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…

It is that time of year again. Lighter nights, daffodils and the sobering discovery of just how much your football team has handed over to agents.

The Football Association (FA) published its annual figures yesterday and, as is the norm, they were bigger, more gasp-inducing than ever before.

The Premier League’s 20 clubs combined to pay £409million ($509m) in agents’ fees in a 12-month monitoring period that began on February 1, 2023. Include the EFL’s outlays and English clubs handed over close to half a billion to that select group of men and women representing a footballer’s interests.

It was the usual suspects leading the way but the Premier League’s spend continues to rise. This year’s total is markedly up on the £318million of last season and almost twice the amount paid in 2017-18.

The Athletic picks out the key points from the FA’s latest report.

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Chelsea drive spending records… again

An age of excess at Stamford Bridge has seen Chelsea spend like no club has ever spent before. Close to £1billion has funded a lavish overall that is yet to deliver discernible progress under the Todd Boehly-Clearlake-led ownership group and the fees paid out to agents are another marker of their intemperance.

Brace yourself for Chelsea’s full outlay over 12 months:…

The battle between Manchester City and Chelsea at the top of the Women’s Super League (WSL) might be the main storyline, but it is not the only exciting title race at the moment. With just two full matchdays to go, there are four points between the top four teams in the Women’s Championship.

Only the winner will be promoted to the WSL and all four are set to play each other on the final day of the season on April 28.

Sunderland, Crystal Palace, Southampton and Charlton Athletic all have deeply varying histories within the women’s game. They are evidence of the range of teams vying to compete at the top level of English women’s football, despite fears that the WSL looks increasingly set to mirror the Premier League.

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Sunderland (20 games, 40 points)

Sunderland are top, a point clear of second-placed Crystal Palace, who have a game in hand. Top-flight women’s football has eluded the north east of England over the past couple of years, despite Sunderland’s illustrious history of developing a glut of England stars, including Lucy Bronze, Beth Mead and Jill Scott.

They have struggled in the past to meet the FA’s licensing requirements for participation in the WSL and

Permanent concussion substitutions will be introduced into the laws of football, the game’s lawmakers have confirmed.

The measure, which has been trialled in a number of competitions such as the Premier League, Women’s Super League and FA Women’s Championship and FA Cup, will come into effect from July 1, 2024.

Teams will be able to use additional substitutions, outside of their allotted amount, if any player is showing signs of a concussion, regardless of the number of changes they have made already.

However, a trial for temporary concussion substitutions — a measure which has been called for by the Premier League as well as players’ unions — was not approved at the annual general meeting of The International Football Association Board (IFAB) in Scotland on Saturday.

It is understood the Premier League remain of the view that permitting professional leagues to trial temporary concussion substitutes will significantly benefit player welfare and the sport.

Scottish Football Association CEO, Ian Maxwell, said: “Regarding permanent concussion substitutions, the trial we’ve run is effectively concluded and that is now enshrined in the laws of the game.

“It will be for competitions to determine whether they want to use permanent concussion substitutes, as per the…

It’s hard not to see the fixture as a meeting between two powerhouse female managers — one on the way out of the Women’s Super League (WSL) and the other doing everything she can to get into it.

Crystal Palace, led by Laura Kaminski, visit Emma Hayes’ cup holders Chelsea at Kingsmeadow in the fifth round of the FA Cup on Sunday.

Kaminski has only been Palace coach since July but the 36-year-old has been named Championship Manager of the Month for September, signed New Zealand international Ria Percival (fresh off her appearances for the co-hosts in the World Cup last summer) and helped the south Londoners secure this FA Cup last-16 spot.

Palace sit third in the Championship, three points behind leaders and neighbours Charlton Athletic with a game in hand.

Kaminski has over 15 years of coaching experience at clubs such as Brighton & Hove Albion, Watford, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur.

Before her move to Palace — which is her first time leading a team — Kaminski worked as manager Karen Hills’ right-hand woman at Charlton for two seasons. It was Kaminski’s straight-talking coaching approach, coupled with her ability to use humour which gained her…

Here is a question that will never feature in a Christmas party quiz: which Premier League attendance record was broken this week?

No, Luton Town did not find a way to squeeze a few more in for the visit of the champions Manchester City on Sunday. And we are not referring to the huge crowd that turned up to see Arsenal beat Chelsea at the Emirates, which is a Premier League venue but was hosting a Women’s Super League game.

You are never going to get it, so we will put you out of your misery: Tuesday’s crowd of 30 club representatives was a record attendance for a Premier League shareholders’ meeting at the Brunel Building, the fancy London office block in Paddington, west London, that became the league’s headquarters in 2019. And that does not include the “virtual” crowd, who took part in the meeting working-from-home style.

