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• Latest news and comment before weekend’s action

• Premier League: 10 things to look out for | Mail John

Troubling news for Chelsea: Cole Palmer, who has not played since September, faces six more weeks out with a groin injury.

The latest on Maccabi Tel Aviv’s visit to Aston Villa:

Senior government officials will meet on Friday as they look to reverse a decision by West Midlands police to ban fans of the Israeli team Maccabi Tel Aviv from a European match at Aston Villa next month.

Ruben Amorim travels to Liverpool on Sunday trying to become the first United manager to earn three points at their bitter rivals’ home since Louis van Gaal in early 2016

The only Manchester United victory of the past decade came when Marouane Fellaini’s header powered Juan Mata’s cross on to the bar and Wayne Rooney hooked the rebound in on 78 minutes to give the visiting Evertonian a particular thrill. Victory lifted Louis van Gaal’s team to fifth, and sank Jürgen Klopp’s team to ninth. Yet by the summer the Dutchman was sacked despite May’s FA Cup final triumph after United finished fifth, missing out on fourth on goal difference. In June Klopp, who guided Liverpool to eighth in his first part season in charge, signed a new six-year deal. “His leadership will be critical to everything we hope to achieve,” said the club.

• Court rules in favour of Iconic on preliminary issue

• Claim by investor in multi-club group Eagle Football

The former Crystal Palace owner John Textor has suffered another setback with the UK commercial court ruling he has a case to answer in a $97m (£72m) claim from an investor in his multi-club group, Eagle Football.

The dispute stems from Iconic Sport’s $75m purchase three years ago of a 15.7% stake in Eagle, which holds majority stakes in Lyon, Botafogo of Brazil and the rebranded Belgian club RWD Brussels (formerly RWD Molenbeek). Eagle was also the biggest shareholder at Palace until July, when Textor sold his 43% stake to former US ambassador Woody Johnson.

• Chelsea forward has played once under Thomas Tuchel

• Enzo Maresca confirms Reece James fit for Forest trip

Enzo Maresca has said Cole Palmer will miss another six weeks with a groin injury, raising doubts over whether the Chelsea forward will be able to regain his England place before the 2026 World Cup.

Palmer, who has been unavailable during the past two international breaks, has been struggling with his fitness since the start of the season and has not played since limping off against Manchester United last month. Chelsea have tried to manage the 23-year-old’s groin injury with rest and are confident it does not need surgery but Maresca has dashed hopes of his most influential player making a swift return.

As England’s teams head to the World Nations Cup in Spain, walking football is proving to be one of the UK’s fastest-growing sports

There’s no running in walking football – at least, not officially. Yet as England’s over-70s took on their final training match before competing in the World Nations Cup in Spain next week, the pace felt anything but pedestrian.

Voices echoed across the pitch, sweat beading on foreheads. One man even earned a red card for grabbing another player’s arm and denying him a goal-scoring opportunity. For a sport defined by restraint, it’s surprisingly full-blooded.

West Midlands crime commissioner demands review as ministers meet to ‘find a way through’

• UK politics live – latest updates

Pressure is mounting on West Midlands police over their ban on fans of the Israeli football team Maccabi Tel Aviv from a match at Aston Villa next month, as the area’s crime commissioner demanded a review of the decision.

Senior cabinet ministers, including Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, and Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, are due to meet on Friday to “find a way through”, after the ban was criticised by politicians across the spectrum, including the prime minister.

• Josh Wander accused of defrauding investors

• 777 Partners held stakes in global soccer clubs

• Case renews scrutiny of multi-club ownership model

An American businessman whose firm invested in several European soccer clubs that struggled under its ownership has been indicted in New York on charges of financial wrongdoing in an alleged $500m fraud scheme.

Josh Wander was a co-founder of Miami-based 777 Partners that owned stakes in an Australian airline plus soccer clubs Hertha Berlin in Germany, Genoa in Italy, Standard Liege in Belgium and Vasco da Gama in Brazil.

