Not many at Old Trafford are suited to the manager’s trusty 3-4-2-1 but replacing them will cost hundreds of millions

Everything always seems clearer in the morning, and in the cold grey light of Thursday, the prognosis for Manchester United is bleak. While Tottenham face an awkward calculation – weighing up whether the delirium of a first European trophy in 41 years offsets their worst league season in terms of proportion of games lost – for Manchester United the equation is far starker.

Ruben Amorim will only play in one way. He is committed absolutely, uncompromisingly, irrevocably to the 3-4-2-1. Liverpool considered him, looked at their squad, realised the two things did not go together, appointed Arne Slot and won the league. Manchester United looked at their squad, flinched at the horror, and seem to have reasoned it was such a mess that it was impossible to find a manager whose philosophy would fit. There was a dissenting voice, Dan Ashworth, but at the court of Sir Jim Ratcliffe, reasoned doubts are as unwelcome as a free lunch.

Our cartoonist looks at the Tottenham coach fulfilling his prophecy by lifting a trophy in his second year with the club

Tourists are in England for the first time in 22 years and faced dual threats of hostile batting and cold weather

Of course the first morning of the summer was the worst morning of the summer. Test cricket, like a bank holiday picnic, is a reliable way to send the English sun running, and Zimbabwe’s first day of Test cricket in this country in 22 years started under thick ripples of ominous grey cloud, and in a freezing breeze. In the shop at the bottom of the Radcliffe Road Stand staff were sent running to the stock room to fetch up fresh boxes of beanie hats and hooded tops, as the crowd, caught short by the sudden dip in temperature after weeks of good weather, made an unexpected run on their supplies of winter clothing.

Zimbabwe won the toss, which was the last thing that went their way all day. “We’ll have a bowl,” said their captain, Craig Ervine, and it must have seemed like a good idea at the time. Ben Stokes admitted he would have done the same thing himself given the conditions overhead.

• Leigh 12-26 Hull FC

• Hull score 26 unanswered points in the first half

John Cartwright has already enjoyed some wonderful moments as Hull FC coach and transformed the club’s fortunes in just three months in charge, but this win at Leigh could well turn out to be his finest victory yet.

There is no escaping the fact that after a wonderful start to 2025, Hull have endured a difficult few weeks. Injuries and a loss of form have resulted in them exiting the Challenge Cup at the hands of their biggest rivals and tumbling outside the playoff places as the midway point of the season approaches.

• Dutch dartist fails to make playoffs after 6-2 defeat

• Luke Littler sets points record by seeing off Humphries

Michael van Gerwen was knocked out of the Premier League after failing in his win-or-bust mission in Sheffield as a record-breaking Luke Littler won a sixth night. The seven-times Premier League champion has had a miserable campaign and came into the final weekly night having to win to stay in contention for the playoffs.

But Van Gerwen fell at the first hurdle, losing 6-2 to Nathan Aspinall, whose victory guaranteed him a top-four spot and completed the lineup for next week’s playoffs at the O2 in London.

• Briton’s production company working on ‘three concepts’

• Verstappen misses Monaco screening of F1: The Movie

Lewis Hamilton has revealed his film production company is working with screenwriters to produce three films in the future. The seven-time world champion was speaking after a private screening of the forthcoming film F1: The Movie, held on Wednesday night in Monte Carlo, on which he was a producer and an adviser.

“At the beginning you see all the different logos for the different production houses and my one comes out, which I worked on for so long, which is Dawn Apollo and it was just amazing to see that,” he said. “This has gone in very high. Couldn’t go any higher for my first movie but we will be producing more movies in the coming years. I’ve got three concepts that I’m writing. But I’m going to write with a writer.

• Researchers hit out at organisers’ claims of athlete safety

• Paper also points to ‘evidence of psychiatric conditions’

Enhanced Games competitors run the risk of their libido being “killed off” as well as a greater chance of heart attacks and psychiatric issues by taking performance enhanced drugs, leading experts have warned.

Prof Ian Broadley, whose research has been supported by the World Anti-Doping Agency, and his colleague Martin Chandler, a research fellow who specialises in PEDs, also told the Guardian that organisers’ claims that banned drugs can be made safer if taken under medical supervision are “incorrect and misleading”.

