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• ‘It’s impossible to replace Bruno … we need more leaders’

• United host Newcastle in Premier League on Boxing Day

Ruben Amorim has described Bruno Fernandes as “impossible to replace” but has told Manchester United’s players the captain’s injury is a chance for them to step up.

Fernandes was forced off at half-time of Sunday’s loss at Aston Villa owing to a soft-tissue injury that will rule him out for a prolonged period. United host Newcastle in Boxing Day’s only Premier League fixture and Amorim was asked how he could compensate for Fernandes’s absence when the 31-year-old’s deputy, Kobbie Mainoo, is also injured.

Egypt forward could change face of a league so far mostly reliant on ageing stars and alter perception of football in the Arab world

Mohamed Salah has made an impact in Morocco with an injury-time winner to spare Egypt’s blushes in their Africa Cup of Nations opener against Zimbabwe but his future intervention in Saudi Arabia could be more meaningful. A Saudi Pro League (SPL) that had been moving away from signing big-name veterans is tempted by a player who will be 34 just as this season ends.

Although players such as Cristiano Ronaldo and Karim Benzema have been successes on and off the pitch, albeit incredibly expensive ones, the powers that be don’t want the SPL to be regarded as a retirement league in the sun for stars whose powers are waning. But Salah is different, the attraction intensified by the fact that he is the biggest-name player in the Arab world.

• Algeria win 3-0 as Adel sees red | Burkina Faso 2-1 E Guinea

• Côte d’Ivoire 1-0 Mozambique | Cameroon 1-0 Gabon

Riyad Mahrez scored twice as Algeria launched their Africa Cup of Nations campaign with a comfortable 3-0 Group E win over 10-man Sudan in Rabat.

The Desert Warriors were ahead within two minutes when the former Leicester and Manchester City winger ran on to Hicham Boudaoui’s clever backheel and fired past the Sudan keeper Monged Abuzaid.

US lifestyle entrepreneur joins Snoop Dogg and Luka Modric by making minority investment in the Welsh club

The American lifestyle personality Martha Stewart has become the latest celebrity to become a co-owner of Swansea City football club.

Stewart will join the rapper Snoop Dogg and the footballer Luka Modric as a minority owner of the Welsh club, which plays in the second tier of England’s football pyramid. The announcement was made in a post on the club’s website by two of its owners, Brett Cravatt and Jason Cohen. The post did not disclose the size of the investment.

Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Magalhães among those playing games with children, some of whom have been receiving treatment for several years

There’s a buzz going around Great Ormond Street hospital’s Koala ward. After the England captain, Leah Williamson, and her Arsenal teammate Steph Catley visited the previous week, rumours have been spreading that there could be some more very special guests arriving in the buildup to Christmas.

“I think there’s a little bit of a rumble,” says Danny Bell, a specialist paediatric physiotherapist in neuro-oncology who works with children recovering from brain tumours. “I can see an Arsenal shirt out there, so that might just be a very big coincidence! They may know the team involved, but I don’t think they know any individuals. So I’m really looking forward to seeing their faces as it dawns on them who is going to be here.”

• Manchester City in advanced talks over £65m winger

• Bournemouth winger has release clause in January

Manchester City are in pole position to sign Antoine Semenyo after Chelsea cooled their interest in the Bournemouth winger.

Liverpool and Manchester United have also been pushing for Semenyo, whose contract contains a £65m release clause that becomes active for the first two weeks of January, but it is believed that the 25-year-old’s preference is to join City. The clause is made up of a £60m fixed fee and £5m in add-ons. Nothing has been agreed yet.

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Jonathan Wilson and John Brewin for a special festive Q&A

Rate, review, share on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud, Acast and Stitcher, and join the conversation on email.

On the podcast today: in what is now a Christmas tradition, the panel gather at the podcast hearth to answer your questions, on topics ranging from the moments of the year to their worst interviews.

• Everton manager laments inconsistency of officials

• ‘Certain clubs get those decisions and others don’t’

David Moyes has claimed Professional Game Match Officials (PGMO) is reluctant to engage with managers because so many refereeing ­decisions this season have been difficult to explain. The Everton manager said he was left “half-choking” when Fulham were awarded what proved to be a match-winning penalty against Nottingham Forest on Monday for Douglas Luiz’s touch on Fulham’s Kevin.