• WSL board examining ways of raising funds

• Loans would be used to boost payments and prize money

The Women’s Super League is considering borrowing tens of millions of pounds in an attempt to accelerate the growth of the competition. The WSL board has commissioned the investment bank Goldman Sachs and the accountancy firm Deloitte to examine ways of raising funding and a loan is the preferred option at this stage.

The borrowing would be used to increase central payments and prize money awarded to clubs, with the aim of stimulating further growth in sponsorship, broadcast deals and club-led investment, as a result of creating a better product.

• Injured DR Congo forward yet to play for Newcastle

• Forward should be fit in time to feature at Afcon

Yoane Wissa could become embroiled in a club v country row after Eddie Howe declined to confirm whether he would be happy for Newcastle’s £55m striker to represent the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in this winter’s Africa Cup of Nations.

Wissa is sidelined with a posterior cruciate ligament injury sustained on international duty with the Leopards in September and has not kicked a ball for Newcastle since his summer transfer deadline day move to St James’s Park from Brentford. The 29-year-old has only just begun light running on grass and is still receiving intense physiotherapy on his knee before a prospective first team debut in mid-November.

West Ham’s lack of forward planning, Rodri’s fitness concerns and a crunch clash at Anfield

• Top scorers: check out the latest standings

Ange Postecoglou is under increasing pressure at Nottingham Forest having failed to secure a win in his seven games in charge. Reports suggest Sean Dyche is waiting to take over, but history shows Evangelos Marinakis sways like the wind, and victory against Chelsea could be enough to save Postecoglou’s job for now. Goals have been a mounting concern for a team that have been beaten in four of their last five league matches and failed to score in any of those defeats. Failure to find their shooting boots will ensure Forest go three consecutive top-flight games without a goal for the first time since 1999. It will be a tough task against a buoyant Chelsea team, who entered the international break having beaten Liverpool. Moisés Caicedo was instrumental in the win against the defending champions, scoring the opener, and the 23-year-old leads the league in tackles (28) and interceptions (18). Elliot Anderson, whose total of 55 turnovers is also a league-high tally, will have his work cut out for him in what may be his toughest midfield battle of the season. Yara El-Shaboury

Nottingham Forest v Chelsea, Saturday 12.30pm (all times BST)

Brighton v Newcastle, Saturday 3pm

Burnley v Leeds, Saturday 3pm

Crystal Palace v Bournemouth, Saturday 3pm

Club fought to keep Alexander Isak and were linked with Benjamin Sesko, Hugo Ekitike and Viktor Gyökeres. Maybe they found the right man after all

By WhoScored

When Alexander Isak sealed his £125m British record transfer to Liverpool, Newcastle fans braced themselves for a period of turbulence. Losing their striker, who scored 54 goals in 86 Premier League appearances, felt a decisive blow – until a 6ft 6in German began to win them over.

Replacing a centre-forward is not as simple as matching goals with goals. Newcastle’s task was to replace a player ​around who​m the team’s attacking identity had been built. The answer was the 23-year-old Nick Woltemade, a young, promising forward from VFB Stuttgart, but untested at the very top level.

Arsenal’s midfielder Mariona Caldentey said “almost everything” needs to be better after a laboured defeat of Benfica secured the holders’ first win of the Champions League campaign.

Beth Mead sent the ball crawling over the line in the second half after a scramble in the box and Alessia Russo killed off the game with their second in Portugal. It was not pretty in the Estádio da Luz, but it was enough, just, with Arsenal’s lack of cutting edge remaining a major concern.

• Seven Conmebol members do not support expansion

• Impact on World Cup qualifying cited as main factor

The proposed expansion of the 2030 World Cup to 64 teams is facing opposition from within Conmebol, the South American confederation that would benefit from staging the extra matches.

The Guardian has learned that seven out of the 10 Conmebol members have expressed concerns about the expansion plan, which is being driven by the federations of Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina.

