Lions between 2007 and 2013, thinks that the midfielder’s call-up highlights problems in the national setup.

The 55-year-old told Sky Sports’ The Debate show:

“Harry Winks has only started a handful of games for his club, and he’s in the international fold. Now, it’s brilliant for him, I think he’s a great talent, but it shows you the flaws in the process.”

Winks has started just one top-flight game for Spurs this season, but has featured on five occasions in all competitions

Liverpool legend Phil Thompson has insisted that Jurgen Klopp has improved the Reds since taking charge in 2015.

Klopp led Liverpool back into the Champions League last season, but the German is currently under pressure after a run of just one win in the club’s last seven matches in all competitions.

Liverpool’s defence remains under scrutiny, meanwhile, with critics claiming that Klopp has not improved the team as a unit since replacing Brendan Rodgers.

Thompson, however, has said that his former club are in a much better position under the German, who has improved the entertainment value at Anfield.

Thompson told Sky Sports:

“He’s certainly improved the team. People keep comparing him with Brendan Rodgers’ team but Rodgers was blessed with a fantastic spine whereas Jurgen has had to build a squad.

“We’ve got a lot of pace in the side, which we were lacking after Raheem Sterling went, and obviously we’re an extremely exciting side to watch.”

Liverpool will look to return to winning ways in the Premier League when they welcome bitter rivals Manchester United to Anfield on Saturday afternoon.

The Reds will enter that match in seventh position in the table – seven points behind second-place United, who are unbeaten this term, after seven games of the 2017-18 campaign.

Derbies are always a tricky proposition and the Second City Derby between Aston Villa and Birmingham City is always one of the most passionate in the country.

On these occasions form can go out of the window, so Steve Bruce and his team will likely be happy at having earned a point away to their struggling rivals on Sunday.

It wasn’t a classic for the neutral, with both teams playing out a 0-0 draw, but it’s perhaps a better point for Birmingham than it is the Villans given their respective league positions.

Both sides went close to opening the scoring. For Steve Cotterill’s side it was Jota who had the best chance, fluffing his effort and blazing over the bar when presented with a second half opportunity. For the Villans, John Terry went closest, his header going just wide.

Villa supporters are nonetheless content with the draw and having finished the weekend in the play-off positions can look ahead to Wednesday’s trip to Preston North End with confidence.

They took to Twitter to share their thoughts…

West Ham United captain Mark Noble has admitted that his team were naive in the latter stages of Saturday’s Premier League clash with Crystal Palace.

First-half goals from Javier Hernandez and Andre Ayew saw the Hammers take a two-goal lead into the interval of the clash at Selhurst Park.

Palace halved the deficit from the penalty spot in the 50th minute, however, before Wilfried Zaha netted an equaliser in the seventh minute of additional time.

West Ham attacker Michail Antonio has been heavily criticised for his part in Palace’s equaliser, with the 27-year-old easily conceding possession moments before the goal.

Noble has claimed that his team need to learn to ‘see games out’ if they are to put together a consistent run of positive results in the Premier League.

Noble told West Ham’s official website:

“We scored two great goals, two goals away from home and we dug in. I thought the defenders played tremendously well, but as I have said many, many times, you get punished if you make mistakes in this league and that’s what we did.

“We’ve got to learn how to see games out, it’s as simple as that. As you can tell I’m really disappointed because I thought we did enough to win the game.”

West Ham have only collected nine points from their 10 Premier League matches this season, with that total leaving them down in 16th position in the table.

Next up for Slaven Bilic’s side is a home game against Liverpool on Saturday night.

Santi Cazorla has not turned out for Arsenal since October 2016 after a nightmare 12 months for the brilliant midfielder.

The 32-year-old has undergone eight operations over the last year in a bid to return to the field, but he remains on the sidelines approaching 2018.

Cazorla recently gave an open interview to Marca, where he revealed that doctors had told him he should be satisfied to walk again after contracting gangrene following an operation.

His last operation, which was a reconstruction of his Achilles tendon, took place in May, and it is understood that the midfielder is confident of returning to training in the new year.

