“Crystal Palace turned the tables on Liverpool, scoring in stoppage time to secure a memorable victory at Selhurst Park as Oliver Glasner’s side continued their unbeaten run in the Premier League. Liverpool’s habit of finding the net in the latter stages of matches this season seemed to have earned them a draw when Federico Chiesa levelled in the 87th minute. But an impressive Palace secured all three points with the last play of the game when Eddie Nketiah struck at the far post in the 97th minute. …”
NY Times/The Athletic
NY Times/The Athletic: ‘Mentality’ is Arne Slot’s new favourite word at Liverpool. This is why
Crystal Palace 2 Liverpool 1 – Nketiah’s late winner, set-piece concerns for the champions
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“There is a certain aesthetic which sits alongside the most entertaining games of football — often it is that they are played at a ‘good tempo’. A player who can dictate the tempo of a match is worth their weight in gold, while identifying a team’s shift in tempo is synonymous with an increase in energy and creativity. It is a term that is frequently used within football parlance, but what exactly do we mean by it? …”
“Almost as soon as Anfield’s last visitors leave, new ones swoop in. On Tancred Road, four streets away from the district’s famous football stadium and home of Liverpool FC, changeover day in three rental properties last week was Thursday. Out went the Liverpool fans who had travelled from other parts of the world to watch their team’s 3-2 Champions League victory over Atletico Madrid. Shortly after, they were replaced by ones in town for Saturday’s Premier League Merseyside derby against Everton. Nearby, separate groups shared a four-bedroom house from Tuesday to Sunday, taking in both fixtures. …”
“… This was the round when 
“Many frontiers have been crossed within football analytics. It was not too long ago that clubs would be lucky to obtain the most basic event metrics, such as shots, passes, and corners. Fast forward to the modern day, and the granularity of football data now is eye-watering. Players with GPS (Global Positioning System) vests are commonplace in the modern game as clubs monitor the speed, distance covered, accelerations and decelerations of each squad member in every training session and matchday. …”
“It wasn’t pretty but Tottenham Hotspur’s return to the Champions League was a winning one. A calamitous own goal by Villarreal goalkeeper Luiz Junior in the fourth minute proved enough for Thomas Frank’s side in a low-key encounter in north London, although few Spurs fans were complaining at the relative lack of fireworks. Here, we analyse the major talking points. …”
“This summer, the traditional ‘Big Six’ clubs signed more players from the rest of the Premier League than in any of the previous 15 seasons. 
“Aston Villa’s goal of the month for August was simple. They decided not to bother with it at all because, for only the second time in their history, Villa failed to score in their first three league fixtures. They are the only team out of 162 that make up England’s top seven leagues (Premier League down to the National League North and South) yet to hit the back of the net. A big caveat here is that they have played only three league matches, whereas some teams in lower leagues have played more than double that number. …”
“Tottenham Hotspur has been the club where everything changes but its owners. For all that managers and players come and go, ENIC has held power for almost a quarter of a century. No Premier League owner has lasted longer. The front-facing leader had always been Daniel Levy but 
“The transfer window is over. Over 150 senior players have been signed by Premier League clubs. Others have moved on to the continent. Much like every year, a club’s transfer window will likely be judged a success or a failure based on the season that follows — that big-money striker who fires his new side into the Champions League or the huge (and unresolved) hole in defence that means a club slips into a relegation scrap. But with the window having just closed, we asked The Athletic’s club reporters for their view on how it panned out for their side, and what grade they would give the club’s window. …”
“It is just 90 days since Paris Saint-Germain claimed their first Champions League with 