Aston Villa, Chelsea, Leeds and Nottingham Forest fail to respond to questions sent by the Guardian, while Sunderland refuse to comment

Eleven Premier League clubs will have to find new principal sponsors next season when the ban on front-of-shirt advertising for betting companies takes effect. This will represent a financial blow for the clubs concerned: gambling operators are known to pay a substantial premium on standard industry rates. As Karren Brady told the House of Lords in a debate on the football governance bill last November, “the typical difference between gambling and non-gambling shirt sponsorships is around 40%”. The vice-chair of West Ham warned: “For some Premier League clubs, this decision [to ban front-of-shirt gambling advertising] will mean a reduction of around 20% of their total commercial revenues.”

So how to make for the shortfall? Some clubs seem to have opted for the simplest of solutions: to carry on as before, by adapting the nature of their offer to gambling partners accordingly, which includes hidden partnership deals with Asian-facing operators that are unlicensed in the UK and target illegal markets in China, and south and east Asia. The clubs concerned are Sunderland, Aston Villa, Leeds, Nottingham Forest and Chelsea.

Manchester United overcame the first-half dismissal of Dominique Janssen to close out a win over ­Atlético Madrid and ­maintain their ­perfect start to their first ­Women’s ­Champions League campaign. The ­Sweden forward Fridolina Rolfö fired in a close-range volley to score the ­decisive goal.

The Dutch centre-back ­was shown a red card before the break after a VAR review into her sliding challenge on Gio Garbelini, who was taken off on a stretcher. Atlético also ­finished the match with 10 players after their defender Alexia Fernández received a second yellow card with 15 minutes remaining.

• England captain missed penalty in 2022 quarter-final exit

• Kane: ‘It’s definitely helped me to become a better player’

Harry Kane has said that his penalty heartbreak against France at the last World Cup has changed him as a player and given him extra motivation to lead England to glory at the tournament next summer.

The captain missed from the spot in the 84th minute of the quarter‑final in Qatar in 2022 as England slipped to a 2-1 defeat – a moment Kane describes as the lowest of his career, worse than losing any club final. The Bayern Munich striker lost three of them with his previous club, Tottenham, including the Champions League final in 2019.

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

Manchester City and Netherlands player explains why she has become an LGBT Foundation patron and the importance of keeping football free of hate

In April, after scoring for Manchester City against Everton, I kissed a band in the blue, white and pink colours of the transgender flag on my right wrist. I felt very strongly about the supreme court ruling, politically and emotionally. It really hurt me, even though I’m a cisgender woman, and it still hurts me because it targets people within my community.

I really feel part of the queer community because I grew up in a pretty small town in the Netherlands and didn’t have a lot of queer people in my circle or in school, and there wasn’t a lot of representation on TV. I never really felt a part of any community because I didn’t really know it was out there. Growing up and coming out and being in women’s football, which has a very accepting and open environment, and then moving to Manchester, I felt that I could be myself and I became much more in touch with the community. It has been a new, refreshing part of my life.

Almost three years after his last game the former Barcelona and Everton forward is in Udinese’s gym each weekday morning, refusing to give up

The morning light is still sharpening, training its beam through the windows at the far end of the gym. Around the walls, painted black up to halfway, are motivational slogans that have become common currency in training environments. “Go hard or go home,” one of them urges. “Hard work beats talent, when talent chooses not to work hard,” cautions another.

Beneath the second of those messages, Gerard Deulofeu stands in conversation with Angel Aceña, Udinese’s rehab fitness coach. They are a team now, working towards a goal that never quite stands still. It is 8.30am and, as always, Deulofeu has been here for half an hour. There has been a session on one set of weights and shortly he will cross the room for another, checking a monitor for the latest notes of optimism. There is not another footballer in sight.

There are supporters and then there was the Bulgarian Marin Levidzhov, who died this week aged 62

Ask any Manchester United fan of a certain age what 26 May 1999 means to them, and they will tell you the date has marked them for life. It was the night injury-time goals from Teddy Sheringham and Ole Gunnar Solskjær sealed United’s 2-1 comeback in the Champions League final against Bayern Munich at the Camp Nou. It was also the night the life of one United fan in Bulgaria, who has died this week at the age of 62, changed for ever.