On Friday, Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger revealed that Cazorla, who is valued at £10.2m by transfermarket.co.uk, was in good spirits despite an extremely frustrating year out of the game.

As expected, the English club’s supporters took to Twitter to pay tribute to the Spaniard, who many feel is their most talented footballer.

A selection of the best Twitter reaction from the Arsenal fans can be seen below:

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After arguably one of the worst weeks in the clubs recent history, Everton finally came good, defeating West Ham 4-0 on Wednesday evening.

David Unsworth was taking charge of his last game as caretaker manager, with Sam Allardyce set to take the role in the next 24 hours.

And the former Everton player must have used his departure from the role as motivation for his players because the positive change in performance and attitude was enormous.

While Wayne Rooney will undoubtedly grab all of the headlines because of his hat-trick, which included a spectacular goal from his own half, there were a number of other Evertonians who impressed on the night.

One of these players was Aaron Lennon, who has had a very challenging year personally. Despite this, the Englishman played an exemplary game of football and was a constant menace to the visiting West Ham.

Everton fans noticed Lennon’s effort and took to Twitter after the game to praise the 30-year-old, who is valued at £4.5million by Transfermarkt…

According to reports in the Daily Mail, West Ham United co-owner David Sullivan says his children begged him not to sign Robert Snodgrass during the January transfer window, and Irons fans have been quick to show their support for the Scot after he criticised the comments on his official Twitter account.

The east London outfit brought the winger to the London Stadium earlier this year following an impressive first-half of the campaign with Hull City, but the 30-year-old only made 15 appearances in all competitions – with many of those coming from the substitutes’ bench – and struggled to make an impact.

The Scotland international joined Championship side Aston Villa on a season-long loan deal during the summer, but he clearly wasn’t impressed with Sullivan’s comments or his lack of support given the Irons are still Snodgrass’ parent club.

West Ham supporters took to social media to show their solidarity with the wide-man, and while one said “we all hate him too”, another said “West Ham fans are on your side”.

Here is just a selection of the Twitter reaction…

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Derbies are about the here and now, but reflecting on last weekend’s derby day clashes between the Manchester clubs and the Liverpool ones, it’s clear that they’ll have more long-term effects than short-term ones.

For the Merseyside derby, the point gained by both clubs will unlikely be too significant come the end of the season. Everton look like they’ll be safe, and won’t trouble the top six. Liverpool might rue their missed chances if they narrowly miss out on the top four, but other than that, both clubs will be looking for redemption in the cup competitions.

As far as the Manchester derby was concerned, too, City seem so far ahead that even a Manchester United victory would surely only have prolonged the vain hope of a title race. The victory probably just puts neutrals out of their misery that little bit earlier.

But there will be long-term implications to both of those games, perhaps mostly for Manchester United, but possibly for Everton, too.

It feels like this was the shape of things to come. For Everton under Sam Allardyce, they may well improve and become a more potent attacking force, but for now it’s clear that the focus is on sorting out the defence. That might well be fair enough, given that the former England manager inherited the team with the worst defensive record in the league and who looked destined for a relegation dogfight until he took over. Since then, they’ve conceded just one goal.

That might mitigate Everton’s unambitious performance at Anfield last Sunday, and after going on to beat Newcastle in midweek, Evertonians probably won’t care all that much – not unless they’re still watching boring football come the end of the season.

For Manchester United, there can be no excuse. Ideas have been floated, that United are outgunned by City’s spending power, or that Paul Pogba – who cost well over £30m more than Blues’ record-signing Kevin de Bruyne – was absent for the derby. They’re complete red herrings, of course, designed to deflect from the fact that Jose Mourinho and his team are 11 points behind their rivals. The reason that the Portuguese coach was appointed manager of Real Madrid was to topple Pep Guardiola at Barcelona. The same thing is happening in Manchester. And he’s not just behind: he’s behind in double figures.

But Mourinho is hiding another massive deal. He’s not just hiding his failure to track down City, he’s hiding the fact that his side can’t attack.

