When a Formula 1 docuseries following the 2018 season hit streaming platform Netflix, it very quickly changed the trajectory of how producers and Netflix in particular would approach the sports documentary.

Drive to Survive was not the first fly-on-the-wall sports series. The NFL had been doing this kind of thing for years, while plenty of clubs, teams and competitions had already invited cameras behind the curtain. But Netflix’s Formula 1 series had managed to discover a certain recipe that helped it find a different gear.

Firstly, it followed a sport that was niche enough to feel fresh and unfamiliar, but simple enough to understand at speed. Formula 1 may be built on ultra-complex engineering, political manoeuvring and microscopic margins, but the basic proposition is wonderfully clean: cars go very fast, drivers try to win, teams try not to crash and burn.

Secondly, it introduced a sprawling cast of characters. Drivers, team principals, billionaire owners, engineers and executives all arrived with their own quirks, grudges, vanities and bloated egos. The show did not need to manufacture drama from nothing. It simply pointed the camera at a sport already full of stress and insecurity.

Thirdly, it looked fantastic, taking the viewer across Monaco, Monza, Singapore, the Gulf and beyond. The sport came wrapped in wealth, glamour and absurdly cinematic backdrops. There were private jets, helicopters, hotel balconies, expensive cars, champagne on yachts, and men in branded polo shirts behaving as if a botched pit stop was an international emergency.

By placing a microscope over a season of racing and cutting it through driver soundbites, paddock politics and boardroom tension, Drive to Survive discovered lightning in a bottle. Its rise was then helped by the COVID-19 streaming boom, when millions of viewers were stuck at home and suddenly had time to binge-watch a sport they may previously have overlooked.

Although Netflix are coy with their viewing figures, Drive To Survive hit a peak of over 90.2m watch hours in season 5 (the 2022 season). F1’s American TV audience roughly doubled across the Drive to Survive era, with ESPN noting that 16 races set viewership records in the 2025 season. Ultimately, there’s strong evidence that Netflix helped drive F1 interest in the US, especially among younger fans, women, and casual sports viewers.

Naturally, this boom introduced the Netflixication of the sports docuseries.

In 2023, Netflix launched Full Swing, following golf’s biggest names, and Break Point, which tracked the top-level tennis circuit. Later that year came Tour de France: Unchained, following the gruelling French cycling race. In 2024, the Six Nations rugby championship received the same treatment with Six Nations: Full Contact.

If there was a sport that needed a season under the microscope and wanted a F1 booster injection, Netflix was there, camera crew in tow.

But the formula that worked so well for Drive To Survive quickly became saturated when applied to other sports. The same ingredients keep reappearing: dramatic voiceovers, slow-motion training footage, contrived boardroom tension, carefully chosen swear words, and overly dramatic talking heads.

Ultimately, none of Netflix’s follow-up docuseries has come close to matching the scale or cultural impact of Drive to Survive.

Per FlixPatrol, Break Point was broadly well received at over 30 million watch hours, but that plummeted by over half for season 2. Unsurprisingly the show was canned in 2024, generally accepted that the supply of trendy sports docs and docuseries on streaming platforms was outpacing demand.

Golf’s Full Swing has fared better, but its numbers have also dropped sharply from a season 1 high of more than 53 million watch hours. Its fourth season recently arrived with just four episodes, down from eight and seven in previous seasons, despite covering one of the most dramatic golf years imaginable: Rory McIlroy completing the career Grand Slam at the Masters, a Ryder Cup year, and the ongoing tension around the sport’s fractured future.

While the show’s shorter runtime keeps it flowing quickly the season felt curiously light and insignificant. The 2025 Ryder Cup provided a solid spine, but the show never quite lands the punch one might have expected from such a newsworthy campaign.

Elsewhere, the Six Nations rugby championship got the Netflix treatment, but viewing figures fell off a cliff in season 2 before it’s cancellation. The show failed to capture any of the magic the Drive To Survive creators managed to find in F1, and it followed the same familiar and formulaic treatment as the others, ultimately failing to attract many new fans to the sport, as Six Nations CEO Tom Harrison said Netflix made the strategic decision not to continue beyond season 2.

Tour de France: Unchained was arguably more successful creatively, and its viewing numbers remained steadier than some of its peers. Cycling, like Formula 1, has obvious advantages for this kind of treatment: danger, scenery, tactics, suffering, team orders, internal politics and enormous physical cost. But Netflix still pulled the plug after three seasons, another sign that competent execution alone may no longer be enough.

In the end, everyone had hoped to find strike a cord with an audience that responded avidly to Drive to Survive, but few managed to find the same magic recipe. And as the Formula 1 docuseries reached its eighth season this year, even it may have become a victim of its own success.

Although its viewing figures have remained strong — certainly exorbitant compared with its sporting counterparts — the old formula has started to become cold and boring. There is an argument that the production has become too sanitised, controlled, and PR-friendly. One of the major storylines from the 2025 season, Christian Horner’s departure from Red Bull Racing, was given noticeably soft-touch treatment.

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The show now feels more contrived than ever. The drama has been diluted and the big egos have been sanded down. The bite from the racing drivers and bosses has been largely lost. Drive to Survive always required the viewer to play along with a certain artifice, that the talking heads and dramatic commentary were recorded long after the fact, but that overkill has now resulted in a very unfulfilling and sanitised product.

It will, of course, persevere. Season 9 will likely arrive on Netflix next year, ahead of the 2027 Formula 1 season. But it will stand alone as the first and last of its kind.

Everyone went hunting for the next Drive to Survive. In the end, not even Drive to Survive could fully survive sticking to its own sterile blueprint.

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.”

As World Cup 2026 swells into view, it doesn’t so much arrive as it expands - bloated, stretched, and slightly out of shape.

It swells in participation — 48 teams for the first time.

It swells in scale — 104 games across three countries.

It swells in ego — Gianni Infantino, the FIFA president turned geopolitical wheeler and dealer.

And it swells into a world that feels increasingly unstable and politicised, going head on with Donald Trump’s American juggernaut — a country that is currently flaming wars in the Middle East and having a public spat with the Pope.

Rather than skidding excitingly round the bend four years on from Qatar, the World Cup 2026 has almost had to be dragged into place — like the struggle of Homer dragging the Stone of Shame. It’s sweaty, it’s heavy. It’s not particularly pretty to look at. But it’s here and we’ll watch it anyway, I guess?

For many, it will be hard to separate the basic purity of kicking a leather ball around and the geopolitical tightrope that’s brought us here. With just under two months to the competition, Iran are in conflict with Donald Trump, who is TACOing in and out of various positions. It remains unclear if the Iranian national team and their fans will be able to safely attend the tournament and support their team, and step foot in a land where just two weeks ago in an expletive-laden Truth Social post, Trump vowed to end their entire civilisation if they didn’t back down.

Last year, Infantino was lauding Trump with the inaugural FIFA “Peace Prize”, a moment that now feels less like diplomacy and more like parody. It wasn’t the first time Trump butted into view on a FIFA stage, having been bizarrely inserted into the Club World Cup celebrations when Chelsea won the inaugural tournament last summer.

If this was some genius gambit from Infantino to keep Trump onside so he could carry FIFA through this summer’s tournament unscathed, he’s failed utterly and made himself look like a sniveling Yes-man. The FIFA Peace Prize has become an oft-referenced meme as far as Trump is concerned, an award that is unlikely to see the light of day again.

Infantino has seemingly moved heaven and earth to strike a close friendship with the U.S. president, attending Trump’s inauguration, making several appearances in the Oval Office, attending Trump’s Board of Peace meetings and last weekend he posted a photo on Instagram alongside Trump at a UFC event in Miami. Infantino has also opened a FIFA satellite office in Trump Tower in New York.

Infantino has somehow become a pitiful and disdainful figure in an occupational pipeline that delivered us Sepp Blatter.

Such has been Trump’s overriding influence on the hosting of the tournament, recent reports from The Athletic suggest FIFA and Infantino are planning to request an amnesty from ICE raids across America while the World Cup is under way, seemingly leveraging off his new-found friendship. Several FIFA member countries have raised concerns over the safety and viability of travelling to the host nations, with ICE arrests reaching thousands per day and in almost half of cases, targeting people with no criminal records.

In addition, the mass inflation and skyrocketing fuel prices Trump has induced through his escalation with Iran will likely not help draw people to matches in the U.S. or the surrounding carnival of football.

Previously lauded as the most inclusive World Cup ever, this edition instead looks to be the most financially challenging ever. Beyond the difficulties of obtaining VISAs and attending the tournament, exorbitant price hikes and ticket gouging are rife, with local host cities announcing transport cost rises to help cover the significant costs of handling the World Cup wave.

Boston are to charge fans $95 for buses to Gillette Stadium, while a round-trip rail ticket from New York Pennsylvania Station to MetLife Stadium will cost $150 per passenger, impacting eight games and the World Cup final on July 19th.

New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill accused FIFA of taking fans “for a ride”.

“FIFA is making $11billion off of this World Cup and charging fans up to $10,000 for a single ticket for the final. I won’t stick New Jersey’s commuters with that tab for years to come. That’s not fair.”

Meanwhile, FIFA has created a new category of tickets in an apparent effort to milk even more money out of prime seats. They released new batches of tickets listed as “Front Category 1” for seats in the first several rows of certain sections, being charged at upwards of $900.

Suddenly, seats purchased from the original standard Category 1 ticket that, if bought beforehand, should have been eligible for placement in those exact same rows and sections.

Fans in the ticket lottery have reported feeling “scammed” and “misled” by FIFA’s ticketing system, further alienating fans who were willing to go, and likely convincing other fans to stay at home and not travel to the tournament. It’s one further Americanisation of the World Cup, where VIP culture is rife at big events, with exorbitant ticket levels and dynamic pricing strategies all contributing to inflated prices of attending an event.

On an economic front, leaders of hotel associations in major host cities told Forbes that the economic boon FIFA promised isn’t coming to fruition. That same Forbes report spotlighted thousands of room cancellations FIFA made in host cities across the United States, Canada and Mexico.

With travelling fans priced out and stretched thin, the atmosphere and soul of the tournament is at major risk of diluting away. The football pyramid is already oversaturated, with more games than ever before, and the 48 team structure will likely dilute the quality even more, with several mismatches and dead rubbers likely, granted the likes of Curaçao and Cape Verde will offer great underdog tales and a beacon of light with their unlikely qualification.

With so much chaos off the field, perhaps some serenity will be found on it once it all kicks off. Plenty of geopolitical fears as well as infrastructural challenges hounded the approach to the Qatar World Cup, but a lot of it was largely forgotten once the action got underway.

But the 2026 edition has managed to become the most greedy, grotesque offering yet. Somehow it will go ahead, amidst all the chaos of exorbitant prices, worldwide inflation, wars and geopolitical knife-edges, but it’s another example of FIFA managing to cultivate calamity and highlighting a world rife with division and unrest. It claims to “unite the world”, and is doing so manages to take all the attention away from the game itself.

Stay tuned for more World Cup 2026 writing before and during the tournament here on Game Over, Ball Burst.

Beyond Rory McIlroy’s historic back-to-back Masters win last weekend, one of the main talking points coming out of the tournament was how it now exists in the modern content era.

“Content” feels like a dirty internet word at this point, but the Masters — something that once seemed to speak entirely for itself — has quickly become a content behemoth. For a tournament where phones are banned on course, it still drives an immense amount of clicks, views and attention.

Augusta National has made a concerted effort to enter a more digital age — the mobile app is now an annual ritual for the Masters acolyte, offering unrivalled replay and attention to detail on every single shot and every single hole. This year, the tournament had a renewed social media focus, providing plenty of content throughout the week on their various channels, beginning with behind the scenes footage of McIlroy’s Champions Dinner preparation, to neatly edited stories on Instagram threading through the on-course storylines. While the style wasn’t exactly to my taste and I found myself speed-tapping through them, clearly a lot of effort had gone into the format.

A bigger bone of contention was how mainstream components beyond the golf had become, as patrons transitioned from golf nerds into consumers and influencers, unpacking massive hauls of Masters merch on TikTok, revealing their extensive collections of caps and a garden gnome or two. At times it felt like a distraction, and although Augusta National have been criticised for leaving millions of dollars on the table through their somewhat archaic traditions, it’s something perhaps the board may consider reversing course on in future tournaments.