Everton were denied a penalty on Saturday for a similar offence by William Saliba on Thierno Barry during their home defeat by Arsenal. Moyes did not criticise the decision at the time but in light of Fulham’s penalty feels the inconsistency of referees can not be ignored.

Ownership of Frauen-Bundesliga is being taken over by the clubs, who want to keep pace with game in England

“The reason we started this whole process was a fear of losing more and more the connection to the top,” says Katharina Kiel, the head of women’s football at Eintracht Frankfurt.

Alongside her role at one of Germany’s more successful women’s football teams, Kiel was this month elected president of the new Women’s Bundesliga Association, after all 14 clubs agreed to split from the German Football Federation (DFB) and form their own committee to take ownership of the league to further commercialise and grow it, with the 2027-28 campaign a targeted start date.

With just one top-flight Boxing Day fixture this year, our cartoonist takes a look at how players, coaches and officials might spend their time

• David’s favourite cartoons of 2025 | Buy one here

• And his latest book, Chaos in the Box: get it now

Ousmane Dembélé becomes our seventh winner as he beats Lamine Yamal into second and Vitinha into third on our list of the best players on the planet

• Premier League dominates list | How every judge voted | Our methodology | The top 100 female players for 2025

• 2024 edition | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012

This competition may not be Mikel Arteta or Oliver Glasner’s top priority this season but that didn’t stop their sides from producing a spectacle full of blood and thunder.

It was one-way traffic for Arsenal in the first half but they found Crystal Palace’s second-string goalkeeper Walter Benítez in an inspired mood as he kept his team in the contest with some fine saves.

• Proposal meets with resistance from players union

• Guardian rankings will be among criteria for exception

The NWSL introduced a new “High Impact Player Rule” on Tuesday that allows teams to exceed the salary cap by up to $1m to help attract and retain star players. The rule goes into effect on 1 July 2026.

One of the first players who could potentially benefit from the new rule is Washington Spirit forward Trinity Rodman, who reportedly has received lucrative offers from teams in Europe.

• Liverpool head coach says Isak out for ‘couple of months’

• Spurs counterpart says ‘true defenders’ have to challenge

Thomas Frank has hit back at Arne Slot after the Liverpool head coach criticised Micky van de Ven for a “reckless” challenge that left Alexander Isak with a fractured leg. Tottenham’s head coach said Van de Ven’s attempt to prevent Isak from scoring in Liverpool’s 2-1 win at Spurs was the “natural reaction” of a true defender and that his player had spoken to the Sweden international to apologise.

Liverpool will be without their record £125m signing “for a couple of months”, Slot confirmed on Tuesday. Isak had surgery on Monday to repair an ankle injury that includes a fractured fibula.

• Rowett departs with club two points from safety

• Oxford have one win from their past 10 matches

Oxford United have sacked Gary Rowett with the club 22nd in the Championship, two points from the last safe spot.

The former Birmingham, Derby, Stoke and Millwall manager was appointed on 20 December 2024 after the departure of Des Buckingham, who had led Oxford to promotion from League One in the 2023-24 season.

• Italian replaces Rehanne Skinner at east London club

• ‘I want to build a team that is aggressive with the ball’

Rita Guarino​ has declared herself “really excited” about the project at West Ham after being confirmed as the club’s new head coach on Monday.

Guarino has signed a contract until 2027 with West Ham, as the Guardian reported on Sunday, replacing Rehanne Skinner, who was sacked on Thursday after two-and-a-half years in charge of the Women’s Super League side. Her first game in charge will be the trip to the champions Chelsea on 11 January, following the WSL’s winter break. The 54-year-old former Juventus head coach takes charge with her new side 11th in the table.

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Sanny Rudravajhala and George Elek as Manchester United and Bournemouth play out a thrilling 4-4 draw. On the podcast today; lots of fun to be had at Old Trafford as Manchester United and Bournemouth draw 4-4. But how to analyse a game that wild? Let’s hope the panel have some ideas. Elsewhere, Coventry City lead the Championship with a reinvigorated Middlesbrough led by Kim Hellberg in second. Plus, Cardiff City and Walsall lead the way in Leagues One and Two respectively and your questions answered.