Under Johann van Graan’s philosophy the West Country giants believe they are on the cusp of a return to the top

Trophies. They are like bloody buses. Or at least that is what Bath fans must be hoping. They wait 17 years for one, and along come …

We are about to find out how many. One has just been. The Premiership Cup pulled up in March to fairly inconsequential fanfare. But it looks as if another, the Challenge Cup, is waiting just a stop away, before we turn our attention to a third, the Premiership, timetabled for the middle of June – but you know what these bloody buses are like.

• Men’s fifth seed could face Jannik Sinner in the last eight

• Iga Swiatek a possible second-round foe for Raducanu

Jack Draper will have to navigate a challenging draw at the French Open to consolidate his breakthrough clay-court season with a deep run at Roland Garros, where he is still seeking his first win.

Draper, the fifth seed, will begin against the Italian left-hander and fellow 23-year-old Mattia Bellucci, who is ranked No 68. Draper has been drawn in Jannik Sinner’s quarter and a career-best run in Paris could culminate in a last-eight match with the top seed.

Chelsea braced for City Ground cauldron, Rodri back on the scene and party vibes all round at Anfield

• Golden Boot: how the leading scorers stand

Bournemouth’s hopes of European football were vanquished after defeat to Manchester City on Tuesday but the Cherries, 11th on 53 points, could still achieve ninth spot and match their best finish in the Premier League (under Eddie Howe in 2016-17, although that was achieved with only 46 points). A home game against relegated Leicester looks to offer the perfect opportunity but the closing stretch has been tough for Andoni Iraola’s side, with the past 12 league games producing only two victories. Remarkably, a three-game league form table puts Leicester in fourth after home wins over Southampton and Ipswich either side of a 2-2 draw at Nottingham Forest. Perhaps this won’t be the walkover most are expecting, and there could be a wistful feeling in the air at the Vitality on Sunday afternoon. No one can deny it has been a strong season but what a party it might have been. With Dean Huijsen off to Real Madrid and Milos Kerkez linked heavily with the champions, Liverpool, how many of the goodbyes on the traditional end-of-season lap of honour will be permanent? David Tindall

Football coverage no longer stops after the final whistle. And in this new era, the former Liverpool defender reigns supreme

Jamie Carragher’s legs were aching. He had been speaking to a Sky Sports cameraman for 25 minutes. Usually for a news interview it’s just 10, but today called for something more. Reports were coming out that Trent Alexander-Arnold, who inherited Carragher’s mantle as the local mainstay of Liverpool’s defence, was about to announce his long-expected departure from his boyhood club, and so, as sure as day follows night, a camera crew had been hastily dispatched to Carragher’s whereabouts to find a quiet spot, hit record and get his opinions out to viewers before they’d had a chance to fully form their own.

How much was there to say about a subject that had already been talked about all season long? Quite a lot, it turned out. Like a hunter-gatherer extracting a week’s worth of food from a seemingly arid wilderness, Carragher – occasionally prompted by a Sky Sports anchor in the studio – launched into nearly half an hour of pure, free-flowing, agenda-setting football opinionating. From this monologue, Sky would carve out a TV report, YouTube interview, news article and three short-form videos. When Carragher says something – about Alexander-Arnold’s future, Arsenal’s attack, Chelsea’s owners or Fifa’s executives – we tend to hear about it very shortly after.

As she returns to the French Open, where she broke through in a run to the 2019 semis, the American explains why she stepped away from the sport

Professional tennis players are often led to believe that taking time off is fatal. In such an intense, competitive individual sport where greatness is determined though fine margins, the pressure to keep on moving is eternal. If you are not constantly training, competing and working on your craft, it is said, someone will always be there to take your place. Once you lose your spot, you may never get it back.

During the most difficult period of her career, Amanda Anisimova, a former teen prodigy, had to reckon with that myth. In the depths of her depression, when the intensity of the tennis circuit had become unbearable and her mind was screaming out for change, the 23-year-old opted for the solution of a complete break from the sport two years ago.