The Masters has always been wrapped in a mystique, but that is now being repackaged as a brand identity to be bought, displayed and circulated online. The tournament remains beautiful, but parts of the culture around it are beginning to resemble a luxury drop from a designer brand than a major championship, less a golf tournament that happens to have iconic branding, and more an iconic brand that happens to stage a golf tournament.

On television, ESPN entered the fray with their exclusive airing of the Par 3 tournament on Wednesday. It attempted to merge the Worldwide Leader’s increasingly Barstoolish tenor with the decorum of Masters week and although it was largely confined to the Par 3, it fed into a broader sense among pundits and hardened golf fans that this is exactly what they do not want the Masters to become — loud, boorish, and cluttered with unwelcome characters drafted in for comic relief.

Jason Kelce is a popular, louder-than-life character of this new ESPN era, but his involvement at Augusta was widely criticised. Although Pat McAfee was denied at the gate, it still felt as though ESPN failed to grasp the mood of the earnest golf fan. On the morning of day one, WWE wrestler The Miz was on hand to preview the tournament, in some awkward bit of cross-promotional synergy between ESPN’s coverage and this weekend’s WrestleMania. Needless to say, it went down like a lead balloon.

While this is more of an ESPN problem than an Augusta one, it does raise the question of whether stricter lines will be drawn in future. Augusta National chairman Fred Ridley made a rare admission in his once-a-year press conference last week that the club may have made a mistake in allowing Dude Perfect, the YouTube trick-shot troupe, to play frisbee around Amen Corner a few years ago.

Ridley noted that while Augusta is willing to explore themes outside its traditional box, there is clearly little appetite to veer too far into influencer and celebrity culture. Most golf fans still see the exclusivity of the Masters as something to be protected. Get the balance wrong between that and the gimmicks designed to capture more eyes, clicks and money, and the club risks alienating the true worshippers of Masters golf.

Beyond ESPN, the television coverage once again left plenty to be desired. It is well documented at this point just how limited live coverage of the golf remains, with early viewing restricted to specific featured groups and featured holes before broadening later in the day into the full broadcast window.

That approach leans into the supposed exclusivity of the course itself — you will see what we want you to see — and, in theory, whets the appetite for the main names and big storylines when the coverage finally opens up properly in the evening.

But there is a thin line between leaving viewers wanting more and simply excluding whole swathes of the tournament. Even when shots did make the air, the production often appeared to show them on a significant tape delay, sometimes several minutes after they had happened in real time. Several golfers disappeared into a black hole once they slipped down the leaderboard, with little effort made by television to colour in the wider picture and show how the tournament was unfolding beyond the top five or six names.

When Haotong Li was thrashing his way around Augusta National’s greenery en route to a quintuple bogey on the 13th, for instance, it was not even mentioned on television. Not only did it remove him from the top-five picture, it also had an impact on Scottie Scheffler, his playing partner, who viewers actually were following on screen.

Shane Lowry, near the top of the leaderboard for much of the tournament and still in the mix early on Sunday, eventually drifted out of contention with little effort made by television to tell that particular story, with only 19 of his shots finding airtime.

NBC analyst Kevin Kisner pulled no punches in his assessment of the coverage, openly baffled by CBS’s production decisions:

"Our production team at NBC prides themselves on playing every shot that they possibly can live… I have no idea what they’re doing. Literally no idea. They’re showing every shot on tape. I don’t even know how the announcers call it.

The problems escalated from there and left fans completely in the dark when production seemed to lose track of McIlroy’s second shot on the 18th. Needing at least a bogey to win the tournament, McIlroy ended up right of the fairway in the trees and recovered with a looping iron that finished in a bunker just short and right of the green. But for a good thirty seconds, neither the television pictures nor the commentary seemed entirely sure where the ball had gone.

All while this was happening, over on Sky Sports, Nick Faldo was mindlessly waffling on about how energy can be absorbed from the trees in moments like these. Faldo, long treated as one of the network’s authoritative Masters voices thanks to his Augusta pedigree and years in Sky’s golf orbit, can still sound more dutiful than illuminating. There is no questioning his stature or understanding of the course, but his television persona has often leaned toward the dry, aristocratic and faintly joyless, as though the audience is being lectured on the game rather than invited deeper into it.

For a tournament built on tension, that kind of commentary can flatten the drama rather than heighten it. Sky have long valued Faldo’s gravitas, but gravitas on its own is not always the same thing as insight. In a broadcast already constrained by Augusta’s rigidity, the last thing the viewer needs is another layer of distance between themselves and the event.

And that, really, is the modern Masters dilemma. Augusta is becoming less exclusive in the ways many golf fans never asked for — through TikTok haul culture, manicured social content and celebrity intrusion — while remaining just as restrictive in the one area viewers might actually welcome greater openness: the golf itself. In trying to preserve its mystique while broadening its commercial reach, the club risks drifting into an awkward middle ground: less formal, less sacred and less exclusive than before, yet still unwilling to let fans fully into the tournament they actually came to watch.

Leave it to Rory McIlroy to inspire a clearing of the cobwebs over on Game Over, Ball Burst, which, must like the golfer himself, has had a quiet opening to 2026 after a blistering and unforgettable 2025. However, unlike Rory, I’d love to say that I’ve been grafting in the shadows, sharpening my keyboard ahead of a big Majors season, day-tripping to the course after the school-run, but that is sadly not the case.

Travel, work and the impending doom hovering over planet Earth have all contributed to a loss of form and a tumbleweed forming around the GOBB offices.

But there’s not much better than a Masters tournament, another episode of the award-winning Rory drama and a lick fresh of paint to find renewed vigour to get back into action.

You might notice a new, sort of Masters-inspired colour scheme around here, or perhaps a tribute to reigning All-Ireland champions Kerry. The new green and yellow branding scheme was my latest example of procrastination from actually writing on this thing, when I cobbled it together last week in anticipation of returning to the newsletter in a post-Masters roll of thunder.

This weekend, after a decade of Masters turmoil and almost Animaniacs levels of cartoonish anguish, Rory McIlroy showed how Augusta National is his town now. Not only has he finally found the key to the front door, he’s changed the locks, grabbed himself a cold iced beer and created his very own ass-groove on the sofa. That’s his television set, those are his slippers. Those are his beers in the fridge.

Last year’s victory was the tsunami of relief, sealing a long-awaited golfing Grand Slam and releasing a powder keg of pent up Masters pressure. This year’s victory didn’t come without its drama, but it presented a player who knew the course inside out and had matured enough to wrestle it into submission.

Friday’s score taking him to -12 heading into the weekend was absurd, especially consider he was playing so loosely. At various points over the weekend he lost his iron play and pulled a few putts, but as the course brought everyone down to size come Sunday night, Rory rarely looked any more than slightly uncomfortable.

Which is brazeningly un-Rorylike considering he had somehow relinquished a 6-hole lead and the overall lead after a double-bogeyed fourth hole. Scottie Scheffler shook the earth coming down the stretch, but ran out of holes, whilst Cameron Young and Justin Rose, after various flirtations with the lead, eventually succumbed to the Masters blackhole.

Sam Burns and Shane Lowry fell off drastically, Haotong Li came and memely dropped off the face of the leaderboard. As the temperature intensified, Rory looked like the only player coping. Seriously deep scars still exist, especially for us onlookers who wince and squirm at every wayward Rangefinder line.

Of course, it’s never straight forward when he’s in play, not least with an 18th drive flew so wayward right that McIlroy had to manage game of musical chairs to move patrons out of the firing line. He had lost that swagger and jaunty gait, looking tired and saggy. You sure get your money’s worth with this guy.

But his quality and touch never waned. With the finishing line in sight, a gorgeous chip shot onto the green on 17th, after a Tiger-esque approach putt, Rory knew exactly how to maneuver himself towards a tournament-winning putt. The glorious lift out of the bunker on 18, when a more tense pair of arms, or indeed an older version of Rory McIlroy may have shrank deep within its pits as the sandy walls cocooned around him.

The line from Rory coming out of his 2025 win was “what are we all going to talk about next year?!”. Talk of going back-to-back was tempered in the run up to the tournament. More than ever it seemed like a bolter was due, perhaps a rookie could rise to the test.

And then Rory wagged his finger at those doubting him again. Entering the bastion of greats, probably the greatest European golfer ever, and into privileged territory as only the fourth to defend a Masters title.

The course, longer than ever, is his now - malleable in the palms of his hands.

When it was announced that a wrestling biopic of the Von Erich family was coming to the big screen in Sean Durkin’s Iron Claw, my immediate reaction was on how exactly they were going to pack so much tragedy into one single, compact two-hour yarn.

The filmmakers were working with some pretty murky material - a wrestling family cursed by several life events of destruction and devastation. On paper, it stretches almost beyond the realms of human reality and into fiction. In the end, the film didn’t have to contend with the entire life story of the Von Erich’s with the creative decision to annex an entire brother, Chris, as the filmmakers felt that elements of his story would not only overlap with his siblings, but almost added too much misfortune for one viewer to comprehend.

While I believe it’s up there amongst some of the great sporting biographical dramas, and arguably the best wrestling film of its kind, as someone who was fairly in lock with the story beforehand it certainly stuck in the craw that they would exclude an important and worthy component of the Von Erich family tree.

Naturally, I realise this is mostly a me problem along with any wrestling snobs who know more about the inside mechanisms of World Class Championship Wrestling than they care to advertise too much. This is a wrestling film about some grueling but absorbing source material that tries to toe the line between doing its duty with the story and not intimidating the audience. And it does a pretty good job at that. It’s not necessarily aimed at me, or others closely familiar with the Von Erich tale, but a wider audience who are already being asked a lot of by buying into a wrestling movie.

The Von Erich story is a tale of utter pain and misery. A clan of brothers who follow their father, Fritz, superbly acted by Holt McCallany, into the wrestling industry. Determined to do good by him and honour the family’s wrestling legacy, the brothers all have ambitions of making it in the business, whilst also tasked with earning their father’s kudos and meeting his unachievably lofty expectations.

The film mainly focuses on Kevin, the only surviving brother, played by Zach Efron in a performance that, in my book, was starkly overlooked during last year’s award season. We meet brothers David, Kerry, played by Jeremy Allen White, Mike, and eventually Jack, the oldest of the brothers but who died when he was a child.

Left out entirely was Chris, the youngest of the brothers. His story does in many ways overlap with what we see through his siblings - a guy determined to make it in the wrestling industry, facing various setbacks and challenges colluding against that, leading to depression and drug use and eventual suicide.

But there was so much more to Chris’ story than that crude summation. He loved wrestling and, unlike Mike, who didn’t dream of becoming an on screen performer, was determined to make it in the squared circle. However his size, at just 5’5”, and brittle bones made it an impossible task.

And unlike Kevin, David and Kerry who all had degrees of success in the business, Chris never really got that chance bar some fleeting moments as an extra or as an addition during his brother’s matches. He had to contend with the fact that he’d never be a wrestler in the truest sense, never able to entertain the crowd, earn their adulation and respect, although he was popular with wrestling fans of the time with his underdog frame. And notably with his father, forever be the brother who was too small and meek to become a wrestler and follow in his footsteps. His story is blended with Mike, who had other passions and little desire to enter the business, but this considerably dilutes Chris’ story.

Director Sean Durkin explained that including Chris would have been too much for the audience to handle, too much tragedy, and that the film may never have been made that they tried to do too much.

Including Chris wouldn’t have necessarily made the movie any better, but he has a heart wrenching tale that deserved outright exposure in the film. Chris Von Erich wasn’t just another tragedy in an already tragic family. He was the brother who wanted it most and was denied it almost entirely, and his absence rings loudly in an already cripplingly tragic story.

I’m reticent to write too often about Manchester United, mainly because there already exists a never-ending tsunami of content surrounding the club, from every possible angle.

Secondly, because there’s some far better writers out there with a far better handle on things that I could ever match up to. And thirdly, they ruined much of my childhood. Growing up a Liverpool fan in an Irish primary and secondary school, surrounded by United fans, throughout the entirety of the Alex Ferguson era. I’ve been mentally scarred, and only just coming out of the light on the other end. Maintaining an unbiased overview to anything United is immensely difficult and I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve taken a fine deal of satisfaction in their downfall.

