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Arne Slot has no excuses, Fulham and Palace are stretched and should Arsenal be wary of Burnley’s full-backs?

• Premier League top scorers: Golden Boot standings

Burnley’s Kyle Walker and Quilindschy Hartman, Q to his friends, have been one of the finest full-back pairings in the Premier League this season. They are defensively disciplined but also have the ability to push forward and cause problems. Everyone expected as much from Walker, who has been one of the best right-backs in world football over the past decade, but it could have been difficult for Hartman, coming from the Eredivisie, to settle into a newly promoted team and face some of the best wingers in the world. The Dutchman has stuck to his defensive tasks supremely well but the task of marshalling Bukayo Saka and Eberechi Eze will be a true test. Regular assists are also making Hartman a real asset to Burnley. Two crosses produced Zian Flemming’s goals against Wolves, making it four assists in nine Premier League appearances. Arsenal should be wary. Will Unwin

Manchester United are determined to avoid ‘rinse and repeat’ of past 10 years but was Anfield really the coach’s Mark Robins moment?

The excitement of a new era at Manchester United was almost palpable, according to one observer. The part-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe, CEO Omar Berrada and technical director Jason Wilcox were full of optimism. What owner isn’t energised by making a coaching appointment, especially their first? It was a chance for Ratcliffe to put his imprint on United after years of drift under the Glazers.

The coach, who had regained the title at Sporting, had youthful vivacity, an admirable track record and emotional intelligence. Ruben Amorim, appointed a year ago this Saturday, was one of the most desired young coaches on the market, which is why Tottenham and Liverpool had also considered him.

How Arsenal-supporting family put the youngster on road to history-making appearance at Emirates on Wednesday

There was never a question about which club Max Dowman wanted to join after he was spotted playing up an age group for Billericay Town’s colts in 2015. In the Essex town best known these days for being one of the backdrops for the popular BBC comedy series Gavin and Stacey, and where allegiances have often been split between Tottenham and West Ham, Dowman had caught the eye of scouts from London’s biggest academies at the age of six.

“He had the pick of clubs,” says Nick Hutt, the chair of Billericay’s youth section, who saw a four-year-old Dowman play. “But the whole family are Arsenal supporters, so they chose Arsenal.”

• Oliver Glasner’s side could play two matches in 54 hours

• Club are in discussions with EFL over scheduling

Crystal Palace are facing the prospect of having to play five matches in 11 days during December after reaching the Carabao Cup quarter-finals.

Oliver Glasner’s side recorded a third victory of the campaign against Liverpool on Wednesday to set up a repeat of last season’s quarter-final with Arsenal. That match is due to take place on Tuesday 16 or Wednesday 17 December but, with Palace scheduled to host the Finnish side KuPS at on 18 December in their final Conference League league phase fixture, the tie at the Emirates Stadium looks certain to be confirmed for the Tuesday by the EFL.

• OpenAI service suggested a move to a back five

• Harvey has been head coach of the NWSL team since 2021

Seattle Reign head coach Laura Harvey has admitted that she used ChatGPT to help determine the team’s tactics for multiple matches this NWSL season.

Speaking on the Soccerish Podcast, Harvey said that she started by asking the large language model various questions about tactics and strategy in the NWSL, which eventually turned into more detailed breakdowns on how to beat individual teams in the league.

• Arsenal say 19-year-old will not play again this season

• ‘Recovery starts now, I will be back stronger than before’

The England forward Michelle Agyemang has promised to come back “stronger than before” after confirming that she ruptured an anterior cruciate ligament during the Lionesses’ 3-0 victory over Australia on Tuesday.

Agyemang revealed the results of her scan on her social media. “Disappointed that results show a torn ACL,” she wrote. “I am so grateful for all the kind words and the support from everyone. Recovery starts now, I will be back stronger than before. In all things I give thanks to the Most High God, this test will surely turn into a testimony.”

Former Liverpool and Sunderland forward on buying Ed Woodward’s house, his padel business and how his new coach is similar to Ancelotti

Fabio Borini’s house witnessed a major disagreement over football but it was not related to his recent move to Salford City. The forward bought the property from the former Manchester United executive vice-chair Ed Woodward, who had fans at the gates showing their displeasure during his time at Old Trafford. “Because of the protest outside, everybody was worried, so I said: ‘Don’t worry I’ll buy it, get the price down,’” Borini jokes.

