Key events
David Hytner
Reece James is expected to be out for three months, the Guardian has been told. The Chelsea captain has had surgery to address a knee problem, which the club have been keen to describe as “minor.” Xabi Alonso, the manager, said after last Saturday’s win over Bournemouth that James, who missed the game, had “some little issues on the knee.”
It does not sound particularly minor given the length of time that James will be unavailable. What is not in doubt is that he has had zero luck on the fitness front. The 26-year-old has a long history of hamstring problems while this knee issue was sustained in training. James was not involved for England during the recent international window.
Reece James. Photograph: Anna Szilágyi/EPAShare
Fixtures are here. Everton v Chelsea is the first Premier League match on the weekend menu, at 12.30pm BST tomorrow, and David Moyes is rumoured to be speaking to the media shortly.
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Marco Rose, the Bournemouth manager, says the prognosis on Alex Scott’s injury is “much, much better”. Which is nice, especially as he picked it up on international duty for England recently.
Rose is also asked about Scott’s future – his contract runs for the next 18 months. He looks a bit miffed. “The last transfer window just finished, and we are already talking about the next one?”
Alex Scott. Photograph: John Sibley/Action Images/ReutersShare
Updated at 07.25 EDT
Thank you Simon, hello everyone. What a fantastic audience!
Football is happening around us, constantly, and this weekend is no different. There will be a wealth of Premier League manager press conferences coming up in the next few hours. And a ton of non-Premier League assocation football news and previews, too.
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Updated at 07.15 EDT
Right, I’m going to step away from the blog for a while. I leave you in the capable hands of Luke McLaughlin, who you can email here if you fancy. Back in a bit!
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Dionisi says report of Watford sacking ‘fake news’
Despite reports suggesting he would be sacked if Watford lost at Cardiff on Tuesday, Alessio Dionisi remains in post. “There is good news, bad news or fake news probably,” the Italian told the BBC yesterday. “In this case for the moment, it is fake news. But I don’t decide.”
The situation at the club is dire: a squad haphazardly thrown together, with no money spent on transfer fees in the summer, the division’s lowest wage bill, few players arriving until the final days of the window, a miserable dearth of Championship experience (which the club leadership acknowledged and pledged to address at the end of last season, and for that matter before most recent transfer windows), a disjointed and lopsided squad notably bereft of midfield options, and an aloof and increasingly unpopular owner.
Watford fans leaving early during the 4-0 home defeat to Burnley. Photograph: Peter Tarry/PA
Since the start of March the club have played 21 league games and won only three, the worst record of any club which has been in the division throughout that time (indeed Coventry, Ipswich, West Ham and Oxford United all have more wins and more Championship points despite spending much of it in other divisions). Most recently they played Burnley at home when their opponents were bottom of the league and lost 4-0, and then went to 21st-placed Cardiff and lost 5-1. They are now 22nd, and both Elton John – who said he was “upset and disappointed at the decline” – and Troy Deeney have criticised the way they are playing and the way they are being run.
Today Gino Pozzo is meeting a representative of fans’ group the 1881 Movement – who recently published an open letter stating their “complete loss of confidence” in Pozzo, and criticising “the endless cycle of appointments and dismissals [which] has reduced a once-proud club to a source of ridicule”. Tomorrow they host 13th-placed but also troubled Charlton, who won three of their first four league games but have not secured a victory since August.
Word is that the club has already made contact with potential replacements for Dionisi, but that the level of vitriol coming from those fans still sufficiently motivated to turn up to games has stayed Pozzo’s hand, for now. The club certainly have some players, the likes of Othmane Maamma and Myron Boadu, who are able to play at a much higher level to the one the team is currently showing, but do they have the motivation (and the teammates) to demonstrate that ability, or has the cycle of sackings drained the squad of all motivation and cohesion?
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Updated at 07.15 EDT
Coventry boss Frank Lampard is not prepared to relax after watching his side record back-to-back wins in the Premier League, writes the Press Association.
The Sky Blues looked to be in for a long season after losing their opening four games without scoring a goal. But they have kick-started their campaign with wins against Nottingham Forest and Newcastle and as he prepares to visit Tottenham on Monday Lampard wants to keep the foot on the gas.
Coventry’s Frank Lampard: “Keep driving it.” Photograph: Andrew Boyers/Action Images/Reuters
“Keep driving it,” he said. “It’s very important to look at the the good things out of the game, also the things we can improve. But when we talk about the good things, I’m not overly patting them on the back because we have to work hard to get better.
“Every game brings different challenges, so I think the players understand me and my approach and the staff’s approach here. We never want to rest. I don’t. I’m always fearful of resting on something and thinking that you’ve made it. This league’s too difficult for that.
“So one of my first jobs is to keep pushing from that front, and the players need to feel that.”
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Sky are reporting that Reece James, who Chelsea confirmed this morning had undergone minor knee surgery, is expected to be out for three months.
ShareJacob Steinberg
Fulham fans fretting about life under Álvaro Arbeloa will not feel any better when they remember how things were under Marco Silva, who was one of the most effective managers in the Premier League when it came to making substitutions.
Silva’s substitutes were involved in the fourth-highest goal contributions last season and the most in the 2024-25 season. Fulham knew how to dig in and salvage unlikely points. But Silva left last summer, joining Benfica after concluding he could achieve nothing more at Craven Cottage, and his replacement is already under pressure after some puzzling tactical choices.