I do however have this bizarre thought process that a lot of people tend to differ from when I bring it up, with a mixture of judgmental outrage and get-this-guy-medical-help responses - I actually think a good Man Utd would be good for the Premier League, and I’d prefer Liverpool to be competing for titles with them rather than the likes of City or Chelsea.

I really am a bit disappointed that we never truly got a Liverpool and United title challenge during that era where Liverpool became sort of good again, just as United crumbled into oblivion. Sure, the years against Man City were fun and amounted to some titanic battles and never-before-seen points tallies in the Klopp and Pep era, but, and no disrespect to any City inboxes, it would’ve felt far more substantial if those wars had been against United. There’s nothing worse than losing to United on a normal day, putting that concoction into the melting pot of a title challenge would really get the juices flowing.

Anyway, what I see with United, something that’s edged back to the fore now that the Ruben Amorim era is shuttered, is a club falling over and crumbling under the immense weight of the empire it’s been built on.

There’s almost a cruel monkey’s paw allegory to the club. They had decades of success under arguably the greatest manager ever, a force of nature who ruled the club with an iron fist, which happened to coincide with a conveyor belt of some brilliant talents either emerging from the academy or joining the club and becoming folk heroes, who rose up and delivered, sometimes against the odds, under the guidance of Ferguson.

It’s like someone came a long and asked for sustained dominance, a powerful identity, and greatness built around one man and one generation. That receipt has now come due over the last decade with institutional dependency on the ghost of Ferguson following his retirement, who hovers over the club despite remaining physically present at Old Trafford. Symbolically, every manager works under his shadow.

In an effort to reclaim that identity, some of those ex-players are teed up to connect that great past with the new. A thread to the era of success when things were better. They know the club. But with each failure deepens the sense that the past is judging the present and that while many ex-players may know the club, the club has simply become too big and immovable to be steered forward now that that era is in the history books.

In addition, you have several more ex-players sprawled across the media, adding narrative and discourse on TV and podcasts, shining a blinding microscope on everything the club does. They are part of the problem and the hamster wheel the club finds itself, putting forward their old comrades for the role of manager, delivering a thumbs up to a Roy Keane, a man who hasn’t managed a club in over 14 years, and a thumbs down to the reigning FA Cup manager in their latest viral video effort. Keane is perhaps the biggest cult of personality to emerge from the remnants of the club after the very manager he most publicly fell out with. In the middle stands dozens of ex-players who must eternally offer sigils of deference to both figures.

In another corner is Gary Neville, Sky Sports lead commentator and who’s built an empire of his own in podcast form, almost off the backs of several of his ex-teammates and even rivals, into a steamship that almost exclusively fuels itself through the United of the past.

The loop wheels around once more as United turn to Michael Carrick this time, and for a second time, to carry the club forward until the summer when another outsider will be given perhaps the greatest poisoned chalice in sport.

It will be the twelfth instance of a new figure in the dugout since Ferguson’s departure, five of them being former players of the man who’s shadow looms large.

Amorim’s departure at this juncture, with the club in seventh place in the league and performing well beyond last season’s measly 15th, shows a club that has an ambition for the future but no clue on how to get there, or at least an uneasiness with truly committing to something. Amorim’s spell saw the club marry itself to a very specific system that needed very specific system players to deliver it, something the club was in the process of overturning. But results were inconsistent, performances often lacking, and despite several clear issues to mask over, Amorim, clearly a strong personality himself, eventually had enough and clashed just enough with the football directors that triggered an end to his time there.

The new ownership structure, led by Sir Jim Ratcliffe, a force of personality himself as a businessman but so far floundering helplessly in the business of football, has committed and then changed his mind on two managers, while in the middle pursued sporting director Dan Ashworth at great expense and then binned him months later, and are now immediately back in the ex-player carousel of legends who dominated Old Trafford at their peak but are now mere mortals in the dugout as the empire continues to crumble and crack at the seams.

The club’s suffering is the bill coming due for a period of success so complete, so all-encompassing, that it eliminated the need to plan for a future without it. United didn’t just win under Ferguson, it outsourced everything to him and is doing it again with it’s ex-players - direction, identity, standards and evolution.

And that, perhaps, is the final curl of the monkey’s paw. United got exactly what they wished for: dominance so absolute it became their defining feature. But now they are trapped in reverence, unable to move forward without constantly checking back over their shoulder, stumbling under the weight of the empire it had became.

Josh Safdie’s long-anticipated Marty Supreme feels like a natural extension of what he and his brother Benny built with Good Time and Uncut Gems. The same ultra high-intensity, pressure cooker of emotion and movement set to a gritty New York backdrop, placing you in claustrophobically tight spaces and with the incessant overlay of people speaking over each other and loud noises.

For anyone familiar with their catalogue, it should come as no surprise that Marty is just as relentless, albeit slightly more cartoonish in its action, hot-stepping from one episode of outlandish carnage to another at breakneck pace.

What separates Marty, however, is it can be placed firmly into the category of sports film, with the story based loosely on real-life ping pong player Marty Mauser, with the degree of filmmaker’s creativity on this film, set across a nine-month period, to the nth degree.

It follows Mauser, played by Timothée Chalamet, an American table tennis star who’s toiling at his uncle’s shoe store as a means to an end to fund his ambition to become the greatest player in the world. From the outset we’re hammered with just how relentless Marty is in achieving his dreams. The film follows a trajectory of Mauser firstly at the British Open table tennis tournament, where he blitzes through the early rounds, his lofty standards clashing with table tennis authorities when he laments the quality of his sleeping quarters and accordingly checks in to The Ritz, racking up a substantial bill on the table tennis association’s name. Mauser clearly sees himself as a star, acts like a star and has an unshakeable confidence that nothing can stand in the way of. That was before coming up against a Japanese wall in the deftly talented and deaf Koto Endo, who seems to have Marty’s number.

The table action scenes are terrific and parallel the relentless pace of the film. From the early rounds where tables are stacked upon tables and players barely have room to swing their bats, to the wider open tables in the finals where the darkened, smoky arenas artfully highlight the plight and pressure of the players.

From that initial tournament, the film takes you into a different stratosphere as Marty will stop at nothing to fund his travel to the World Cup in Japan later that year and meet Endo on home soil. From concocting an affair with Gwyneth Paltrow, the wife of a rich pen magnate, played annoyingly well by Kevin O’Leary, through to hustling at a bowling alley with Tyler, the Creator, through to searching for the dog of a cash-rich but deathly dangerous mafioso, the film tallies through episode after episode of Marty’s euphoria of winning his chance at Japan, the inevitable pain of letting it slip through his fingertips, and his almost sadistic fortitude to pause, plan and try again. He will simply stop at nothing to play in Japan, throwing out all ethics and morals, blind to the reality that surrounds his situation.

Of course, the story doesn’t pan out as expected and he’s delivered one final blow on the eve of the tournament, but we are afforded one final showdown with Endo, who doesn’t utter a word all film and is played by real-life player Koto Kawaguchi, which, once again, is shot tremendously. The table tennis match scenes might be few and far between, but they are enthralling and absorbing enough to stand it with any sports action moments across other genres. And you preposterously end up rooting for this kid, who’s left the woman he impregnated alone in a New York hospital just so he can get spanked, even in the most literal sense, with a table tennis paddle.

At its most derivative essence, Marty Supreme is a quality sports movie. It harnesses that motive - aiming to dream big and reach the pinnacle of your sport with, and adds typical Safdie chaos in eschewing all moral bankruptcy to fuel this ambition.

Mauser is a deeply flawed, immoral anchor to work towards that vision. Josh is a big basketball fan. It’s easy to imagine what Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant might have become if that same impenetrable desire to win had been cocooned inside 1950s New York ping pong halls.

Streamers

I’m happy to see far less from streamers in my 2026. I don’t watch streamers, I don’t know very many of them, yet my timelines are often filled with dudes reacting to things in the comfort of their gaming chair. Other times, they’re mobile, sometimes joined by other streamers, and getting into skirmishes that sometimes breaks into my mainstream news avenue, like recently when Puka Nacua told streamers that he doesn’t believe in CTE or when he was told to do an anti-semitic dance the next time he got in the endzone. I don’t know who watches them, I don’t know how they’re able to earn so much money, I don’t care for their opinions or their reactions. Go away.

AI

I’m AI-skeptic, but not totally anti-AI. I’ve found use cases in my personal life where AI can be quite helpful and that’s just dandy. But there’s a fine line in AI being actually useful and mind-numbingly awful, and it often starts with actually knowing how to use it. The best tip I’ve learned about using an AI is no matter what, it aims to please you. So when it’s bigging you up and telling you are God’s gift to green earth, take that with a pinch of salt.

But I don’t need AI everywhere. It’s not hugely beneficial or helpful in most use cases that don’t involve you doing something that would otherwise involve trawling through Google or Reddit. And it’s particularly awful and useless on Twitter, where Grok has become this entire entity of awfulness that came to the fore already in 2026 with the absolute scandal that it will take any request involving the removal of clothing or the sexualisation of people’s photos without their consent. Before this disgusting escalation, Grok and AI in general has made people stupider, made social media infinitely more worse and totally accelerated it to the point of unuseability, and I’m happy to see far less of it in 2026. Newsflash: I won’t.

Gianni

In a steeped category, Gianni Infantino is probably my Worst Person of 2025. The man leading the great sport of football has managed, in no uncertain terms, to make it all about himself in an effort like no other. Whether he’s sucking up to Donald Trump in the Oval Office, honouring him with the FIFA Peace Award (???), bringing him onto the field at the finale of the Club World Championship, that egregiously stupid looking award for said competition. The reams of horseshit he spews at every turn. That World Cup draw will live long in the memory as one of the worst and most excruciating things I’ve ever had to sit through.

The thing is, it’s a World Cup year. IN AMERICA. There will be more Gianni, more Trump, more Gianni and Trump. Please. Make it stop.

Oversized Drinking Vessels

Why has the simple act of water intake become a thing? Water bottles have become an extension of people’s identity. There’s several colours, styles, shapes and ultra-massive sizes to choose from. Water has been drank since the Neanderthals, it was probably the first thing that became a thing when they realised they could consume this nectar without getting poisoned or experiencing the overbearing taste of salt.

Just get a decent bottle that doesn’t leak and drink from the shaggin’ thing, not one that needs it’s own check-in tag.

Hyrox

Look, fitness is good. Trying to maintain longevity in life and avoid the risk of heart disease and bad things happening is undoubtedly good. Running, sure. Gym, go for it. Marathons and the rise of organised races, park runs, Run Clubs, all that manner of outdoorsy forced fun and desire for human connection, absolutely.

But I draw the line at Hyrox - specifically the marketing and promotion of the endeavour. You’re running about a warehouse, pushing sleds and throwing around medicine balls. It’s crossfit and yet why do I have to watch so much of it on my timelines? Go on, get your medal, but I don’t think anyone is going to regret on their death bed doing one less Hyrox.

Bad Television

2025 seemed specifically bad for television and I think we’ve largely jumped the shark with streaming sites and production companies pumping incessant amounts of bad television just to fill their waves. Adolescence was a 2025 thing and that feels like forever ago, and it was good in the moment and had a phenomenal message, discussed in parliament and schools and so on, and the one-shot takes were amazing.

But other than that, it’s hard to find too much that moved me. I definitely overexpected from Severance and the third season kind of just came and went. The White Lotus was terrible. The Bear hasn’t returned to the heights of season two, granted I liked it better than a lot of the reviews. Dept Q. was one of the better things on Netflix, while Slow Horses maintained a high floor with that new series.

And rounding it off with Pluribus which was just kind of… there. It definitely didn’t feel like a great year for television. When a reality show, The Traitors, is topping or shortlisting on most lists, you know you’re in trouble.

The Overlap

I could probably have six different categories of different areas of football content, punditry and television coverage I’d like to change in 2026 or leave behind in 2025, and that is something that I’ll probably tease out in a longer post at some point. It might be unfair to label The Overlap specifically on this one, but I’m quite content with leaving this cabal of guys behind. The oversaturation of Gary Neville, Jamie Carragher, and I’m sorry to do this to you, but Ian Wright and Roy Keane as well, to my ears and eyes has just become too much.

