Liverpool are hoping to persuade Blackpool to let Charlie Adam join the Anfield outfit with Jonjo Shelvey going the other way. Liverpool have made it no secret that they are interested in landing the Scottish midfielder.
Blackpool are resigned to losing their prize asset following their relegation from the Premier League. However, they are holding out for the highest offer for Adam.
A host of clubs are thought to be monitoring Adam's situation with the Seasiders with Aston Villa and Tottenham thought to been preparing to join the chase.
Adam is believed to be keen to make the move to Liverpool having made Anfield his first-choice destination from his list of suitors.
Blackpool have secured the services of two players on the final day of the transfer window, Ian Holloway has moved quickly to sign James Beattie on loan until the end of the season & Andy Reid has joined permanently for an undisclosed fee from Sunderland.
Andy Reid transfer to Blackpool could now open the door for Charlie Adam’s departure to Liverpool.
Rangers striker James Beattie joins the Tangerines after only managing just seven appearances for the Ibrox club since joining them in August.
A number of clubs had been linked with the former England striker but the 32-year-old has decided to join Blackpool.
Beattie will hope that an impressive spell at Blackpool will secure a permanent move.
Blackpool are currently lying in 12th spot in the Premier League with 15 games remaining in the season.
Blackpool’s Charlie Adam has handed in a transfer request in hope of pushing through a move during the January transfer window, Liverpool are likely to submit an improved offer after having a £4m offer rejected last week.
The Scottish international turned in another eye-catching display against Sunderland on Saturday despite the ongoing saga over his future.
The Scotland midfielder scored a penalty in the home defeat.
Blackpool boss Ian Holloway insists that Adam should stay put until the summer, but now he has to contend with an official request.
Holloway said: 'Has his head been turned? Yes. It can be turned. He understands Liverpool is huge. With Kenny Dalglish in charge, the club is so stable.
'They have got new owners and they are going to get back to what they were and Charlie deserves to play for them one day.
'But that day, for me, isn't right for this football club at this moment in time. Maybe in the summer because it's a much better time to do business.'
Blackpool have since rejected Charlie Adams's transfer request, with hope of keeping hold of him until the season.
Ian Holloway has said that Kenny Dalglish cannot fix Liverpool’s problems overnight and hopes the Scot does not tarnish the reputation he currently has with the Fans. Kenny Dalglish is seen as a Legend at Anfield having achieved much success at the club as a manager and as a player.
Liverpool have slipped way behind the top three in recent weeks and Holloway feels King Kenny will have his hands full in rejuvenating the Reds season in hope the blame won't fall on the Scot should he fail succeed this time around,
Blackpool face Liverpool tonight in which it will be Dalglish’s first league game in charge of Liverpool since he resigned 19 years and 11 months ago after he masterminded three title triumphs and FA Cup successes.
Ian Holloway said; "I hope Kenny does brilliantly - after our sides meet.
"But there are problems at Liverpool and it will take time. What Kenny can't do is carry the can for all this.
"I don't see Kenny as being the great golden saviour. I just see him as someone the fans trust at a time when they need to get some trust back.
"Kenny does not deserve to ruin what he's got with the fans - and football fans can be fickle.
"It's a bit like a painter. Sometimes you aren't appreciated until you're gone. Let's hope Kenny will still be appreciated after this stint."
What do you do just before you sign a five year contract for £41.6m? Apologise rather sheepishly if you are a certain Wayne Rooney who today did both. He bowed his head and said sorry for causing offence to the fans, hurting the players’ feelings and causing Sir Alex his most recent press headache.
Then he was sent to the naughty step. Well, not really but following this week’s events which would rival many a northern soap opera for their sheer ups and downs (hesitation, rancour, soul searching followed ultimately by compromise and resolution) Rooney should perhaps spend a minute or two there.
As U-turns go this was a fairly major one and now he is back on the Old Trafford Bus he can expect to earn £160K a week with incentives of probably another £40 or so at least. We don’t expect he will be receiving Child Benefit for the kids when it becomes mean tested in a few years but if it was behaviour tested his mum would still be getting it.
At least Rooney, then, has something to celebrate on his 25th birthday on Sunday. You can just imagine the metaphorical birthday feast. Colleen forcing a smile, her parents clenching their fists and a group of fans like Tiny Tim (or at least a very fed up one) at the butcher boys window. Not heard that one? The police had to be called on Thursday to remove angry fans from outside chez Wayne. To say he has one or two bridges to rebuild is to put it lightly.