All season he’s been on the defensive about it, pointing to the goals they’ve scored and their place in the table. But in no big game this season have they been on the front foot. The first 20 minutes against Arsenal were perhaps the best in any of those big games this season, but even then they had to rely on two mistakes to put them far enough ahead to deal with the onslaught that eventually came.

The problem with their derby day performance, though, is that when you’re playing the league leaders, who are eight points ahead of you, and everyone is billing the game as pretty much your last chance to start pinning them back, you only have one option: attack.

If there was ever a game that United had to attack a team this season, surely it was this one. Surely it was the one game where it mattered that they actually won.

So far, Mourinho has seemed happy to draw the away games against the top six rivals. He’s seemed happy to play the percentages. But playing at home against the league leaders isn’t a game where you can do that. Must-win games are ‘must-win’ for a reason.

It’s set a dangerous precedent, one that will have long-term implications. For a club who base their footballing identity on the idea that they play attractive, attacking football, this isn’t good enough. Nor, surely, is it acceptable to United that their city neighbours can come to Old Trafford, outplay them, end their title hopes, and leave only after their fans have sung ‘park the bus, park the bus Man United’.

Last week’s derby day showed that the Premier League is now divided into teams who feel like they’re good enough to live on the front foot, taking the game to their opponents, and those who feel that they aren’t, and who hide behind excuses, complaints and two banks of four.

Far from being about short-term bragging rights, these derby days will live on in the memory as a day when Everton and Manchester United added a cowardice to their identity that no-one knew they had.

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Nottingham Forest are interested in signing Newcastle winger Yasin Ben El-Mhanni according to The Daily Mail.

What’s the story?

El-Mhanni joined Newcastle from Lewes in 2016 but has failed to make a single league appearance, only playing a couple of FA Cup matches for the Magpies since joining.

The 22-year-old came accused Peter Beardsley of bullying and discrimination earlier this year and his contract has now come to its end at Newcastle.

A number of clubs are interested in signing the pacy winger on a free, including Nottingham Forest, Leeds United, Wolverhampton Wanderers, Watford, Besiktas and Sporting Lisbon.

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A fresh start

Clearly El-Mhanni hasn’t enjoyed the greatest of times at Newcastle and understandably he wants to move away from the club and enjoy a fresh start.

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Having not made any league appearances it’s hard to judge how he would perform in the Championship, but by all accounts the 22-year-old is a tricky winger with the ability to beat a man.

For a free signing, Forest have little to lose and a lot to gain as Aitor Karanka looks to strengthen for the season ahead.

According to Transfermarketweb, Tottenham Hotspur remain interested in signing Barcelona’s Andre Gomes this summer, but the London could should instead attempt to bring in Mateo Kovacic from Real Madrid.

What’s the story?

Gomes has long been linked with a move away from Barcelona, with the Portugal international struggling to settle at Camp Nou following a 2016 move from Valencia.

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The 24-year-old did make 31 appearances in all competitions for the Catalan outfit last term, but found it tough to gain a regular spot in the XI.

Reports in Spain have claimed that Gomes has been left out of the Barcelona squad for their pre-season tour of the United States, which appears to signal a departure.

According to Transfermarketweb, Tottenham want to sign Gomes this summer, but the midfielder has not shown too much during his time at Barcelona.

There is no question that the former Benfica midfielder is a talent, but Tottenham should drop their interest in Gomes to pursue a deal for Real Madrid’s Kovacic.

Would Kovacic fit in at Tottenham?

Kovacic will not make a final decision on his future until the 2018 World Cup has finished, and he will be hoping to play a part in Sunday’s final between Croatia and France.

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The 24-year-old has made over 100 appearances for Los Blancos since a 2015 move from Inter Milan, but he only started 10 La Liga fixtures last term.

Kovacic is at the stage of his career where he will be looking for first-team action, and there is no question that he has the ability to replace Mousa Dembele at Spurs.

The Croatian’s high-tempo, all-action style of football is just what Mauricio Pochettino will be looking for when it comes to new signings in this summer’s transfer window.

A number of other clubs are also said to be monitoring the situation though, and Tottenham should move for the 5ft 10in ace next week to ensure that they do not miss the boat.