The former Italy international has a business mind and knows a good deal when it comes along. Joining Salford, however, was certainly not about the money. Following his departure from Sampdoria, where he endured a difficult final season after being ostracised, Borini wanted to play for the love of the game. He returned to his wife Erin’s native north-west, where they had their Cheshire home, and searched for work.

With ticket sales phases under way and prices reaching eye-watering levels, my experience raised a crucial question: who is this World Cup for?

For months, people in my life had been asking me when and where to get World Cup tickets. In the absence of any actionable information from Fifa before the first round of the pre-sale opened up, they hoped, I guess, that I had inside knowledge.

In truth, I only knew that Fifa would be using the universally despised dynamic pricing model, and that the bid book for the 2026 World Cup had promised an average group stage ticket price of $305. Mind you, that was seven and a half years ago and an awful lot of inflation has happened since then. In the bid, Category 4 tickets for the group stage – the cheapest seats available – were priced at $21. (As we would soon learn, the actual price would start at $60, and category 4 tickets are almost non-existent.)

Club’s winless streak finally ended on Wednesday against Udinese but a significant task awaits the next manager

It was an oddly coy way to announce Serie A’s first sacking this season. “Igor Tudor is no longer the manager of Juventus,” read the Turin club’s social media post on Monday – as though this had happened by accident or mutual consent. The Bianconeri had not, in fact, lost him down the back of the sofa, but instead relieved him of his duties after an eight-game winless run.

That was their longest dry stretch since 2009. Claudio Ranieri got the boot back then, and it was no surprise to see Tudor meet the same fate now. Juventus had failed to score a goal in his final four matches, culminating in a 1-0 loss to Lazio on Sunday night. “I’m living in the present,” he insisted afterward. “I don’t give a stuff about the future.” Yet it came for him the next day all the same.

The 46-year-old didn’t fulfil his potential as a player but as manager has climbed from the bottom of the pyramid to fifth in La Liga

The driver of the Tusa bus went from Badalona to Barcelona and regional catalana to primera división, stopping everywhere in between. On Thursday night, Atlètic Lleida host Espanyol in the Copa del Rey first round. Lleida play in Spain’s semi-pro fourth tier, a world away from their opponents, who celebrated their 125th anniversary last Saturday by climbing into a Champions League place, but there will be something familiar about the man sitting on the visitors’ bench, if he ever actually sits. “I know Manolo because we’ve faced each other at our level,” Lleida’s coach, Gabri García says. “We come from the depths.”

Depths is right, but Manolo González wouldn’t change a thing, proud to have been in García’s place. A symbol of some day, he reached the top flight via the long route, having coached at every age group and every level in Spain, from the regional league to tercera, with its 397 teams across 18 groups; from Segunda B, still theoretically amateur and made up of four regional divisions with 80 teams, to segunda; and on to primera, no guarantee he would get there. Which is why it took years to give up the day job at the wheel of the interurbano to Barcelona.

Banyana Banyana squeeze through but assistant Thinasonke Mbuli insists they must learn from countries such as Malawi

The Women’s Africa Cup of Nations will welcome two new participants next March after Malawi and Cape Verde qualified for the first time. For Cape Verde, the island archipelago with a population of just over half a million people, it’s a double celebration after their men’s team qualified for the World Cup for the first time. The women’s team was only founded in 2018 and in seven years have enjoyed a rapid rise. As far as records show, no other team has progressed as quickly from formation to major tournament.

They will play in a field that includes hosts Morocco, 10-time champions Nigeria, Kenya and Burkina Faso, who have both qualified for just the second time in their history, and six other teams who were involved at the 2024 edition: Zambia, Tanzania, Algeria, Senegal, Ghana and 2022 champions South Africa, who required a 91st-minute winner against the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to confirm their spot.

