England

Training sessions at Newcastle United will be a lot less cordial after manager Steve Bruce said on Friday that players and staff had been advised to avoid handshakes in a bid to prevent spreading coronavirus.

The United Kingdom now has 19 confirmed cases of coronavirus and Bruce said the club was not taking any chances.

"There's a ritual here that everybody shakes hands with everybody as soon as we see each other every morning; we've stopped that on the advice of the doctor," Bruce told a news conference ahead of Saturday's match against Burnley.

Tottenham midfielder Dele Alli has been charged by the Football Association for a post from his Snapchat earlier in February.

They’re calling Liverpool’s Premier League title challenge a procession because that’s exactly what it is. For whatever reason, that’s come to be seen as a howl of despair from neutrals, as though Liverpool’s brilliance is setting off an ennui inside us all that can only be rectified by allowing offside goals scored against the Reds to stand.  

When Pablo Fornals steered his volley beyond Alisson to give West Ham a 2-1 lead over Liverpool with 35 minutes remaining, there was a sense that David Moyes would finally have his day at Anfield while bringing a close to a host of historic Liverpool ambitions. 

Alas, the man with the football genius moniker will be left cursing his goalkeeper following a remarkable Liverpool turnaround that keeps the Reds 22 points clear at the top while the Hammers remain rooted in the relegation zone. 

Children between the ages of six and 11 have been banned from heading during practice by the English, Scottish and Irish FAs. The heading ban was announced on Monday following a landmark study into the correlation between footballers and brain disease.

Anthony Martial's not the sort of forward you’d associate with winning the ball back in the attacking third after a demonstration of single-minded counter pressing. He’s not a target man, but he’s also not going to thrive when shunted out wide and asked to perform industriously.

In terms of a 1-0 scoreline, there’s no greater beatdown than the one RB Leipzig just administered to Tottenham in London on Wednesday. The difference on the scoreboard was Timo Werner’s 58th-minute penalty, but the difference on the pitch was an incredible gulf in tempo, build-up play and variation in attack.