⚽ All the latest updates heading into the weekend’s action ⚽ Premier League: 10 things to look out for | Email John Slot has been talking about Liverpool’s injuries, too: “Endo and Gakpo? Going to be weeks. Cody is a muscle injury and Wata is ankle. And his new strike pairing of Hugo Ekitike and Alexander Isak: “What we all saw, which is normal, the more they play, the more they will adapt and the better they will cooperate. The other two No 9s on the pitch for Inter were more used to playing with each. It’s the second time they have played together and I think we will see more of this in the future. Alex got a knock in the first half, so let’s see if he is able to start tomorrow. Continue reading...

Initial Kansas plan for US training base thrown into doubt FA exploring alternative options on the east coast The Football Association has sent operational staff to the US this week to scout for World Cup training camps amid concerns that England may lose their preferred site to the Netherlands. Thomas Tuchel had cleared an FA plan for England to be based in Kansas after a pre-tournament training camp in Fort Lauderdale, but after last week’s draw there are concerns that the Netherlands will be allocated their chosen facility at Sporting Kansas City, a high-performance centre used by US Soccer. Continue reading...

Reds goal ruled Sunderland own goal in blow to Wirtz Mohamed Salah ‘still important’ after being dropped Florian Wirtz should ignore his Premier League numbers and not lose confidence in his world-class ability at Liverpool, believes Virgil van Dijk. Liverpool’s £116m summer signing thought he had scored his first goal for the club against Sunderland on Wednesday only for the 81st-minute equaliser to be deemed an own goal by defender Nordi Mukiele. The decision means the 22-year-old is still without a goal or an assist in 13 league appearances for the champions. Van Dijk, however, is convinced Wirtz is on the right path at Liverpool and will prove he is an elite level player. Continue reading...

Cherries fans wait on word of Semenyo, Gueye’s red card could leave Everton blue and Nuno needs new plans With Thomas Frank, Bryan Mbeumo, Yoane Wissa, Christian Nørgaard and Mark Flekken leaving Brentford in the summer, the Bees looked the established club most likely to go down, thereby allowing a promoted one to stay up. In the event, though, they’ve made a solid start to life under Keith Andrews, more or less alternating wins and losses to sit 13th in the table, five points above the relegation zone. Burnley, on the other hand, find themselves roughly where most people thought they’d be: second-bottom having lost three games in a row. As it happens, they’ve not been that bad, asking difficult questions of more exalted opponents with tidy midfield play, before succumbing to defeat anyway. Ultimately, conceding two goals a game is not sustainable, but it’s worth noting that one of Burnley’s three league victories came against Sunderland, a side whose physical, intense and forward-thinking style is not dissimilar to Brentford’s. If they can get their passing going, they’ve a chance. Daniel Harris Brentford v Burnley (Saturday 3pm, all times GMT) Manchester City v Leeds, Saturday 3pm Sunderland v Bournemouth, Saturday 3pm Everton v Newcastle, Saturday 5.30pm Continue reading...

Two goals from Donyell Malen led Aston Villa to the verge of automatic qualification for the last 16 of the Europa League against a backdrop of more crowd violence from Young Boys supporters. The Netherlands striker is exemplifying Villa’s greater strength in depth but this 10th win in 12 games was marred by visiting fans ripping up seats, throwing missiles at stewards and Villa players and fighting with police. Continue reading...

Nottingham Forest leave Anfield as 3-0 winners Slot: ‘I should look at myself first and my team’ Arne Slot said he needed to “look at myself” after Liverpool suffered a sixth defeat in seven Premier League games at home to Nottingham Forest and insisted he would find a way out of the champions’ slump. Forest, in the relegation zone before kick-off, produced the biggest win at Anfield in their history as Liverpool slipped to an eighth loss in 11 matches in all competitions. The British record signing, Alexander Isak, was again anonymous and Liverpool argued Murillo’s opener should have been ruled out for similar reasons to Virgil van Dijk’s disallowed effort against Manchester City before the international break. But Slot admitted the buck stopped with him and made no excuses. Continue reading...

Troy Parrott’s brilliant hat-trick, his third coming in the depths of injury time, delivered the Republic of Ireland into the World Cup playoffs, denying a sickened Hungary at the death. To cap a remarkable week in Irish football history, Parrott, the two-goal hero of Portugal’s defeat in Dublin on Thursday, stunned Budapest’s Puskás Aréna into silence, barring the ecstatic scenes among the Irish contingent. Parrott had described Thursday’s defenestration of Cristiano Ronaldo’s team as the best night of his life, only for Sunday to be yet more gloriously dramatic. The former Tottenham trainee, who plays in the Dutch Eredivisie for AZ Alkmaar, would almost certainly not have started Ireland’s double-header had Roma’s Evan Ferguson not injured an ankle. Continue reading...