• Liverpool dumped out of Cup by Palace at Anfield

• Reds have now lost six of their past seven games

Arne Slot said he had no regrets over fielding a weakened team against Crystal Palace in the Carabao Cup and accepted he is under pressure as ­Liverpool succumbed to a sixth defeat in seven games.

Palace beat Liverpool for the third time this season to advance into the quarter-finals thanks to two goals from Ismaïla Sarr and a first Palace goal from Yéremy Pino. A comfortable 3-0 victory was aided by Slot’s decision to make 10 changes from the Liverpool team that started at Brentford on Saturday, with nine ­inexperienced youngsters on the bench.

Enzo Maresca lambasted Liam Delap for his “very stupid red card” and called on his young squad to “grow up”. Chelsea, 3-0 up at half-time, managed to turn this into a topsy-turvy tie that earned them a ­Carabao Cup quarter-final tie at ­Cardiff, but has cost them the services of their striker for Saturday’s game at Tottenham.

The Chelsea manager had no ­sympathy for Delap who, ­returning as a substitute after two months out with a hamstring injury, was dismissed for collecting two similar yellow cards in seven late minutes.

The Carabao Cup was on display in main reception here, dictating that Tottenham’s players trooped past it en route to the away dressing room before kick-off. If the sight of that trophy inspired Thomas Frank’s team, Newcastle’s desire to retain it proved infinitely stronger. As Eddie Howe put it: “This was a performance in line with our identity and our expectations. We were strong.”

Howe’s side could have been forgiven for prioritising the Champions League and the Premier League but, instead, they played with the zeal of a side still buoyed by their Wembley triumph in March.

For so long, Manchester City were stifled by Swansea City’s defensive blockade. Then, in the 77th minute, Omar Marmoush took matters into his own hands, rolling his marker and blasting a shot high into the roof of the net from a tight angle, paving the way to the Carabao Cup quarter-final, where they will host Brentford. Rayan Cherki, who teed up Marmoush, secured the win in stoppage time.

It was a timely moment for Marmoush’s first City goal of the season and he seized a rare window of opportunity. When the Egypt striker, filling in for Erling Haaland, received Cherki’s pass and swivelled on his heels, eluding the Chelsea loanee Ishe Samuels‑Smith, there was only one thing in his mind. For Pep Guardiola, the relief was palpable and he punched the air as Cherki made sure of victory.

Crystal Palace haunted Liverpool yet again but that might be the least of Arne Slot’s worries should his decision to field a weakened team in the Carabao Cup fail to pay dividends in the coming days. Aston Villa and Real Madrid are on the Anfield horizon and so is trouble should this slump deepen.

The FA Cup and Community Shield winners eased into the Carabao Cup quarter-finals courtesy of a first-half double from Ismaïla Sarr, Liverpool’s tormentor‑in-chief. The Senegal international made it seven goals in nine appearances against Liverpool – for Palace and Watford – as Oliver Glasner’s team registered their third triumph against Slot’s side in 80 days.

Plus: more early English managerial exits, the player hitting the woodwork four times in a game and P45 structures

• Mail us with your questions and answers

“My beleaguered Tranmere played Barnet a couple of weeks ago,” begins James. “I was amazed that this was the first ever meeting between two clubs who have spent so much time in the Football League. It made me wonder: what is the most surprising or eye-catching fixture in English club football that has never been played?”

We were surprised to hear that Middlesbrough’s 1-1 draw with Wrexham on Saturday was the first ever league match between those two sides, though they have met in both domestic cup competitions.

222 seasons Everton (127) v Rochdale (95), West Brom (127) v Rochdale (95)

218 Everton (127) v Hartlepool United (91)

217 Manchester United (123) v Gillingham (94), Manchester City (123) v Exeter City (94)

216 Arsenal (122) v Southend United (94), Arsenal (122) v Exeter (94)

213 Liverpool (122) v Hartlepool (91)

206 Manchester United (123) v Mansfield Town (83)

205 Everton (127) v Torquay United (78)

204 Manchester United (123) v Darlington (81)

203 Newcastle United (122) v Darlington (81), Sunderland (125) v Torquay(7 8)

201 Manchester United (123) v Torquay (78)

200 Arsenal (122) v Torquay (78), Aston Villa (127) v Newport (73), Liverpool (122) v Torquay

3 days: Bill Lambton, Scunthorpe, April 1959

4 days: Dave Bassett, Crystal Palace, May 1984

7 days: Tim Ward, Exeter City, March 1953
Kevin Cullis, Swansea City, February 1996

8 days: Billy McKinlay, Watford, Sept-Oct 2014

9 days: Martin Ling, Cambridge, Jul-Aug 2009

The board of directors of Raith Rovers FC announces that we have parted company with manager Gary Locke and assistant manager Darren Jackson, with immediate effect.

