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…

The Premier League, EFL, FA, and Women’s Super League (WSL) have announced a new code of conduct for gambling-related agreements in football.

The code, which will be implemented at the start of the 2024-25 season, is designed to regulate gambling sponsorships across the professional game, emphasising four key principles: protection, social responsibility, reinvestment, and integrity.

A key aspect of the code is its emphasis on reinvestment. Revenue generated from gambling sponsorships must be redirected into football-related infrastructure and community programmes. This includes improvements to stadiums and training facilities, as well as investments in grassroots football and local community participation.

Under the new code, gambling sponsorships will also be required to target their marketing efforts more carefully to avoid reaching children and individuals at risk of gambling-related harm. Additionally, any gambling-related sponsorship must include educational initiatives and awareness campaigns designed to promote responsible gambling practices.

GO DEEPER

‘Some players bet on football – they know it’s breaking the rules but still do it’

The importance of maintaining the integrity of football competitions is also stressed in the code, adding that gambling sponsorships must…

Within hours of the finals of the European Championship and Copa America on July 14, attention will turn to pre-season for many of the most famous clubs in Europe.

Manchester United have a friendly match against Norwegian side Rosenborg on July 15, while Tottenham Hotspur and Aston Villa have games two days later. Yet the main event of pre-season is the now customary money-spinning tour where European clubs travel thousands of miles across the world with the objective of growing their fanbase, consolidating ties with existing supporters and unlocking fresh revenue potential.

This summer, the United States is the location of choice for many of Europe’s largest clubs. Premier League clubs Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea, Aston Villa, Wolves, Crystal Palace, West Ham and Bournemouth will all be in the United States, along with League One side Wrexham, who have become a streaming sensation under the ownership of actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney. La Liga giants Real Madrid and Barcelona will also be in the States, along with AC Milan from Italy. Arsenal and Chelsea’s women’s sides are also crossing over the Atlantic this summer to face NWSL side Gotham.

The motivations are hardly surprising. The U.S. is the centre of the football universe…

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…

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…

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…

There is an EFL club that keeps a database designed to monitor the progress of its future head coaches. It is succession planning, a means of identifying the next best candidate before the search is even required to begin.

Individuals are marked and categorised; ones to watch and others to forget. A new tab has recently been created beneath those head coaches who are deemed unworthy of consideration, though. It is labelled “Joey Barton”. Do not touch.

The anecdote is relayed after one senior figure at the club was asked last week if Barton, sacked as manager of Bristol Rovers in October, would ever be considered for one of their managerial vacancies. “Not a chance,” they say.

Barton is unlikely to care. Not publicly, at least. After his playing career was held back by acts of violence and self-sabotage, the 41-year-old is now setting fire to his prospects of finding further opportunities as a football manager.

An industry that has provided Barton with no end of second chances – after prison, after an 18-month gambling ban and after multiple arrests – is finally seeing its patience expire thanks to a series of furious social media posts against female pundits and commentators.

They seem to have closed off any possible return to the game he claims to be defending. There…

Welcome to #GrassrootsGOATs, our series about the heroes that make football happen at a local level. After your nominations, we have narrowed it down to five people whose incredible dedication has changed the lives of those around them through football. Read the full series here…

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Dave Eastham chuckles when thinking about the inaugural training session for Oxenhope Juniors, whose home village nestles amid the moors of Bronte Country in Yorkshire.

“The grass was frozen over, so we had to play on this old Tarmac basketball court,” he says. “There were four kids there and it was also raining. So, not a great start.”

From such inauspicious beginnings in October 2019, the club now boasts six under-age teams and more than 90 players. A feat made all the more remarkable by co-founder Dave — an all-round “superhero” for helping bring “football to the children of this area”, according to friend Andy Farley — grieving the loss of wife Amy from pancreatic cancer during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Amy Firth passed away aged 42 in October 2020, just months after being diagnosed on the eve of the first lockdown in March. She left behind husband Dave and three children, Isla (now 13), Finn (12), and Erin (eight).

“Obviously a really, really difficult time for all the…