Manchester City completed a PFA Player of the Year double on Tuesday night as midfielder Phil Foden and striker Bunny Shaw were named men’s and women’s winners for 2023-24.

Foden, 24, scored 19 goals and provided eight assists to help City clinch an unprecedented fourth successive Premier League title under Pep Guardiola.

Erling Haaland — who won last season’s crown — was one of six nominees, including City midfielder Rodri, Arsenal’s Martin Odegaard, Aston Villa’s Ollie Watkins and Cole Palmer.

Shaw finished the campaign as the top scorer in the Women’s Super League (WSL) with 21 goals in 18 games for the club, despite having her season prematurely ended by a foot injury in late April.

The Jamaica international becomes the first female City player to scoop the award since Lucy Bronze won the accolade in 2016-17.

Shaw’s Man City team-mates Yui Hasegawa and Lauren Hemp were also nominated, alongside Chelsea’s Niamh Charles, Erin Cuthbert and Lauren James.

Having missed out on the evening’s main award, City academy graduate Cole Palmer was crowned the men’s Young Player of the Year after an outstanding debut campaign at…

The policy that helps inform which match officials are chosen to appoint games in the Premier League, English Football League and Women’s Super League has been published for the first time.

Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) — the body in charge of refereeing in England — chief Howard Webb revealed that in an effort to be more transparent, his organisation wanted to make the appointments policy and its guidelines available to the public.

After earlier confusion due to Webb’s comments, PGMOL has since clarified the allegiances of individual officials within its organisation will not be made available to the public.

The move comes after public refereeing controversies in the Premier League particularly last season. Stuart Atwell, for example, was accused by Nottingham Forest of being a Luton Town fan following Forest’s controversial 2-0 defeat at Everton when the official was on video assistant refereeing duties.

GO DEEPER

Nottingham Forest, Stuart Attwell’s Luton link and a melodrama played out on social media

“Officials are asked to declare any specific interests in advance of the season and as the season goes on should any of those things change,” Webb explained. “That (the appointment policy) will be made public I believe and coming out as well so…

Scott Lindsey stood arms aloft, taking in the adulation of his supporters. He had just witnessed his Crawley Town side dismantle MK Dons in the League Two-play off semi-final to reach Wembley for the first time and, rightly, he and his team were taking it all in.

The eight goals they scored across two games may have surprised those outside of West Sussex but the manner of the victory — the bravery, the skill, the dominance — reflected a side in Lindsey’s image.

Tipped for relegation at the start of the season, Crawley are 90 minutes from reaching the third tier. It would bookmark a long and winding journey for Lindsey, 52, one of tragedy, grief, passion and positivity.

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It was the summer of 2019 and Lindsey, then assistant manager at Forest Green Rovers, was putting his team through a gruelling pre-season training camp in Devon when he received a phone call.

His wife, Hayley, who had stage four kidney cancer, had collapsed in the shower. “They’d taken her kidney out before this and then we were going on the surgeon saying he’d got it all out,” Lindsey says, “But because it’s stage four, there was a chance it could come back.”

The cancer had grown into her spine and her legs started to get weaker. “They said, ‘It’s going to eventually paralyse you, you…

The season is rapidly approaching its conclusion and the pressure is cranking up.

At the top of the Premier League, Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City and Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal are locked in a gripping title race; at the other end of the table, Rob Edwards is desperate to prolong Luton Town’s top-flight fairytale at the expense of Nuno Espirito Santo and Nottingham Forest. And in the English Football League (EFL), play-off season is in full swing, complete with all its usual emotional ebbs and flows.

These are the days when reputations are forged or shattered and, while it is enthralling for fans, managers would be forgiven for regarding the whole thing with dread.

Jurgen Klopp’s announcement in January that he would be leaving Liverpool at the end of this season was proof of how draining the job can be. “I cannot do it again and again and again and again,” said Klopp, who turns 57 next month.

In February, Roy Hodgson left Crystal Palace shortly after collapsing at their training ground. Although the 76-year-old’s health was not a factor in the club’s decision to end his contract three months early just a few days later, it caused understandable concern among players and staff.

It is not just in the Premier League, either.

Emma Hayes, who is leaving Chelsea Women at the…

Hollywood actor Will Ferrell has joined Leeds United as a minority investor.

Leeds owners, 49ers Enterprises, have a number of high-profile minority stakeholders including actor Russell Crowe, Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps and Major golf champion Jordan Spieth.

Ferrell, 56, has bought a small stake in the Championship club to join this group with the club’s general partners — from 49ers Enterprises itself — still in day-to-day control.

49ers Enterprises, who already owned 44 per cent of the club, completed their full takeover in July.

Ferrell, who is already a part-owner of Major League Soccer side Los Angeles FC, follows a number of celebrities to try their hand at football club ownership in recent years.

Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney have enjoyed meteoric success with Wrexham while JJ Watt and his wife Kealia invested in Burnley in May of last year and fellow NFL great Tom Brady joined the ownership group at Birmingham City in August.

Leeds finished third in the Championship and will face Norwich City in the first leg of the play-off semi-finals next weekend in their bid to return to the Premier League.

GO DEEPER

A day with Will Ferrell in Wrexham (yes, you read that correctly)

How does Leeds’ ownership group work?

The Leeds United investment group created by 49ers…

Birmingham City’s plans to build a new stadium have taken a step forward after owners Knighthead completed the purchase of land in the east of the city.

Knighthead has bought a 48-acre site in Bordesley Park from Birmingham City Council and confirmed plans to build a new “world class” stadium and training ground.

The “Sports Quarter” will be home to facilities for the men’s, women’s and academy sides and aims to be a “globally recognisable sporting and entertainment location”.

The land is a former motor racing park and is located less than one mile away from St Andrew’s, which has been Birmingham’s home ground since 1906.

Birmingham’s training ground has been located outside of the city at the Elite Performance and Innovation Centre, the former home of Wasps rugby club following a fire at the Wast Hill training ground in March 2023. They signed a three-year lease for the centre in December.

Knighthead co-chief executive officer and club chairman, Tom Wagner said: “When we invested in Birmingham City, we made it very clear that we had an ambitious vision to transform the experience for our fans and make a positive contribution to the growth and vitality of the city of Birmingham. The acquisition of the former Wheels site is an important next step in making…

It is probably a mistake to start with a British cultural reference that is nearly 29 years old, but this is a story about misgivings and mistakes, so it feels apt.

In 1995, the late, great comedian Caroline Aherne had a spoof talk show in which she played a character called Mrs Merton, an elderly lady from Manchester who would ask celebrities disingenuously blunt questions.

“So, what first attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?” was her famous opener to Debbie McGee, the glamorous assistant and wife of the aforementioned TV magician.

A version of that question had been rattling around my head while I tried to find a common thread between the four case studies we have done this week on men who want to buy football clubs.

So, Chris/Dozy/William/Thomas, what first attracted you to the cash business with property assets that would guarantee weeks, if not months, of positive media coverage and a huge dopamine hit from the gratitude of strangers?

Because when you put it like that, it is not hard to see how bidding for football clubs might be addictive/a good smokescreen/useful advertising/worth a go (delete as applicable).

We picked Chris Kirchner, Dozy Mmobuosi, William Storey and Thomas Zilliacus this time, but if there are any streaming giants reading, we could flesh out…

Leicester City are facing charges and a potential points deduction for an alleged breach of the Premier League’s profitability and sustainability regulations (PSR) in the 2022-23 season, which ended in relegation to the Championship.

Had Leicester avoided relegation, the 2016 Premier League champions would now almost certainly be in the same situation as Everton and Nottingham Forest, both of whom have been referred to an independent commission over a PSR breach and are at risk of losing points. Everton have already had a 10-point deduction reduced to six points relating to a PSR breach from the reporting period ending in 2021-22.

On Wednesday, it was confirmed Leicester remain at risk of a PSR breach for this season despite an independent panel ruling the club do not have to submit a business plan to the English Football League (EFL). They could still avoid this second breach if they are able to reduce their losses through player sales in June.

PSR assessments are usually based on a rolling three-year basis, with Premier League clubs allowed to lose a maximum of £105million ($134m) over the period, although that figure is adjusted to exclude expenditure on community projects, infrastructure, the women’s team and youth development. But because of the uneven impact of the…

“He will give us a huge step forward in quality… He could help us for the next eight or nine weeks.”

The quote from Sheffield Wednesday head coach Danny Rohl makes the situation sound simple. In reality, it is anything but.

On Thursday, with his team mired in the Championship’s relegation zone, Rohl announced his intention to sign free-agent left-back Nico Schulz. Schulz had been training at the club.

Why is he a free agent? He was released by Borussia Dortmund last year after being charged with domestic abuse. Schulz denied the allegations.

Legal proceedings came to an end this week when the case against him was dropped. Schulz agreed to pay €150,000 (£128,000) to domestic violence charities — but was not convicted, with the case officially dropped.

Sheffield Wednesday’s plans to sign him are still controversial, with the club criticised by fan groups over the proposed transfer. This is the situation.

Who is Nico Schulz?

Schulz, 30, is an attacking left-back who played for several Bundesliga clubs — Hertha Berlin, Borussia Monchengladbach and Hoffenheim — before sealing a move to Borussia Dortmund in 2019.

He struggled at Dortmund — only making 40 league appearances over four seasons — and was marginalised once Edin Terzic took over at the start of the 2022-23…

Kicked out of the FA Cup and facing a fresh English Football League investigation into allegations of backdated paperwork, Barnsley’s season has been anything but boring.

The South Yorkshire side are pushing for promotion but the overall impression is one of a club distracted and divided by the break-up of the ownership group that took control in 2017 — a situation exacerbated by a dispute between two women at the club last summer.

Co-owner and director Jean Cryne, the 70-year-old widow of former owner Patrick Cryne, allegedly told fellow staff that she thought then-club secretary Eleanor Dobson, 28, flirted with the players and wore inappropriate clothes. Cryne did not deny this when Dobson, who had recently gotten married, later challenged her about them.

This led Dobson, who joined the club in 2022, to make a formal complaint to the then-chief executive Khaled El-Ahmad and their human resources manager, with club chairman Neerav Parekh also informed.

In an attempt to resolve the matter, El-Ahmad arranged a video conference call in early August between the two women during which it is said Dobson accepted an apology from Cryne.

But within weeks of that virtual meeting, the row flared up again when Dobson discovered that her complaint, which was meant to be private, had…