Raith Rovers FC announces that we have this evening parted company with manager John Hughes and assistant manager Kevin McBride

Mail us with your questions and answers

The US started off badly with a loss to Portugal, recovered a bit with a win against the same team, and finished with a romp over New Zealand

More than three months after their last match, the US women’s national team returned to the pitch in October, playing three games with varied results. In the first, an impressive Portugal broke down the Americans in a 2-1 win for the visitors. Emma Hayes played an almost entirely different, much younger lineup in the rematch, and the Americans returned the favor, 3-1. A somehow even younger lineup in the third game steamrolled a limp New Zealand, 6-0. The Portugal games offered many lessons; the Football Ferns were less scary than 11 jack-o’-lanterns would be, so that third match was more of a fun romp than a true test.

Here are some takeaways from the window:

The Australian coach’s legacy in Scotland is best left untouched while he needs a period of reflection – not to take the next job that comes along

It is fair to say that Ange Postecoglou had a hard time during his 40-day stint at Nottingham Forest, but there is perhaps a more difficult test on the way. Being out of work means that his name is automatically going to be linked with available coaching jobs in Europe. It’s a nice problem to have, especially as the northern winter approaches and axes start to fall. There are few available coaches whose fingerprints are still on a major European trophy and who also have recent and major Premier League experience.

There have already been changes in England’s top tier with Forest being the main driver, firing Nuno Espírito Santo who then went on to replace Graham Potter at West Ham United, then bringing in Postecoglou and then replacing him with Sean Dyche. In the coming weeks and months, more will follow. There are lots of skill sets that a successful head coach must have, but one of the most important – and the least talked about – is knowing when to shake the head instead of hands when there is an approach.

Recent history has seen all three sides promoted from the Championship be relegated the same season – Régis Le Bris’s side could break the spell

• Sign up for Soccer with Jonathan Wilson here

Last season, all three promoted sides in the Premier League were relegated. The season before that, all three promoted sides were relegated. The fear was that the gulf between the Premier League and Championship had become too big, with the increasing stratification of the English game essentially making it impossible for the promoted sides to survive, much less to thrive. It’s a self-perpetuating issue; the longer the other 17 remain in the Premier League, fattened on television rights, the harder it will be for teams coming up to make an impression.

There was a need for the promoted sides to put up a better fight than they managed last season when, between them, Leicester, Ipswich and Southampton collected just 59 points. Nine games into this season, not quite a quarter of the way through, Sunderland, Leeds and Burnley already have 38 points between them. None of the three are currently in the relegation zone. But most striking have been the performances of Sunderland, who have taken 17 points already and, to widespread surprise, lie fourth in the table.

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

Rory Delap was apparently ahead of his time. The spirit of Stoke City’s legendary ball flinger lives on with the long throw-in enjoying a renaissance in the Premier League this season. Indeed, statistics show that the number of long throw-ins per match has more than doubled from last season, pointing to a very real and meaningful trend.

It was just like old times as Dani Carvajal sparked a full-time ruckus with Barça’s teenage star after his pre-match barbs

“As long as I win they can’t say anything,” Lamine Yamal said once, but this time he didn’t win and they were coming for him. They said he spoke too much; they replied that, yeah, they would see him outside; they told him talk is cheap. And that was just the players: there was more from the preachers in their pulpits, men who never lose.

On the eve of the clásico, the teenager who claims he left fear behind in Mataró suggested that Real Madrid rob and moan, or so it goes. He also offered a reminder that the last time he had been at the Santiago Bernabéu – a kid with blaugrana braces, a glint in his eye and a right foot they didn’t know he had – he beat them 4-0. But that was then and this was now. And, an adult now, exactly a year on, he was beaten back. He knew, they told him so.