“Welcome to the 13th edition of The Athletic’s Transfer DealSheet for the summer 2025 transfer window. Our team of dedicated writers, including David Ornstein, will take you inside the market to explain the deals being worked on. The transfer window is open and will run until September 1. The information found within this article has been gathered according to The Athletic’s sourcing guidelines. Unless stated, our reporters have spoken to more than one person briefed on each deal before offering the clubs involved the opportunity to comment. Their responses, when they were given, have been included. We aim to bring you analysis you can trust about what is happening at Europe’s leading clubs and the latest information we’re hearing from across the market. This year, The Athletic’s football finance writer, Chris Weatherspoon, will be adding to our analysis of the transfer market. …”
“There is no doubting the sizeable and growing divide between London and much of the rest of England. A 
“Electric is how Eddie Howe describes the atmosphere he expects at St James’ Park tonight. First home game of the season, Bank Holiday Monday, under the floodlights and Newcastle United will have the pent-up emotions of a city behind them: their frustration unleashed not upon Alexander Isak this time, but Liverpool. All summer long a sense of indignation has brewed and bubbled on Tyneside. This could be the night it boils over. Isak’s actions — spurning Newcastle and their supporters’ adoration, turning his back on his manager and team-mates as he agitates for a transfer — have caused anger. Liverpool, whom Isak is set on joining, will feel the brunt of that resentment. …”
“Football quite often shows that it isn’t aware of its own absurdity, and a prime example of that came last week when Enzo Maresca was discussing Levi Colwill’s knee injury. Colwill is likely to miss most of the season after rupturing his anterior cruciate ligament, which given he started 35 league games in the 2024-25 campaign, is enough to put a wrinkle in anyone’s plans. Maresca’s immediate solution was to suggest that Todd Boehly further loosened the already pretty loose Chelsea purse strings and furnish him with a new signing to plug the gap. …”
“C’est la vie is the motto Tijjani Reijnders lives by, the one that inspired his trademark shoulder-shrug celebration he performed on his debut for Manchester City. That’s life and, yes, this — running football matches — is what I do. Deal with it. The Premier League certainly got the message. He played a key role in all of City’s goals in their 4-0 away win against Wolves: orchestrating the first, scoring the second, assisting the third and doing the leg work for the fourth to rank among the best debuts the division has ever seen. …”
“Have you missed football? Probably not, because it never really stopped. But if you were struggling, fear not, because the Premier League is back. Three hundred and eighty matches, 282 days, 20 teams, endless grumbling about VARs, and almost certainly a new officiating debate that none of us have dreamed up yet are waiting just around the corner, all starting when reigning champions Liverpool host Bournemouth on Friday at 8pm BST/3pm EST. 
“As the new season gets under way, the 20 Premier League managers will be grappling with key selection decisions that could make the difference between a good or bad start to the campaign. So to help them, The Athletic’s dedicated club correspondents and experts have picked their own strongest XI — and justified the reasoning behind it. So without further delay, here they are. …”
“Landing transfer targets at Newcastle United this summer has been a bit like trying to nail jelly to a wall. Last week, Benjamin Sesko became the latest player to turn them down, signing for Manchester United instead and joining a list that includes Hugo Ekitike, James Trafford and Joao Pedro. Newcastle made bids for all four players this summer and ended up missing out on each of them. They also tried and failed to sign Dean Huijsen, Bryan Mbeumo and Liam Delap. On top of that, Alexander Isak, the club’s talisman and biggest asset, is attempting to force through a move to Liverpool. …”
“Tactically, the Premier League is in a real state of flux. After four consecutive title-winning years with a distinct, possession and territory-based style, Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City were reduced to a third-place finish on 71 points in 2024-25 — their worst since Guardiola’s debut campaign of 2016-17. Meanwhile Liverpool cruised to the title in their first season post-Jurgen Klopp, with Arne Slot’s side developing a reputation for their flexibility and adaptability. They had 25 wins and only lost twice across the first 34 matches, by which point the trophy was theirs. Nottingham Forest showed European football can be earned with a throwback, defend-first and counter-attack strategy, while for the second season running all three promoted teams were relegated. So what might we expect from 2025-26? …”
