Category Uncategorized

Crystal Palace now have Europa League football to look forward to next season, and already the club are planning for the summer as they eye up a move to sign a “superb” Bundesliga midfielder, according to a recent report.

Wharton’s Crystal Palace future in doubt despite FA Cup win

Adam Wharton has been a standout performer since his arrival in SE25, and his performances have caught the attention of teams at home and abroad. Despite missing a large chunk of this season through a groin injury, Wharton has played 20 times in the Premier League and was a huge part of the Eagles’ FA Cup glory.

Heading into the summer transfer window, he is now very much a wanted man, as teams start to circle with significant interest. Last week, it was reported that Man United boss Ruben Amorim is personally driving the Red Devils’ move to sign Wharton. It’s claimed that United are in the strongest position to sign the Englishman this summer, but they are not the only team chasing the midfielder.

Crystal Palace join Man Utd in race to sign £19m ace who could replace Eze

Crystal Palace are among the Premier League teams chasing a player who is leaving his club this summer.

By
Brett Worthington

May 19, 2025

Newcastle United have also been heavily linked with a move for the 21-year-old, while Arsenal are said to have joined the race to sign Wharton, as they plan to close the gap at the top of the table.

Liverpool are also interested in Wharton, and it’s been reported that they are planning to make a £60 million bid to sign the Palace man. However, given the Eagles have qualified for the Europa League, their stance has tightened, and it’s been claimed they wouldn’t consider any bid less than £80 million.

Crystal Palace eyeing move to sign "superb" £15m+ midfielder

And while the hope will of course be to convince the England starlet to stay put, according to Sky Germany, Crystal Palace are interested in signing Nadiem Amiri from Bundesliga side Mainz 05, making plans to buff up their midfield ranks just in case.

Sky Germany report that Amiri’s exit from Mainz is a possibility this summer, as Palace, Fulham and Borussia Dortmund are interested in signing the midfielder, as well as teams in Serie A.

The 28-year-old was asked about his future after Mainz’s final game of the season over the weekend against Bayer Leverkusen, which they drew 2-2, and the German didn’t give much away: “Go on holiday now; then we’ll see.”

Amiri, who has been dubbed “superb” by football talent scout Jacek Kulig, doesn’t have a release clause in his contract, with this report claiming he could cost between 18 and 20 million euros, which is roughly £15-16 million.

The midfielder, who can operate as a number ten or more defensively, is under contract until 2028, and the fact that Mainz have qualified for Europe next season will toughen their stance, given Amiri has been an important player this season with seven goals and five assists in 30 Bundesliga games.

Leeds United are currently enjoying their title party and could already be set to kick that up a notch after identifying two candidates to join them on their Premier League journey, according to a report.

Leeds crowned champions after stunning win at Plymouth

Daniel Farke has endured plenty of trials and tribulations this term, but his side have been a class above and deservedly find themselves top-flight bound after a successful campaign climaxed with a last-gasp title winner from Manor Solomon at Plymouth this weekend.

Many would argue that a club of Leeds’ stature belong in the Premier League, though there is plenty of work to be done to ensure his squad are equipped to take on the challenge of surviving after promotion from the Championship.

Dipping into the market, Farke has identified Celtic attacker Daizen Maeda as a primary target at Elland Road following his freescoring campaign north of the border. The Japan international is valued at £25 million, while Arsenal, Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur are among a host of clubs ready to swoop for his services.

Confidence is high that Solomon will join Leeds on a permanent deal after a fine campaign on loan from Tottenham Hotspur, with the player said to have agreed to a return next term.

Leeds "well-placed" to sign £6m+ ace who's similar to Phillips and Tanaka

He is tempted by a move to the Premier League.

By
Henry Jackson

May 3, 2025

Kalvin Phillips and Tomas Soucek have been mentioned in connection with the Whites. The former hardly comes a surprise due to his links with his boyhood club, but it remains to be seen if a fairytale return is on the cards.