Former Hull striker on his push to raise awareness, thriving as a pantomime villain and his most famous goal

The framed photograph hangs just inside the front door. It shows Dean Windass, somehow larger than life even with his back turned to the camera, standing with arms aloft on the balcony of Hull City Hall and inhaling the adulation of thousands. Two days earlier he had, at the age of 39, scored a winner for the ages at Wembley and sent his boyhood club to the Premier League. He could not have caught the ball any more sweetly after Fraizer Campbell had chipped it across; it was no hardship that, even then, he knew it would follow him for ever.

“It changed my life,” Windass says, sitting in his living room on a quiet May morning. “I scored 234 goals and everyone only talks about that one.” To this day he swears a scorcher at Wycombe in 1992-93, “volleyed in with my left foot from 950 million yards”, was superior to his museum piece from 2008. But he is synonymous with the playoffs now; they are his thing, a sporting event he still anticipates like few others, and when we meet he correctly predicts Sheffield United will meet Sunderland in Saturday’s Championship final.

The club is expertly run but if Black Cats defeat Sheffield United, commercial concerns could be a headache

It is May 2024 and Illan Meslier, the Leeds goalkeeper, is singing the praises of a former Lorient youth coach whose astute mentoring shaped his career. But who is this left-field thinker who dispatched his young goalkeepers to undergo professional boxing training, spend hours performing acrobatics on trampolines and talk intensely to sports psychologists? Régis Le Bris eventually became Lorient’s first-team manager in 2022 but, after a promising opening season, the Breton team were relegated from Ligue 1 last spring. No matter; a month on from that chat with Meslier in North Yorkshire, Sunderland named Le Bris as their head coach and, now, the 49-year-old is preparing to lead the club out at Wembley on Saturday.

Mauricio Pochettino faces an uphill battle to change the USMNT’s culture without their most important players.

If the 2022 World Cup was the debutante ball for a shiny new generation of United States men’s national team players, the 2025 Gold Cup was supposed to be a general rehearsal for the big dance: next summer’s World Cup.

Instead, still-somewhat-newish US manager Mauricio Pochettino will go into this summer tournament for the continental title shorn of a great many of his leading players. As such, his first and only chance to work with his team for an extended period of time before the start of the 2026 World Cup will present all kinds of challenges.

We can expect Phil Dowson’s Saints to hit the accelerator in Cardiff against a French side packed with creative talent

How do Northampton Saints go again? After pulling off a stunning upset to avenge last season’s semi-final defeat by Leinster and take their place in Saturday’s final, the question is how do Phil Dowson’s side overcome one of the French giants, Bordeaux, to clinch the Champions Cup?

Had the final been a week later I’d have feared for Northampton but they are helped by the ability to distract themselves with Premiership action, and I think the manner of victory over Leinster plays into their hands. Northampton need to focus on being unashamedly themselves. In Dublin the gameplan was to put the car into fifth gear from the first whistle and that’s precisely what they did. When your approach is so authentic and in keeping with your culture, it makes it that much easier.

Emotion of Europa League final victory hits hard, particularly tangled in with homesickness watching from Australia at 5am

I didn’t really cry until Son Heung-min was handed the trophy – the camera hadn’t cut to him enough at full time. Of all the players who look sad when they’re sad, Sonny really looks sad. Building up to the Europa League final all I could imagine was a disconsolate South Korean walking around the pitch applauding mournfully. The Harry Kane walk. His smile when shiny-shoed Aleksander Ceferin hands him the trophy broke me. Apparently it weighs 15kg – the same as my three-year-old. That trophy certainly looked lighter than when young Ian demands to be carried home from the park.

As a very sleep-deprived middle-aged dad of young kids, the emotion of football back home hits a lot harder than it used to. I found myself weeping at the videos of Crystal Palace fans after the FA Cup final. Someone focused from person to person, pausing for just enough time on each of them to give you the impression that you could see the etched lines of disappointment they’d experienced over the years just evaporating into the air.

