When Arsenal went top of the Premier League against Luton last week, it wasn’t their fans who were celebrating. Comfortable in their two-goal lead, the home crowd were slipping out before the end and the stadium was empty soon after the whistle. But not entirely. Clustered in the south-east corner, nearly 3,000 Luton fans stayed to serenade their beloved manager. Oh for someone who looks at you the way a Lutonian looks at Rob Edwards.
Premier League clubs spent more than £400m on agents in the year to February 2024, with Chelsea handing over a record £75m to players’ representatives.
Figures released by the Football Association show that Premier League clubs paid £409m to intermediaries from 1 February 2023 to 1 February 2024, which includes the past two transfer windows.
When Portsmouth celebrated promotion to the Premier League in 2003 and lifting the FA Cup in 2008 which, it later emerged, came at a crippling cost, Southsea Common played host to the party. Fans also gathered there to toast winning League Two in 2017, though at that point they did not anticipate spending quite so long in League One. At the seventh attempt, a return to the second tier after 12 years away is in full view, John Mousinho having quietly revived a club that had been stuck in a malaise. Victory at Bolton on Saturday would not only guarantee promotion but crown Pompey champions. As the kit man “Big” Kev McCormack, part of the furniture after 25 years of service, says, the feelgood factor is back.
Barring one of the most remarkable comebacks to have decorated Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool reign, his final European game at Anfield will have featured a flat performance and atmosphere, resignation to defeat and a divide between fans and club; everything, that is, that goes against the culture he has created over the past nine years. Rediscovering the spark and belief required to win a Premier League title, however, is the Liverpool manager’s more pressing concern.