German club Mainz have lost a court appeal for wrongful dismissal by Dutch winger Anwar El Ghazi over social media posts regarding the Israel-Gaza conflict.

Plus: more football records that were rapidly broken and Home Nations players from the crown dependencies Mail us with your questions and answers “In September, Lithuania became the lowest Fifa-ranked country (143rd) to score against the Netherlands, who were ranked seventh,” writes Pete Tomlin. “That means a difference of 136 places between the two countries. I have two questions upon hearing this – which is the lowest-ranked team to score against England (since the rankings began in 1992) and what is the biggest difference between teams where the lower-ranked team has scored? I was thinking of the respective rankings at the time the matches took place rather than current rankings.” The Netherlands, who won that match 3-2 in September, will meet Lithuania in the return fixture on Monday. The respective rankings are now sixth and 146th so the gap will be 140 places if Lithuania manage to score in Amsterdam. 65 North Macedonia 1-1 England, November 2023 75 Albania 1-3 England, March 2001 87 Macedonia 1-2 England, September 2003 91 England 2-2 Macedonia, October 2002 116 Northern Ireland 1-0 England, September 2005 118 Malta 1-2 England, June 2000 120 England 5-3 Kosovo, September 2019 122 San Marino 1-7 England, November 1993 131 England 5-1 Kazakhstan, October 2008 Matt Le Tissier England, 8 caps, 1994-97 (b Guernsey) Maya Le Tissier England, 10 caps, 2022- (b Guernsey) Graeme Le Saux England, 36 caps, 1994-2000 (b Jersey) Kieran Tierney Scotland, 50 caps, 2016- (b Isle of Man) Continue reading...

Amorim: ‘We have a lot of problems, we’re just in the beginning’ Frank defends substitutions after jeers from fans Ruben Amorim accused Manchester United of feeling too comfortable after they salvaged a draw from the jaws of defeat at Tottenham in a game they had led for long periods. Matthijs de Ligt’s 96th-minute header ensured United are five games unbeaten but their levels varied wildly in a match they controlled after Bryan Mbeumo’s first-half goal. They were overhauled by strikes from Mathys Tel and Richarlison before the last-gasp salvation act and Amorim expressed concern that they had drifted through spells of the game while ahead. Continue reading...

How to make sense of a match that, so low on quality for the majority, swung in every conceivable direction in its final 15 minutes? Tottenham were on the brink of a potentially transformative win for Thomas Frank when Mathys Tel, who had only been on the pitch for five minutes, equalised out of nowhere before Richarlison glanced in an apparent clincher early in added time. It would have been their first league victory at home since the opening day but then Matthijs de Ligt, getting on the end of a deep corner with virtually the final action, extended Manchester United’s run of encouraging form. Head scratching was the only response; from Frank’s point of view at least Bryan Mbeumo, his former charge at Brentford, had not decided matters with his first-half header. Continue reading...

Wayne Rooney gives his side of THAT post match chat with Virgil van Dijk.

‘Isak had to go off because he felt his groin,’ says manager Striker played first half of 5-1 Champions League rout Arne Slot welcomed an emphatic end to Liverpool’s losing run but fears he could be without Alexander Isak for several weeks after the British record signing sustained a groin problem against Eintracht Frankfurt. Liverpool produced a 5-1 rout in Germany with Slot’s call for set-piece improvement answered by two goals from corners by Virgil van Dijk and Ibrahima Konaté. The win ended a sequence of four successive defeats for the Premier League champions but Isak had to be withdrawn after 45 minutes of his second start in four days. Slot believes the workload may have been too much for the striker, who missed most of pre-season at Newcastle in his attempt to force a £125m move to Liverpool. Continue reading...

Injury-hit and under pressure, Hansi Flick turned to defender turned makeshift striker to take them top of La Liga “I told my teammates: ‘If I go on, I’ll score,’ and everybody laughed,” Ronald Araújo said but they weren’t laughing now. Actually, wait, no: they were laughing now. Laughing and shouting and swearing and scrambling to escape the bench, like someone had set fire to it. Someone like him: 6ft 3in and 15 stone of Uruguayan beef, tearing off his top and leaping over the boards advertising Kicking My Feet, fists thudding at his bare chest while Barcelona’s players chased him, Frenkie de Jong leapt on for a ride, and over on the far side of Montjuic the manager who wasn’t supposed to be there let rip. “It’s football, it’s emotion,” Hansi Flick said. When it’s like this especially. On a weekend when the first 15 seconds of every game weren’t played at all and weren’t always broadcast either – La Liga distracting everyone from the 22-man standstill protests over their unilateral decision to go to Miami by encouraging cameras to look elsewhere and commentators to talk about something else – the best was instead saved for the final seconds when attention was actually on the pitch. And there it was all kicking off. Properly, this time. Continue reading...