• Liberty stake sold at record $450m team valuation

• New funds will help build Liberty’s Brooklyn facility

• Latest sign of surging value in women’s pro sports

New York Liberty owners sold shares in the WNBA team at what would be a record valuation of $450m for a women’s pro sports franchise, the Athletic reported Thursday.

The capital raised from the sale, which represent a percentage share in the “mid-teens”, is believed to be earmarked toward construction of a practice facility in Brooklyn, per the report.

• Winner helped by superb lead-out from Wout van Aert

• Del Toro has 33sec lead over teammate Juan Ayuso

Olav Kooij sprinted to victory on stage 12 of the Giro d’Italia as Isaac del Toro retained the pink jersey in Viadana.

Kooij was helped by a superb lead-out from his Visma-Lease A Bike teammate Wout van Aert, with Casper van Uden (Team Picnic-PostNL) second over the line ahead of Britain’s Ben Turner (Ineos Grenadiers).

• Indiana rally for 138-135 OT win over New York in Game 1
• Pacers tie game on Halburton’s shot at end of regulation
• New York suffer historic collapse in spite of Brunson’s 43

The ghosts of Reggie Miller were alive and well at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday night – and Tyrese Haliburton once again played the role of Garden villain to perfection.

Haliburton helped Indiana complete an unprecedented 14-point comeback in the final reel, tying the game with a wild jumper at the buzzer in regulation, to beat the New York Knicks 138-135 in overtime in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals. The Pacers now hold a 1-0 lead in the best-of-seven-games series for a trip to the NBA finals after pulling off one of the most improbable finishes in playoff history.

• Durham boxer was diagnosed with cancer in January

• Won gold medal at 2017 Commonwealth Youth Games

Tributes have been paid to the British boxer Georgia O’Connor, who has died at the age of 25 after being diagnosed with cancer in January.

O’Connor won a gold medal at the Commonwealth Youth Games in 2017 before turning professional with promoters Boxxer. She won all three of her bouts, having last fought professionally in October 2022.

• British No 2 went out 4-6, 6-1, 6-3 after long medical break
• Djokovic wins first match of season on clay in Geneva

Emma Raducanu suffered an injury scare before the French Open as she went out of the Strasbourg Open.

The 22-year-old left the court during the second set of her second-round match with American Danielle Collins for treatment on a back problem, though appeared to recover. Having won the first set, Raducanu was 5-0 down when she called a medical timeout before returning to the court 10 minutes later. Although she was able to finish the match, she lost 4-6, 6-1, 6-3 to Collins.

• No sales needed to pursue top targets Cunha and Delap

• United will listen to offers for players including Garnacho

Ruben Amorim has a summer transfer budget of a little less than £100m and retains Manchester United’s firm backing despite Wednesday’s Europa League final defeat by Tottenham.

As the Guardian previously reported, the executive’s belief in Amorim was not going to be affected by the result at San Mamés in Bilbao. The football department, headed by Sir Jim Ratcliffe, wants the Portuguese to have a first pre-season with his team and to strengthen the squad.

• Streaming platform in line to agree five-year deal

• Dazn has shown Champions League for four seasons

The streaming platform Disney+ is set to show live Women’s Champions League matches from next season across multiple European broadcast territories, including the United Kingdom.

It is understood Disney+ has agreed a five-year deal which will mean that it broadcasts every single match in the competition live, which is being perceived as a major step forward for coverage of the European women’s game’s top club competition.

• Insults were directed towards Brazilian in December 2022

• La Liga hails judgment as ‘unprecedented milestone’

• Luka Modric to leave Real Madrid after Club World Cup

Five Valladolid fans who abused the Real Madrid forward Vinícius Júnior have been given suspended prison sentences, in what La Liga described as a landmark ruling that condemned racist insults hurled in a football stadium as a hate crime.

The case goes back to Madrid’s 2-0 win in December 2022 at Real Valladolid’s José Zorrilla Stadium, during which several fans hurled racist abuse at the Brazilian. The individuals were later identified using images and videos published on social media.

• Manager wants ‘exceptional’ Partey to sign new contract

• ‘We need a goal threat and we need the firepower,’ he says

Mikel Arteta has said he would like Thomas Partey to stay at Arsenal but admitted his squad needs more “firepower” to win trophies.