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

India are struggling at domestic and international level, and are now missing out on hosting two superstars of the game

In September 1977 an Indian astrologer predicted that Pelé would fall ill in Kolkata and be unable to take to the pitch for Santos in an exhibition against Mohun Bagan. In the end the Brazilian did actually play to the delight of 60,000 fans but, almost half a century later, there was perhaps even more excitement, with Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi set to appear on the subcontinent in the space of a month. This time, though, any doomsayer would be correct. Ronaldo didn’t come in October and Messi will not in November.

Without getting into that debate, Ronaldo’s absence is more painful simply because he was due to play in a competitive fixture, by some distance the biggest name ever to appear in a real game on Indian soil. August’s draw for the AFC Champions League Two put Al-Nassr in the same group as FC Goa, where the hotel for the visitors reserved the presidential suite for the five-time Ballon d’Or winner for the 22 October game.

Habib Beye’s job is on the line but simply sacking another manager is not the route to success for the Pinault family

By Get French Football News

“It’s been a bit of a crazy week,” said Rennes manager Habib Beye after his team’s 2-2 draw with Toulouse on Wednesday night. After a run of five games without a win, the former Newcastle and Aston Villa player did not know if he would be in charge for the game – his sacking was even hastily announced in some places – but he was in the dugout in Toulouse and is still holding on.

“The momentum at the club isn’t good and finances are relatively fragile, which puts pressure on us,” said the club’s president, Arnaud Pouille, after the game before announcing that the manager would stay. “We met with the staff on Monday to ask them whether they still had the energy to keep going, and they proved it tonight.”

Serie A’s best player last season showed his class against Inter despite his coach getting mouthy with former players

Scott McTominay could have been forgiven for a moment of self-pity after Napoli’s 6-2 defeat to PSV in the Champions League last week, a night when he scored twice and still wound up on the wrong end of a historic shellacking. Instead, he was the voice of reason.

While Antonio Conte debuted a new line of complaint, putting aside a career’s worth of laments about employers failing to back him in the transfer market to this time protest that Napoli had bought him too many new players, McTominay said simply: “It’s football. You have to take it on the chin.”

Will Still kept Lens competitive last season despite losing key players. They’re climbing even higher under Pierre Sage

By Get French Football News

When the Lens president, Joseph Oughourlian, set out the club’s “No 1 objective” before the season, he did not mention European qualification, a points target or even a cup run. The task at hand was to “rediscover financial solidity”. Sporting ambitions have taken a backseat role at Lens since Oughourlian announced the introduction of austerity measures in the summer of 2024. His words have been mirrored in the club’s actions.

Since running Paris Saint-Germain close for the title in the 2022-23 season, when they finished one point behind the eventual champions, the Lens squad has been decimated. First, it was Seko Fofana and Loïs Openda; then it was Abdukodir Khusanov, Elye Wahi, Brice Samba and Kevin Danso; and this summer it was Neil El-Aynaoui, Andy Diouf and Facundo Medina.

The lack of squad investment had clearly frustrated a habitually successful manager yet he was minded to see out his final season – before things got personal

Presumably Martin O’Neill had no inkling of what the coming hours would bring when he used a Monday radio appearance to talk up Hearts’ prospects of winning the Scottish title for the first time since 1960. “This is the time for Hearts,” O’Neill said.

The scale of reverberation around Brendan Rodgers’s resignation is such that even the return of O’Neill to the Celtic dugout is not the most dramatic element. Instead, the lesser‑spotted Dermot Desmond broke cover to lacerate Rodgers. The attack felt personal and spiteful. This proved a sad and unseemly conclusion to Rodgers’s second spell in Glasgow. So much so, in fact, that the third most successful manager in Celtic’s history cannot now show his face at the stadium. Desmond appears to be a bad enemy to choose.

Incidents in both games generated a lot of noise, not least the yellow card for Dorgu when Minteh was running towards goal

Two fixtures at the weekend generated a lot of noise in terms of refereeing decisions: Manchester United v Brighton and Brentford v Liverpool. In each case there were incidents that can serve as good educational pieces for understanding the calls that match officials make.