Scaling up ahead of their Premier League return won’t be easy for Leeds, given the level of side they are likely to come up against on a weekly basis compared to the English second-tier. Nevertheless, they now have two talented players in their sights that could make all the difference, per recent developments.

Leeds want Nicolas Kuhn and Cameron Carter-Vickers from Celtic

According to TBR, Leeds are in the mix to sign Celtic duo Cameron Carter-Vickers and Nicolas Kuhn to strengthen their Premier League survival bid. The pair earn £50,000 per week between them at Parkhead and have lit up the domestic scene in Scotland, emerging as two of the best players in the top-flight, with Carter-Vickers playing a part in the Bhoys conceding only 22 goals in 34 league matches.

On the other hand, Kuhn has notched 20 goals and 14 assists in 47 appearances across all competitions, earning plaudits for his consistent displays coming off the right flank.

Celtic’s involvement in Champions League football may be a sticking point for Leeds if negotiations were to occur, though the lure of Premier League football can be a tempting one for top performers in Scotland.

Arsenal are quickly looking to complete a £17 million deal for one player who is a target for ex-Gunners star Cesc Fàbregas at Como, with new sporting director Andrea Berta seemingly aware of the growing competition for his signature.

Andrea Berta's transfer goals for Arsenal this summer

Berta’s arrival has prompted reports of serious summer spending at Arsenal.

Offer ready: Arsenal keen to bid £30m for "special" Premier League forward

The Gunners are set to move for an attacking midfielder, who plays for one of their Premier League rivals.

ByDominic Lund Apr 6, 2025

GiveMeSport recently claimed as much as £300 million could be splashed on up to seven major signings across the squad, including a new second-choice keeper, left-back, midfielder, left-winger, striker and alternative to Bukayo Saka.

Even two central midfield signings are a very real possibility, as per GMS, with Arsenal in advanced talks over a deal for Martin Zubimendi, who could also be joined by Newcastle United star Bruno Guimaraes.

The latter is a personal recommendation from Berta, as first reported by journalist Eduardo Burgos, and Guimaraes could be signed for around £60 million if Newcastle fail to qualify for the Champions League.

Supporters are anticipating a very busy first window for Berta, with the 53-year-old also in the market for a goalkeeping alternative to David Raya.

Neto isn’t a viable long-term option and will return to Bournemouth when his straight loan deal expires, leading them to target Espanyol star Joan Garcia.

The Spaniard played a key role in Espanyol’s push for La Liga promotion last season, and it is believed that Garcia agreed personal terms over a move to Arsenal last year. Even though the transfer fell through, Berta plans to make another attempt for him this year.

Arsenal want to finalise Joan Garcia deal "as soon as possible"

Sources in Spain expect Garcia to complete a move to Arsenal, as per Sky presenter David Garrido last week, and another update has emerged on the 23-year-old from his homeland.

According to a report in Spain, as quoted by Football 365, Arsenal want to finalise a deal for Garcia “as soon as possible”, and the outlet claims that his release clause is actually set at around £17 million right now.

They’re aware of the growing competition for his services, including from Fabregas at Como, who wants the keeper in Serie A (La Razon).

Interest from Italy and the Bundesliga has apparently created a sense of “urgency” to get Garcia over the line, amid his growing reputation as one of Spain’s most exciting young keepers.

“An uber-athletic keeper with dominant cross-claiming, composure on the ball, standing at 6’3” tall, García is an exciting keeper ready for a step up,” wrote Football Analyst Ben Mattinson on X.

“García is such an athletic GK. His legs are so powerful and springy enabling him to generate more power to reach the ball. Good flexibility, agility and his proactiveness enable him to be an alert shot-stopper in the box and recover to make double saves.”