That supporter was born Marin Zdravkov Levidzhov in Svishtov, a town on the Danube with a population of 22,000. Growing up in communist Bulgaria adoring football, he dreamed of changing his name to … Manchester United. To claim the name of a football club from the capitalist west, however, was mission impossible. Had Marin tried to do so before the fall of the regime, he would almost certainly have ended up in jail.

Sports science graduate Alex Revell’s team lead League One with a record unrivalled in the top four divisions

These are heady days at Stevenage. They are top of League One under Alex Revell and a mile or so up the road an Airbus hub is building robots to explore Mars. A couple of months ago, the club’s longstanding chair, Phil Wallace, highlighted how Stevenage were one of the best points-per-pound performers last season – when they finished in mid-table – and after a near-flawless start this time they have the best points-per-game record in England’s top four divisions.

It is fair to say supporters are getting plenty of bang for their buck. A crowd of 7,228 packed into Stevenage’s modest ground for their latest league victory, over Luton, their highest attendance since welcoming Newcastle in the FA Cup fourth round in 1998, when a temporary stand boosted the capacity.

Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed he could take World Cup matches away from US cities he deems ‘unsafe’. Here’s what he said – and what powers he does and doesn’t have

The world of soccer throws up no shortage of questions on a regular basis. In today’s column, Graham Ruthven endeavors to answer three of them

By the time next summer’s World Cup kicks off, it’ll have been 12 years since Italy last played at the tournament they have won more times (four) than any other nation besides Brazil (five) and Germany (also four). The way things are going, the Azzurri’s 12-year wait for World Cup qualification could become a 16-year one at the very least.

Off-field issues are ever-present but players in Australia’s domestic league take to the field in its 21st season with an added motivator

Put aside, for a moment, anxiety around the A-Leagues’ next broadcast deal. Shelve calculations for the impending “hard” salary cap. Forget the perpetual challenges of venues, crowds, members. Of connecting the pyramid. Of all the worries in Australian football’s future.

The A-League Men kicks off on Friday for its 21st season, and for the best 300 or so footballers in the country, nothing matters more than when the referee blows for kick-off. “Once the whistle goes, I’m going to be doing what it takes to win the game,” says Kai Trewin, the player of the year at champions Melbourne City.

The undefeated streak may have ended, but Australia’s first loss under this coach against USA confirms they’re set on the right path

Australia’s men were always going to lose a game in the Tony Popovic era, one supposes. How does that little idiom go again? Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened?

After last week’s win over Canada took him one clear of Joe Vlasits’ start in the 1960s, only Terry Venables had put together a longer undefeated start to life as Socceroos boss than the one Popovic took into Tuesday’s fixture against the USA – the 52-year-old was unbeaten in the eleven games of his year-long tenure, with seven straight wins. But thanks to two goals from American striker Haji Wright, it was in the mile-high surrounds of Denver where this run ended.

• Mosengo-Omba said to run CAF as a ‘proprietorship’

• Employee: ‘Anyone who dares speak up is terminated’

The Confederation of African Football’s general secretary, Véron Mosengo-Omba, has been accused of running the organisation as his “proprietorship” and creating a toxic culture of fear where employees are fired for speaking out against him.

Several former and current members of staff have told the Guardian there is an atmosphere of intimidation and paranoia at the Caf headquarters in Cairo, where Mosengo-Omba is accused of sidelining colleagues and silencing whistleblowers.

• Como insist relocating Milan game ‘not a matter of greed’

• Italian side highlight gulf in revenues to Premier League

The Italian club Como have released a statement on their potential Serie A match against Milan in Australia, claiming that taking games abroad is about “ensuring survival” for the league.

