The Sport Matrix: Wednesday 7 January 2015

City closing in on £25m striker Bony

Swansea striker Wilfried Bony was last night moving closer to a £25m move to Manchester City. The Premier League champions have struggled for forwards this season, with Sergio Aguero, Edin Dzeko and Stevan Jovetic all spending spells out injured. Arsenal, Liverpool and Tottenham have all been linked with the Ivory Coast forward, currently away on international duty ahead of the African Cup of Nations.

New Europe captain known next month

Outgoing Europe captain Paul McGinley says his successor for next year’s Ryder Cup will be announced by the end of next month. “We are pretty far down the road,” the Irishman said, with Darren Clarke favourite. “Within a maximum of six weeks we’ll have a new captain in place and be getting ready for Hazeltine.” McGinley led Europe to a comfortable victory at Gleneagles last September.

Brazil’s World Cup now a nightmare

Six months have passed since last summer’s World Cup and Brazil finds itself lumbered with a number of huge, largely empty stadiums, which are having to host everything from Bon Jovi gigs to gospel concerts to keep pace with high maintenance bills. Ewan MacKenna examines the problems facing the country in the aftermath of the event, with locals angry at the perceived wasted expenditure.

Peacock faces backlash after sexist tweets

Former Chelsea, Queen’s Park Rangers and Newcastle United midfielder Gavin Peacock has faced a Twitter backlash after posting a series of bizarre, sexist messages.

Peacock worked as a pundit after retiring from the game but in 2008 announced he was quitting and became a pastor in Canada.

The 47-year-old, who played nearly 600 games for six different clubs, yesterday posted a bizarre rant rooted in biblical verse that stated wives should “respect your husband by gladly submitting to and encouraging his leadership”. He also said “God’s divine design for marriage in male headship and female submission is complementary not competitive”.

Peacock has faced a backlash over his views, with hundreds of Twitter users calling the comments “sexist” and “outdated nonsense”. His former BBC colleague Jacqui Oatley also questioned the tweets.

Moores: sacking Cook was ‘brave’

England coach Peter Moores believes the decision to sack captain Alastair Cook ahead of the World Cup was “brave”.

“It felt like the right thing,” Moores said, “so we moved [to do it]. We’ve got the right people on the plane so we’ve got to go there and perform.”