The senior allrounder on how Australia are preparing for the T20 World Cup, focusing more internally than on the chasing pack

Valkerie Baynes01-Oct-2024It’s the US$2.34 million question: who can end Australia’s dominance of the Women’s T20 World Cup? But Ellyse Perry, who has played in all of them and is therefore preparing to make her ninth appearance at the tournament, believes the competition has always been wide open and that might just be the key to Australia’s success.”Particularly the T20 World Cups, I don’t think they’re ever not open,” Perry told ESPNcricinfo. “It’s such a fickle format and the way that the games fall is really unpredictable a lot of the time.”I just think that every team is playing more consistently now, so you’ve got to be in the right place at the right time sometimes and we’ve been fortunate that that’s gone our way a lot in the past, but I think, like any other tournament, it’s wide open at the start.”Related

• Alyssa Healy: 'Not here to defend the title, here to win it'

• Can anyone challenge Australia and India in Group A?

• What makes Australian players such winners? We asked their opponents

• ESPNcricinfo's top 25 women's cricketers of the 21st century: Nos. 5-1

Australia have long played like champions, winning six of the eight Women’s T20 World Cups to have been staged so far, including the past three in succession and three more on the trot from 2010 to 2014.But, by Perry’s account, they have also prepared like champions, focusing more internally than on the chasing pack.”Most of it has really just been focused around what we can control as a group, where we can spend time and effort improving and the best things that as a collective we can lean into to make sure that we’re in the best possible position,” she said.”I don’t think you can really worry too much about any other team or what they’re doing. You’re only reacting then, as opposed to trying to just find the best space and opportunities that exist for the team.”

It’s a great challenge for everyone and I think as a group we’ve had a little bit of change over the last couple of years, so the chance to go out there and test the work that we’ve been doing is really coolEllyse Perry

Without the retired Meg Lanning, Australia are now led by the experienced Alyssa Healy. And, while they appear to have moved on from influential spinner Jess Jonassen since Sophie Molineux’s recovery from injury, they have also introduced some fresh faces with the likes of allrounder Annabel Sutherland and top-order batter Phoebe Litchfield.Australia have looked more beatable in the format since their 2023 World Cup triumph than they have in a long while, however, beaten by England 2-1 in the T20 leg of last year’s Ashes series and losing match each to West Indies and South Africa at home. They won their most recent series, hosting New Zealand, 3-0 but twice suffered batting collapses and were bowled out for only the second time since early 2020.Ellyse Perry has been part of six Women’s T20 World Cup wins with Australia•Getty Images”It’s going to be really tough and really competitive if international competition’s anything to go by,” Perry said. “In the last 12 months it’s just been some great cricket played by lots of different countries and obviously in different conditions as well and teams are going to have to adapt really quickly.”So it’s a great challenge for everyone and I think as a group we’ve had a little bit of change over the last couple of years, so the chance to go out there and test the work that we’ve been doing is really cool.”Despite Perry’s experience in the tournament and her standing in the game – she was recently named No.1 in ESPNcricinfo’s top 25 players of the 21st Century – the T20 World Cup retains a sense of unfinished business for her. Her highest score of 42 came in 2016, when Australia lost their crown to West Indies, and her impact was limited from down the order in 2018 and 2023, while her home campaign in 2020 was curtailed by injury.”I really, really enjoyed the opportunity more than anything” – Perry on her time at the Hundred•ECB/Getty ImagesBut she was speaking on her way to the airport in August, travelling home from the Hundred, where she scored 203 runs at an average of 29.00 and strike rate of 125.30 and took eight wickets for Birmingham Phoenix. That was after topping the run charts at the WPL with 347 at 69.40 and 125.72. She was also in the top-five batters at the most recent edition of the WBBL with 496 runs at 45.09 and 131.56.It is in the franchise leagues that Perry, now 33, has enjoyed a resurgence in her short-form game, new learnings keeping things fresh for a player who made her debut aged just 16.”I really, really enjoyed the opportunity more than anything,” Perry said of her time at the Hundred. “A chance to be a part of a different competition with some fresh faces that I hadn’t played with before was just really enjoyable. From that perspective I’m just incredibly grateful for the chance to be a part of it and certainly learned a lot along the way too.”Every time you get some exposure and opportunity to play really high-level cricket, it’s just great. You try things that you’re working on or just batting with different people or being out in the middle with different people, you always pick up new things.