Ian Holloway, the Manger of Blackpool certainly had something to say about football's authorities for allowing Wayne Rooney to manufacture his exit from the club.
If his contract is extended to 2015 you can only hope that the bruised feelings and hurt he has caused this week can heal before that.
The first African-American World Heavyweight Boxing Champion whose win provoked a race riot.
Way before Cassius Clay (later to be Muhammad Ali) was even a twinkle in his father’s eye an African American took the World Heavyweight Boxing Champion, the first African American to do so. The year was 1908 and Jack Johnson (born John Arthur Johnson) held the title for seven years. Many people have never heard of Jack Johnson, but his story is one which needs (or indeed begs) to be told.
His story also enables us to reflect on how much times have changed in so many ways – and yet in others hardly at all.
Johnson was born to Henry and Tina Johnson in Galveston, Texas in 1878. His parents were emancipated slaves and Henry, their first son was represented the first generation of his family to be born in to freedom. Yet times were tough. Although the parents worked a succession of blue-collar jobs yet still managed to teach their six children to read and write. Galveston only had about five years of formal education before he joined the tough world of the Galveston Docks as a general laborer.
Johnson developed his boxing technique in this environment, patient and defensive, he would lie in wait for his opponent to make a mistake and then he would go in for the kill. A cautious starter he would build up his aggression over a series of rounds and then continuously punish his opponents rather than go all out for a knockout blow.
The press of the day rounded on Johnson for his technique. Yet only a decade earlier they had praised “Gentleman” Jim Corbett, generally considered the father of modern boxing, for a very similar style. Johnson had studies the techniques of the 1892 World Boxing Champion and adapted them to his own style. Yet still the press condemned him for being devious. Clever and color it seemed, would not be rewarded.
By the turn of the new twentieth century Johnson had dozens of wins against both black and white fighters.
His first title would come in 1903 – when he won a title that no one would contemplate these days – the World Colored Heavyweight Championship. Perhaps he could have won the World at that time but the champion of the time, James J Jeffries simply refused to fight him – on purely racially grounds.
Today, this would probably mean the end of someone’s boxing career and international vilification in the press. However in 1903 Jeffries was well within his rights. Other championships were open to black boxers but the world title was blocked, completely off limits. Not to be thwarted, in 1907 Johnson proved his mettle when he knocked out a former World Heavyweight Champion in the second round.
Johnson used a tactic familiar to us today in order to secure a match. He virtually stalked the world champion (the Canadian Tommy Burns) around the world and used the press (his old enemy) to taunt the boxer in to finally agreeing to fight him. Burns finally gave in and on Boxing Day 1908 the pair went head to head for fourteen rounds in front of over twenty thousand people in Sydney, Australia (see picture below). It was stopped by the police and the referee awarded the title to Johnson.
The referee deemed the win to be a Technical Knock Out (TKO) deeming Burns unable to continue. However, Johnson had clearly won the fight, having soundly beaten the champion particularly in the later rounds. The technicality must have made him furious but he had what he wanted – the Heavyweight Championship of the World.
There was an immediate and racial backlash towards Johnson in the press, who had happily printed his goads towards Burns but had not expected him to win. Jack London (who wrote Call of the Wild) was one of many who called for a Great White Hope to come along and beat Johnson. And so they did – many of them in exhibition matches.
While champion, Johnson lived the life of a celebrity and was forever in the press or on the radio. He was immensely popular - above, a crowd await his arrival in New York sometime between 1910 and 1915 (his poster appears bottom left).
He endorsed a great number of products and became a hobbyist, joining in the new fad for automobile racing. He was always immaculately and expensively tailored - and had a fine line in nouveau riche wit. When stopped once for speeding he gave the traffic cop a one hundred dollar note. The fine was fifty and the policeman protested that he had no change to give. Keep it, rejoined Johnson – I intend to make my return trip at the same speed.
The day Johnson – and the world – would never forget came in 1910. The former champion, James J Jeffries (who had never been defeated during his career) came out of retirement. He was quoted in the press as saying “I should step into the ring again and demonstrate that a white man is king of them all.” He had been out of fighting for six years and was not at peak fitness by any means. You can guess the outcome.
The fight was arranged on a deliberately provocative date – July 4 – and was fought in Reno, Nevada in front of a capacity crowd of twenty thousand. Fifteen rounds later Jeffries’ team called it quits – Johnson had knocked him down twice already (a career first for Jeffries) and they did not want the black champion to knock him out. Here are the highlights.