Well done, boys (and girls). But was it a good process?

Not according to some participants, who agreed to speak to The Athletic under the condition of anonymity in order to protect their relationships.

“Chaos” was one description, “shambles” another. And yet three decisions were made and it was all over by lunchtime. So, it could not have been that bad.

Let’s run through the agenda and you can decide if this bumper crowd witnessed success…

When I think of Roy Hodgson as Liverpool’s manager, my mind is taken to a modest restaurant in the city’s Georgian quarter after he won his first match in charge of the club.

West Bromwich Albion had been beaten by a single goal at Anfield and Hodgson marked the occasion with a meal with Sheila, his wife, who was from Liverpool and came from a family of Evertonians.

Hodgson was fresh, or maybe a bit stale from work, and was still wearing his official Liverpool suit with the club’s badge on its pocket. His tie was red, and that made him stand out. I remember him standing up and jangling the keys in his pocket like a caretaker as he prepared to leave.

If he was expecting a warm reception from other diners, or even a hint of recognition, it never came. Nobody turned around. When I said to my now wife, “Look, there’s Roy Hodgson”, she carried on eating her bowl of pasta.

Had Hodgson been Rafa Benitez, the manager he’d succeeded, he’d have struggled to get out of the door. When Jurgen Klopp became Liverpool’s manager four and a half years later, he went for a drink at a bar just around the corner the night before his appointment and was mobbed.

Hodgson’s reign at Liverpool is the shortest of any manager in the club’s history. Barely four months after spotting him…

The English FA has said that staff at professional clubs “falls short of reflecting the levels of diversity amongst the playing population”.

This comes after the FA published its third annual report on the Football Leadership Diversity Code. Introduced in 2020, the code is an initiative to prompt the collective effort to address inequality in senior leadership, wider team operations and coaching roles.

Last season among the clubs endorsing the initiative, just nine per cent of senior leaders, 11 per cent of team operations, 16 per cent of coaches and nine per cent of hired senior coaches were individuals of Black, Asian or mixed heritage. Additionally, only 23 per cent of senior leaders and 30 per cent of team operations hires were female.

Within the 53 club signatories, 21 per cent of senior leaders and 29 per cent of team operations are female. Meanwhile, seven per cent of senior leaders and nine per cent of team operations belong to individuals of Black, Asian or mixed heritage. 

In the coaching workforce, 13 per cent of trainers and 11 per cent of senior coaches are from Black, Asian, or mixed heritage backgrounds.

This year marks the first instance where participating clubs have disclosed their actual workforce data, including information on LGBTQ+ and disability,…

When Aaron Ramsdale sat down for his “interview” with The Players’ Tribune in April, he had one intention: to tell his story as honestly as possible. That was as far as his thought process went, until he started talking.

And then it all came out.

The England goalkeeper spoke about the backlash when news broke that he was joining Arsenal in August 2021 and “the entire world” told him he would fail, and the series of knockbacks that spurred him on to earn three caps for his country (“maybe that’s something to keep in mind for all the kids out there who are constantly told that anything less than perfection is the end of their dream”).

The 25-year-old also spoke about his family.

About the miscarriage he and his wife suffered early last year and playing through the pain in the north London derby three days later.

About the pride and admiration he has for his brother Oliver, a performer in London’s West End, who is gay. And about the moments he’s bitten his tongue in dressing rooms and on social media over the years when hearing “homophobic comments”.

It was around this point during the interview that Ramsdale paused and glanced over to the side of the…

You know the old joke about London buses?

In the multi-club ownership era, interviews with football club owners are a bit like that. You wait weeks and weeks for one and then three, sorry, four come along once.

Because, readers, the next in our occasional series of chats with owners of English clubs is John Textor, the founder and chairman of Eagle Football, a group that owns majority stakes in Brazil’s Botafogo, French side Olympique Lyonnais and RWD Molenbeek in Belgium, as well as a large slice of Crystal Palace.

So, that’s four relatively recent takeovers to discuss, two of which were bumpy, one was a pioneering move into a huge but largely unexplored market and one that… well, we’ll let Textor explain.

The 57-year-old American also provides updates on a significant corporate move, the sale of a successful American sports franchise and a merger involving the Europe’s best women’s team.

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The Athletic: Let’s start with Eagle Football’s takeover of Olympique Lyonnais. What’s the latest?

Textor: We’re moving through the growing pains of a takeover of a big and complicated club. When you buy a business from a founder, or someone who has been a leader for a long time, there are many similarities as to what you’d go through.

First, the seller decides to invite you…