The amount of women that are getting opportunities to play cricket as a career and hopefully inspire a new generation of cricketers, not just young girls but young boys, is quite phenomenal reallyEllyse Perry

“We all feel really passionately about the countries that we’re from, but at the same time I think there’s a lot more to it than that and just the chance to share different bonds with different people across the course of your career is a real privilege and you can make lifelong friends out of that.”Friends will become rivals again when the tournament begins in the UAE on October 3 with that US$2.34 million winners’ cheque on the line, Australia will be opening their campaign against Sri Lanka in Sharjah on October 5. It is the first time women will receive equal prize money to the men at an ICC event, which forms part of an ever-changing landscape in the game, which Perry couldn’t have imagined when she started out.”It was probably hard to imagine,” Perry said. “It just kept evolving at such an amazing pace and yeah, it’s probably a good thing that I couldn’t imagine that either because it doesn’t limit the possibility of what’s the potential for the next five or 10 years.”To be a part of it has been amazing and also just really cool to see the amount of women that are getting opportunities to play cricket as a career and hopefully inspire a new generation of cricketers, not just young girls but young boys, is quite phenomenal really.”

The Ireland batter talks about his tough run in T20Is, his cricket-mad family, and his belief in the squad’s ability to go further in the T20 World Cup this year

Matt Roller16-Oct-2022Harry Tector hardly watched a ball of the 2021 T20 World Cup after Ireland’s elimination. “I couldn’t turn it on,” he recalls. “I couldn’t think about who we could have been playing and where we could have been. It was probably as dark as I’ve been with cricket after that game.”The game in question was an eight-wicket defeat under the scorching Sharjah sun. Ireland, a full ICC member, collapsed from 62 for 0 after 7.1 overs to post 125 for 8 and were knocked out by Namibia, an Associate nation, whose successful run chase owed plenty to David Wiese’s 28 not out off 14 balls. Four days after starting the tournament by thrashing Netherlands, Ireland were out.”Almost everyone was in the same boat,” Tector says. “I remember us getting off to an awesome start but we struggled through the middle and couldn’t quite get down. Wiese hit a few bombs and put the nail in the coffin. We were just devastated.”Tector, Irish cricket’s coming man and widely believed to be a future captain of the country, was batting out of position at No. 6, making 8 off six as the innings fell away. He had been in and out of the side, struggling to nail a spot down, and was left out of Ireland’s next T20I squad for a two-match series against the United States in December.”I took it really terribly,” he says. “I was unapproachable, almost, for three days. I found it difficult to accept it: from being in the XI for the World Cup to being out of the 15 for the USA trip.” He was recalled one game into the qualifying tournament for Australia, at which stage Ireland needed three consecutive wins to reach the World Cup.Promoted to No. 4, Tector helped Ireland book their spot with cameos against Germany and Oman. “In hindsight, it was the little spark that I needed to give me an extra bit of motivation,” he reflects. “When I came back in, I batted at No. 4, which suits me the best. In a roundabout way, it was probably the best thing that could have happened.”Three games into the 2022 T20 World Cup, Ireland crashed out of the tournament. “We were just devastated,” Tector says•ICC via GettyHe has retained that spot ever since, with mixed returns. He started Ireland’s home summer with 64 not out off 33 balls in a rain-reduced game against India, then hit 39 off 28 two days later. But in his next ten innings he only passed 25 once to finish the season averaging 25.33 with a strike rate of 133.33.Simultaneously, Tector’s 50-over form has been remarkable with two hundreds and seven fifties in his last 15 ODI innings. He is a tall, orthodox batter, strong off his hip or hitting through extra cover. “One-day cricket suits me more than T20,” he explains. “It comes more naturally to me. I’d love to bring that consistency into T20 cricket, but all I want to do is win games of cricket for Ireland. That’s all I’ve ever really wanted to do.”With T20, you have to accept that you’re not going to be as consistent. It’s more about putting in match-winning performances, whether that’s 80 off 50 balls or 20 off 10. I’m still learning. I’m only 22. I’m by no means the finished article and I’ll still make mistakes more often than not. But I feel like I’m improving as a player.”Tector is a member of a generation of Ireland players who have not had access to county cricket in the way their predecessors did. A consequence of Ireland’s ascent to Full-Member status was that their players no longer qualified as locals in county cricket, instead competing for a small number of overseas spots, and opportunities have been hard to come by.As a result, they are increasingly reliant on opportunities in short-form leagues: Tector flew to Australia for the World Cup from Guyana, where he had been representing Barbados Royals in the CPL, while Josh Little, the promising left-arm seamer, has enjoyed stints in the Abu Dhabi T10, the LPL and the Hundred.”The more players that we can get playing in these leagues, the better we’re going to be as a country,” Tector says. “You can see that with someone like Stirlo [Paul Stirling]. He’s played in all these leagues and played for Middlesex for so long. He has such a vast wealth of experience that when he comes back to Ireland, he’s the man. When I first came into the team, he was the guy you went to if you needed advice about batting.”In July this year Tector scored two hundreds in three ODIs against New Zealand•Sportsfile/Getty ImagesAt the CPL, he counted David Miller among his team-mates. “There’s so many good players around and you spend so much time with them that even when you’re not talking about cricket specifically, you’re picking up little snippets. Just watching someone like him from the sidelines, you’re opened up to ways of thinking you haven’t heard before. I couldn’t get enough of it.”The lingering frustration is that the reason underpinning why county cricket is inaccessibility to Tector and his peers – Ireland becoming a Test-playing nation – has felt more like a quirk than a lived reality: they have not played a Test since July 2019, and Tector is still uncapped. That should finally change next year: Ireland have five Tests scheduled between March 2023 and January 2024, including another against England at Lord’s.”It’s the next thing on my bucket list,” Tector says. “It’s something that I really, really want to do. Growing up in Ireland, I pretty much watched every Test match England played, just because it was always on TV at home. For me, it’s still the greatest test of you as a player. If you can score big runs at that level, you’re one of the best players in the world, aren’t you?”There will be plenty of family pride when Tector’s Test debut arrives: he is one of three Tector brothers to have captained Ireland at an Under-19 World Cup along with Jack and Tim. “Dad took us to YMCA CC [in Dublin] where he played and we fell in love with the game. After that, we were living in the back garden, playing cricket on the patio.”His younger sister, Alice, played for the Under-15s this summer and if she graduates to full international level, she could play in the same team as his girlfriend, Gaby Lewis. Together, Tector and Lewis are Irish cricket’s own power couple. “There’s far too much cricket in my life,” he says, laughing.”I’ve been with Gaby for over three years now but I haven’t seen her much: the nature of our lives is that we spend a lot of time on the road. Her dad is my dad’s best friend and that’s how we know each other. Trying to switch off from cricket when the families are together is a challenge: both are filled with complete badgers.”Those families will be glued to the World Cup when Ireland’s tournament gets underway against Zimbabwe in Hobart on Monday. “A success would be getting through the group,” Tector says, “but we’re in a good enough place that if we do get through, I don’t see any reason we can’t go out and win against pretty much every team that we face in the next group.”That’s the belief in the squad and that’s changed in the last couple of months off the back of our performances. We genuinely believe we can beat these big teams: in the summer, we were a bounce of the ball from beating New Zealand and India. If we focus on the process and play some really good cricket, hopefully we’ll qualify for the tournament proper and get some big wins.”

