All the latest action from the English top-flight, including Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea

• Chelsea striker regarded as ‘a pain in the ass’
• Ivory Coast forward is fit after ankle injury

José Reina has broken with custom at Liverpool to rank Didier Drogba as one of his favourite players and his most formidable opponent, with the Chelsea striker receiving the back-handed compliment of being labelled a “pain in the ass” by the Spain goalkeeper.

Drogba was instrumental in Liverpool’s demise in the Champions League semi-finals last season, when he responded to Rafael Benítez’s criticism of his theatrical style by scoring twice in Chelsea’s second-leg triumph. Despite the misery of that night at Stamford Bridge for Liverpool, and an injury-plagued season for Drogba since, Reina has revealed a grudging respect for the Ivory Coast international and believes his threat will be as potent as ever when the teams meet again in Wednesday’s Anfield quarter-final.

“To be honest, he’s one of my favourite players and when the people ask me about who was the most dangerous striker or who was really a pain in the ass, I always say Didier Drogba,” the Liverpool goalkeeper said. “I think in a way he’s becoming stronger and stronger. He’s been having some injury problems in the last months but now he’s scoring goals. He’s scored four or five in the last six games or something like that and whoever plays in front, like Nicolas Anelka or even Drogba, it will be difficult to stop them.”

The Chelsea striker missed last Saturday’s 2-0 win at Newcastle United with an ankle problem but is expected to feature for Guus Hiddink’s team against Liverpool, whose own major injury worry has eased. Steven Gerrard was withdrawn in stoppage time against Fulham on Saturday with a tight hamstring, a problem that has restricted him previously this season, but the Liverpool captain has not required a scan and is expected to train with the rest of the squad today.

Liverpool are not lacking in confidence ahead of the quarter-final, having hauled themselves back into contention for the Premier League title and defeated Chelsea home and away this season. Benítez’s team ended Chelsea’s 86-game unbeaten league run at Stamford Bridge in October and then accelerated Luiz Felipe Scolari’s demise as manager with a 2-0 win at Anfield in February. However, Reina believes the Londoners are a more consistent unit with Hiddink at the helm than under the World Cup-winning Brazilian coach, and discounts the argument that Chelsea’s squad is on the wane.

“I think they play more consistently now,” said Reina. “Chelsea had before, and continue to have, one of the greatest squads in the Premier League and in Europe; so no matter who the manager is, the Chelsea squad will be strong anyway. As always, when we play them in any kind of competition, like the league or Champions League, the smaller things can make a big difference and it will be that way once again. We feel that we can win, that we can beat each other at any time because we’ve done it before - they did it last year, in the Champions League semi-final.”

Liverpool will be without Javier Mascherano for the first leg of the quarter-final, the Argentina captain suspended as a result of a harsh booking in the 4–0 rout of Real Madrid, and responsibility is likely to fall on the much-maligned Lucas in his absence. The Brazilian midfielder began in place of Mascherano at Craven Cottage but has not started two consecutive games for Liverpool all season. That is likely to change at Anfield unless Benítez moves Gerrard back alongside Xabi Alonso in central midfield.

“I know that the Chelsea game is a big opportunity for me and I’ll try to make it into the team,” said Lucas. “I know that sometimes I am on the bench but I understand that the manager has to choose and that Javier and Xabi have been playing really well.”

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Barcelona will encourage Manchester City interest in Thierry Henry as the Spanish league leaders seek to bolster their summer transfer budget. Barça are also receptive to offers for their leading scorer, Samuel Eto’o, who they fear losing for nothing when his contract expires at the end of next season.

City’s aggressive plans to purchase a squad capable of qualifying for the Champions League have positioned them as European football’s cash cow and Barcelona are eager to milk them to support their own recruitment strategy. They would like to replace Henry with Robin van Persie and add his Arsenal team-mate Cesc Fábregas to their midfield, but currently do not have the resources to fund both transfers.

Barcelona are nursing an unexpected €30m (£27.3m) deficit after the Catalan broadcaster TV3 refused to cover a fine imposed on the club for unilaterally breaking a contract with another television company, Audiovisual Sport, to screen its matches. Barça have banned TV3 from the Camp Nou in an unsuccessful attempt to force payment, but are also preparing to sell to make up the shortfall.

Henry struggled for fitness and form in his first season at the club and, although the striker has been a more effective force this campaign, he turns 32 in August and is considered replaceable. While Barça would accept far less than the €125m release clause on Henry’s contract, the player himself is understood to be unwilling to switch the success and climate of Barcelona for the uncertainty of chasing a top-four place at Eastlands. The possibility of jeopardising his place in France’s 2010 World Cup squad is another consideration.

Barça would also be receptive to offers for Yaya Touré and Seydou Keita, aware that both midfielders are likely to be on African Nations Cup duty in January, with Ivory Coast and Mali respectively. Touré has been a target for several Premier League sides, including City. Eto’o, meanwhile, has been advised to sit out the final season of his contract and entertain offers as a free agent in 2010. The Cameroon forward has little loyalty to Barça’s board after the club unsuccessfully put him up for sale last summer.