At least that’s somewhat avoidable, granted it’s probably the most virable podcast in football and clipsharing is inescapable when Roy Does Something. But television coverage is altogether harder to avoid for me as I tend to watch a lot of Premier League football. And it is terrible. Putrid. Awful. The format needs to change, the approach, the creativity, the blandness. It’s worse than ever in my opinion, over-polished within an inch of its life and yet still just so terrible.

Jake Paul

Arguably in the streamer category, but this one has a particular intersection with sport that needs to be consigned to 2025, never to be seen again. And that’s Jake Paul the boxer, Jake Paul the promoter, YouTubers and non-boxers boxing, any combative performance not involving two people who have actually trained and dedicated their life to being the best at this particular thing. I’m not a huge boxing fan and this sort of carry on has undoubtedly pushed me further and further away from it. It clearly has a market and that probably is a reason why streamers are as big as they are and why Grok AI is used so potently by idiots — this venn diagram is pretty big, if not just one huge circle.

Temu

And that ilk can firmly stay in 2026. When I moved house a couple of years back we used the cheap and cheerful Chinese overproduction site to source some households things. Not a single one of those items are still in use, and each usage was reeped with the miserable thought that I and I alone were responsible for this stupid plastic thing being shipped half-way around the world, just because I was too cheap to spend an extra couple of euros in Mr. Price or Dealz.

Temu, their incessant ads, it’s silly coupon thing and the intolerable means of navigating the site can be gone.

Doomscrolling

A lot of my problems come from being unable to disconnect from my phone. If I could just consign doomscrolling to 2025 then life would be far chirpier, happier and these kind of lists not a thing because I’d have less of a reason to be mad. I know it would make my life infinitely better and my mental health indestructible. Doomscrolling, I so badly want to leave you in 20…. *swipes on*

Triple H

I don’t like to advertise it too widely, hence why this is last in my list. But I’m a wrestling fan. And I’m totally fine with leaving Paul Levesque in 2025 along with John Cena’s utterly dreadful retirement run. That heel turn with The Rock against Cody Rhodes will go down as one of the worst booking decisions of all time once the dust settles. The fact they patted themselves on the back so proudly on Netflix for all to see, pulling back the curtain of how the whole idea came to be, makes it a million times worse.

Triple H is awful. He can’t book wrestling. You, sir, can suck it and stay in 2025.

I’ve found it really hard to pick up the inspiration to write in the last few weeks, despite no shortage of stories to draw from. Even sitting down to pen some of the bits that I have posted over the last while, I’ve found myself phoning it in a bit. I’m not sure if this counts as writer’s block, when my goal is to write just a single piece a week, at about a thousand words, on whatever sports story has piqued my interest, but here we are.

I’ve always dealt with a degree of imposter syndrome when it comes to sports writing. I’ve generally always seen myself as a guy writing about sports, rather than a sportswriter. And I think there is a big difference between the two.

And that usually compounds into periods where I struggle to write at all. I look around and see several others capable of saying what I’d like to say, but simply far better, and look on enviously at their terrific output.

But then I log on here and see a couple of hundred of you sports hungry readers waiting for something and it’d be mental of me not to appreciate that. There’s few things more cringey and self-indulgent than a writer complaining about writing. Especially someone who struggles to even categorise themselves as a writer.

So let’s try and overcome that today and take a look around at what’s been happening…

… and OH CHRIST MO SALAH WHAT HAVE YOU DONE…

There is a man who is not short a few words. For anyone suffering from a lack of inspiration, maybe turn to a guy like Mo Salah who had a lot to get off his chest to the first interviewer who caught his gaze in the media tunnel after Saturday’s 3-3 draw with Leeds, and see if that can rekindle something inside of you. I could easily trot out several thousands words on what’s going on with Salah and the club and end up twisting myself in knots on who is in the wrong, how it could possibly be reconciled and where the club is going and still barely scratch the surface.

My plain view is he was wrong to do it in the manner that he did. Liverpool, as is obvious to see, have been truly awful lately. But this manner of complaint and self-sabotage at this juncture is really telling not only on himself, but a lot of his teammates. The crux is Liverpool have been pretty terrible, for various reasons, and much of that is down to Arne Slot and his coaching and decision making. But he has a team leaking goals and a right sided attacker who not only won’t defend, but is unable to do much in the other direction and looks leggy and zapped of confidence.

Salah is also evidently feeling the departure of Trent Alexander-Arnold, whom he had an almost surgical understanding with down the right hand flank which offered him copious amounts of possession and space to attack. Slot’s mish-mashing at right back has totally upset what was until the end of last season, always Liverpool’s most dependable outlet - give it to Trent, give it to Mo, and wait for something to happen.

He’s been an exceptional player for Liverpool, but the option to go nuclear to the media after a string of three games on the bench, three games Liverpool didn’t lose - but, granted, didn’t play particularly well in, either - feels misguided and is inherently egotistical.

It’s firmly placed everything into a club v Mo Salah equation and, as the classic and over bandied cliché reiterates - nobody is bigger than the club.

But this isn’t a great position for the club, either, especially the head coach. Unless he can rapidly turn this form around then the players who have sided with Salah will make that even more known, and some are undoubtedly doing so already. And those who are keeping their toes out of the fire might start questioning this guy, also.

It’s hard to see a way forward for Liverpool. Barring some spectacular reconciliation and return to form happening before next weekend it looks like the club’s future is without Mo Salah. It also, to me right now, looks like it’s more than likely going to be without Slot as well. And the next man up, whoever that is, has a hell of a job on their hands because I simply can’t see a functioning team in this squad, especially one that extracts something out of a stuttering Alexander Isak, Florian Wirtz and can also maintain Hugo Ekitike’s bright start. Not to mention accounting for some of the significantly poor form of others around the team.

What has irked me during all of this it’s largely been Slot versus the world and the culture of modern football means we never hear from personnel above the manager, namely sporting directors and notorious laptop boffins Richard Hughes and Michael Edwards. These were the guys wheeling and dealing throughout the summer and have spent extraordinary amounts of money on players who seemingly haven’t or can’t click into a system that also benefits a player the club handed a massive new contract to only a few months ago. Is that on them, and if so, why aren’t they fronting up to the media to take some heat off Slot? And if the blame is on their hand-picked head coach who seems incapable of getting a tune out of these well-paid superstars, why are they persisting with him?

The scapegoat, it seems apparent, is Salah. Cut Salah out now, a guy who looks likely to leave regardless in the next 12 months or so, and you open up a spot for someone else and can at least add one more player willing to track back and defend. But in the brief sample size we have so far, we’ve yet to see Wirtz and Isak connect, a very tidy finish against West Ham aside, while Ekitike proved his quality against Leeds with a very decent performance before it all went pear shaped. In the very role Isak is expected to occupy as the most expensive striker in history.

Something doesn’t add up and I’m not sure how dropping Salah alleviates any of it in the short to medium term.

But back to that interview, I mean, everything he’s saying is understandable but the timing, the tone and the message is entirely out of kilter with the situation, which is a player in a poor spell, potentially seeing the writing on the wall, taking his manager and the club to task. Going scorched earth, even if what he said is largely clear, and I’m sure there’s several of his teammates nodding their heads in approval, has helped nothing except accelerate a possible release from the club, where he departs on a desperately sour note.

Salah is all smiles in training this morning where there’s undoubtedly an undercurrent of tension and a coach who has to face media scrutiny ahead of their Champions League match-up with Inter Milan on Tuesday. Reports say Salah won’t be joining them on that trip, and he’ll be off to the African Nations Cup after next weekend’s game with Brighton.

What state of a club he returns to will paint a clear picture of the future - if the mess continues beyond his mid-season sojourn to Morocco, he could be tasked as the potential savior, maybe even under a different coach.

But if Liverpool and Slot somehow turn this all around in his absence, the player and the club who remained loyal to each other for eight unforgettable years will come to an abrupt and sad end of the line.

Apologies for the brief hiatus on here over the past few weeks. A badly-needed holiday to the South of France followed by a taxing return to work this week meant I hadn’t had a chance to put pen to paper on anything until now.

Frequent readers will find it as no surprise as to what the topics of this week’s newsletter will be. It’s Irish football.

You’d want to have been living under a rock to not have seen the scenes, videos and images of Ireland’s come-from-behind victory against Hungary in Budapest, sending them to March’s play-off round of qualification for the 2026 World Cup.

It’s a moment that has sparked across the nation, lifting the smog that has burdened the landscape of Irish football for almost a decade, and a feeling that has transcended well beyond just our shores and been seen and enjoyed all around the sporting planet.

It’s hard to convey just how low of an ebb things had been for Irish football. Troubles both on and off the field over the past decade, even two, have left Ireland in an almost terminal state of football decline, having to somehow kickstart a struggling engine mid-flight, all while countries around us were investing in their football, gradually improving and overtaking us on the field of play. Ireland were far from football powerhouses, but we were rapidly becoming a minnows on the international stage.

The past week has shown we haven’t fully gone away, or at least, for now, are showing sprouts of life that we may have been able to crawl through a pipeline of shit just enough to reveal a brighter future on the other side.

What’s pleased me most about the victories over Portugal and Hungary, a do-or-die must-win double for Ireland to have any hope of heading towards next summer’s World Cup, is its a long overdue coming-of-age moment for a lot of these players who were dumped in the deep end of international football prematurely.

Mostly out of desperation and a glaring lack of alternative options, when Stephen Kenny took on the COVID-riddled role in 2020 he was left with an ageing side that had a monumental schism between those were approaching the end of their careers and the next era. What came was the promotion of players who were far too young, inexperienced and had barely scratched the turf of senior club football, but were being hyped as Ireland’s next great hopes.

Headlining that billing this week was Troy Parrott, who was parachuted straight into the national team as a promising teenager at Tottenham, despite having barely a lick of first team experience. He wasn’t the only one - Dara O’Shea, Jayson Molumby and substitute Adam Idah were amongst those dropped into the fray at an extremely young age, in addition to several names who missed the squad this week through injury or having fallen through the cracks in that five year period.

Parrott, who made his debut in 2019, is still finding himself as a footballer. This past week, with five goals in two and a 95th minute hero against Hungary, he’s now catapulted himself beyond that wiry but determined youngster who was too unproven and unready for international football into a bonafide star.

He’s now a 23-year-old Eredivisie striker with 33 caps to his name. He’s been linked with moves to the Premier League and around Europe’s top flight. For the first time this past week in a green shirt, he finally looked like he had arrived as a football. Parrott had played a fleeting role in the qualification campaign until an Evan Ferguson injury offered him a chance to shine up front. Ferguson, the other young talent who we’ve had to ask far too much from far too soon. He’s only 21 and has 26 caps, and has yet to truly find himself at club level. But we’ve burdened these guys with so much pressure.

That build up of pressure and expectation uncorked like a bottle of fine champagne on Sunday afternoon and the release of emotion from Parrott and his team was palpable. This is the moment a lot of this squad and this nation of football die-hards needed, to quell all the doubt and misery that’s come before them. Announcing to the world stage that we haven’t gone away.

It’s also a marker that although we might seem down and out, we’re not an easy match for anyone. Cristiano Ronaldo was baited into red card-worthy rage last Thursday, while Hungary, despite the almost single-handed best efforts of Dominik Szoboszlai, couldn’t stop the Irish push from 1-0 and 2-1 leads.

The future is now clear and the path to a World Cup next summer has been enlightened. An away play-off against Czechia in March will see the winner get a home tie against one of Denmark and North Macedonia. On paper it’s far from the most difficult draw, but all four of those nations will be thinking the same over the next few months. If the match was next week it’d be impossible not to fancy Ireland out of pure form and the high of emotion alone, but March is a long way away.

But to be in the race at all is incredible. In the first international round, Ireland lost to Armenia away from home and the future looked terribly bleak, not least for manager Heimir Halgrimsson. Many wondered if he’d see out the campaign. The Icelandic dentist who moonlights as a football coach somehow turned Ireland’s fortunes around and a play-off is all anyone could have asked for at the beginning of the campaign.

Maintaining this momentum will be tricky, but not impossible. With three wins on the bounce and marquee victory over a tier one side in Portugal, there should be a billowing of belief around the Irish squad and these players. The sheer will and desire to win against Hungary is testament to their mindset that nothing is impossible now.

Why can’t we dream? Why can’t Parrott, now a shining name across the football sphere, not dream of going further and being the catalyst for success? This is where this team have left us, and why sport is so important in this country. It’s given everyone a lift. It’s given us something to look forward to and a chance to dream of bigger and better nights ahead.

