Aston Villa have named Unai Emery as their new manager after the Premier League club paid the Spaniard’s €6m (£5.25m) release clause at Villarreal. Villa approached Emery as they looked to make a quick appointment following the sacking of Steven Gerrard last week. Emery will take over from 1 November after his work permit formalities are completed, meaning Villa’s caretaker manager, Aaron Danks...
In the beginning, there was a typewriter and José Manuel Llaneza. And that, Villarreal president and owner Fernando Roig is fond of saying, was that. It is not entirely true – Roig’s son recalls a guy called Gumbau and a man named Parra – but it’s not a long way off and it is an effective way of expressing just how far the club has come and how they did it. Who did it too. Another came from Manu...
Jesse Marsch has described Leeds United’s travails as “painful” and said he must “stop the bleeding” as his position came under increased scrutiny following defeat against Fulham on Sunday. Although the Elland Road board approached the game with an apparent resolve to offer their American manager time to put things right, the club are now in the Premier League relegation zone after four...
Wherever Steven Gerrard was on Sunday at 2.15pm, he would have been forgiven for cussing. If the former Aston Villa manager was somehow masochistically watching this game, he might just have been wondering where all the verve and anticipation – never mind the goals – had come from as Villa ripped Brentford apart with all the vim of a team exhilarated to be playing under an inspirational new...
Goals from the midfield pair of Lia Wälti and Frida Maanum helped take unbeaten Arsenal past Liverpool. This could have been a banana‑skin game for the Gunners, sandwiched between two tricky Champions League group-stage fixtures, the first of which was a trip to the reigning champions, Lyon. Matt Beard’s Liverpool had stunned Chelsea on the opening weekend of the season, with two Katie Stengel...
Napoli’s seemingly unstoppable winning streak continued when Victor Osimhen’s late strike secured a 1-0 win at Roma in Serie A, giving them 11 straight victories in all competitions. In front of a raucous crowd at the Stadio Olimpico, both sides were evenly matched in a largely uneventful first half. Napoli thought they had a penalty in the 38th minute when Roma goalkeeper Rui Patrício challenged...
As recently as Friday the message from the Leeds boardroom was that the club’s directors remained determined to keep faith with Jesse Marsch but such resolve is now being subjected to an intense stress test. Marsch’s side endured a fourth successive Premier League defeat here, extending their winless run to eight games and sinking into the bottom three. The American met the final whistle by...
The Wolves-supporting caretaker manager Steve Davis felt the fans’ pain during their 4-0 defeat against Leicester. Wolves dominated play and created a plethora of chances but never truly looked like scoring, to leave them with five goals in 12 games and an increasingly toxic atmosphere at Molineux. There were chants of “We’re fucking shit” from the crowd after Youri Tielemans, Harvey Barnes and...
Newcastle climbed into the Premier League top four after winning 2-1 at Tottenham with their manager, Eddie Howe, declaring “we can achieve special things with this group”. First-half goals from Callum Wilson and Miguel Almirón were enough to beat third-placed Spurs, who failed to mount a second-half comeback after Harry Kane’s 54th‑minute goal. “Hopefully this gives us the confidence to know we...
How high might Newcastle’s ceiling be? Victory at third-placed Tottenham lifted them into the Premier League’s top four. With winnable fixtures against Aston Villa and Southampton before a pre-World Cup showdown with Chelsea, Newcastle can be solidly in the Champions League shakeup when they head off for that Saudi winter training camp taken for “football reasons”. What a difference a change of...