Manchester United face their biggest game of the season so far when a revitalized Tottenham Hotspur arrive at Old Trafford this weekend for the pick of the fourth round ties in the FA Cup.
Refreshed by a mid-winter break in the heat of Saudi Arabia, Sir Alex Ferguson's team will seek to keep their bid to emulate the treble winners of 1999 alive against opponents riding a wave of confidence following their 5-1 thrashing of Arsenal in midweek.
That put Spurs into the League Cup final and the mood around White Hart Lane has been improved further by Dimitar Berbatov's subsequent revelation that he is happy to stay at a club whose fortunes have been turned around since new manager Juande Ramos took over earlier this season.
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Berbatov is a player Ferguson would love to have on his payroll and the Scot knows his defense, the cornerstone of United's success this season, will have to be vigilant about the threat posed by the Bulgarian and the rest of a Tottenham side who displayed real verve in their attacking play on Tuesday.
Arsenal will attempt to rebound from their midweek trauma -- which was compounded by an on-the-pitch confrontation between their strikers Emmanuel Adebayor and Nicklas Bendtner -- when the newly reinstalled Kevin Keegan leads his Newcastle United side out at the Emirates Stadium today.
The third all-Premier League tie of the round sees Wigan Athletic entertain the other League Cup finalists, Chelsea, who have conceded just one goal in their last four games.
PHOTO: AP
Wigan's chances of pulling off an upset have not been helped by the loss of England striker Emile Heskey to injury.
Lovers of FA Cup tradition will relish the visit of non-league Havant and Waterlooville to Liverpool.
Anything but a comfortable win for the home side would be a major upset and there seems little danger of Liverpool taking the tie lightly in the current context of boardroom strife at Anfield.
With his side's league title ambitions virtually quashed, Reds manager Rafael Benitez knows he cannot afford any embarrassing slip-ups against the part-timers and is likely to field his strongest possible side for the visit of the side from the Conference South.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier