Untung99

* New manager calls for unity to reignite fans’ passion * Rennes winger Kamaldeen Sulemana also wanted Everton confirmed Sean Dyche as their manager on Monday and set about trying to strengthen his squad by making a bid worth up to £45m for Chelsea’s Conor Gallagher and pursuing the Rennes winger Kamaldeen Sulemana. Other clubs are interested in Gallagher, who was part of England’s World Cup squad in Qatar and has started nine Premier League games this season, including the past two against Crystal Palace and Liverpool. Everton’s offer is £40m with the rest in add-ons. It is unlikely the 22-year-old will want a move to Goodison Park. Continue reading...

Upset averted. If indeed it would have been considered such. This was one of those “no win” fixtures, a Championship staple at home to lower-league high-flyers. In the end, Stoke City navigated their way past Stevenage with relative comfort. Certainly, the scoreline did not flatter Alex Neil’s side, who took an early lead through Jacob Brown before largely dominating. Continue reading...

National League leaders eye another FA Cup upset on Sunday and are striving to attract local talent to their academy Wrexham’s short-term ambitions are clear to everyone. The Welsh club famous for having two Hollywood actor owners desperately want to quickly exit the National League and have invested significantly in the playing squad so there are no delays to the club’s return to the Football League. They sit top of the table and, although underdogs despite claiming the scalp of Coventry in the the last round, few would be surprised if they pulled off an FA Cup upset against the Championship’s Sheffield United on Sunday. Success on the pitch will help with their plans off it as the club plot building a new academy to provide a solid foundation for their long-term plans. Continue reading...

Rangers eased past 10-man St Johnstone with a 2-0 victory in a controversial Premiership game at Ibrox. On the day Todd Cantwell made his Rangers debut, captain James Tavernier smashed home a penalty in the 15th minute before the referee, Willie Collum, took centre stage. He showed a red card to the Saints striker Nicky Clark in the 33rd minute for a foul on Ryan Jack, with the VAR check upholding the decision. Collum then stuck with his decision to give Jack a yellow card for a late tackle on Adam Montgomery after checking the pitchside monitor. Continue reading...

Reading manager was a one-man wrecking crew in his Manchester United pomp but his legacy there is complicated Everybody remembers the story of how Sir Alex Ferguson broke up a party at Lee Sharpe’s house, with Ryan Giggs also there, mainly because it was so hilarious and for the way that both of the Manchester United players have told it. According to Sharpe, before Ferguson absolutely carpeted him and Giggs, the manager “had the face on with bits of froth at the corners of his mouth”. Not everybody will remember what Ferguson did next. He sent Giggs to live with Paul Ince for six months or so in an attempt to keep his young star on the straight and narrow. At which point, it is probably worth clarifying that it was not just Ince – rather Ince and his wife, Claire. Continue reading...

Pep Guardiola recalled how Mikel Arteta would never celebrate goals scored against Arsenal – whom he played for and captained – during his time at Manchester City. 'When we scored a lot of goals with our opponents, always he jumped and celebrated. Except for one team – Arsenal,' he said Continue reading...

* Accusations of misconduct relate to two tournaments * Felix Sohounde Peperipé denies wrongdoing The Confederation of African Football media officer provisionally banned for five years after it was claimed he sexually abused a female official in his hotel room during the African Nations Championship in Algeria has been accused of offering to pay another official to “come to his room” at a previous tournament. Felix Sohounde Peperipé – a Beninese journalist who has been working as one of the confederation’s media officers on a freelance basis during the tournament for African players playing in their national leagues – was sent home this week after a hearing of the Caf disciplinary committee in Algiers. Continue reading...

Working as an assistant at Bristol City has been an eye-opener – a mix of overthinking, mental exhaustion and enjoyment Welcome to Moving the Goalposts, the Guardian’s free women’s football newsletter. Here’s an extract from this week’s edition. To receive the full version once a week, just pop your email in below: Coaching wasn’t alien to me. My first experience came in the US when I worked at some of the summer camps connected to Sky Blue FC (now NJ/NY Gotham FC), the club I was playing for at the time. I would get to go out into different areas within New Jersey, meet local football clubs and work with youth players across different ages. Sometimes with really young children, from age six all the way through to 14 and 15. Continue reading...

Faye Carruthers wraps up a weather-affected weekend of WSL action with the help of Suzanne Wrack, Sophie Downey and James Lewis In this week’s pod: hands up if you actually saw some football this weekend? Don’t worry, who needs football when Chelsea are opening a new ice rink at Kingsmeadow? On a serious note, postponements are top of the agenda, followed by Manchester United moving top of the table, Aston Villa taking more points from Manchester City and Everton’s youngsters running the show against West Ham. Continue reading...

There were over 40 goals across the weekend as the league returned from its winter break in brilliant but chaotic fashion You know when a driver, frustrated in traffic, finally sees a stretch of open road and blazes off with inappropriate and unwarranted speed into the middle distance? Welcome back, the Bundesliga. German football’s first domestic action in nearly 10 weeks was a dizzying assault on the senses, a torrent of copper from an arcade coin pusher machine, a stream of consciousness from a chatterbox that has been starved of company and has stayed silent all day. It all started on Friday night in Leipzig, where fireworks were expected in a face off between the league’s two best teams. Instead, the visit of Bayern was more about measure and respectful distances. After a bleak midwinter of fretting over a replacement for the injured Manuel Neuer, the champions bedded in Yann Sommer, signed on Thursday and making his debut, characteristically unruffled, the day after. It was an

* Defender moves to Molineux on two-and-a-half-year contract * Dawson not signed in time to play at Manchester City Wolves have completed the signing of Craig Dawson from West Ham. The centre-back returns to the Midlands having spent a large chunk of his playing career at West Brom before moving to London in 2019. Dawson joins Wolves for a £3.3m fee after weeks of speculation, in which the West Ham manager, David Moyes, was critical of Julen Lopetegui’s club for allegedly making their interest in the defender public earlier this month. Continue reading...

The Nottingham Forest manager, Steve Cooper, toasted a special moment for his striker Sam Surridge after the substitute claimed his first Premier League goal to snatch a draw at his former club Bournemouth. Forest looked set to slip to defeat at the Vitality Stadium after Jaidon Anthony’s opener before Surridge, a graduate from the Bournemouth academy, poked home a milestone strike seven minutes from time. Continue reading...

* Midfielder wants big rise to show club value him * Liverpool putting plans in place for summer move Chelsea are stepping up attempts to agree a new contract with Mason Mount in the face of the growing prospect of Liverpool trying to buy the midfielder this summer. Mount has 18 months on his deal and Chelsea, who are weighing up whether to increase their offer for Brighton’s Moises Caicedo, are yet to meet his wage demands. The uncertainty has led to questions over whether negotiations will come to a successful conclusion and Liverpool, who are planning a rebuild of their midfield, are prepared to act on their interest in the England international if the situation drags on. Continue reading...

* Former Crawley manager responds after ban to June 2024 * ‘I find it very offensive for people to say I’m racist,’ he says The former Crawley manager John Yems believes he is “owed an apology” despite having committed 12 aggravated breaches of Football Association rules on discrimination. Yems was found by an independent FA panel to have called players in his squad “curry munchers”, “terrorists” and “Zulu warriors” among a range of slurs and banned him from football until June 2024. In an unrepentant interview on TalkSport on Thursday, however, Yems downplayed the seriousness of the charges he faced and insinuated the original complaints had been manufactured by players with grievances against him. Continue reading...

Braga's teenage goalkeeper João Carvalho dazzled an onrushing attacker before clearing the ball in the closing moments of an under-23 match. His side were leading Rio Ave 2-1 at the time and held on to win Continue reading...

Max Rushden is joined by Nicky Bandini, Lars Sivertsen and Philippe Auclair for the first Europod of 2023 Rate, review, share on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud, Acast and Stitcher, and join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter and email. We begin in Serie A after Napoli thrash Juventus 5-1 to keep clear on top of the table with a nine-point gap. Will Luciano Spalletti keep them there? Continue reading...