“Will the return of Rodri propel Manchester City back to the top of the table? Is this the year Manchester United finally regain their status as a genuine Premier League power? How will a tragic summer affect Liverpool on the pitch? Can the promoted teams break the pattern of recent seasons and stay up? The 2025-26 season kicks off on Friday and what better way to start the week than by looking ahead to what might be in store over the coming months. We asked all of our writers to submit their predicted Premier League table — you can see that a little further down this article. …”
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“… The map shows the average attendance of the 20 clubs that comprise the 2025–26 Premier League. The main map [of England & Wales] shows the locations of 13 of the clubs; the Inset-map shows the locations of the 7 clubs that are based in Greater London. The larger the club’s average attendance from last season [2024-25], the larger their circle-and-badge are on the map(s). Each club’s home venue-name, and regional location, are also shown. Clubs are grouped by region (that is, by City or County). The location of Everton’s former home (Goodison Park) is shown, as well as the club’s new home on the docks of the River Mersey (
“… The date was October 27, 2005, and Paul Gascoigne, one of the most naturally gifted English footballers of all time, was spelling out his grand plans for Kettering Town, having just been announced as their new manager. Gascoigne was speaking at a packed out press conference to mark the momentous occasion for Kettering, a historic non-League club playing in the sixth tier of English football. Gascoigne, who had a prominent bandage on his neck following an accident on a Christmas ice-skating special of BBC One’s Strictly Come Dancing, was sat next to another decorated ex-professional footballer, former Arsenal midfielder Paul Davis, who had agreed to work alongside him as his assistant. …”
“Players are the focus of any football transfer storyline. Managers, agents and club owners add to the intrigue, of course, but it’s a relatively new role which has been garnering increased attention with every transfer window — the sporting director. Fundamentally, the remit of the sporting director is to be a link between the coaching staff and the club’s hierarchy, providing continuity, sustainability and a stable strategy in the club’s football operations. …”
“It was the brown envelopes that kept falling through the letterbox that filled Dean Windass with foreboding. Windass was a spiky but effective striker whose 18-year senior career had taken him through all four divisions, including spells in the Premier League with Bradford City, Middlesbrough and Hull City, plus the Scottish top flight with Aberdeen. While he was never one of the game’s superstars, he had earned good money at a time when English football was booming. …”
“‘Let’s hear it for the boys — make some noise!’ cries the voice over the public address system at Park Hall Stadium on a beautiful summer evening. It’s July 8, in Oswestry, an English market town that’s only three miles from the Welsh border and where the whistle has just sounded to start a Champions League first qualifying round first-leg tie between The New Saints (TNS), the Cymru Premier title winners, and KF Shkendija of North Macedonia. Typically, the kick-off in these early Champions League fixtures is regarded as the curtain-raiser to the new season and a sign that club football is finally back. Except club football never went away this summer. …”
“It is nine weeks since Sheffield Wednesday last played a home game but the flyposting around Hillsborough helps to illustrate a long summer of rancour. ‘Chansiri out’ is the simple, scrawled message, set against a collage of cult heroes and trophy lifts. Wednesday’s happiest recent times in the early 1990s, when they were regulars in the upper echelons of the top flight and frequent travellers to Wembley in cup competitions, seem a long time ago. It is 25 years since they were last in the Premier League and Wednesday now resemble a decaying club under the ownership of Dejphon Chansiri, a 57-year-old businessman whose family own the Thai Union Group (TUG), the world’s largest producer of canned tuna. The money has dried up and so, too, has hope. …”
“Arsene Wenger had a lot to get off his chest in the autumn of 2015. His Arsenal side were in danger of exiting the Champions League at the group stages and their 2-1 loss away to Dinamo Zagreb had become an acute source of irritation. Not because Arsenal had stumbled against their weakest opponents, but because the Croatian side had triumphed with a player — Arijan Ademi — who had returned a positive drugs test after playing the full 90 minutes. Ademi would eventually be given a four-year suspension (later reduced to two on appeal) after traces of the banned steroid stanozolol were found in a routine urine sample, but Wenger bristled at Zagreb facing no disciplinary sanctions from UEFA, European football’s governing body. ‘That means you basically accept doping,’ he said. …”