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The Croatia legend on his return to Dinamo Zagreb, his fall out with Uefa and the ‘shameful’ actions of Gianni Infantino

An afternoon mist is descending over Stadion Maksimir, enhancing the severity of its dramatic, precipitous angles. In a building across the way, Zvonimir Boban is explaining what brought him back. We are eating squid ink risotto in one corner of a room now configured as Dinamo Zagreb’s canteen; diagonally opposite is the spot where, fighting through the club’s youth system, a young arrival from Dalmatia used to sleep. “Emotionally it’s the biggest story of my life, this one,” Boban says, memories of this former dormitory leaping into his mind’s eye. “Where, if not here?”

He has, in some shape or form, been almost everywhere else. Boban has burned brightly but briefly in each of his various lives as a football administrator. The sport would look different were it not for his influence in senior roles at Fifa and Uefa across the past decade. Almost two years have passed since his high-profile resignation from the latter and there was always the sense Boban, opinionated and deeply principled, had further rungs to climb.

Political backbiting has led to accusations Fifa is running the show as tournament switches to four-year cycle

It was a decision that took many by surprise, although not those who have been watching closely since February 2020. Members of the Confederation of African Football’s (Caf) executive committee, along with various other dignitaries including George Weah, the former Ballon d’Or winner and president of Liberia at the time, were assembled in Rabat at a seminar to hear Gianni Infantino outline his plan for the development of competitions and infrastructure in African football.

As well as improving standards in refereeing and mobilising investment in the continent’s infrastructure, the president of Fifa floated the prospect of holding its most important tournament, the Africa Cup of Nations, every four years instead of every two and described the current arrangement as “useless”. The argument ran that it would be more beneficial for countries “at the commercial level” and would help to “project African football to the top of the world”. “Let us show the world what we can do,” added Infantino. “This day is special – it’s the start of a new chapter for African football.”

A side that once looked resilient has collapsed into historic futility, with Wolves now facing the grim task of avoiding the worst season English league football has ever seen

Saturday’s defeat at home to Brentford means Wolves have taken just two points for 17 games. No side in the entire history of English league football, in any division, has ever made a worse start than that. To reach 11 points, the record low for a Premier League season set by Derby County in 2007-08, would require a significant improvement.

How can this have happened? Wolves finished 16th last season, recovering after a dismal start. When Vitor Pereira took over on 19 December last year, they were second bottom on nine points from 16 games. They picked up 23 points from the final 22 games of the season and effectively ended any prospect of relegation with a run of six successive victories in the spring. How can a team go from averaging near enough a point a game to a 10th of that? The drop-off is extraordinary.

This is an extract from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, a weekly look from the Guardian US at the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here. Have a question for Jonathan? Email soccerwithjw@theguardian.com, and he’ll answer the best in a future edition.

A fightback win over RB Leipzig before the Christmas break is just reward for coach who faced a thankless task

Leipzig might not be every Bundesliga fan’s idea of a weekend idyll but as the sun set on 2025, the venue for the final Saturday night Topspiel of the year might have been the scene of a minor Christmas miracle. It had already been a worthy showpiece to draw the curtains on pre-Christmas Bundesliga but the end result – achieved not without a smidgeon of controversy – left us with a satisfying tale to tell by an open fire over holiday season.

Bayer Leverkusen can enjoy their brief break with a rosy glow of satisfaction with their win against a direct competitor a clear measure of how far they have come; or, if you like, a measure of how far Kasper Hjulmand has taken them. Leverkusen sit third over the bridge to the new year which, if we were to return to the closure of the summer transfer window, looked a long way off.

Whoever wins season’s Scudetto is likely to crawl over the line and Juve have entered the picture

“When you say things like that, it makes me want to bite you,” Luciano Spalletti told a Sky Sport Italia reporter asking about title ambitions. Treating interviewers like a slice of panettone aside, the most shocking thing about this assertion is that it’s not entirely implausible. Juventus have barely scraped a few good performances, but the overwhelming sense of inconsistency throughout Serie A means that’s no reason to rule them out for the top prize.

Spalletti can tuck into his Christmas dinner knowing Juventus beat Roma 2-1 to close within a point of fourth place, securing three competitive wins in a row, with Loïs Openda finally breaking his Serie A duck, and Bremer returning for his first start sincehis meniscus tear on 27 September. The quality in the squad was always present, so with a little confidence, momentum and players beginning to gel with their new coach, there’s plenty for fans to get their teeth into.