* Summit of the World Economic Forum starts there on Monday * Club insist it will be used to meet existing clients and partners Manchester United set out a dazzling Davos shop front this week but insisted its lounge was to entertain clients and partners rather than to attract buyers during the annual summit of the World Economic Forum, which begins on Monday. United said in November they were looking at options to either get new investment or explore a potential sale, 17 years after the Glazer family bought the club. Continue reading...

On a day when the memory of the late, great Gianluca Vialli acted as a unifying force, it felt imperative for Chelsea’s players to show pride in the badge. Anything less would have been a betrayal. Chelsea’s fans simply wanted evidence of some heart, anything to suggest another manager is not about to be forced out, and the result was that Graham Potter could feel the pressure lightening a little by the time this flawed contest was done. The relief was immense when Kai Havertz, accepting the responsibility that comes with a £62m fee, barrelled in a header midway through the second half. Havertz’s sixth goal of the season calmed the noise. It brought Chelsea their second win in 10 games and, although it took some fine saves from Kepa Arrizabalaga to deny Crystal Palace a point, victory at least gives Potter some breathing space. Continue reading...

* Kenwright and Barrett-Baxendale among those absent * Club call decision ‘unprecedented’ and ‘profoundly sad day’ Everton’s board of directors missed the Premier League defeat by Southampton at Goodison Park due to what the club described as “a real and credible threat to their safety and security.” The unprecedented move was announced before a sit-in demonstration against the board by thousands of Everton fans, who called on owner Farhad Moshiri to make “sweeping changes” at chair, board and executive levels. Moshiri dismissed those demands in a letter to the Everton Fans’ Forum this week, prompting the resignation of several members of the forum plus Fan Advisory Board. Continue reading...

* Talks ongoing but up-front fee of more than £50m expected * Chelsea also interested but forward prefers Arsenal move Arsenal are closing in on a deal to sign Mykhaylo Mudryk from Shakhtar Donetsk for an eventual fee of up to £80m, meaning their long pursuit of the player is on the verge of a successful conclusion. Mudryk has been Mikel Arteta’s top winter target but negotiations with the Ukrainian champions, who drive a notoriously hard bargain, have not been straightforward. Nor are they complete, with the nature of add-ons and terms of payment understood to be the biggest remaining sticking points, but the sides are within touching distance of a final fee. Continue reading...

Defender overcame a slow start and ahead of Saturday’s derby is contesting aerial challenges like a piranha on a trampoline After one minute of Manchester United’s game against Liverpool in August, you knew: Lisandro Martínez is for real. Because that was when he clattered, then barged through Mohamed Salah for no apparent reason and no obvious gain. English football’s frequently toxic and forever self-mythologising rhetoric tells us this is just how big men behave. But reality is different: save, perhaps, an airport, there’s nowhere safer to start a row than on a Premier League pitch, because the chances of reprisals are almost zero. Consider, for example, Martin Keown and Ruud van Nistelrooy: jumping on someone from behind works well in football’s posturing pantomime, but in a square go the sensible money would be on the martial artist able to exercise self-control because he knows there’s no serious threat. Continue reading...

Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now! Chelsea have always spent big. They’ve been spendthrifts since time immemorial. Full marks for ambition, though you never quite know how their sprees are going to work out. In the 1930s and 1940s, for example, they broke the bank for stars such as Hughie Gallacher and Tommy Lawton, only for the former to spend most of his time being cashiered through saloon doors along the Kings Rahd, and the latter to take about five minutes to decide he’d rather play for third-tier Notts County instead. Or how about the ££££££s spaffed in the 1970s on the luxurious state-of-the-art East Stand, a behemoth that nearly bankrupted the club? Or the cash Ken Bates spent in the 1980s on electric wire and other gear? Actually we’re not quite sure how to quantify that. Robert Fleck for £2.1m was a bum deal, we know that much for sure. Re: memories of Gareth Bale (yesterday’s Quote of the Day). Among the other better-known moments, picture a warm summer’s e

Manchester City's manager, Pep Guardiola, joked that Gareth Bale will now become "fantastic" at golf following his retirement from playing football. Wales legend Bale called time on his playing days following a stellar career that included over 100 international caps and a nine-year stay with Real Madrid. Guardiola and Bale both share a love of golf, and the Spaniard said that he would extend an invite the 33-year-old retiree to play a round with him as "maybe now he will have the time". * Joy of the playground defined Bale more than records or trophies * Bale announces retirement from football: ‘I have realised my dream’ Continue reading...

Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now! This may or may not be the sort of behaviour you’d expect from a long-running regular email service that changes its name on a whim, but Football Daily would like to retract everything it said yesterday about the FA Cup being the stuff of dreams. Yes, yes, Stevenage this, Sheffield Wednesday that, Boreham Wood the other, but when it comes to tales of the unexpected, the League Cup is really where it’s at. Put it this way: when was the last time a Fourth Division team got to the final of the FA Cup, like Bradford did in the 2013 League equivalent, or Rochdale in 1962? The fifth of never, that’s when! So, yeah, QED. Admittedly six of the last nine League Cups have been won by Manchester City, with Chelsea, Manchester United and Liverpool winning the other three, while Wigan and Leicester have lifted the FA Cup in the interim, but as the League Cup roll of honour also features Swindon, QPR, Oxford, Luton, Norwich and Swansea, Football D

* FA to speak to Sheffield Wednesday and Newcastle officials * Newcastle fans post footage of congestion issues in stadium A survivor of the Hillsborough disaster insists lessons have still not been learned after Newcastle fans complained of overcrowding at their FA Cup third-round defeat by Sheffield Wednesday on Saturday. The Football Association is to speak to officials from both clubs after footage emerged on social media of congestion around the exit to the tunnel in the Leppings Lane End, with reports of fans ripping out security screening to give themselves more room. Continue reading...

* Manager made eight changes for match at Sheffield Wednesday * Howe: ‘We don’t have the deepest squad in the Premier League’ Eddie Howe has defended his decision to make wholesale changes to his side for Newcastle United’s shock FA Cup third round defeat at Sheffield Wednesday on Saturday night, explaining that fatigue played its part. With half an eye on Tuesday’s home Carabao Cup quarter-final against Leicester, Howe made eight changes to the team which had earned a draw at Arsenal on Tuesday. But the decision backfired when Josh Windass’s second-half double ended Newcastle’s 15-game unbeaten run and sent them out of the competition to League One opponents for the second consecutive season. Continue reading...

It was only briefly sunny in Coventry. It was otherwise rain-lashed and windy. Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, Wrexham’s proprietors, had stayed away, presumably waiting for a Premier League club in the next round. In their absence, their team prevailed after a chaotic, dramatic FA Cup tie. It doubtless made for high-quality streaming content in showing off the old competitions’s finest win-or-bust essence, even if McElhenney complained on social media that his feed had crashed during the game. A National League club, even one with Disney financing, takes its place in this year’s fourth round draw. Now, does that actually count as a giantkilling? Continue reading...

The former Italy striker Gianluca Vialli has died at the age of 58. Vialli, who played for Chelsea during a stellar career before going to become the club’s manager, had been undergoing treatment for pancreatic cancer. Vialli began his career at Cremonese, his hometown club, before going on to star in Serie A for Sampdoria and Juventus, ending his playing career at Chelsea before going into management and coaching. He was part of the backroom team that beat England in the final to win Euro 2020 and recently announced that he would be stepping away from his role as delegation chief with the Italy team to focus on his cancer treatment. Vialli announced he had undergone radiotherapy and chemotherapy in November 2018, having been diagnosed with cancer one year earlier. He was initially given the all-clear in April 2020, but in December 2021 he announced the disease had returned. * Gianluca Vialli, former Italy, Juventus and Chelsea striker, dies aged 58 Continue reading...