On these pages early last year, I penned a piece on why the U.S. sports gambling dam being cast wide made for particularly bad, predictable news.

I won’t go as far as to say I told you so, as it was so blatantly obvious what was going to happen, but the latest scandal emanating out of the NBA is just another predictable instance of sport losing its integrity as legal gambling becomes the norm in America.

For decades, U.S. sport and the professional sport leagues shunned the greasy tentacles of gambling, until widespread gambling reforms across the States jerked open the door for sporting organisations and their respective media and television industries to get into bed with the lucrative betting sphere, opening up a treasure trove of new business opportunities and sponsorship opportunities.

This all came in stark contrast to sport’s efforts on this side of the pond to curb the influence of gambling in advertising and marketing material and sponsorship that appears on and off the field.

Instead, the U.S. sports market was ripe for gambling’s vices. Hyper-specific markets and prop bets, widespread insider information across a whole swathe of sports, divisions and the many, many hundreds and thousands of personnel around teams and leagues to extract information on.

The latest scandal embroils current and former NBA figures, including Miami Heat’s Terry Rozier and former Portland coach Chauncey Billups. It involved Mafia families and dates back to scammed card games in 2019, with a scheme featuring a shuffling machine that had been secretly altered to use concealed technology to read the cards in the deck.

FBI investigators allege the gambling scheme involving non-public game status information began, with the co-defendants accused of using “access to private information known by NBA players or NBA coaches that was likely to affect the outcome of upcoming NBA games or individuals’ performances,” according to the federal indictment.

The indictment alleges Rozier, then playing for the Charlotte Hornets, had informed co-defendants that he was going to prematurely remove himself from a game against the New Orleans Pelicans in the first quarter. This information was sold to various co-defendants, and substantial sums were placed on prop bets for Rozier’s “unders” in the game.

Rozier, indeed, removed himself from the game in the first quarter after playing less than 10 minutes and did not return. He had five points and two assists and finished “under” the lines set by oddsmakers for his points, assists and 3-point shots.

Billups had allegedly told co-defendants that his Trail Blazers were tanking and several of their best players would not be playing.

The prop bet, featuring hyper specific in-game scenarios, have become ripe for insider information. You can bet on player overs and unders, team dynamics, and injury information on big name withdrawals before that news reaches the news and betting markets give betters a crucial edge to go all-in on.

On the other hand, these bets wildly stand out on sportsbooks and it’s argued that the fact gambling is now legal, these instances of insider gambling can be more easily caught.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver has criticised prop bets, calling for reform after the previous NBA scandal involving Jontay Porter, who has been banned from the NBA for life after the league found that he violated gambling policies by “disclosing confidential information to sports bettors, limiting his own participation in one or more games for betting purposes and betting on NBA games.”

Sporting commissioners have taken a stern position against players and personnel betting on games and other sports, with various scandals dating as far back as 1919 and the Black Sox scandal, in which eight members of the Chicago White Sox were accused of throwing the World Series for the benefit of a gambling ring.

David Samson, a former sports executive and president of baseball club Miami Marlins for 15 years, explained on the Pablo Torres Finds Out show that MLB players personnel must sit through an annual lecture on the illegality of gambling on baseball, in an effort to combat issues down the road.

The opening of the dam has created a new category of gambling addicts, paired athletes and sports personnel with crime syndicates, while the leagues have gone beyond just tolerating the change and made partnerships and sponsorship deals with major sports gambling companies. The two leading companies, FanDuel and DraftKings, are official corporate gambling partners of the NBA, the NFL and MLB, as well as with individual teams.

During broadcasts, it’s common to see betting ads and in-game statistical projections on-screen, complemented with the corresponding prop bet.

The prop bet has been described as like heroin to the vulnerable, offering instant gratification during games for those betting. They “may be associated with risky gambling behavior,” according to the National Council on Problem Gaming.

In a memo issued by the NBA, they singled out prop bets as trouble spots: “In particular, proposition bets on individual player performance involve heightened integrity concerns and require additional scrutiny.”

And as gambling becomes mainstream and roundly legal, it’s become more accessible than ever. Phone apps mean you can drop bets at the few touches of a button, loading up your balance with barely a verification check.

The ills will have been well sign posted, but there really is no putting the cat back in the bag. DraftKings has more than doubled its revenue since 2022, reaching $4.8 billion last year, and nearly doubling its monthly average users to 3.7 million. There is just far too much money and it’s far too lucrative for executives to correct course.

With gambling now legal across most of the country, it’s almost impossible for governments to re-regulate and for sports leagues to turn up away from the vast incomes that are now flowing through their coffers. This will be one of the more unusual gambling scandals that hit the headlines - it most certainly won’t be the last involving sporting figures in America’s big leagues.

“People’s opinions aren’t going to pay me. They’re not going to help me set up my future.”

These were the words of Irish swimmer and three-time Olympian Shane Ryan, as he defended his decision to cast aside a career of sporting integrity and enter into the highly controversial Enhanced Games effort, which is to go ahead some time in the next year.

His announcement was immediately condemned by Irish sporting organisations, Swim Ireland, and even Taoiseach Micheál Martin.

The move has brought several issues to the fore, not least the moral ethics of the entire endeavour of a doping-fueled sporting competition, but also the financial structures currently making it difficult for athletes to earn a reasonable living having committed their lives to Olympic sports like swimming.

It has also pitted Ryan against his home nation, the country he swam on behalf of throughout his career and represented at three Olympic Games.

Ireland is a deeply rich sporting nation, punching well above its weight on various fronts, and sporting integrity is woven into the very fibre of our makeup. When such a large part of our sporting identity is based around amateur sports, where financial incentives are put behind honour, integrity and community, the very contemplation of doping is scandalous. Two of the most high profile anti-doping journalists come from these shores in David Walsh and Paul Kimmage, whilst the nation outright shunned an Olympic Gold medalist swimmer who is suspected, but never proven of cheating at the 1996 Games.

So to contend with one of ours brashly casting aside all that we stand for, it for sure leaves a sour taste in the mouth. It also lands the Enhanced Games audaciously at our doorstep, something that until now seemed peculiar and alien and involving figures we needn’t spend much brain power caring about.

However, Ryan has proved to be a worthwhile addition to their ranks, speaking candidly and from the front foot over the past week across Irish and international media defending his decision, giving it an enormous amount of promotion, with the pointed angle that however we may feel about his move, it isn’t going to fill up his bank account.

To base his defence around financial incentive is a major middle finger to the sporting establishment, arguably more so than the “scientific” advancement the organisers purport it to be. It slots welcomely into where the Enhanced Games can pick at the scabs of genuine sporting competition, propped by a bottomless pit of Silicon Valley venture capitalists, led by Aron D’Souza, an Australian venture capitalist and tech entrepreneur, and financed by abominable characters such as Peter Thiel and Donald Trump Jr.

The social contract of clean sport is built on the idea that we compete on a level playing field and that victory is earned rather than engineered synthetically. But the notion of clean sport is, and always has been to a certain degree, partly fairytale. From Ben Johnson’s syringes to Lance Armstrong’s blood bags to entire Olympic teams juiced up under state-wide programmes, sporting history is riddled with pharmaceutical gremlins.

We yearn for sport to be noble, pure and romantic. Ryan is a reminder that it’s more often grubby, compromised, and transactional. The Enhanced Games are just taking that and stripping away the Omerta.

“Yes, the Enhanced Games are a bit controversial, but the Olympics aren’t that clean anyway. You’d be surprised at what some athletes get away with. They also make so much money off the participants, who live very basic lives,” said Ryan.

Across Olympic sports, athletes scrape by on crumbs while global federations pocket billions. The IOC is the world’s wealthiest multi-sports organisation, with revenues in excess of $7 billion per four-year cycle, yet athletes, particularly those from countries like Ireland, are funded on a sliding scale with government grants that are barely covering annual living expenses.

The Enhanced Games are exploiting that hypocrisy, offering prize money that some of these athletes are in dire need of, sponsorship opportunities, a little bit of notoriety and a cut of the profits. It’s easy to preach about morality from our vantage points, slightly less so when you’re choosing between competing in a sport and being able to pay the bills. As Ryan explains, he had to live on €18,000 a year whilst training for the Olympics. Now, he’s guaranteed $200,000 with potential earnings of over $600,000 should he succeed at the games.

Shane Ryan will be heralded as both a trailblazer and condemned as a cheat. He’ll be branded a traitor to true sporting values. But he’s also holding up a mirror to a sporting system that is happy to exploit athletes’ passion while preaching for purity and fairness.

The Enhanced Games, however, isn’t simply about profiting downtrodden athletes with a view into scientific and technological advancements. There is something much more sinister at play, in a sort of Black Mirror-like public testbed for human enhancement and biotech advancements.

Notably, nobody involved comes from a sporting background. One of the co-founders, Christian Angermayer, is a biotech billionaire described as a “psychedelics mogul” who takes several mushroom trips a year, and has planted the Enhanced Games as a “New Human Agenda”, which will “usher in true superhuman abilities through the seamless integration of technology into our bodies”.

Just like in most industries nowadays, these are the ultra-rich mushroom-addled minds shaping the future of life as we know it. They are venture capitalists and futurists using sport as a proving ground for their next frontier. But, it’s important to remember that this is still an extremely niche effort and far from the end of clean sport as we know it.

Unfortunately, with athletes like Shane Ryan on board, it is a warning shot across the bow for clean sport. I’m in no doubt that athletes do want to compete cleanly and fairly, but I’m also sure they want to be paid adequately. Organisations need to support them beyond podiums and Olympic cycles.

What could become a problem is athletes like Ryan approaching the twilight years of their careers and looking around to see meagre bank balances and finding it easier to throw off the shackles of clean sport and make easy, albeit tainted money. And if clean sport refuses to confront its own economic hypocrisies, it shouldn’t be surprised when they do.

There was a moment in Saturday night’s Portugal and Ireland game where Cristiano Ronaldo, frustrated by Ireland’s time wasting, retrieved the ball for Caoimhín Kelleher and dramatically stamped it on the six yard box, gesturing at the Irish goalkeeper to hurry up his play.

It was a quintessential Ronaldo moment, the now 40-year-old still dragging his chiselled frame into international duty. It drew a huge cheer from the home support, was somehow missed by the television directors, and in many ways was a pure Ronaldo moment - going above and beyond for the good of his team, while also still somehow craving the attention for himself. Part self-sacrifice, part self-promotion. It was a dutiful move which sparked a rise out of the fans, but also, nobody else was really going to do that.

Yet somehow, Ireland rode that wave, huffing and puffing their way towards a precious point. With their World Cup ambitions hanging on by a thread, a point - a POINT! - against Portugal would have left like lifting the Jules Rimet trophy itself.

But with 15 minutes left, the familiar cruelty of fate arrived. A dubious 75th minute Portugal penalty seemed to shatter the dream, but Kelleher matched Ronaldo with a save with his feet, levitating into the air in celebration and rare release of emotion from the cool Corkman.

That penalty felt dodgy, even well beyond full time. The referee, an Ivan Kružliak of Slovakia, was determined to give it - pointing defiantly at the white spot when Dara O’Shea appeared to handle the ball in the box. However, replays proved inconclusive, with one side-on angle appearing to show the ball hit him square in the chest. A real borderline decision that would’ve warranted at least a screen visit for the referee was waved away and, almost typically, little old Ireland were to just suck it up and face the music for their non-offence.

Portugal were running out of time as the clock flicked towards 90. And then, Trincao, one of a trio of subs on the hour mark who until then had made no impression of the game, found enough space to swing a cross from wide, which millimetre perfectly met the head of Rúben Neves, a blink ahead of Kelleher, and his header hit the net.

Defeat, again. Deflation, dismay, depression, again.

In 60 appearances for Portugal, Neves had never scored a single goal. Not least a header, for a holding midfielder and long range specialist, it was nosebleed territory. Yet he ventured upwards and scored the winner.

On his calf, a tattoo of himself and Diogo Jota. On his back, the number 21 - Jota’s number for his country. Portugal, playing at home for the first time since his passing, remembered their past countryman on the 21st minute.