In Germany, a 5-1 home victory for Wolfsburg against Bayern Munich proved enough to take the winners to the top of the Bundesliga, because the erstwhile leaders, Hertha Berlin, lost 3-1 at home to Borussia Dortmund. Wolfsburg lead Hamburg, 1-0 victors at home to Hoffenheim, on goal difference.

Wolfsburg were level at half-time against the team who started the day in second, after two goals in two minutes just before the break. Luca Toni equalised for Bayern after Christian Gentner’s opener. In the second half, though, two goals apiece from Edin Dzeko and Grafite gave Wolfsburg an emphatic win. For the fifth, Grafite dribbled past two defenders and the goalkeeper before scoring with a backheel in front of two other stunned Bayern defenders.

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The underdogs bristle with South American spirit

Porto’s Champions League chances at Old Trafford on Tuesday will depend largely on the influence of the player they call El Comandante. Luis Oscar González, or Lucho as he is billed on his No8 shirt, is a 28-year-old central midfielder and on-field leader.

He heads an ever-growing and, in Portuguese football, almost unheard of Argentine subdivision at Porto, which currently stands eight-strong. They have as many Argentines as Portuguese in their Champions League squad. Lucho lines up on the right of Porto’s usual 4-3-3 formation behind his countryman Lisandro López, the Blue Dragons’ top scorer in the Champions League who also arrived in northern Portugal in 2005.

A conjoined history usually determines that it is the boys from Brazil who settle in Portugal. Porto have three – the beefy and aptly named striker Hulk, Fernando, a midfielder, and the goalkeeper Helton, all of whom should start on Tuesday. That they also have so many Argentines on the payroll is largely because of the general manager Antero Henrique’s contact book, and the club’s specific character.

“Porto has a fighting mentality,” says Piet de Visser, the chief football adviser to Chelsea’s owner, Roman Abramovich, who is often in the stadiums and streets of Argentine towns scouting for the boss. “The Brazilians have greater skill but the Argentines have more fighting spirit.”

Sir Alex Ferguson is well aware of the South American threat from Porto. “They’ve a lot of Argentinians and the boy Lisandro López, the centre-forward, he’s definitely a finisher,” Ferguson said. “Obviously Carlos [Tevez] will be able to give us some information.” Ferguson is also impressed with Hulk. “I’m surprised he’s not in the Brazilian squad. He’s a big, powerful lad with a good left foot.”

Henrique, meanwhile, sounds like the ideal model of a continental-style director of football. Unlike the Porto coach, Jesualdo Ferreira, Henrique has a long-term contract. “He’s a very good manager,” says the former Porto assistant Jan Olde Riekerink, now in charge of Ajax’s youth set-up but who worked with Co Adriaanse when Porto won the double in 2005-06, Lucho and López’s first season in Portugal. “He has a lot of contacts everywhere so they always manage to pick the right players.” Among those contacts are Fernando Hidalgo, a prominent Argentine agent, and his sometime associate Pini Zahavi, arguably football’s most influential fixer.

“Javier Mascherano and Lucho were the big stars of River Plate, and Porto needed a player like Lucho at the time,” says Zahavi, who recommended him to Henrique. “There were not so many Argentine players at the time.”

What are Lucho and Lisandro’s qualities? “Lisandro is more explosive, an individual character who’s creative and focuses on scoring – he has more difficulty dealing with disappointment,” says Olde Riekerink. “Lucho is a very stable personality, quiet, more of a team player. He’s now the full-time leader.

“Lucho was important [in the 2006 double team] but for Lisandro it was difficult because he played on the right, then the left and did not always start because our system was 3-4-2-1 so we needed a striker who could take the first ball and let others play.”

Lucho and Lisandro’s success led, in time, to the extension of the Pampas Family. “We opened the way to the other Argentines,” said Lucho, “and have been important for them in adapting when they arrived. As a group, we’re very together.” It is a sentiment echoed by Lisandro. “I have always been treated very well,” says the 26-year-old, who has 43 goals in 100 league games and 12 in 26 Champions League appearances for the club. “So I gave good recommendations to those who arrived later.”

The first of those was Ernesto Farías, a striker, in 2007. Last summer he was followed by Nelson Benítez and the midfielders Tomás Costa and Mariano González, who was an unused substitute in Argentina’s 2004 Olympic gold-winning team (Lucho started the final, which was won by a Carlos Tevez goal). Andrés Madrid signed on loan from Braga in January and only one of Porto’s Argentines – Mario Bolatti, who is on a temporary deal at Huracán in his homeland – is not in Tuesday’s squad.

Benítez, a 24-year-old defender, is pleased the club has invested in so many of his countrymen. “We have a winning mentality. It makes us proud to have so many Argentines here.”