Manchester United’s improved fortunes under the Dutchman are primarily a result of structure and accountability There is no need for a deep dive into how Erik ten Hag has changed Manchester United tactically since arriving as head coach last summer. The key difference is obvious and it is not about tactics: he has brought discipline where it was lacking. Various players have mentioned in interviews that there is now a structure and accountability. There is evidence of the change in attitude with Ten Hag publicly naming those who need to improve. Continue reading...

* Midfielder joins on 18-month deal with option to extend * Nobbs says she is leaving ‘love of my life’ after ‘fairytale’ stay Aston Villa have signed the England midfielder Jordan Nobbs from Arsenal. The 30-year-old, who missed the Lionesses’ victorious European Championship campaign with a knee ligament injury, has an 18-month deal with an option to extend. Nobbs won three Women’s Super League titles and four Women’s FA Cups during a 12-year spell with Arsenal and returned to the England squad for last September’s World Cup qualifiers against Austria and Luxembourg. Continue reading...

More than 30,000 Grêmio fans filled the Brazilian club's arena in Porto Alegre to welcome striker Luis Suárez. The 35-year-old signed a two-year contract in a free transfer after his contract with Uruguay's Nacional ended. Three-time Copa Libertadores winner Grêmio will return to Brazil's top flight division after a shocking relegation in 2021. It will be the eighth club in Suárez' career, which includes stints at Ajax, Liverpool, Barcelona and Atlético Madrid. Continue reading...

* Manager’s long-term future unknown after abysmal run of form * Lampard needs result against Manchester United in the Cup Frank Lampard will be in charge of Everton for their FA Cup third-round tie at Manchester United on Friday amid doubts over his long-term future at Goodison Park. The Everton manager is under severe pressure following a run of eight defeats in 11 matches in all competitions and one win from 10 Premier League games. Continue reading...

The Takagawa Gakuen high school football team in Japan used a technique of their own invention to take a free-kick, as three players kneeled in front of the wall, while three attackers danced in a circle next to the ball. Despite the effort being unsuccessful, it was not the first time the team have gone viral for using strange tactics. In 2021 a similar technique was far more successful, as one of their players stood alone in the six-yard box while five others danced in a circle on the edge before darting off in different directions.   Continue reading...

* Fifa president makes comment while in Brazil for Pelé’s funeral * Rio de Janeiro halted plans to name Maracanã after Pelé in 2021 Fifa will ask every country in the world to name a stadium in honour of Pelé, its president, Gianni Infantino, said on Monday. Pelé, the Brazil great who won the World Cup three times and scored more than 1,000 goals, died last Thursday aged 82. Continue reading...

* Celtic ‘extremely saddened’ by McGarvey’s death * Ex-player diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last year Tributes have been paid to the former Celtic and St Mirren striker Frank McGarvey, who has died at the age of 66. McGarvey, who also played for Queen of the South and Clyde and won seven caps for Scotland, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last year. Celtic said in a statement: “Everyone at Celtic is extremely saddened to hear of the death of former striker Frank McGarvey, who passed away earlier this morning at the age of 66. The thoughts and prayers of everyone at Celtic are with Frank’s family at this extremely sad time.” Continue reading...

Barcelona missed the chance to pull clear of Real Madrid at the top of La Liga after they were held to a 1-1 home draw by their local rivals Espanyol in a bad-tempered clash in which both sides were reduced to 10 men. Madrid had taken top spot on Friday with a 2-0 win at Real Valladolid, putting pressure on Barcelona to respond against an Espanyol side battling to avoid relegation. Continue reading...

* Striker comes off bench to hit United’s winner at Wolves * ‘Everyone has to follow the rules,’ says United manager Erik ten Hag praised Marcus Rashford’s reaction after the striker stepped off the bench to clinch victory at Wolves having been dropped for being late to a team meeting because he overslept. Ten Hag reiterated that all of his players must play by the rules after Rashford missed Manchester United’s pre-match meeting. Rashford entered at half-time in place of Alejandro Garnacho and scored the only goal of the game to help United into the top four for the first time this season. Continue reading...