Uefa has reluctantly given approval for the match – a home league fixture for Milan – to take place in Perth next February. In addition, Villarreal’s La Liga match against Barcelona in December is set to take place in Miami, Florida.

In this mailbag edition of his newsletter, Jonathan answers questions about the evolution of tactics, heat and World Cup outsiders

• Sign up for Soccer with Jonathan Wilson here

Do you believe playing styles are developing incrementally or cyclically? Will things naturally come back around, or is it more a matter of rock, paper, scissors where one style counters another for a short while, as the current style gets broadly adopted? – Paul

I dislike the term “cyclical” for tactics because it implies inevitability. Winter, spring, summer, autumn is a cycle; what happens in football tactics is not. When older ideas are repurposed for the modern age, they come with knowledge of what went before. So, to take an extreme example, when Pep Guardiola started fielding teams in a sort of 3-2-2-3 shape, it wasn’t the W-M used by Herbert Chapman in the late 1920s, because in the 100 years since, football has changed enormously: players are fitter, pitches are better, kit is better, we understand pressing, we have data and sophisticated analytical modelling.

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.

Manager learned at PSG to ignore star power in pursuit of a winning formula that prioritises brotherhood

Thomas Tuchel once stood on the touchline at Anfield, watching in disbelief as his self-indulgent Paris Saint-Germain players refused to put in the hard yards against Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool. “Guys, what is this?” he said, but there was never going to be a reaction from individuals with too much power and not enough respect for the basic concepts of teamwork.

Intensity? Tracking back? Not for us, thanks. Too many wanted to do their own thing and it ground Tuchel down in the end. The German is a coach who wants structure, identity, sacrifice and energy. At PSG, though, he saw how individualism can bring a dressing room down. How could Tuchel make his mark when he had players who would moan if a teammate looked at them the wrong way?

Dynamic pricing, crypto detritus and corporate doublespeak have made the task of buying 2026 World Cup tickets a grim case study in the monetization of emotion

When the first tickets for the 2026 World Cup went on sale last week, millions of fans joined online queues only to discover what Gianni Infantino’s assurance that “the world will be welcome” really means. The cheapest face-value seat for next summer’s final, somewhere in the gods of New Jersey’s 82,500-seat MetLife Stadium where the players are specks and the football’s a rumor, comes at a cost of $2,030 (oxygen tank not included). Most upper-deck seats range from $2,790 to $4,210, according to customers who finally glimpsed the prices that had been closely guarded. The much-touted $60 tickets for group-stage games, propped up by Fifa as evidence of affordability, exist only as comically tiny green smudges on the edge of digital seating maps, little more than mirages of inclusivity.

Fifa had kept the costs under wraps until the very moment of sale, replacing the usual published table of price points with a digital lottery that decided who even got the chance to buy. Millions spent hours staring at a queue screen as algorithms determined their place in line. When access finally came for most, the lower-priced sections had already vanished, many presumably hoovered up by bots and bulk-buyers (and that’s before Fifa quietly raised the prices of at least nine matches after only one day of sales). The whole process resembled less a ticket release than a psyop to calibrate how much frustration and scarcity the public will tolerate.

An easy target for accusations of luxury hypocrisy, Neville has at least tried to address an issue that has everything to do with aggressively flag-draped and militarised modern sport

“At the far end of the food counter a group of men were pledging allegiance to the flag, with trays balanced in one hand, in order to be allowed to take seats at the table. A group that had arrived earlier was singing The Star-Spangled Banner in order that they might use the salt and pepper and ketchup there.”

Welcome to our own Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade, another real-time demonstration of the fact every satirical absurdity described in Catch-22 has become, yeah, pretty much totally plausible. The nation is now fully hostage to bad actors and phoney rage. And as ever football must act as a key amplifier of all this, a public echo chamber for the anxieties of what we must, out of a sense of duty, still call the real world.