Porto are the outsiders of the eight remaining teams, yet the low level of expectation will do little to alleviate the pressure on Ferreira, who has won the league title in his first two seasons at Porto. “There’s little to be won and much to lose because plenty of others have won titles with Porto,” Ferreira says wearily when asked about his future, despite the club again leading the championship. “Only in England do coaches have long contracts. When mine expires we’ll have to see if I’m still here.”

It will be difficult for Porto on Tuesday, though if United lose today in front of their own crowd against Aston Villa it would be a third consecutive defeat and a signal of a definite slump at the most important part of the season.

Lucho, who with Lisandro was in the Argentina squad that suffered a record 6–1 defeat in Bolivia on Wednesday, suggests his team are ready to exploit any weakness. “We want to go as far as possible in the Champions League – the traditions of this club demand that.”

Sir Alex Ferguson has denied as “absolute nonsense” allegations of a training-ground bust-up between himself and Wayne Rooney and has poured scorn on reports that this may have led to the striker being benched for Manchester United’s game against Fulham two weeks ago.

The affair is a further unwanted distraction following reports yesterday that a deal to take Cristiano Ronaldo from United to Real Madrid this summer is in place. Sources have claimed to Observer Sport that the deal was completed as long ago as September and that both sides signed a confidentiality agreement. The news comes at a crucial point for United as they hope to bounce back from consecutive Premier League defeats when Aston Villa visit Old Trafford today.

The pressure on them to defeat Villa heightened yesterday when Liverpool won at Fulham courtesy of a stoppage-time goal from Yossi Benayoun. The substitute’s strike lifted Liverpool top of the Premier League, two points clear of United, who have two games in hand.

United’s visit to Craven Cottage had been less successful. They lost 2–0 there, having been defeated 4–1 by Liverpool the previous weekend. Rooney played the full 90 minutes of the Liverpool game, but Ferguson then decided he should be a replacement for the awkward visit to Fulham, despite knowing victory would have frustrated Liverpool’s resurgence.

Instead, with United losing at half-time, Ferguson introduced Rooney who was sent off after accruing two yellow cards, incurring a one-match ban, which means Ferguson cannot select him today.

After England’s 4–0 victory over Slovakia last weekend, in which Rooney scored twice, Mark Lawrenson, the former Liverpool defender who is now a BBC summariser, said: “Everybody knows he had a massive row with Fergie after the Liverpool game and was then left out against Fulham. It is an ongoing problem, but if anyone can deal with it, it is Sir Alex.”

Ferguson, though, when asked if he was aware of Lawrenson’s comments, insisted that there had been no row. “I was made aware of it. Absolute nonsense. I don’t know where that came from, but the revealing part of it is ‘everybody knows’, but I didn’t know and I was in there. These people self-promote but who the hell’s bothered about it? Nobody followed it up which tells you everything because if there was any truth you’d have found out.”

Rooney is one of several players unavailable to Ferguson, including Paul Scholes, who also received a red card at Fulham, and Nemanja Vidic, who was dismissed against Liverpool. Dimitar Berbatov is ruled out for a fortnight because of injury and Carlos Tevez returned only yesterday from Argentina’s 6–1 defeat to Bolivia.

This has forced Ferguson to consider selecting the little-known Italian striker Federico Macheda, a 17-year-old who scored a hat-trick for the reserves in the week and who will be at least a substitute this afternoon. “Berbatov and Rooney missing is a bad blow to us, but it’s there and there’s nothing we can do about it,” said Ferguson. “I’ve got options of course. I could play Ronaldo through the middle, I could play [Danny] Welbeck, I could play Macheda or I could play [Ryan] Giggs – the great thing is the flexibility of players, Giggs, Ronaldo, those types.

“The boy Macheda is developing at a great rate of speed now, his performances for the reserves have been very good, he’s a natural finisher and he’ll definitely be on the bench at least with Welbeck.”Ferguson did not comment on Ronaldo’s future but accepted the 24-year-old has been unable to reproduce the form of last season that ended with him scoring a career-high 42 goals. “The one that isn’t on the level of last year is Ronaldo, but he’ll still score more than 20 goals.”

Usain Bolt, however, was less circumspect, branding Ronaldo a “wuss”. The double Olympic sprint champion is due to give United a training session on 16 May before their penultimate game of the season against Arsenal. “The first thing I’m going to tell him: stop acting like a wuss,” he said. “Seriously, because the fact why his game is kind of down right now is because these guys are picking on him because he’s so soft. No one in football will try it with Rooney. Ronaldo’s got to be a little like Rooney, he’s got to be aggressive, then these guys will stop picking on him. If Ronaldo’s aggressive back to these guys, and gets a few red cards, people will stop picking on him.”

Bolton’s fiery manager features as an orangutan, Rolf Harris and a happy little raincloud in this week’s Photoshop fun. Now send us your Harry Redknapp