Friends Tarryn Allarakhia and Haji Mnoga will step out together in Morocco having shared a path in the English lower leagues

Like all good things, Tarryn Allarakhia and Haji Mnoga’s friendship began at a National League match between Wealdstone and Aldershot in 2023 when they were opponents. Since then they have moved to the north-west and are heading into a second Africa Cup of Nations as Tanzania internationals together.

This is the fourth time Tanzania, who sit 112th in Fifa’s rankings, have qualified for the tournament but they are yet to secure a victory. In Côte d’Ivoire in 2023, Allarakhia and Mnoga were part of a squad that secured draws against Zambia and DR Congo, but that was not enough to get them out of the group. Nigeria, the highest-ranked side in the group, will be their first opponents on Tuesday before clashes with Tunisia and Uganda in Morocco for the Taifa Stars.

Morocco are the hosts and favourites for this year’s Afcon. How well do you remember previous tournaments?

• Which Premier League teams will be affected by Afcon?

• Mbappé makes it 59 goals in a year in win over Sevilla

• Juventus stay in Serie A race with 2-1 win over Roma

Kylian Mbappé equalled Cristiano Ronaldo’s record of 59 goals in a calendar year for Real Madrid with a late penalty in his side’s 2-0 home win over Sevilla in La Liga on Saturday, the French forward celebrating his 27th birthday in style.

Mbappé missed several earlier chances before getting his chance from the spot four minutes from time and he made no mistake to net his 59th goal in as many games across all competitions in 2025 to level Ronaldo’s 2013 haul.

• Patrice Motsepe reveals change on eve of tournament

• Caf event held every two years since inception in 1957

The Africa Cup of Nations will be held every four years instead of every two from 2028, the Confederation of African Football (Caf) has announced. The tournament, which brings in an estimated 80% of Caf’s revenue, has been held every two years since its inception in 1957. Sunday marks the start of the 35th edition, hosted in Morocco with the home team taking on Comoros.

The Caf president, Patrice Motsepe, said the next finals, scheduled for 2027 in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, will go ahead and another tournament would be held in 2028, but after that it will be hosted every four years.

England forward’s brilliance is proving difficult to stop but Unai Emery will surely not be able to keep relying on him every time

It is only two months since Morgan Rogers was standing on the Stadium of Light pitch, looking confused as Unai Emery berated him for failing to anticipate a through-ball as Aston Villa failed to beat a team that played for an hour with 10 men. At that point, as Villa went six without a win, it wasn’t clear whether Rogers’ form was a symptom or a cause of Villa’s more general malaise.

There was a volcanic touchline reaction from Emery on Sunday as well, but this was rather more positive. As Rogers swept in his second of the game to restore Villa’s lead, Emery ripped off his thick padded coat, spread his arms and roared. Villa were on their way to a 10th successive win and, having failed to win any of their first six games of the season, are somehow only three points behind the leaders Arsenal.

The Celtic manager wants to focus on the things that matter but after starting with four defeats he may not have the chance

Years ago when sport was good, you didn’t have optics. You just had what happened. And what happened was what you had seen happen.

Things are different now. If you haven’t lent into optics when discussing your underperforming team, then you’re missing out. One dictionary definition for you: Optics (1) “The way in which an event or course of action is perceived by the public.”

Fifa has made big mistakes over 2026 tournament but it can afford to slash prices and even give some tickets away

Who is the World Cup for? Fifa appeared to share some of its thinking on this topic in the past week. On the one hand, there was the revelation that spectators are being asked to pay more than twice as much for match tickets than they were in Qatar. On the other, the news that prize money for competing teams is to rise by more than 50% on four years ago. Stakeholders are doing good! Fans? Not so good.

It hasn’t taken long for some of those watching to wonder whether things could be done differently. Tom Greatrex, the chair of the Football Supporters’ Association, which represents fans in England and Wales, argued that the ability to pay expanded prize money, itself a result of expanded revenue, showed “there is no need to charge extortionate ticket prices to the supporters who bring the vibrancy to the World Cup”. You could go so far as to say there was never a real need to do it in the first place.

If action is taken, the so-called ‘banter’ used to victimise women who take part in the sport will soon diminish

After six days in which a former player was held accountable in court for sexist comments and a current manager was charged by the Football Association with using sexist language, are we seeing a change in how that behaviour is tackled?