Our cartoonist on a smooth journey towards the World Cup for England against a backdrop of flags and uproar

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• David’s latest book, Chaos in the Box: get it now

Clubs’ plan to open new ground in 2031 has been met by local opposition but is required for hosts to stay competitive

A protester outside held a sign insisting “San Siro belongs to the citizens” but Milan’s city council was about to change all that, voting to sell one of the world’s most famous football stadiums to tenants who plan to tear it down. Milan have played home games at what is officially the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza since 1926. Inter moved in with them 21 years later. They propose to build a shared home on the same grounds.

It has been a long time coming. The clubs announced joint plans for a new stadium as long ago as June 2019, with an intention to complete work within three years. International architecture firms were consulted and designs made public, but they never progressed out of this first phase.

Optimistic in August under Steve Bruce, Blackpool are now managerless and 23rd in League One after Stockport’s win

The Mick McCarthy “it can” meme is known far and wide as social media shorthand for woeful underperformance, although the full context is not.

When McCarthy was infamously asked if a miserable run of one win in 17 games could continue and issued the deadpan response “it can”, he was the Blackpool manager struggling through his ill-fated 2023 spell.

Veteran commentator answers your questions on famous lines, favourite stadiums and being told ‘Not for me, Clive’

What is the best sporting accomplishment or achievement you have commentated on and did you ever harbour personal ambitions to be a professional in any sport? Tony Medlock

I was never good enough at any sport to kid myself that I had a career at elite level. My parents would have told you that from an early age any sporting ambitions I entertained were in the area I ended up in; describing and commentating on top-level sport. I always resist any grading of goals or players or matches because I have a belief that sport belongs in its moment. Sport creates memories – we can recall vividly where we were, who we were with, what we were thinking, when our team won a trophy or an athlete won an Olympic gold medal … or Shane Lowry sunk a putt to seal the Ryder Cup. Those moments are very personal, and the job of the commentator is to try to add something to the memory of those moments. And those moments are unique and should remain separate from one another.

The Guardian’s fans’ network on the opening stages of 2025-26: their toughest opponents, biggest setbacks and tips for the next manager sacked

Story so far Top of the table, looking down at our rivals, despite still not really firing on all cylinders … it’s early days, but we’re struggling to keep a lid on the excitement here. Having star turns such as Havertz, Madueke and now Ødegaard succumb to long-term injury is a reminder of the risk of being derailed, but it does feel like we’ve never been better equipped to cope with the slings and arrows. Arteta is still unwrapping his new toys and figuring out the best way to use them – can’t wait to see how the chemistry develops.

Bernard Azulay onlinegooner.com; @GoonerN5

Jonathan Pritchard

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In winning the Premier League manager of the month award for September, Oliver Glasner became the first Crystal Palace gaffer to take the gong since Tony Pulis in April 2014. Of course, Pulis could justifiably claim to have done more to earn his gaudy Perspex commemorative cuboid with four wins and a defeat, compared to his modern-day equivalent’s paltry draw and two wins. However, the man famously commemorated in song for wearing the club shop of whoever he happened to be managing wasn’t subsequently presented with an award for Austria coach of the year at a posh ceremony in Vienna, almost certainly due in no small part to the fact that he is Welsh. “It’s too many awards for me, I don’t feel that important!” protested Glasner in an interview with the Crystal Palace socials team, after beating compatriots in the field of ski-jumping and volleyball to the Niki award, named in honour of a famous Austrian who won two world championships with Ferrari, back in the days when F1 was still good.

For goodness sake, stop all the faffing around. Give the Geopolitics World Cup (and the Sherpa Van Trophy, and everything else) to Trump, and say it’s done. No need to worry about the heat, who’s on The Plane, who’s left on the tarmac, whose metatarsal is hurting, and all the rest of it. Just do it and we can get on with our lives” – Robert Pearce.

As someone in the construction industry, it comes as absolutely no surprise that architects are pretentious and know nothing whatsoever about what makes a good football stadium, or to use Big Website’s words, ‘football stadiums do have an otherworldly aura, as modern colossi looming above huddled neighbourhoods, evocative of Philip Larkin’s “ships up streets”’. However, what completely threw me in the article was the description of Forest Green Rovers as being ‘currently managed by former bad boy Robbie Savage’” – Noble Francis.

