Category: Football (Soccer)

City’s title chances suffered another blow when Enzo Fernandez scored a deserved injury-time equaliser for Chelsea

11 min Cherki is fouled 25 yards from goal by James. He and Foden are over the ball…

7 min It’s been a comfortable start for Chelsea, with City playing at a relatively slow pace. Their shape is interesting: it’s ostensibly 4-1-4-1 but Reijnders is playing very narrow, so they almost have three central midfielders, Cherki to the right and Nico O’Reilly, the left-back, taking care of business on the other side.

Eddie Howe describes January as “season defining” for his side and Newcastle’s manager looked suitably delighted to kick it off by collecting three points as Crystal Palace’s winless run continued.

Yet snapshots of a beaming Howe allied with the bald statistics do not quite tell the story of an often chaotic meeting of the Carabao Cup and FA Cup holders. By the 78th minute, when a corner was dropped for Malick Thiaw to poke the ball past Dean Henderson, the disappointment writ large across Oliver Glasner’s face suggested the Crystal Palace manager knew the game was up.

Price tag for winger’s move to Manchester City would make headlines in any other country but not in England

Antoine Semenyo, it seems likely, will soon join Manchester City from Bournemouth for a fee of £65m. Given how well Rayan Cherki and Phil Foden have played from the right this season, it is not immediately obvious why City need him, but the modern game is the modern game, the rammed calendar makes large and flexible squads essential and Pep Guardiola may have some esoteric plan for the Ghanaian anyway. But perhaps what is most striking about the deal is the fee – or, more precisely, how little attention it has drawn.

English football has become inured to big transfers. The fee feels about right. Semenyo is 25. He has four and a half years left on his contract. He is quick, skilful, intelligent and works hard. He is disciplined, but has the capacity to do the unexpected. Of course a player of his ability costs that much. Yet £65m would make him the third-most expensive player in Bundesliga history. He would be the seventh-most expensive in Serie A history, the 14th-most expensive in La Liga history. Only nine non-English clubs have paid a fee higher than that. Even in Premier League terms, Semenyo sneaks into the top 25.

Brighton ended a six-match winless run with a comfortable home victory over second-bottom Burnley.

Georginio Rutter gave Brighton a first-half lead before Yasin Ayari doubled the advantage early in the second period. Loum Tchaouna came close to halving the deficit, but Scott Parker’s struggling side remain six points adrift of Nottingham Forest in 17th after their wait for a league victory stretched to 11 games.

Declan Rice scored a rare brace as Arsenal came from behind at the Vitality Stadium to stretch their lead at the top of the table to six points

• Read Ed Aarons’ match report from the Vitality Stadium

Elsewhere in the Premier League: Wolves have finally won their first match of the season, scoring three without reply against sorry West Ham at Molineux. In news to make those of us who remember his Leeds United debut as a 16-year-old feel truly ancient, James Milner celebrated his 40th birthday by helping Brighton to a 2-0 win over Burnley, while Aston Villa got back to winning ways by beating Nottingham Forest 3-1 at Villa Park in today’s early kick-off. Wolves remain 12 points adrift of safety at the bottom of the table but today’s results mean life is looking a lot less bleak for Rob Edwards’ side now than it did first thing this morning.

View the Premier League table

Palmer and Delap are among five academy players who learnt their trade at City, as links between the clubs grow

Chelsea’s visit to Manchester City on Sunday will be a homecoming for members of the travelling party. Five Chelsea players were nurtured at the academy that sits a few hundred yards from the Etihad Stadium, on the other side of a bridge.

The London club’s recent recruitment has been heavily influenced by City’s teaching of players and coaches. Tosin Adarabioyo, Cole Palmer, Liam Delap, Jamie Gittens and Roméo Lavia were members of City’s youth ranks, most working there under Enzo Maresca. If one thread was unpicked this week when Maresca dramatically departed Chelsea, the link remains strong because Sunday’s caretaker, Calum McFarlane, was formerly the under-18s assistant manager at City.

Bournemouth take on leaders Arsenal on Saturday while Manchester City host Chelsea in Sunday’s big game

Saturday 12.30pm Sky Sports Premier League Venue Villa Park

• Manager Glasner pleased club got deal done swiftly

• Johnson says he is ‘super excited’ to make move

Oliver Glasner credited Crystal Palace’s hierarchy for completing the signing of Brennan Johnson from Tottenham for a club record £35m on the second day of the transfer window.

The Wales forward has a four-and-a-half-year deal and is expected to be part of Palace’s squad that will face Newcastle on Sunday. Glasner has made no secret of his desire to bolster the FA Cup winners after a demanding debut campaign in Europe and has criticised Palace’s lack of preparedness in previous transfer windows. But the Austrian manager said he was delighted with the signing of the 24-year-old after Palace saw off competition from Bournemouth.

Pep Guardiola’s team could find no way past Sunderland at a rowdy Stadium of Light

Regis Le Bris also spoke to Sky: “A few weeks ago we struggled because they were really good and efficient through their counter pressing. I hope we learnt the lesson but it will be another experience at home with another energy so we’ll see.”

Pep Guardiola has been speaking to Sky: “Tough place and it means that anyone could win here. Hopefully we can perform. Josko [Gvardiol] had a few niggles, an incredible run of playing every three days and Savinho has speed and is fresh.

It’s a strange quirk of this fixture that the away side hasn’t lost for the last 10 Premier League meetings between Crystal Palace and Fulham, with substitute Tom Cairney’s late equaliser ensuring that streak goes on.

Only a brilliant save in added time from Dean Henderson and a glaring miss from former Palace player Joachim Andersen denied Marco Silva’s side all the points after falling behind to Jean-Philippe ­Mateta’s first goal from open play since 1 November. But Oliver Glasner was still bitterly disappointed that his team couldn’t end a sequence of six games without a victory in all competitions after running out of steam again in their 31st match of the season. “We are a little bit in survival mode,” admitted the Palace manager, whose team now faces three games in the space of seven days.