Talks are understood to have begun with Partey’s representatives over extending his contract beyond this season. The Ghana midfielder has been one of Arsenal’s best players as they finished as Premier League runners-up for a third season in succession. Arteta has won only the 2020 FA Cup during his five seasons in charge.

Ange Postecoglou moved away from his attacking style while Brennan Johnson earned the sweetest vindication

Finals are not for the playing; they’re for the winning. Who cares about the spectacle? Who cares about the quality? At some level football is always more about the narrative and the drama than technical mastery. Tottenham certainly will cheerily ignore what a shambolic game of football this was as they bask in their first trophy since 2008, their first in European competition in 40 years. Glory comes in many forms, and just because this might not be how Danny Blanchflower sanctioned it, does not mean this was not, in its own way, glorious.

But it was a baffling game. For the third round in a row, Tottenham prevailed with a sort of ultra pragmatism. Ange Postecoglou always wins a trophy in his second season, a fact of which he has delighted in reminding everybody. It just seems odd that it took him that long to move away from his characteristic attacking, high-pressing style to a blueprint José Mourinho might have left behind in a drawer. Ange stared into the Barclays, but the Barclays stared back far harder into him.

Triple substitution against Manchester United in the FA Cup final illustrates the gap they have opened up over their rivals

Your name is Sonia Bompastor. Your Chelsea team are winning 3-0 in the FA Cup final and about to cap a 30-game unbeaten domestic season with a league, cup and league cup treble. Wembley is a sea of triumphant blue flags. Manchester United, shuffling and straggling around the pitch, look like the victims of some macabre reality television endurance challenge that will later be censured by Ofcom. What is your next move?

Well, if you’re Bompastor, your next move is to make a triple substitution in the 93rd minute. On come Guro Reiten, Sjoeke Nüsken, Johanna Rytting Kaneryd. Just in case. Just to see things out. Just the 198 international caps, 14 league titles and 26 major trophies, casually hauled off the bench in injury time of an already won cup final. And for Chelsea this really was the most insouciant flex: the victory lap before the victory lap, the £50 tip you give the waiter just because you can.

Sound the tram bells, unleash the smoke plumes from the Tasty Jerk shack – Crystal Palace have finally won a major trophy

As the final whistle was blown at Wembley there was a moment that seemed to stretch out and become frozen in time. The Crystal Palace players collapsed where they were standing, crumpled across the grass like a battle scene fresco. The colours made it beautiful, red and blue against the deep green, new optics, new names, the unstyled celebrations of players unused to these moments, Jean-Philippe Mateta face down, Will Hughes flat on his back, arms spread like a snow angel.

There was a rush of noise as the clock began to tick again. And that was that. Sound the tram bells, unleash the smoke plumes from the Tasty Jerk shack – 119 years into Crystal Palace’s existence this mercurial club with the clanky corrugated stadium has finally won a major trophy.

Opinionated football journalist, who has died aged 93, loved the sport but detested much about the modern game

Brian Glanville, who has died aged 93, was what Groucho Marx might have been had the old master of the one-liner shown any interest in football. I doubt if the greatest soccer scribbler of them all – the London-born son of a Dublin dentist and an Old Carthusian expensively educated in literature and song – met Groucho (Brian knew a host of famous people), but their exchanges would surely have blistered the paint off the walls.

Nobody swore so elegantly as Glanville, who hovered in the press box like Banquo’s ghost, the gathering’s invisible conscience, ready to deliver a scathing observation, relayed, sotto voce, to a nearby colleague like a chorus baritone in one of his favourite operas.

A new documentary explores how the legend of one of the league’s greatest quarterbacks endures, despite the multiple scandals that have engulfed him

Brett Favre was the man with the golden arm – a three-time NFL MVP who revived the Green Bay Packers while setting the league record for consecutive starts and all-time yardage, raising the standard for toughness and productivity at quarterback. It’s his thumbs that let him down in the end. He could play through the thumb injuries – but allegedly not the urge to send lewd text messages to a staff member at the New York Jets, or the digital impulses that would tie him to allegations over a $94m welfare scandal in his home state of Mississippi.