The worrying shift under Arbeloa was evident during Fulham’s collapse against Ipswich last weekend. The west Londoners were 1-0 up and looking good for their first league win of the season when Arbeloa weakened his midfield by replacing Shea Charles with Manuel Ángel in the 70th minute.
It was a strange way to shut up shop. Charles is physically imposing, has impressed since joining from Southampton and was doing well alongside Sander Berge. The 22-year-old Ángel is 5ft 7in, was making his Premier League debut and has little experience of senior football. Ipswich’s comeback to win 2-1 was not a surprise, particularly when Arbeloa’s other rejigs included bringing on Rodrigo Muniz and switching from a 4-2-3-1 system to a flat 4-4-2 in an attempt to defend the lead.
More here:
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Can you name the three teams still without a win in this season’s Premier League? If so, you’re approximately 6.7% of the way to full marks in the sports quiz of the week!
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Fulham’s Alvaro Arbeloa has held his press conference ahead of tomorrow’s home game against Hull, and has been quizzed on how confident he is that he will still be at the club in a week’s time if they are not able to win:
double quotation markI am focused on tomorrow’s game, on my players, on my team, that is the most important thing. It’s not about me, it’s about the club, it’s about the players, it’s about the supporters. For me it’s been a normal week. We’ve been working hard. We were preparing for a difficult match against a very difficult team.
I saw the commitment of the players this week, how they have been training. They are so focused on tomorrow’s game. I saw them, how they can play. For me it is the most important thing, the performance of the players. It’s not about my future, it’s about the club and about the players. They are looking for their reward, and looking for a game where they can get a win for our supporters and I think they deserve it.
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Donald Trump is likely to end up as the only political leader awarded the Fifa peace prize after Gianni Infantino was told at Thursday’s meeting of Fifa council to make major changes or scrap the controversial award.
The Guardian has learned that several council members demanded the award be abolished and others called for the prize to be depoliticised, with Fifa’s football social responsibility committee to make a recommendation before the next council meeting in Doha on 16 December.
More on this from Matt Hughes and Nick Ames here:
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The Women’s Super League table is taking shape for 2026-27. The defending champions, Manchester City, have five wins from five games but more intriguing stories lie elsewhere. Why are Arsenal struggling, who is performing better than results suggest, and in which way are two promoted teams smashing expectations? Andrew Beasley has the answers:
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Chelsea captain Reece James has knee surgery
Chelsea have announced that Reece James has had “successful” and “minor” surgery on a knee injury sustained in training. “Reece has already begun his road to recovery and will be supported by the club’s medical department at Cobham during this rehabilitation phase,” the club wrote on social media.
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Updated at 06.14 EDT
Newcastle head coach Matthias Jaissle says he is uninterested in dwelling on what might have been when highly-rated Aston Villa midfielder Johan Manzambi visits St James’ Park this weekend, writes the Press Association.
Manzambi looked set for a switch to Tyneside over the summer but the deal was hijacked as Villa swooped in to sign the Switzerland international, who has flourished during his short time in the midlands.
Johan Manzambi of Aston Villa, who had looked set to join Newcastle in the summer before Villa intervened. Photograph: Ed Sykes/Getty Images/Sportsphoto/Allstar
The 21-year-old opened the scoring in Villa’s 6-0 Champions League rout of Fenerbahce in midweek and he could rub salt into his former suitors’ wounds when Newcastle welcome Unai Emery’s side on Saturday.
But while Jaissle, who succeeded Eddie Howe after Manzambi snubbed a move to the north-east, is a fan of the youngster, the German side-stepped the question of whether he would have liked him in his ranks.
“He is a really good player,” said Jaissle, who will be looking for a response after Monday’s 4-1 loss at Coventry. “But I’m not here to talk now about players, about rumours, about potential signings. The pure focus is on our players. We have many things to do, many things to improve, and that’s the approach to not get distracted by anything else.”
Joelinton is poised for his first start of the season for Newcastle on Saturday while Dan Burn looks set to be on the bench again, with Anthony Elanga and Jacob Ramsey poised to return to light training next week.
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Updated at 04.22 EDT
Is there a correlation between running more and winning more in the Premier League, I wonder? We have the answer for you! And it is, to summarise, um, kind of but not really but maybe a bit. Read about it, with graphs and everything, here:
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Preamble
Hello world, and happy Friday! Yes, we are all one day closer to finding out if there are any new depths for our teams still to plumb, which is certainly an exciting prospect for my fellow Watford fans. In unusual coincidence news, this Premier League weekend sees all four English teams who were in action in Europe last night play each other on Sunday – Bournemouth v Sunderland, Brighton v Crystal Palace – while the two Scottish teams who played in Europe last night also play each other on Sunday, with Hearts heading to Celtic. Meanwhile table-topping, relegation-bound Manchester City host Ipswich and second-placed Arsenal head to Nottingham Forest, while Fulham and Spurs, like Bournemouth winless in the league this season, seek those magic three points at home to promoted teams, Fulham v Hull on Saturday and Spurs v Coventry on Monday.
But we get the ball rolling with an apology, after Lisandro Martínez begged forgiveness not for what he said about the shambles at Manchester United, but for the fact that the “time and place … perhaps were not the right ones”, which the way I read it is very much a partial climbdown rather than the fulsome version that some are interpreting it as. Anyway, read all about it!
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