“It’s that time of year again. Liverpool have finally lifted the Premier League trophy after securing the title last month, but the main prize is not the only thing being handed out. Mohamed Salah hoovered up the individual awards, with 29 goals securing the Golden Boot and 18 assists grabbing the Playmaker award for the second time in a Liverpool shirt. Golden glove? That goalkeeping accolade was shared between Nottingham Forest’s Matz Sels and David Raya of Arsenal, with 13 clean sheets apiece. …”
“Manchester City’s dominance finally came to an end, Liverpool were able to celebrate the title in front of their fans for the first time in 35 years, two of the ‘Big Six’ finished in the bottom six and the promoted clubs all went straight back down.Those might be the raw headlines from 2024-25 but this Premier League season offered so much more — this was the campaign, don’t forget, when a player got booked for imitating a seagull. Seb Stafford-Bloor, Tim Spiers, Nick Miller, Oliver Kay and Stuart James reflect on the highs and the lows as another year of English top-flight football reaches its conclusion. …”
“For a lot of this season, the Premier League has been light on compelling, competitive narrative. It was pretty clear that Liverpool would be champions from fairly early on, and it was even more obvious that Ipswich Town, Leicester City and Southampton were going to go down. Stakes seemed low, attention could easily wander, the summer loomed. But then, emerging over the hill to save us all as winter turned into spring, was the race for the Champions League places. The fact that the Premier League had five places this season rather than four gave things an added element of spice, so as Nottingham Forest faltered, Manchester City started to look more like themselves and both Newcastle United and Aston Villa found some form, it was all headed inexorably towards high drama and teeth-chattering tension on the final day. …”
“The defining moment of Stoke City’s 10 years in the Premier League came on November 29, 2008. They were playing Hull City at home, whose defender Kamil Zayatte had just played a backpass to goalkeeper Boaz Myhill. Myhill was immediately closed down by two Stoke attackers, so the standard clearance up the pitch was not an option. There wasn’t a short pass on. The next most logical choice was to go sideways and put it out for a throw — not ideal, but it would have dealt with the immediate issues. After all, how dangerous can a throw-in really be? But Myhill stopped, hesitated, stuttered, regretted every one of his life decisions that had led him to this point, weighed up his options… and kicked it out for a corner. …”
“In football, we obsess over which team is going to win every competition, where every side will finish in the league and the future transfer destinations of top players. What we talk about far less is where managers will end up, other than in the unemployment queue — which, obviously, is only a metaphorical image because in reality they’re all multi-millionaires and set for life financially. Which club will Marco Silva call home after he leaves Fulham? Ever wondered where Crystal Palace’s Oliver Glasner will work next? Nope, us neither. But maybe it’s time we started. …”
“Football tactics have experienced a boom in recent years, but even the most progressive fan still loves to see their team ‘stick it in the mixer’. In many ways, the football we watch has become increasingly cultured in the Premier League, but ask yourself this: who doesn’t reminisce about Rory Delap’s iconic long throw-ins for Stoke City in the late 2000s? The drop in directness from these towards the end of the previous decade in the Premier League coincided with a decrease in the percentage of goalkeeper passes played long — defined as ones that travel at least 32m (35 yards) — as more teams were focusing on maintaining possession, building out from the back, and recycling the ball if they lost it. …”
“Mohamed Salah is five goals clear of Alexander Isak in the race for the Golden Boot and leads 
“Luton Town fans looked dumbfounded. Their team had just been beaten 5-3 by West Bromwich Albion in a breathless game on the final day of the Championship season to confirm relegation into English football’s third tier. Some hugged loved ones for comfort; others just held their heads in their hands. It was a dark day in the club’s recent history, and all the more painful given that — just 12 short months ago — Luton still had a chance of staying in the Premier League. They ultimately lost that fight but started this season among the promotion favourites. …”