Sometimes the script is written and there’s nothing you can do about it. Sometimes you’re just Ireland and nothing, nothing will go your way. You are consigned to a life of misery and pain and unrelenting hardship following a team that, for whatever reason, just can’t find that stroke of luck.

The problems go far deeper than missed penalties or last-minute heartbreak. They run from a dysfunctional football association and a domestic league that’s had to fight for survival, to a threadbare academy system that barely produces elite talent. Meanwhile, Europe’s so-called minnows, the Faroes, Armenia, Luxembourg, are getting smarter, more organised, and better funded.

And, sadly for us fans and followers of the most painful show on earth, there is no reprieve. No slice of luck that might give us hope. Another World Cup will come and go without our renowned best fanbase in the world. We will, to at least some upside, have a home Euro tournament to look forward to in 2028 but even that isn’t just guaranteed yet, and may need the moving of mountain and sea for us to make it along with the other host nations.

Right now, we await Armenia in Dublin on Tuesday night. A draw or defeat just about buries any hope and leaves the latest manager, Iceland’s Heimer Halgrimsson, possibly out on his tot before the final two group games next month. I suspect he won’t be missed, nor will he miss his beat with maybe the hardest job in Irish sport.

As we look around at the likes of Faroe Islands beating Czechia, sides well above and below Ireland in the FIFA world rankings, you see two teams that Ireland would be unfancied to beat.

Looking around at a European continent of minnows, who are slowly but surely getting better, looking more organised, and enjoying funding and investment in their local game, there are few teams around Ireland that you’d back with certainty for them to win, especially not 103rd ranked Armenia who, after feeling Ireland out for about 30 minutes in Yerevan last month, came to realise that they are no great shakes and proceeded to put in a solid if unspectacular performance and win, 2-1.

And yet, despite it all, the Irish fan will turn up. Bloodied, beaten, broken, they’ll still turn up and watch the team. Support and will the team foward. They’ll track the Irish players across Europe’s leagues, dissect team sheets, cling to hope where none exists. Following this team is one of the cruellest pursuits in sport, a test of faith and resolve with no reward, a habit that can’t be broken. Because no matter how much Irish football gives us nothing, we’ll keep coming back for more.

What a difference a few weeks make in football. Before the first international break of the season, Liverpool were purring. Three wins from three in the league, including a scarcely believable injury time winner by teenager Rio Ngumoha against Newcastle, which was followed up with three points against Arsenal thanks to a simply outrageous Dominik Szoboszlai free kick.

They had also beaten Bournemouth on the opening weekend, a result that looks better with age as the Cherries hum along themselves, settling into fourth place in the league.

Heading into this international break and, depending on the content you consume, the wheels are teetering. Driving at 100 miles per hour, Liverpool are trying to replace those wheels with newer, shinier wheels they picked up at great expense during the summer. The guy trying to ease them into position is having to go all the way to the back of the car and hurl them aimlessly forward, to little success. We can tell he’s good at his job but it’s just not working for him at the moment. There’s a bearded man in the passenger seat not exactly contributing. All the while, the entire motorway is stopping to watch and scream at the shiny headed driver who’s plan, which started off reasonably well, is quickly becoming undone at the bolts.

That butchered analogy aside, Liverpool are going into the next two weeks, following three straight losses, facing many more questions than before. It’s Arne Slot’s most difficult spell in the job so far, a role he took to like a duck to water and quickly managed to ease the club and fanbase past the force of nature that was Jurgen Klopp.

How could it sour so rapidly? Despite their run of form which lasted five unbeaten games of the league, it was clear everything wasn’t all rosy. Late wins were required each time, while the team was chopped and changed to amalgamate new signings and bend for injuries, suspensions and the lack of fitness of Alexander Isak. At no point has the team looked truly settled, while mainstays from last season - namely, Alexis Mac Allister, Ibrahima Konate and Mo Salah - are struggling to find form.

As Liverpool dipped into their fountain of luck one too many times, it all came home to roost when Crystal Palace spat it back in their face with a late winner of their own the weekend before last. Suddenly, the cracks that were being papered over began to peak through. A turgid 1-nil loss over in Turkey against Galatasaray piled on the misery, and then Chelsea delivered a hammer blow with another late winner of their own at the weekend.

Suddenly, there’s pips of sweat on the forehead of the otherwise calm and calculated Slot, who this time last year was absolutely massacring Manchester United and his compatriot in the opposite dugout Erik ten Hag on Sky Sports afterwards, explaining with cruel transparency how easy it was to tear through his system.

How the tide has turned, as Marc Cucurella, the eccentric curly-headed Chelsea full back, was doing the same to Slot, specifically pointing out the ease at which they could get past Mo Salah and into Liverpool’s half.

Which poses Slot with the most difficult question of all. Can he persist with Mo Salah? Trying to account for an attacker that won’t track back or can’t defend is trouble at the best of times, but when that player is one of the club’s greatest ever, with a great deal of influence and, whether he admits it or not, pride and ego, it’s a dangerously difficult line to toe for Slot. One that could go horribly wrong, if he sits the ferocious forward who contributed an astounding 29 goals in their league title hunt last season, having promised to deliver numbers if Slot made him feel “comfortable” in the team.

“He was very honest with me, we had a few honest conversations and he said to me: ‘OK, I will get the best out of you. I will put you in a situation where you feel comfortable but I need you to provide the numbers.”

That pact is now looking shattered, just as Salah’s legs appear to be waning.

The thing that might sway Slot in a certain direction is he has the guts of €500million worth of attacking power that needs to be embedded, players that, all going well, will be contributing long after Salah has gone.

Buying two strikers at such vast expense, Isak and Hugo Ekitike, did seem a bit odd at the time. Given how well the Frenchman has taken to life at Anfield, and with Isak being the main component of the attack having chased him all summer, how do you fit both into a forward unit? Behind them, Florian Wirtz is trying his best but is overthinking things and trying to force something to happen. He’s been pilloried on social media as his goal and assists stats lay at zero, but he’s clearly not fazed and in many situations, is Liverpool’s classiest player.

How that all intertwines with a Salah that isn’t delivering the required output is something Slot will contend with over this international break. He has problems elsewhere, such as why none of his right backs are settling in a post-Trent Alexander Arnold world, with various mish-mashes of Conor Bradley, Jeremie Frimpong and even Szoboszlai being tried there. By the end of the Chelsea game at the weekend, the Hungarian midfield engine was back at right back, while Ryan Gravenberch was at centre half. Two of last season’s most important midfield cogs were in defence while his third, Mac Allister, is looking desperately out of form and quite possibly nowhere near peak fitness.

As for replacing Trent, the thought process was that they had replaced him in the aggregate, to force a baseball term from Moneyball. Wirtz would do a lot of the creative heavy lifting while Bradley or Frimpong would be an old fashioned full back, full of running and carrying the athleticism of the right side of the pitch so Salah could do his thing. That simply hasn’t worked yet, and is a pressing issue that, if sorted, may see other jigsaw pieces fall into place.

On September 3rd, Salah spikily took to Twitter and critcised a post which highlighted Isak and Wirtz and asked people to name a bigger upgrade in footballing history than them over Darwin Nunez and Luis Diaz. In it, Salah rightfully punched back, saying “how about we celebrate the great signings without disrespecting the PL champions?”

Naturally, the original tweet has aged like sour milk - on Sunday, the pace and directness of Diaz would’ve been a welcome injection as Cody Gakpo plugged away with no great deal of threat, while Nunez - as, let’s say, fruitless as he was at times in front goal - never, ever stopped working and even if his goalscoring ability left something to be desired, he was a menace and a huge threat with his pace and strength.

And now, Salah may have to face his own words as those very “great signings” may have to usurp him in the starting eleven for a little while.

And, somewhat inevitably, the Diogo Jota situation has been raised. In an interview with Virgil van Dijk after the game he acknowledged this as something that rests on the players’ shoulders, and it’s not something that can really be dismissed by anyone, as much as rival fans see it as a convenient excuse as Liverpool’s form takes a downturn.

But that’s not exactly a fair assumption to make. Nobody knows what’s going through the mind of some of these players. Salah, who was brought to tears in front of the Kop on the opening weekend against Bournemouth, may well be playing with a heavy weight on his mind. Alexis Mac Allister, in addition to clear fitness troubles, may well be struggling to focus as he enters a work environment every day with the glaring, painful absence of the jovial Jota.

It’s not on us to make assumptions of what these players feel, nor to second-guess their intentions when this point is raised. It only happened in early July. These players attended their funerals three months ago. Grief is a cruel, unruly and utterly unpredictable beast.

Liverpool, in my completely non-expert and somewhat copium opinion, will be fine. These players are simply too good and the infrastructure around them is too strong. Slot isn’t suddenly a bad manager. Nobody who could engineer a title win with a squad he inherited and make it look that easy can be a bad manager. But there are troubles and kinks that he needs to work out. Isak will score goals, Salah will find form eventually, and Wirtz will strike a balance with his new teammates.

How long that might take and how many jabs Slot and his team take in the meantime, with a title race intensifying around them, remains to be seen. If Slot can navigate his current Salah situation and somehow spark a rejuvenation in players that have lost their way, they’ll be fine and this week will just be another reference point in kneejerk football reactions.

What a weekend of Ryder Cup golf action and an utter washing machine of emotions. After a spectacular Friday and Saturday for the European contingent, not many would’ve called that Sunday would become so arse-clenchingly tight that it would call upon a weathered but determined Offaly man to save the day.

Yet that’s what transpired. As the USA clawed themselves out of a deep 11.5 v 4.5 hole on Sunday morning to give them some hope of a turnaround for the ages, in the cacophony of American abuse and high emotions over the previous two days, the European team wilted fast.

Although his match-clinching half point was followed by a couple of more to put a cherry on matters, it was Offaly’s Shane Lowry who stood steadfast against the American tide as the tension vice-gripped around Bethpage and the Europeans forgot how to putt after a weekend ‘til then of sinking everything in sight.

Maybe they were thinking about sinking a different kind of cup, as the Sunday calamity paved way for Lowry to prove his worth after a tough couple of years of underperformance and an increased tetchiness that had left some fans a bit cold towards the boisterous Irishman.

But, as he kept his composure to seal the blue side of the scoreboard, proceeding to leap about the 18th green and output groans of relief and pleasure that wouldn’t be out of place in a bedroom, it was Lowry that cemented his legacy as a Ryder Cup hero, creating imagery and scenes that will furnish highlight reels for years to come.

Of course up until then it had been a grimly difficult weekend for Lowry and his compatriot Rory McIlroy. A barrage of bottom of the barrel “banter” was thrown at the players, which included various homophobic slurs and disparaging comments about their wives and families, and it was the Irish pair who bore the full brunt of the American fandom that had been foreseen coming into Bethpage, but crossed all sorts of lines and culminated in several patrons being removed from the course at the behest of Lowry and McIlroy.

The scenes were truly ugly and tinged an otherwise incredible weekend of golf, granted the course layout left a huge amount to be desired and quickly became one-dimensional to the television viewer.

But you can’t begrudge the visceral outpouring of emotion from Lowry, having roared “fuck you, fuck you!” at fans during his foursome session with McIlroy on the Saturday, having sealed the European fate and condemned America to a home defeat, albeit with a slightly less embarrassing scoreboard than expected.

In an interview with broadcasters after finishing his singles round with Russell Henley, Lowry told Darren Reynolds that “I have the chance to do the coolest thing of my life here,” in a refreshingly positive outlook on matters as the tension mounted across the course. As European players froze or withered down the back nine, it was Lowry, one of the most outspokenly emotive players across either team, stayed the course and clawed back a 2-up scoreline to seal an incredible tie and half point, getting Europe to the all important 14 points.

Finally, the stress lifted in New York and Europe could celebrate. Luke Donald wins his second Ryder Cup as captain and across both banks of the divide is now widely hailed as one of the greatest ever to take on the mantle, proving the strategy of leaving no stone unturned is an optimal approach for success, in the face of Keegan Bradley who baffled statistic gurus with some selections, albeit his Ryder Cup preparation included his own play and until recently, the matter on whether or not he’d be teeing off himself.

As the horizon turns for Adare, Co. Limerick, whoever is in the European hotseat has a three-peat within their reach and an American team in dire need of unity and a cohesive plan from the top down decision makers through to the guys hacking across the fairways. It may need a Scottie Scheffler to align their focus or a Tiger Woods to emerge and reprioritise where US golf sets its ambitions. Does it involve dragging together 12 individuals every two years like a withered Sunday League football manager, hoping for the best, or is there a plan to shed individual differences, rivalries and financial interests for true and authentic sporting gratification?