For years, talk of so-called “banter” has been used to silence complaints and it has been a struggle to convince football that sexism and misogyny even exist, but there are signs the sport is finally waking up.

Our cartoonist on exorbitant World Cup ticket prices and peace breaking out on Merseyside

• David’s favourite cartoons of 2025 | Buy one here

• And his latest book, Chaos in the Box: get it now

The Frenchman, who has been named the best male footballer in the world by the Guardian, has benefitted from PSG’s focus on the team rather than individuals

What makes a good player great, and a great player the best? This question has been occupying me since 2014, when the Guardian first asked me to contribute to its inaugural Next Generation feature. My job was to look for a France-based talent born in 1997 who could go on to have a stellar career.

After a great deal of research, I narrowed it down from my shortlist of five by asking questions not about the players’ football ability, but about other attributes: resilience, adaptability, decision-making, creativity, work ethic, response to feedback and willingness to learn. Qualities we cannot see, and are harder to measure.

Former Manchester United player discusses culinary and cultural surprises, feeling more mature and how he learned Korean

Jesse Lingard says his Korean is decent, good enough to make himself understood when out for dinner and the shocks do not stop there. The former Manchester United and England midfielder was always going to throw himself into his K League adventure with FC Seoul and now that it is over after two years, a new chapter beckoning when the January transfer window opens, the 33-year-old certainly has the tales to tell.

It was the little things as much as anything else, the cultural quirks. And the bigger ones, of course – such as the time he watched an octopus squirm in front of him before eating it. “The food is different, obviously, and I tried live octopus,” Lingard says. “It was moving. I was scared at first but it was all right.”

Women’s football is booming – but the bigger it’s got, the messier it’s become for players. Through it all, the hot tip for Sports Personality of the Year has kept a cool head

At the end of last year, Chloe Kelly was seriously considering stepping away from football. She was deeply unhappy at Manchester City, her team since 2020, where it seemed as if they wouldn’t let her play, nor let her leave. She wasn’t getting enough time on the pitch, so wasn’t sure that she would be selected for England, who were preparing to defend the title she had helped win in 2022 in the Euros tournament. She was 26, about to turn 27. She had been a professional footballer since she was 18, but her mother was starting to get concerned. She desperately wanted her daughter to be happy again. “I remember my mum coming up to see me and she was meant to go home, but she didn’t go home, because she was so worried,” recalls Kelly.

Less than a year later, and things are very different. At the time of writing, Kelly is favourite to win Sports Personality of the Year after a history-making comeback. At the end of January, she was loaned to Arsenal and in May she lifted the Champions League trophy with the team, very much the underdogs in the final against Barcelona, whom they defeated 1-0. At the end of July, she scored that penalty for England, securing them a second Euros title, against arch-rivals Spain. She was fifth in the Ballon D’or Féminin, and named in the Fifpro World 11 squad for the first time – a peer-voted list of the best footballers in the world. Against the odds, then, 2025 has turned out to be a great year. “For sure,” Kelly smiles. “To bounce back, that’s what makes it the best year of my career.”

Aitana Bonmatí has been voted the best female player on the planet by our panel of 127 experts ahead of Mariona Caldentey and Alessia Russo

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• Meet the judges | See how every judge voted

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Give the one you love something special: a free subscription to Football Daily. The gift that never starts giving

Welcome to the fourth Football Daily Christmas Awards. This is the bit where, in our old guise, we would bang on about becoming so jaded that we’d lost count of how many years we’d been churning out this old tat. Hmm … So OK, here we are, refreshed and ready to go! Pour yourself a pint of wine, throw your boots up on the desk, decompress, de-depress, and enjoy!

With 11 games played our writers assess what has been good and not so good in England’s top flight as the league takes a winter break

This was a tough one, and an honourable mention has to be given to Martin Ho, who, despite only two summer signings, has taken Tottenham one point past last season’s 20-point total with half the season to play. However, Andrée Jeglertz arrived at Manchester City after managing Denmark at the Euros, where his team failed to pick up a point, and has had an instant impact. City look a different beast under the 53-year-old. The league leaders’ opening-day defeat by Chelsea is firmly in the past: they have won all 10 games since, have scored eight more goals than any other side and have built a six point lead at the top. Where previously City had struggled to kill off matches against title rivals, this season there has been a ruthlessness epitomised by their late winner in a 3-2 defeat of Arsenal, after they had twice given up the lead, and a comprehensive 3-0 win over Manchester United. SW

Spurs have faced low moments in their history, and this is one of them. How will the club respond in the post-Daniel Levy era?