“Are people in these positions above the law?” Rebecca Gitlitz wonders. “Have they been told so many times that whatever they do they can get away with it? Stuff like that, where history repeats itself, I wanted to see how that happens.”

The WNBA stars are helping drive record-setting interest in the league. But the conversation distracts from other players, and brings in unwelcome ugliness

At first, it seemed that the Indiana Fever’s home win over Chicago Sky on Saturday would be just another spicy chapter in the rivalry between Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark. Both players were typically excellent: Clark spurred the Fever to victory with a triple-double, while Reese grabbed 17 rebounds to go with her 12 points.

But it was a moment in the third quarter that WNBA fans will be talking about for weeks to come. Some of them may even do so without resorting to cheap bigotry. With 4:38 remaining, Clark reached for the ball over Reese’s head, made what appeared to be deliberate contact with her arm, and sent her opponent spiraling to the floor. There was a brief confrontation, Clark was hit with a flagrant foul and Reese received a technical. After the game, Clark said she didn’t have cynical intent leading up to the foul, and Reese agreed calling it “a basketball play.”

The departure of the men’s team from the ground marks the end of an era for many. Will new hosts Everton Women continue its legacy?

Jamie Yates was heavily medicated, in a secure mental health unit, and in the middle of a breakdown when he had a profound dream. He was back in Liverpool, walking with his daughter along the tightly packed terraced streets which surround Goodison Park, home of the football club he had supported all his life.

When he left the hospital he took out a map, drew a half-mile radius around Everton’s ground and started looking for somewhere to rent.

More than 20 years since they suffered on Jimmy Anderson’s famous Test debut, the tourists are back

A biting wind swept across Grace Road on Thursday and though the crowd was thin, there was just enough stardust to keep the autograph hunters happy. Andrew Flintoff was perched on the pavilion balcony, while Mark Wood, trying his hand at coaching during his latest injury layoff, patrolled the boundary’s edge with a smile.

Out in the middle there were also runs for Josh de Caires, son of Mike Atherton, who compiled a fluent 79 from 93 balls on a green-tinged pitch. De Caires is a player in the modern mould charting his own course but some of the old man’s mannerisms were there to see. Mercifully, the lower back appears to be much less creaky.

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With more than 80,000 English football fans expected to descend on Bilbao for the Bigger Vase final, it’s safe to assume that approximately half of them will return home in despair, while almost all of them will be seriously out of pocket. But despite its status as a fine location with a proud football heritage, Bilbao doesn’t have the infrastructure to cope with the myriad demands that come with hosting a game between the 16th and 17th best teams in England. With “budget” flights costing well north of a grand and even the most low-rent accommodation priced up at £500-plus a night, one can but hope for the sake of those Spurs and Manchester United fans who use plane, train, automobile or boat to arrive in northern Spain for this season-defining match that Bilbao has no shortage of doorways and park benches. Expect plenty to be occupied on Tuesday evening by green-around-the-gills landlubbers who set off on Sunday evening’s Portsmouth ferry, a vessel which docked in Bilbao earlier.

A very beautiful career is coming to an end, a very full life. I feel very fortunate for what I’ve experienced. I didn’t expect it, but I think the time has come and I feel like bringing it to a close here” – former Barcelona, Liverpool and Spain vibes-man, Pepe Reina, is hanging up his gloves aged 7842 after Como’s final game of the season on Friday. He might have a busy last day at the office given Inter will be desperately fighting for the title. Look out for any loose beachballs, Pepe!

Trust the Germans to have a word to describe every situation or feeling. Liverpool’s current performance (or lack of) can be defined as Erfüllungsleere” – Krishna Moorthy.

Given this appears to be the year of the underdog in cup finals, Tottenham and Manchester United must be really optimistic” – Martyn Shapter.

Re: Memory Lane (yesterday’s Football Daily, full email edition) – that mascot got a bit more than they bargained for” – Jim Hearson.

I’d question the wisdom of publishing both of Michael Glogower’s pun-laden Eredivisie missives in recent letters sections. Remember, two De Jongs don’t make a right …” – Derek McGee.