Because whatever elixir Europe have found, it’s working. These players want to represent not just their side of the Atlantic ocean, but their teammates and comrades in arms who put so much time and effort into the bi-annual event. They take it seriously and revel in the spoils with each other, arm in arm, like a true sporting fraternity.

Until America can get it together, moments like Shane Lowry’s on Sunday, a scene he will treasure for the rest of his life, will proffer up the intangibles that make Europe such a ferocious beast and a united front in this silly old game, but Sunday’s struggles in the singles format suggests there are chinks in the armour that can be pulled from. American know that they have to derive those intangibles from somewhere, the things that allow for unlikely heroes to emerge from deep within, and that is something that can’t always be manufactured or bought.

Next stop, Adare Manor.

Agricultural football is back

The biggest development so far this season and one that has dominated games across the league has been the fashionable return of long ball football. Somewhere, Tony Pulis is wearing a Stoke-crested cap and smirking at the world that he created, a man years ahead of his time.

Naturally, football trends are cyclical, but not many would’ve predicted just how agricultural teams would become this season. Even the big clubs, like Arsenal and Manchester City, are reverting to a style of football long forgotten, in a bid to catch out teams that have transitioned into a neater, more eloquent style of play with players who aren’t necessarily prepared for the rough and tumble of aerial set piece bombardment.

Big athletic numbers nines, hefty goalkeepers, towels scattered around the periphery of the pitch for throw-in takers to dry their footballs. This has been a huge shift in Premier League tactics and so far delivered to varying levels of success by teams from the likes of Brentford, who almost exclusively rely on throw-ins and set pieces, to Arsenal, who have set up so much of their attacking onus around the same approach.

Haaland is back, but are City?

The big Norwegian’s goal against Arsenal at the weekend was another firm reminder of not only how good Haaland is, but how in the zone he seems to be right now. With six goals in five, plus a handful more for Norway during the last international break, Haaland has had a blistering start to the season and is punishing teams with his speed, strength and utter disregard for his and others’ safety.

But, as good as Haaland has been, City are shadow of their old selves. Following from the previous point about long ball football, Pep Guardiola has altered City to be the most un-City and un-Pep it’s ever been. The 1-1 draw against Arsenal was the lowest possession rating ever since he took over at City, and a really noticeable shift away from what we’re used to with his teams. But on the other hand, the chaos of the system seems to benefit Haaland, who thrives in situations where the gameplay is hectic and spontaneous, but it may not be the style that benefits City overall and gets them back to the top of the table.

Gyökeres may not be the guy

There are several points of debate from Arsenal so far this season, not least Mikel Arteta’s descent into staunch conservatism, but the prevailing observation seems to be just how poor Viktor Gyökeres has looked leading the line so far.

Without writing him on entirely, something these very own pages called against just a month ago, it has been a worrying start for the Swedish striker, who has looked slow and cumbersome and not at all up to the pace of a Premier League leading striker. This was notable at the weekend with Haaland at the other end of the pitch, who looked like a totally different creature.

Liverpool can’t keep getting away with this

Or, maybe they can. Five wins from five for Arne Slot’s men has them five points clear. Four of those wins needed late goals to get them over the line, while the Merseyside derby win over Everton was a little bit more comfortable, although they did let the Blues back in from 2-0 up and had to defend a 2-1 lead for much of the second half.

As worrisome as that trend might be, it’s hard to say Liverpool have really got out of second gear yet. Alexander Isak hasn’t started a Premier League game, Florian Wirtz is still getting to grips with his new surroundings, and Mo Salah has also been slow out of the gates. Yet they keep winning.

Chelsea are feeling the effects of a long, hot summer

The Club World Cup champions were marked for a weird season and that’s playing out, headlined by their 2-1 defeat to Manchester United at the weekend, having been reduced to 10 men after a handful of minutes when goalkeeper Robert Sanchez got sent off. Enzo Maresca’s response was to remove all his attackers and defend the ship, but they conceded almost immediately and the game kind of fumbled from there, even after United had a man sent off just before half-time.

Chelsea will be good and bad at stages this season, but it may be more of the latter if they can’t keep Cole Palmer fit. He’s already had a slow start to the season, before getting pulled early in the first half on Sunday. Now there’s talk of him missing the next four or more weeks. Is this a result of a long summer of football that kept Chelsea busy into July, with no reprieve and no meaningful off-season? Maybe.

Tottenham are good, to be Frank

It’s fair to say Spurs are looking more like their old selves under Thomas Frank, with three wins from their opening five, leaving them third in the table. It’s certainly a more robust side, with the 2-2 draw at Brighton at the weekend a good illustration of how they didn’t capitulate from 2-nil down away from home and clawed back a solid point against a really good side.

Although Ange delivered that coveted piece of silverware, moving on from the Aussie was the correct move and Frank, so far, is showing why he was high on everybody’s list as the next manager to make the progression up the club pyramid having done so well at Brentford. As Spurs shake off the Daniel Levy shackles, they could be in for a bright future.

United are still United

Nothing too surprising here, as United go through every possible emotion in the opening five games. Two wins and a draw leaves them just above 50%, but it hasn’t been pretty and a lot of the same criticisms lay at Ruben Amorim’s door, with his unrequited marriage to his system leaving airport runways worth of space through his midfield.

As for the new signings, Bryan Mbeumo has looked sharp but they’ll need a lot more production to come from him, Benjamin Sesko and Matheus Cunha, as they still rely on Bruno Fernandes to save the day. It likely won’t be as bad as last season but it’s hard to say through five games that there’s too much to get excited about, just yet.

What’s going on at Villa?

Aston Villa have been a real mess so far, with no wins and just a single, solitary goal, scored this weekend by Matt Cash. Despite their PSR troubles, nobody had them being this much of a basket that had some quarters wondering if Unai Emery is long for this world.

But it looks like Monchi has fallen on his sword as Director of Football, after some underwhelming years of poor transfer activity that has kind of left them in this mess. Things should turn around for Villa, their squad is simply too good to stay in this kind or rut for long, but with the juggling of Premier League football with European endeavors, fans could be in a very difficult season.

The promoted teams actually have a chance

Sunderland are 7th, Leeds are 12th and Burnley are 16th, in what has been one of the strongest starts for promoted sides in years. Helped in part by just how bad the likes of Wolves, Villa and West Ham have been, but there’s a real chance one or more of them stay up, particularly Sunderland who look like just a well setup side under Regis Le Bris.

Burnley are showing a lot of the staunch defensiveness that made them impossible to score against in the Championship last season and were a wayward handball away from earning a point against Liverpool. Leeds are bit more more chaotic, but have two wins. It’s been a heady start for these teams and the best chance in years for them to stay up, whilst a crazy relegation dogfight is brewing at the other end.

Manager madness

Anybody who had hard earned cash on Nuno Espirito Santo to be the first manager to bite the bullet after all his quarrels with Nottingham Forest boss Evangelos Marinakis made some of the easiest money they’ll ever make, when he was sacked. That’s paved for the swift return of Ange Postecoglu into Premier League football, who’s already had a really tough start.

Meanwhile, Graham Potter hangs on by a fingertip at West Ham. I thought he’d be sacked by now after another awful defeat at the weekend, with fan sentiment firmly against him, but the board are either lacking in suitable options or are biding their time.

I’m firmly aware of the niche and slightly cringeworthy nature of writing about professional wrestling, not least in the serious manner, away from the glitz and glamour in the ring, that I’m doing here for this week’s newsletter.

I am firmly aware a lot of you will cringe at the very topic and delete this email quicker than a spam email from a Nigerian prince in need. Some of you will undoubtedly unsubscribe (if you want an insight into the life of a newsletter writer, I get at least one unsubscription email within seconds of publishing every week.)

But stick with me here, because this is less a story about wrestling and more about how our sports and entertainment are once again being sold to the highest bidder, to the betterment of shareholder pockets and utter disregard of core fans. It’s a story we’ve seen in nearly every sport, whether it’s World Cups in football or some of golf’s best disappearing for months at a time behind a Saudi-funded blackhole.

Wrestling is no different and has been one of Saudi Arabia’s most successful laundering vehicles. And now they’ve gone and bought WrestleMania.

WWE’s headline event is also professional wrestling’s sacred cow. It was Vince McMahon’s moonshot gamble back in 1985, a pay-per-view spectacular that, if it failed, would have bankrupted the company. Instead, it changed the industry forever. Madison Square Garden, Hulk Hogan, Cyndi Lauper, Mr. T, wrestling quickly became a part of pop culture, and much akin to the NFL’s Super Bowl, the show became the cornerstone event of the entire industry, marked in the calendar annually, attended by thousands and often arching over into the mainstream.

Over the decades, it’s produced moments that even non-fans might recognise: Hulk slamming Andre. Stone Cold versus The Rock. Shawn Michaels ziplining from the rafters. Rock and Hogan. The Undertaker’s streak. For fans, WrestleMania weekend is a pilgrimage: 70,000-plus in a stadium, fan conventions in every hotel ballroom, smaller promotions riding the wave with shows across town.

It is a wrestling institution. Whatever your feeling about the current product, WrestleMania is a homing device for hardcore fans, those who’ve lapsed along the way and curious onlookers who chime in around the time of the show to see if it’s worth catching.

This week, WrestleMania’s 2027 edition was sold to Saudi Arabia for a rumoured $250million. To put that into context, according to Wrestlenomics, WWE has already generated $600million from its events in Saudi Arabia, while the total revenue from every WrestleMania ticket sale since 1985 has amounted to $400 million.

It’s the compaction of a relationship that began in 2018 and strengthens yearly with multiple shows in the Kingdom, as the wrestling entity becomes one of the country’s most successful and easiest sportswashing vehicles, while WWE eyes light up in the dollar signs that have been thrown at them.

WWE have staged several shows in Saudi Arabia, generally branded “B-shows” like Crown Jewel, Night of Champions or the aptly named Greatest Royal Rumble. They’ve been lavish, pyrotechnic-heavy spectacles that earned the company obscene amounts of money, but not without being mired in controversy.

For example, up until recently, the extremely popular Sami Zayn wasn’t permitted to appear in Saudi due to his Syrian heritage. WWE's women wrestlers have only appeared at the shows since 2019, under heavy restrictions including what they can wear in the ring.

For years, big names like Daniel Bryan and John Cena refused to perform there, while Kevin Owens, out of solidarity with his friend, Zayn, also refused to do a Saudi show until finally appearing there last year.

Famously, CM Punk, who at the time was out of the industry, sent a 2020 tweet aimed at WWE wrestler The Miz, telling him to “go suck a blood money covered dick in Saudi Arabia you fucking dork”. He has since returned to WWE and earlier this year apologised for the tweet, claiming he was in a “crabby mood” and duly wrestled John Cena in Riyadh.

As well as that, the 2018 Crown Jewel event went ahead just days after journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

Until now, these shows were generally treated as extra content, glossy and disposable with quick run-off storylines that didn’t intersect with their larger shows such as SummerSlam, the original Royal Rumble or indeed WrestleMania. No one considered them canon. They were, bluntly, PR exercises.

But moving WrestleMania to Saudi Arabia isn’t simply adding an extra date to the calendar, it is rewriting the very DNA of professional wrestling. To put it into a bit more context, WrestleMania is the finale of often months or even years long storylines. The culmination of feuds and disputes that fans have watched and been invested in in the weekly shows, hoping for the fairytale ending that rounds off a successful storyline. Now, that entire thread throughout 2026 and into 2027 will be qualified with the fact that the show will be in Saudi Arabia.

Not at arm’s reach, like in traditional wrestling cities such as Chicago or Philadelphia, or even in Europe where wrestling fandom thrives. It’s another blow having seen the 2026 edition of the Royal Rumble also aim for Riyadh, one of WWE’s marquee and most fondly watched events, packed with nostalgia and novelty.

Saudi Arabia’s sudden obsession with sport has been well established at this point. Football has been flooded with Saudi money. The Public Investment Fund owns Newcastle United. LIV Golf tore up the PGA Tour. Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury have boxed under Riyadh’s desert lights.

