Wenger in!
Following his meeting with Arsenal owner Stan Kroenke, it has been widely reported that Arsene Wenger has agreed to a two-year extension to his stay at the Emirates. And on the same day Thomas Tuchel leaves Borussia Dortmund! No club knows how to Arsenal quite like Arsenal.
Riyad Mahrez has handed in a transfer request. The Algerian winger intends to leave Leicester City, the club where he won the Premier League and the PFA Player of the Year award in 2015-16, for larger and greener pastures.
Mahrez released a statement Tuesday announcing his intention to depart:
“Out of the huge admiration and respect I hold for Leicester City Football Club, I wanted to be totally honest and transparent with them and have therefore informed the club that I feel now is the time for me to move on.
We love David Wagner. David Wagner is insane and fun and now he's in the Premier League. The German-American manager, whose best friend is Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp, has led Huddersfield Town to the Premier League after winning a penalty shootout in the promotion playoff final against Reading.
Despite a negative goal differential in the regular season, Huddersfield Town wormed their way into the promotion playoff, then won shootouts against Sheffield Wednesday and Reading.
Arsenal defeated Chelsea 2-1 in the 2017 FA Cup Final after Alexis Sanchez opened the scoring in the fourth minute with a truly awful goal, and Aaron Ramsey secured the victory after Diego Costa had equalized for 10-man Chelsea. Victor Moses was sent off in the 68th minute for a sad, not even remotely believable dive.
Let’s get one thing out of the way: these cats are young. They’re like kittens in that sense — feral, attack-minded, alley kittens. It’s easy to get hyped on talent at the FIFA U-20 World Cup because the game, at this age, so heavily favors attackers. The goals are beautiful, but they’re generally scored in acres of space and triggered by a breakdown in midfield or defense.
England’s showpiece club soccer fixture will finally feature a heavyweight matchup. Each year the inevitable questions arise regarding whether or not the FA Cup has lost its magic, but the argument can be made that the tournament has seen too much magic as of late.
With the 2016-17 Premier League season in the books, we wanted to take a deep dive into how each team performed based on its payroll.
The final table reflected the spending gap between the top six teams and the rest. In fact, the eight teams that spent over $100 million in wages this season all finished in the top 8 of the table.
Although that might seem entirely too predictable, there was significant performance variance among those teams. Also, ninth place Bournemouth had one of the lowest payrolls, suggesting that they found some good players at a discount.
Manchester City defender Jason Denayer, who spent this season on loan at Sunderland, said he was reacting instinctively when he kicked a man in the head during a brawl in Belgium.
The 21-year-old's agent said Denayer "was in the wrong place at the wrong time".
City defender Jason Denayer was filmed kicking a man in the head during a brawl outside a bar in Brussels. pic.twitter.com/x0jTwdjJDr