• Sign up for Soccer with Jonathan Wilson here

Tottenham Hotspur, Thomas Frank said after Sunday’s 3-0 defeat to Nottingham Forest, are “not a quick fix”. That’s been true for probably 40 years, since they lurched into financial crisis amid boardroom shenanigans in the 1980s, becoming the first soccer club to list on the stock exchange and embarking on a disastrous programme of diversification (the highlight perhaps being becoming Hummel’s distributor in the UK, a role they performed so badly that Southampton took a page of their own programme to blame Spurs for the fact that their shirts were not being delivered).

Right now, Spurs would probably settle for even a little bit of a fix, a slow hint of progress, a flicker of hope, anything to break them out of the current grim spiral. They have won just one of their last seven league games. When they beat Everton on 26 October, they were third, five points behind the leaders. Sunday’s defeat leaves them 11th, 14 points behind Arsenal. Given that Spurs finished 17th last season, perhaps that is not so unexpected – and the compacted nature of the table means they are only four points off fifth and probable Champions League qualification. But, equally, 22 points represents their lowest Premier League tally after 16 games since 2008.

Crowds at women’s football in England are the envy of the world but there is a curious gap between number of tickets sold and attendances

When the stadium announcer reads out the attendance during England home games, the immediate question that follows relates to the drop-off between the number of tickets sold and the number of fans through the doors.

In 2025, on either side of a phenomenal European title defence in Switzerland, the Lionesses played eight home games, including three at Wembley. Across those fixtures, almost 48,000 bought tickets but stayed away.

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Lars Sivertsen and Philippe Auclair to wrap up the big stories from around Europe as their winter breaks begin.

Rate, review, share on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud, Acast and Stitcher, and join the conversation on email.

On the podcast today: Raúl Jiménez extended his perfect penalty record to secure all three points at Craven Cottage, as Fulham held off Nottingham Forest to wrap up the Premier League’s long weekend.

Highs and lows for Alexander Isak, Wolves’ sobering survival chances and were Chelsea lucky at Newcastle?

• Premier League scoring charts

Can results be misleading? That is the question. Aston Villa’s winning streak continued against Manchester United, but so did the nagging doubts. They were the lesser team by several measures – fewer shots (12-15), less possession (43-57), fewer big chances (2-3). As usual, the victory was a slender one. But games are not won by stats. They are won by solid teamwork, shrewd management and individual talent – and Villa have all three. Morgan Rogers may be their only star, but he’s delivering like Father Christmas. Unai Emery is wily, battle-hardened, five years ahead of Ruben Amorim. If Rogers profited from Leny Yoro’s naivety, that was probably because Emery had spotted that Yoro is not a right-back, and told Rogers to start wide, cut in and torment him. Talent and management, working together. Tim de Lisle

Match report: Aston Villa 2-1 Manchester United

Match report: Everton 0-1 Arsenal

Match report: Manchester City 3-0 West Ham

Match report: Tottenham 1-2 Liverpool

Match report: Newcastle 2-2 Chelsea

Match report: Wolves 0-2 Brentford

Match report: Leeds 4-1 Crystal Palace

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Dan Bardell and Seb Hutchinson to review a game of the season contender between Newcastle and Chelsea

Rate, review, share on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud, Acast and Stitcher, and join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter and email.

On the podcast today; Nick Woltemade scores both of Newcastle’s goals in their 2-2 draw with Chelsea to go some way to reversing his own goal against Sunderland last week.

From PSG’s Ibrahim Mbaye to Brazil’s next hope, we select some of the most talented players born in 2008. Check the progress of our classes of 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 … and go even further back. Here’s our Premier League class of 2025

We pick the best youngsters at each club born between 1 September 2008 and 31 August 2009, an age band known as first-year scholars. Check the progress of our classes of 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 … and go even further back. Here’s our 2025 world picks

Every deal in the NWSL, WSL, Liga F, Frauen-Bundesliga, Première Ligue and Serie A Femminile as well as a club-by-club guide

• Men’s transfers summer 2025: all the moves