Starting at Old Trafford, the yellow card for Patrick Dorgu after fouling Yankuba Minteh, when the Brighton man looked as if he was through on goal, frustrated a lot of people. Everybody screams: “Last man, you’ve got to go” – which is absolutely false. Just because you’re the last defender it doesn’t mean you have to be sent off. In this kind of incident, the referee awards a foul and then has to consider the criteria of what fits the denial of an obvious goalscoring opportunity.

With their election looming, the Argentinian club hope stable leadership can reverse worst form in four decades

Stefano Di Carlo was two months old when, in 1989, his grandfather, Titi, became the president of River Plate, taking over after the resignation of Hugo Santilli. He was seven months old when, that December, his grandfather narrowly lost the presidential election. He was three years old when his grandfather took him to his first River Plate game.

Titi Di Carlo remained a senior figure at the club and was on the board when he went to a Copa Libertadores quarter-final against Banfield with the 16-year-old Stefano. The first leg had finished 1-1.

Stunning goals by Eli Kroupi and Loum Tchaouna mean they are forcing their way into my brain at the expense of Ian Juryeff

I managed to watch last Saturday’s Match of the Day without knowing the scores. It really is one of life’s enduring thrills. So the first time I’d seen or heard of Loum Tchaouna was when he picked up the ball in the 68th minute at Turf Moor, looked around a bit and thought: “Sod it, I’ll just whack it from here.” And how! What a brilliant way to introduce himself to my brain – which was perhaps not his ultimate goal; in this instance a goal was very much his ultimate goal.

By the time of this last-on-MOTD wonderstrike, I’d obviously spent the previous hour watching various other footballers at work – most of them pretty familiar. The odd one did require a cursory Google. Who is Eli Kroupi? Who are all these Chelsea players? Do they really have the same sized squad as all the other teams? If I was cloning footballers in a laboratory and slipping them into the Champions League squad, I’d call them Reggie Walsh.

Our cartoonist dons his best threads to check out which aesthetics are back to dominate the football fashion world

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Mikel Arteta’s side have experience of being top of the table but have been unable to finish the job in previous seasons

All the signs point to it finally being Arsenal’s season. But given that they have spent almost 800 days top of the table since last being champions in 2004, nothing will be taken for granted at this stage. After an outlay of more than £250m in the summer, Mikel Arteta has a formidable squad that has been able to cope with injuries to important players such as Kai Havertz and Martin Ødegaard – a problem that derailed them in three successive runner-up finishes.

The Liverpool legend is the subject of a new film directed by Asif Kapadia on the Scot’s remarkable career in football and connection with his adopted city

‘We got the bus and went down to Sheffield to visit the supporters who were in hospital,” Kenny Dalglish says as he remembers how he spent the Monday after the tragedy of Hillsborough in April 1989. “All the players were there so we split up and they walked into different wards to see people. We were trying to give them a wee bit of confidence or belief of anything that could help them. And there was a family around a young boy’s bed and he was unconscious.”

Sean Luckett was 20 years old and one of the thousands of fervent Liverpool supporters who had travelled to Hillsborough to support the team who Dalglish managed and had played for with such sublime talent since arriving from Celtic in 1977. Ninety-seven Liverpool fans eventually lost their lives after the unbearable crush during the club’s FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest.

In an embarrassing climbdown, the game in Miami is off with the league having alienated the players and even Villarreal, the club that was on its side

If there is a moment that defined La Liga’s fourth failed attempt to play in Miami, an image to explain why everything went wrong, it may have been the moment it was all over. On Tuesday night, Spanish television broadcast reaction to the news from the Estadio de la Ceràmica, live and unfiltered.

Cameras caught someone else who felt dismissed and disrespected, treated as if they didn’t count. This time it was someone who was supposed to be on the league’s side, but now appeared as a portrait of poor planning and poorer communication, a lack of consideration that pushed the project to collapse.