Re: Sensible Soccer or Kick Off 2 (yesterday’s last line, full email edition). If you listen to your colleague Max ‘I’ve already got a podcast’ Rushden’s, ahem, other podcast, you would know that Emlyn Hughes International Soccer is currently the hipsters’ choice. But seriously, it’s Sensi, natch” – David Bell.

I had high hopes of making a difference when I joined Halifax Women but ended up feeling let down. Clubs have a responsibility to look after their players – at all levels

Football has given me some wonderful experiences. As a young Arab and Egyptian woman playing for Stoke City from 2017 to 2021 I broke barriers and that paved the way for some exciting opportunities. Fifa selected me as a 2022 World Cup ambassador and put me in a film with David Beckham; I also became an Adidas ambassador and worked as an Afcon pundit for the BBC.

But there have been less easy times as well. As an Egyptian international, representing a country that stands 95th in the Fifa rankings, there are obstacles to playing in the biggest leagues. Because of the points system for international players I left Stoke for the chance of playing second-tier football in Spain with Albacete. And since coming back to England, I’ve seen a world very distant from the new riches of the WSL.

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Paul Watson and Ben Fisher as the Premier League returns this weekend

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On the podcast today: the panel preview the upcoming round of fixtures including Liverpool at home to Manchester United in a game that feels significant for both sides. Arne Slot has some big decisions to make while a win for Ruben Amorim would potentially blast his side up to the dizzying heights of sixth.

Faye Carruthers is joined by Suzy Wrack, Robyn Cowen and Tom Garry to reflect on Millie Bright’s international retirement, a busy weekend in the WSL and a mixed start for English clubs in the Champions League

On today’s pod: Millie Bright calls time on her England career and the panel reflect on her legacy, leadership and unforgettable moments in a Lionesses shirt.

Plus, the panel runs through all the latest WSL action as Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester City all pick up wins, but not without drama. They talk Jess Park’s purple patch, Spurs’ growing resilience, and what’s not clicking yet for West Ham and Everton.

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Jordan Jarrett-Bryan and George Elek to discuss the World Cup qualifiers as Scotland’s 2-1 win against Belarus disguised a dismal performance

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On today’s pod: Scotland edged closer to World Cup qualification with an ugly win against Belarus at Hampden Park. “We know we have got to be better” was Scott McTominay’s verdict, but Scotland are now two wins away from securing a return to the tournament they have not appeared at since 1998.

Everton continue to struggle at home, Leicester’s long wait for an away win goes on but Spurs can take pride in defeat

The disquiet over Kyra Cooney-Cross’s lack of action has grown louder by the week and her 27-minute cameo in Arsenal’s 1-0 defeat of Brighton fuelled her case for a start. The Australian midfielder impressed when she featured last season and there were high hopes for her going into this campaign, but four games glued to the bench have been followed by 54 minutes as a substitute across the following three matches. Brighton were, by their own admission, tiring towards the end of their 1-0 defeat and Cooney-Cross’s ball-carrying and front-foot approach caught the eye as the Gunners tried to extend their lead. “When there’s a drop-off [in] minute 60 or 75 and intensity goes down in games and space becomes bigger, the gamechangers can make a real impact, and that’s 100% what Kyra did,” said the Arsenal manager Renée Slegers. “She capitalised on the spaces and the fatigue and the opposition team and she plays with a lot of confidence and forward intent and she brings all her best qualities to life today, so I’m really pleased.” The preferred midfield trio this season has been Kim Little, Mariona Caldentey and Frida Maanum, with Victoria Pelova also featuring and Alessia Russo dropping into the 10 on occasion. It is hard to see where Cooney-Cross fits into the equation, but with Arsenal struggling to assert authority, change may not be a bad thing. Suzanne Wrack

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