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…

The Athletic has decided on the 35th anniversary of Hillsborough to re-publish an article that was originally released two years ago, which details the horror of the day, as well as the impact on some of the survivors.

When Martin Roberts returned to Halifax on the night of April 15, 1989, he wet the bed as he tried to sleep. The next morning, he did not say a word to either of his parents, his sister or his brother about what he had witnessed the day before in Sheffield, where 97 Liverpool supporters lost their lives in a steel pen he somehow escaped from.

Martin spent Sunday walking around the garden for hours, hopelessly trying to make sense of it all. By Tuesday morning, he was working again, at Barclays bank. His boss called him into a side room and asked how he was feeling. A stupid question. Martin wondered what his colleagues were thinking, fearing they believed what had been written in the papers about fans like him.

Martin’s deepest scars from Hillsborough were not physical but mental. His father, Liverpool-born, possessed old-school values. His generation understood broken arms and broken legs, but Martin’s pain was not visible. This contributed to him throwing himself into his career and back into what seemed like a normal life. He thought he was coping. Martin…

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:…

Take a look at the top six places in the Women’s Super League (WSL) table and you could be forgiven for thinking it was the Premier League standings from any point over the past decade.

Chelsea, Manchester City, Arsenal, Manchester United, Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur — the Premier League’s established ‘Big Six’ — occupy positions one to six in the WSL with seven games remaining. Never before have they all finished in the top six in the same season.

Is that good or bad, exciting or boring? One thing is for sure, it is a far cry from the first WSL season in 2011. Independent sides Doncaster Rovers Belles and Lincoln Ladies were among the eight teams involved. Of the founding members, only Arsenal (2011 league winners), Chelsea (sixth) and Liverpool (eighth) remain in the WSL. Manchester City Women relaunched in 2014, Manchester United in 2018 and Tottenham were renamed Tottenham Hotspur Women in 2019. Top-six finishers in recent years have included Birmingham City and Reading (2018-19), Reading and Everton (2019-20), Everton and Brighton & Hove Albion (2020-21), West Ham United (2021-22), and Aston Villa and Everton (2022-23).

Today, every WSL side is affiliated with a men’s team and the top of the table has a very familiar look to it.

The mirror image of the…

This is an updated version of an article first published in June 2020.

Perhaps the best place to start is the story Harry Redknapp tells when he is asked about Michael Edwards and the remarkable chain of events that first took a frustrated IT teacher from Peterborough to a position of power and influence at Liverpool.

Redknapp had been Portsmouth manager when Edwards — or ‘Eddie’, as he is commonly known — was given his big break in football and, over a decade since they last worked together, he got back in touch a while ago to request a favour.

“I’d met a guy who had only a few weeks to live,” Redknapp says. “This poor guy was in his early forties. He had been married only a couple of years and he knew he was dying. Someone had got in touch and said, ‘Harry, he’d love to meet you. He’s football mad’. So I went round to his house one Sunday and spent a couple of hours with him, his wife and his in-laws. He was an amazing boy, so strong, and he told me it was his dream to go to Liverpool.

“I rang Michael Edwards and, straight away, he went, ‘Harry, not a problem’. I arranged a car, I got a driver. Eddie sorted everything else. There wasn’t any of the, ‘Oh, Harry, I’m sorry, mate, you know how busy I am’, that you can get sometimes.

“He put…

Jurgen Klopp summed it up perfectly: “What a game, what an atmosphere, what an afternoon.”

Even his wife enjoyed it. “She was completely buzzing,” the Liverpool manager said — and just about everyone inside Anfield must have felt the same.

It ended with the points shared: Liverpool 1-1 Manchester City. In that respect, perhaps the biggest beneficiaries were Arsenal, who remain top of the Premier League with 10 games left, ahead of Liverpool on goal difference. But it was one of those afternoons when it feels legitimate rather than trite to suggest football was the winner — another epic battle between these two teams who, in terms of speed and imagination, can give you the feeling you are watching 4D chess.

How do you even begin to choose a man of the match for a game like that? Sky Sports went for Liverpool captain Virgil van Dijk. Users on the Premier League app went for his team-mate Alexis Mac Allister. Both are sensible suggestions but you could equally make a case for Harvey Elliott, Luis Diaz, Wataru Endo, Kyle Walker or John Stones. Rodri and Kevin De Bruyne ran the show for City for much of the first half, even if they were knocked out of their stride in the second. Jeremy Doku’s exhilarating cameo almost turned the game back in City’s favour.

A…

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 raining in Galicia, with drops running down the windows at Celta Vigo’s recently opened Cidade Deportiva Afouteza training ground.

Bounding into the media room comes Rafa Benitez, still wearing his ‘RB’ personalised shorts and jersey, having just taken training with Celta — his 14th job in almost three decades managing at the top level.

Over that time, Benitez has won 13 trophies with six clubs in three countries, with highlights including two La Liga titles and the 2003-04 UEFA Cup with Valencia, the 2004-05 Champions League with Liverpool and the 2012-13 Europa League with Chelsea.

The 63-year-old took on a new challenge last summer, joining Celta on a three-year contract, and the team from Spain’s far north-west are currently 17th in the 20-team La Liga table, with wobbling champions Barcelona coming to town this weekend.

Benitez warmly welcomes The Athletic to his new workplace for an interview that often returned to one major theme — the importance of timing and opportunity in the career of a coach or manager.

This is an edited transcript of the conversation.

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The Athletic: Vigo seems quite like Liverpool — the rain, the river, the port…

Benitez: When I speak with my wife, who is there in Liverpool, I tell her, ‘It’s raining’. And she says, ‘Of…

Before the Women’s Super League season started, Arsenal and Everton agreed to move their match, scheduled for January 20, forward to 2pm — the idea was an earlier kick-off would give their players more time to recover before Continental Cup ties took place a few days later.

No problem, said the FA. But months later, it emerged that there was a problem.

The new kick-off time sat in the middle of the blackout period — from 2:45pm to 5:15pm on Saturdays — in which football is restricted from being broadcast in England.

The blackout originates from UEFA rules, specifically Article 48, which permits member nations to select a two-and-a-half-hour weekend slot in which live football is banned from screens. In England, the rule only emerged in 1987 when ITV struck a major television deal with the English Football League (EFL). The FA, in conjunction with broadcasters, decided Saturday afternoons should be sacrosanct.

By the time the issue from Arsenal and Everton’s game came to light, it was too late to make changes. Tickets had been sold and fans had booked travel, so the game went ahead, without being shown live on the FA’s official streaming site, the FA…

Marquee signings defined the 2023 January transfer window.

Chelsea paid a British record fee for Enzo Fernandez, then spent another €70million (£60.2m; $76.7m) on Mykhailo Mudryk. Liverpool and Newcastle United paid more than €40m for Cody Gakpo and Anthony Gordon respectively.

More was spent last January (€842million) than in the three previous winter windows combined (€718m). This reflected the financial hangover from the pandemic years. But instead of more big-fee signings in this current window, everyone needs to sign squad depth, for a few reasons:

• Increased speed and intensity of matches
• Greater amount of games (club and international) in a season
• A higher rate of injuries to players
• Head coaches having more extreme/specific philosophies
• The quality needed to win the Premier League has gone up

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Maybe football can learn something from NCAA (American collegiate) cross-country, a team event where runners score points based on their finishing position (for example, the runner in 12th gets 12 points). The team with the lowest combined score wins, meaning the quality of your fifth runner matters as much as your best one.

In the women’s race at this season’s NCAA Championships in November, North Carolina State beat Northern Arizona University by one point (123 to…