In the IPL, he excels at the difficult task of batting in the middle order, but he has his work cut out trying to push his way back into the India set-up

Sidharth Monga19-Sep-2020Rishabh Pant runs down at Mujeeb Ur Rahman, a bowler with variations ranging from the carrom ball to the offbreak to the legbreak to the wrong’un. He thinks he has picked the legbreak and tries to go over the leg side, but it turns out to be the wrong’un, which he ends up slicing to cover. This is after he has hit the Kings XI Punjab’s then gun bowler Andrew Tye for four, six and four in the previous over, and hit the first ball of this Mujeeb over for four more.The three overs for which Pant has been in the middle have brought 33 runs, to inject some life into a Delhi Daredevils innings that was limping at 77 for 2 after ten overs. His intent and eagerness to hit out are later proved right, when the Kings XI chase down the target easily. Pant knows the Daredevils are headed to a below-par total, but gets out trying to correct that course. For 28 off 13. How has he fared? Has he failed?A big part of cricket is failure and how you deal with it. In an interview to the three years ago, Stephen Fleming, coach of a pretty successful franchise, said helping players deal with insecurity about failure was a significant part of his job: “It is very hard to convince a player that if he is going at [a strike rate of] 190 but averaging 10 and he comes in with four balls to go, [that] he is an asset. It is [about] convincing guys that they are doing their roles to maximum. If someone is batting at a run a ball for 20 balls and averaging 50 at the end of the IPL, it is not great.”ALSO READ: ‘This much I know: how to play in what situation’That is a conflict inherent in cricket: the pursuit of individual goals in a team sport. You want the team to win, but you also want to make runs to keep your place in the side. It is quite telling that as recently as 2017, a coach who had worked with some of the biggest names in T20 felt that players still rated themselves by the traditional metric of the batting average. It naturally follows that in trying to keep that average high, in trying to retain their place, batsmen run the risk of being at odds with the team’s goals.This gets all the more vexing if you don’t bat in the top three. There is no time to make up for slow starts. Your striking efficiency has to be high: there are no field restrictions in place to take your shanks and mishits over the 30-yard line and rolling into the fence. The pitch has probably slowed. It is easier for limited batsmen to be shut down, with fewer boundary options because of the spread-out fields and the fact that the opposition’s best spinners are bowling.It is no wonder everybody wants to bat in the top order, where more is expected of you but you have the time and the freedom to go about your innings. Some ordinary T20 batsmen have found their way into top-ten lists for aggregate runs or high averages simply because they have the luxury of batting in the top order. Teams have to strike a balance between the old notion of letting their best batsmen play the most deliveries and having their best batsmen bat in the most challenging phases of an innings.ALSO READ: Rishabh Pant’s wild ups and downs since 2018Batting outside the top three requires a mix of high skill and a new attitude. That’s why the likes of Andre Russell and Kieron Pollard are so highly valued as T20 players. That’s why West Indies have been such a successful international T20 side.India have struggled to manage this attitudinal shift and it has hurt them at world events.In the IPL, for example, all of their high performers bat in the top order. They are selected for India based on traditional metrics, find the top order is jam-packed, and are then forced to become middle-order batsmen at the international level. The Dinesh Karthiks of the world hardly get a run. Can you blame them, then, for worrying about their average?

****

Around the time that Fleming spoke about the need for rethinking what batting success and failure in T20 meant, Pant was finding his feet in the IPL. At the time he was in his second IPL year. Since the start of that season, no one in the IPL has scored more runs than him. The next eight batsmen on the list predominantly bat in the top three. None of them is close to his strike rate of 168 in that period. And yet, he has averaged 38. He is one of only three players to have maintained the holy-grail double of an average of 30 or more and a strike rate of 150 or above through a career of 50 innings or more. AB de Villiers just misses out making that list.ESPNcricinfo LtdPant has no apparent weakness against any kind of bowling. His average and strike rate in this three-year period against pace and spin are 39 and 177, and 42 and 157. Wristspin is the biggest weapon deployed by teams in the middle over, but he averages 56 and strikes at 160 against it. Offspin, which goes away from him, goes at 38 and 151. Left-arm pace, another point of difference that every team seeks, draws an average of 36 and a strike rate of 201. Hyderabad is the only IPL venue and the Kings XI Punjab the only team to have kept him under a strike rate of 150.