Manager inherits a group of players that suits him and has a track record of creating camaraderie in his squads

Sean Dyche was often spotted at the City Ground while out of work. The Nottingham Forest job has been of interest to him for a long time, and not only because he lives close by. The circumstances in which the role has become available are not ideal for an incoming head coach but his appointment is the pragmatic choice in ludicrous circumstances.

Ange Postecoglou was never the right man, inheriting a squad that did not suit his style and did not adapt quickly enough, though it did not help that he told the players their previous achievements meant nothing. His tenure will go down in history for all the wrong reasons. Dyche, on the other hand, has plenty of respect for what Forest achieved under Nuno Espírito Santo and is far more aligned with that conservatism than with what was witnessed under Postecoglou.

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Having started the season playing badly but still managing to emerge victorious from every game, the widespread assumption was that Liverpool would inevitably get their act together, improve their performances and continue said winning streak. On the contrary, their level of performance has dipped even further and, in the process, they have become the first team in English top-flight history to win their opening five matches and then lose the next four. And while there’s no getting away from the fact that four consecutive Premier League defeats constitutes something of a crisis for the reigning champions, Football Daily is simply not prepared to accept that a team comprised almost entirely of whey-faced youngsters and senior reserves getting knocked out of Fizzy Cup by Crystal Palace should in any way be lumped into the same bracket as previous defeats. A cursory glance at both team-sheets before kick-off on Wednesday night suggested anything other than defeat for Liverpool’s C team would constitute an upset and have little or nothing in common with Arne Slot’s actual first team getting beaten in consecutive league matches by Palace, Chelsea, Manchester United and Brentford.

The piece on Shamrock Rovers (yesterday’s Football Daily) produced a flood of memories concerning this historic club. I recalled standing on the terraces of Glenmalure Park in the 1960s and 1970s as a regular supporter during many successful seasons. Sadly, the ground was sold in 1987 for property development. The Hoops remained homeless for 22 years before the construction of Tallaght Stadium, the finest in the league, became their home to this day. One shudders at the thought of the nature of the diatribe one minority shareholder would concoct in response to any calamitous collapse. Oh yes, it’s that man again with a fondness for investing in green-hooped league monopolisers, Dermot Desmond, with 25% of the shares” – John Weldon.

The recent Football Daily focus on the revival of long-throw merchants brings to mind Stoke City v Hull City in November 2008, when Tigers stalwart Dean Windass was booked while still on the bench. He chose to warm up energetically on the touchline alongside Rory Delap in a vain effort to distract the master of the long throw’s superhuman hurling of the ball into the Hull box. Despite Windass’s indignant protest (‘I was only warming up, ref’), on the second occasion he was rewarded for his efforts with a yellow card. Windass is also remembered as the only player in the Scottish Premiership to receive three red cards in one game while being on the pitch for just 20 minutes, playing for Aberdeen against Dundee in 1997; a second yellow and automatic red for enthusiastic tackling, the second red for subsequent abuse metered out to the ref; and the third for an assault on the corner flag on his way off. Class act” – David Burnby.

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Today’s newsletter looks at the most clinical forwards at the tournament in Morocco, which has reached the last-16 stage

The 2025 Under-17 Women’s World Cup is well under way in Morocco with Brazil, China, Canada and Spain among the countries who have reached the last 16. After an intriguing group stage here are some of the young stars who have stood out so far:

Giulia Galli (Italy): Italy have been one of the surprise packages of the tournament, spearheaded by the goals of Galli. The 17-year-old has enjoyed an eye-catching year for club and country: she was at the heart of her nation’s run to the semi-finals of this summer’s Under-17 European Championship, their highest finish in more than a decade that booked their spot at this World Cup. Since then, she has found herself around the Roma senior team, scoring her first goal for the club – the winner – in their Serie A Women’s Cup fixture against Milan. She has led the charge once again in Morocco as Selena Mazzantini’s side won all three group games to progress. All five goals to date have demonstrated her uncanny knack of breaking defensive lines as well as her instinctive clinical ability inside the box.

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Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Robyn Cowen, Jordan Jarrett-Bryan and Ewan Murray as Liverpool lose again, Arsenal keep a clean sheet again, the panel preview the Premier League and Ewan Murray joins for the latest from Scotland

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