A gathering at Ealing CC’s second-team ground today will mark 100 years since the formation of a trailblazing club

At first glance Ealing Cricket Club’s second-team ground – situated off an avenue lined with nondescript 1930s London semis, with the Piccadilly Line clattering away nearby – is not the most obvious place to mark a historic women’s cricket milestone.

But for the group of players who will assemble in the small clubhouse tonight for a meeting that is part pilgrimage, part homecoming, it holds a special place in their hearts.

The Blaugrana face Arsenal after what Caroline Graham Hansen calls an ‘emotional’ campaign under a new manager

Normalising the extraordinary. Even in their “worst season”, Barcelona are going for a second quadruple in a row and third consecutive Women’s Champions League title. Few may have predicted that late last year, after a defeat at Manchester City prompted a new narrative: this was the season they were finally not going to win anything.

In the end, they won the Liga F title but only after losing twice. That may not sound terrible but it is the first time since the 2018-19 season they have been defeated more than once in the league. So a crisis of some sort. The loss at City also prompted some soul-searching for a team in their first season with a new manager, Pere Romeu replacing Jonatan Giráldez last summer.

Head coach must decide if his son commands a place, the back-row blend and whether a left-field pick is required

As Andy Farrell prepares to name his British & Irish Lions touring squad it is worth reflecting on the events of 12 years ago. Then as now, the destination was Australia and Farrell was an important cog in Warren Gatland’s management team. It was also the last time the Lions actually won a series, the solitary occasion they have ticked that illustrious box this century.

Do you remember who, ultimately, made the difference in the all-important final Test in Sydney, with the best-of-three series poised at 1-1? None other than the strong-scrummaging Alex Corbisiero, who had been omitted from the original squad and owed his presence to an ankle injury sustained by Ireland’s Cian Healy early in the tour.

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Seb Hutchinson and Dan Bardell as Manchester City move closer to sealing Champions League football with a 3-1 win over Bournemouth

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On the podcast today: Omar Marmoush scores a goal of the season contender as Manchester City move into third place in the Premier League, before the race for Champions League football concludes with the final round of fixtures this Sunday.

Faye Carruthers is joined by Suzy Wrack, Robyn Cowen, Freddie Cardy and Lucy Bronze to break down Chelsea’s FA Cup final win and preview Arsenal’s huge Champions League final against Barcelona

On the podcast today: Sonia Bompastor’s stunning debut season is hailed after Chelsea complete a domestic treble with a 3-0 win over Manchester United in the FA Cup final. The panel review the game, which featured a Wembley brace from Sandy Baltimore and a cathartic goal for Catarina Macário, and ask what’s next for a side that insists the job isn’t finished without European glory. Plus, Chelsea and England star Lucy Bronze joins the show to reflect on an impressive first season for Chelsea and look ahead to Euro 2025 this summer.

The panel also assess Manchester United’s campaign, dissect Marc Skinner’s post-match comments, and reflect on the contrasting scenes between Chelsea’s ownership and United’s absent leadership.

Nottinghamshire remain top of Division One after defeat at Durham but, cue the Jaws music, the champions are coming

By the 99.94 Cricket Blog

At the end of day one, Haseeb Hameed had carried his bat for 206, his team had posted more than 400 and Nottinghamshire’s position at the top of Division One was secure. At the end of day four, all of that was still true but quite a lot had happened in-between.

The 18-year-old Indian finished joint sixth to ninth out of 10 after Friday’s final round, while Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu, 19, won first prize after a three-way playoff

India’s world champion, Gukesh Dommaraju, hoped for a comeback at Bucharest this week after his dismal Freestyle performances in north Germany and Paris in the spring. Instead, the top-seeded 18-year-old was defeated by France’s pair of Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, in 31 moves, and Alireza Firouzja, in 69 moves, before scoring a 44-move win, against the US’s Levon Aronian, in Thursday’s eighth and penultimate round.

Gukesh has dropped from third to fifth in the Fide world rankings, and ended up tied sixth to ninth in the 10-man Bucharest field, scoring 4/9 with one win, six draws, and two defeats. Two rounds earlier, he was tied last.