Johnson retained his title and earned (for those days) an enormous $65,000. Yet the result of the fight was to have untold consequences. His retention of the title provoked race riots in more than 25 states and 50 cities, all on the fourth of July. Humiliated by his victory whites took the law in to their own hands and police had to stop several attempts at lynching.
Most of the riots began as black communities celebrated in the streets and the police and neighboring white retaliated through sheer spite. Chicago police, notably, allowed the celebrations to continue peacefully and the African-American poet William Waring Cuney was inspired to write My Lord, What a Morning. It is short, pointed and very funny.
O my Lord
What a morning,
O my Lord,
What a feeling,
When Jack Johnson
Turned Jim Jeffries'
Snow-white face
to the ceiling.
Johnson kept the title till 1915, when he lost it to Jess Willard, a Kansas cowbot. It went on for an amazing 26 rounds and ended with Johnson KO’d. By this point Johnson was 37 and past his peak. Yet Johnson’s name will live on forever in boxing history forever.
In 1920 Johnson opened a club in Harlem. After three years he tired of it and sold it to a notorious gangster, Owney Madden. Madden reopened it as The Cotton Club.
Johnson died in 1946 in a car crash near Franklington, North Carolina. He was 68. He had lost his temper in a local diner, had rushed out and got in his car – and ultimately lost his life in the crash. Why had he rushed so angrily out of the diner? They had refused to serve him – on the grounds of his color.
Roy Hodgson has admitted that Liverpool could be a relegation dogfight come the end of the season, the under fire boss the Reds could find themselves at the wrong end of the league table following the weekends dismal 2-1 home defeat at the hands of Premiership new boys Blackpool. Hodgson has said that Liverpool's start to the campaign is unacceptable and suggest they could find themselves struggling if performances don't improve.
The Liverpool boss said, "Things are looking really, really bleak. It has been said that if you are in the bottom three, you are in a relegation fight, and I would have to go along with that," admitted Hodgson.
"But I'm not thinking too much about relegation with 31 games left. My concerns are that we are not playing to our full potential, or are only doing it in periods. In the first half we were punished for a lacklustre display.
"We had the ball as much as they did but didn't do anywhere near enough with it to satisfy my demands, the club's demands or the players' demands on themselves."
He also added, He said: "The fans are entitled to voice their frustrations, they are a frustrated group at the moment.
"I am the one responsible because I am the team manager. When the team does badly then the criticism is going to fall my way and I have to accept it."
Blackpool have signed DJ Campbell, the striker spent most of last season on-loan with Blackpool and is now back joining from Leicester City, Holloway has publicly stated that he still searching for a striker and has chased Campbell all summer after he notched 11 goals in 17 games to help the Tangerines clinch promotion.
"I'm over the moon, I'm delighted," Campbell told the club's official website.
"It feels like he I've got unfinished business, everyone knows how much I love Blackpool.
"I wanted to come back and I'm just delighted it's been made possible."
Blackpool have secured the services of two players on the final day of the transfer window, Ian Holloway has moved quickly to sign James Beattie on loan until the end of the season & Andy Reid has joined permanently for an undisclosed fee from Sunderland.
Blackpool’s Charlie Adam has handed in a transfer request in hope of pushing through a move during the January transfer window, Liverpool are likely to submit an improved offer after having a £4m offer rejected last week.
Ian Holloway has said that Kenny Dalglish cannot fix Liverpool’s problems overnight and hopes the Scot does not tarnish the reputation he currently has with the Fans. Kenny Dalglish is seen as a Legend at Anfield having achieved much success at the club as a manager and as a player. 
Ian Holloway - Every Football fan dream manager.
Roy Hodgson has admitted that Liverpool could be a relegation dogfight come the end of the season, the under fire boss the Reds could find themselves at the wrong end of the league table following the weekends dismal 2-1 home defeat at the hands of Premiership new boys Blackpool. Hodgson has said that Liverpool's start to the campaign is unacceptable and suggest they could find themselves struggling if performances don't improve. 
Blackpool have signed DJ Campbell, the striker spent most of last season on-loan with Blackpool and is now back joining from Leicester City, Holloway has publicly stated that he still searching for a striker and has chased Campbell all summer after he notched 11 goals in 17 games to help the Tangerines clinch promotion.