“Newcastle United’s long wait for a trophy ended under Wembley’s arch just as evening was descending, the sun disappearing and, with it, 70 years of domestic strife. Mid-March’s victory over Liverpool in the Carabao Cup final marked the end of seven trophyless decades on Tyneside (the 1969 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup excluded) and, with it, perhaps, the beginning of something else. As black-and-whites on the pitch and in the stands celebrated the end of an unwanted era, one emblem of their new era stood front and centre. Yasir Al-Rumayyan, club chairman, made his way onto the pitch and held up the trophy. He is also the governor of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), Newcastle’s majority shareholder. …”
“There was a time, not all that long ago, when Tottenham Hotspur were routinely highlighted as the Premier League’s best-run club. And by not that long ago, we mean last August. Fair Game, a campaign group for improved football governance, placed Spurs as the highest-ranking English club in their 
“Just over a week ago, a new part-owner of fifth division team Dagenham & Redbridge appeared on 
“You see the bus at the stop. It’s just over there. You can obviously make it. You quicken your step. As you do, you hear the engine start. The doors fold closed. You could sprint for it — you’re fast enough — but the idea is unappealing. The sweat, sure, but also just the indignity of it. You don’t need this bus. There will be others. The doors reopen. Someone else is now getting on. It’s extremely makeable now, you could probably just jog. But something stops you. You have already committed to not going for it, your nonchalance now non-negotiable. It could linger there for 20 or 30 more seconds for all you care. You’re walking slowly, you’re missing that bus and that’s the end of the matter. …”
“Three games, three days and three degrees of desperation, a tragical misery tour that leads from Suffolk to London and on to the East Midlands. Roll up for a relegation road trip featuring Ipswich Town, Southampton and Leicester City, clubs promoted to the Premier League last season and now going, gone and almost certainly going, who have found the promised land to be harsh and infertile. …”
“Just when you think you’ve seen everything that football has to offer, along come Ipswich Town. Amid another morale-sapping defeat that all but sealed their relegation from the Premier League, Ipswich, with a little help from their opponents, Wolverhampton Wanderers, served up the maddest two minutes of Premier League action you are likely to see this season. A backpass, a mistake, a save, a free kick, a melee on the goal line, a thudding shot and a point-blank block… there was nothing technically proficient about any of it, but it was memorable. Are you not entertained? 
“There has been little to cheer about for supporters of Southampton Football Club this season. Southampton were promoted back to the Premier League last summer at the first time of asking via victory over Leeds United in the Championship’s play-off final, but it has not been a happy first campaign on their return to the English top flight. They’ve only managed two league wins in their 29 games, sacked the manager who brought them up, Russell Martin, in December, are on a nine-match losing streak at home and have conceded 70 goals, which, unsurprisingly, is more than any other top-flight team. …”
“With the Premier League title race and relegation battle seemingly wrapped up before April, you might think there is little peril remaining in the final weeks of 2024-25. Fear not. Any thrill-seekers need only look as far as the race for Champions League spots, with as many as seven teams still fighting to dine at Europe’s top table next season. Liverpool, Arsenal, and Nottingham Forest have separated themselves from the remaining pack at the top of the table but based on the latest UEFA coefficient standings, fifth is enough for a place in the 2025-26 Champions League. One more win for any of the five English sides remaining in a European competition this season should confirm that additional spot in the continent’s top tournament. …”
“As Adam Wharton turned and played a perfect through ball to Eddie Nketiah, Thomas Tuchel must have raised an eyebrow. The England head coach watched Crystal Palace from the stands for the second successive match with several players on his radar. But if there was a pass which by itself warranted an England call-up then this was it. Wharton received the ball 10 yards inside Palace’s half, surveyed the surroundings and advanced forward. He spotted Nketiah, who was through a crowd. …”
“Mousa Dembele was a players’ player: a rare talent whose quality is 
Scissors Kick 