On Monday night, Tom Brady announced that he will be coming out of retirement to play in a flag football game held in Saudi Arabia next year, along with a slew of current and ex pros. Brady is partnering with Turki Alalshikh, chairman of the Saudi General Entertainment Authority, to promote the event. Fox Sports will televise the tournament, and comedian Kevin Hart will be the host.

By hosting these types of events, airing them across the world and stuffing the pockets of famous faces like Hart and Brady, the Kingdom clinically and successfully launders its global image. And what bigger entertainment spectacle to add to their roster than WrestleMania, viewed worldwide by millions?

You can argue boxing and golf are already nomadic. Even football clubs are playthings for oligarchs and states. But WrestleMania has always been rooted in its fan access, in thriving local economies for a week on fan tourism, while wrestling conventions and indie wrestling shows in the host city provide retired wrestlers and young performers a momentary chance to shine in front of a new audience. Not only that, but a ticket to WrestleMania is a badge of honour for lifelong fans.

Shifting it to Riyadh collapses that. Would hardcore fans really travel there? Will the local audience match the atmosphere and devotion of a Philly, New Orleans, or even London crowd? Would the indie ecosystem that makes Mania weekend special even exist in Saudi?

At best, it becomes a TV product, far from the cultural experience it currently serves across the industry.

Of course, there’s major financial incentive to the move. The company is no longer McMahon’s personal fiefdom. It’s part of TKO, a corporate hybrid with UFC under Endeavor’s banner. TKO’s job is not to preserve cultural legacy but to maximise shareholder value.

What Riyadh can offer dwarfs that of a Las Vegas or New York. But there is a trade-off: you can only sell your soul once. After that, everyone knows you’ll sell it again. The fan reaction has already been overwhelmingly negative, with fans chanting “you sold out” at an event at the weekend.

It proves beyond doubt that everything, no matter how iconic, has a price tag. Even for European fans, who have been begging for a WrestleMania to come to their way and have sold out venues and stadiums across the continent for years, are utterly bereft that a WrestleMania event bypasses them for Saudi.

Sure, 2027 is a long time away and wrestling fans tend to be fickle with their fandom, especially in an industry loaded with grimy characters and where someone like Brock Lesnar can be named in a sex trafficking case fronted by WWE’s previous owner and yet make a hero’s return when the heat has eased off.

But it even more alienates the very base that’s kept WWE alive through bad storylines, steroid scandals, and Vince’s missteps. For sport more broadly, it’s another domino in the fall in the creeping normalisation of authoritarian regimes buying cultural legitimacy through sports and entertainment. This year WrestleMania, next year the Super Bowl?

When WrestleMania lands in Riyadh, it won’t matter how well stories are concluded, how much pyro lights the desert sky or how many billions change hands. It will be remembered as the moment wrestling’s greatest stage was sold off as a pawn, proof that no institution, no matter how sacred, is safe.

It’s never, ever boring when it comes to Rory McIlroy.

On these pages I’ve written about the Down man at his lowest after the pain of letting the 2024 US Open slip through his fingertips, and at his highest after this year’s monumental Masters and Grand Slam sealing victory at Augusta.

There’s few sportspeople in this day and age that put you through the ringer, for better or worse, as much as McIlroy. For such a star-studded career, amongst the greatest golf has ever seen, he’s had so many elements of triumph and tragedy that his inevitable autobiography will be the first to come out in a multi-series anthology.

On Sunday he added another chapter to his epic. It won’t be one that’ll lead the headlines when he retires, nor a win that will create that much of a flicker worldwide when you’re in discussion about Rory McIlroy, the five-times golf Major winner.

But for several thousand at Kildare’s K Club on Sunday evening, plus many more watching at home, it’ll be a moment that sticks deep and fondly in the memory of Irish fans for a very, very long time.

Producing an eagle for the ages on the 18th hole to claw himself two shots up the leaderboard and into a share of the lead after four days of the Irish Open and onto a play-off against Sweden’s Joakim Lagergren. From 27 feet, he landed a putt that sent the crowd into raptures and arose resting dogs from their slumber in living rooms across the nation.

A collective moment of anarchy shared by a sporting obsessed nation, seeing their guy do something incredible. Because it’s always Rory and it’s only ever just Rory.

The images and scenes quickly spread across the sporting world. For a competition that is a mere speedbump on the golfing calendar, McIlroy has helped keep it afloat, either through his own sponsorship or his guaranteed attendance on an annual basis, ensuring the weekend always draws a strong homegrown crowd and elevates its exposure.

Now the tournament has a moment that will be revered and enter highlight reels and marketing and branding packages forever more. Not only for the Rory factor, but seeing the shared jubilation between sons and fathers in the background, as well as the massive collection of kids who got to witness the moment cements it as a scene that truly grows the game of golf, a turgid line that is often trotted out from LIV and their connected cash cows. This is what truly helps the game reach new heights - organic moments that are accessible to young fans, seeing the biggest stars doing incredible things on their very doorstep.

Taking that eagle into the play-off, it took three further laps of the 18th hole to separate the two. Devastatingly for Lagergren, ranked 1,194th in the world, a visit into the water on the third approach gave McIlroy a chance to seal the win, and so he did with a straightforward birdie-ing of the hole. To credit Lagergren, it was a career performance from the 33-year-old that included a fantastic eagle on the 16th to rocket him into a solo lead down the stretch.

But Rory rallied, helped by a bizarre 13th hole birdie where the ball not only circled the cup, but left the lip and then rolled back in.

The 18th hole eagle will surely soak warmly for Rory, a moment that will live long in the memory. Even in such a monumental year for his career where he finally got over the Masters hump and got a hold of his coveted green jacket, that eagle drop that reverberated around his home nation will be one to savour when all is said and done.

With the Ryder Cup to come, the scenes in Kildare will be a welcome sendoff for Rory and his European compatriots to what’s likely going to be a very heated atmosphere in New York in a few weeks time.

And for Irish golf, this Irish Open success - McIlroy’s second, having won at the same course in 2016 - will be massive for the growth of the sport on his home soil. Although it’s already in a healthy place in professional terms with several names competing on the international stage, the grassroots game has immense room for elevation.

The Ryder Cup is on its way to Adare in 2027 and there’s a likelihood that the Open Championship will eventually be played on Irish soil. Making the Irish Open a key component of the calendar is essential for the sport in Ireland and if this occasion can help cement that slot and even attract some bigger names from across the Atlantic, will all go to making it an unmissable event.

It’s also essential for Ireland to look at the infrastructure around some of the links course across the amazing Irish coastline to make it a more attractive prospective for the world’s top players, and also make it a picturesque invitation for golf fans and international viewers. Ireland boasts some of the best courses in the world and its a shame they rarely get a chance to shine on an international stage.

As for Rory, that’s not his worry right now as he’s done more than his fair share for Irish golf.

For all the grandeur of Augusta, the green jackets and the silverware that glitters in clubhouses thousands of miles away, his greatest gift to Irish sport is often found in fleeting moments like Sunday evening at The K Club. Moments that stop households, bind generations, and remind people why they fell in love with sport in the first place.

In the end, the win itself may fade into the long ledger of Rory McIlroy’s career. But that putt, that roar, that shared eruption across a small island obsessed with sport will endure forever. And it’s in those snapshots, as much as in any major triumph, where McIlroy’s true legacy lies.

In its ongoing quest to replicate the cultural phenomenon of The Last Dance, Netflix may have found an unlikely heir in Jerry Jones and the story of his Dallas Cowboys dynasty.

Nowadays, the Cowboys are the punchline of jokes across the NFL, a source of derision in the sports media landscape as they hobble from one disaster to the next, the latest occurring just this week when their star linebacker Micah Parsons was dealt to the Green Bay Packers in one of the biggest trades of the decade.

But in America’s Team: The Gambler and his Cowboys, we’re cast back to an era where the Texan club were at the top of the game and Jones, ever the maverick, upended the sport to his amusement and, sometimes, the betterment of it, not to mention the coffers of owners and teams across the country. The story takes us through their three Super Bowl wins, the failures in between, the public disputes and deeply personal grudges and flaws and a star-studded cast of characters.

What Netflix captured in The Last Dance, the story of Michael Jordan and the 1990s Chicago Bulls era, was a biographical account of a deeply flawed but otherworldly figure, told through his eyes and the point of view of his teammates and opponents, but an account which always held the veil of what Jordan wanted you to see. It was a peek behind the curtain with extraordinary behind-the-scenes footage, but at no point was the curtain truly cast aside leaving just Jordan facing himself in the mirror.

There is still that creative framing, a touch of “Jerrywashing” if you will, but this series feels grittier and more honest. On several occasions, the mirror is held up to its cast of characters, revealing as many regrets as triumphs.

Beginning with the purchase of the organisation by the Arkansas entrepreneur, it takes us from a plucky underdog story to one of a fallen star, forever unable to rocket upwards like it had in the early years. Through the arrival of mercurial coach and good friend of Jimmy Johnson, who delivered the Cowboys two Super Bowls in a row, an overarching theme of the series is the rise and fall of the relationship between Jones and his once good friend and college teammate Johnson, before the eventual reconciliation many years later having barbed and bloodied each other in the media for decades.

It tells the story of Emmitt Smith, the league’s leading rusher to this day, and his holdout and contract dispute, going toe-to-toe with the Gambler before they find a resolution, culminating in his eventual departure and realisation that, for him, it was only ever the Dallas Cowboys.

We come to know Michael Irvin, the star wide receiver and three-time Super Bowl champion, and his deep flaws and harsh regrets. From basic roots out of a huge Florida family, the boisterous Irvin became one of the NFL’s great larger than life characters. But even in his current voice as a leading NFL pundit, his flaws are exorcised in a remarkable and painfully honest fashion, be that in the White House affairs or the stunning retelling of an incident with teammate Everett McIver when, over a barbershop dispute, took a scissors to his neck. The incident was quietly dealt with without legal repercussion, something Irvin seems painfully aware of, that his teammate and the powers surrounding him allowed him another chance at freedom.

One of the more interesting side stories is that of quarterback star Troy Aikman and his rocky relationship with Johnson’s successor, Barry Switzer, something that tallies strongly against the overwhelming love his teammates and even Jerry Jones have for Switzer, to this day, the man who delivered the third Super Bowl trophy. The 87-year-old Switzer comes out as one of the purer figures of this time, clearly loved and respected by almost everyone, and in an era plagued by scandals and overpowered by the brashness and bravado of Jimmy Johnson, Switzer is given a small platform to shine.

Altogether, the Cowboys documentary is one of the most unvarnished accounts of a sporting dynasty and all its grubby nuts and bolts. Jones may lead the line in a manner that attempts to shine on the billionaire, but it’s allied by remarkable stories of conflict, reconciliation and the pointed aging of time, as the 82-year-old Jones comes to the realisation that although his club hasn’t delivered a Super Bowl since 1996, it’s been one hell of a ride with not a lot of road left, to the measured and melancholic note of his children.

America’s Team: The Gambler and his Cowboys is an unlikely triumph of the sports documentary medium. There is underdog hope and exhilaration, daring efforts to revolutionise a sport and a pain and rawness not often seen in these endeavours. We don’t have to like Jerry Jones coming out of it, not the man nor the NFL owner and general manager, but you have to respect the blood, sweat and tears he put into making the Dallas Cowboys one of the most fascinating shows in town and, to this day, one of sport’s most compelling dramas.

With the clock ticking towards the transfer window slamming shut, it looks like a resolution to the Alexander Isak transfer saga is in sight. With Newcastle seemingly in line to land German forward Nick Woltemade, this opens the door for the Swede to finally get his wish and swap St. James’ Park for Anfield.

A story that lasted the entire summer, from an initial rumour that Liverpool were somewhat interested in signing the player, to one that grew into a full blown war between Isak and his club, all the while Liverpool sat patiently in the long grass for their target and selling club to get their houses in order ahead of an inevitable transfer.

As summer transfer sagas go, it’s been one of the more uglier examples. Isak isn’t the first player to seek a move up the football food chain to a “bigger” club, but how it’s transpired with Newcastle has left a lot of bad blood between both parties, as he leaves the Magpies less a hero who helped them into Champions League football and more a Judas hate figure who will never be fondly remembered in the north east.

And as summer transfer sagas go, it’s just been one of the more mind numbingly boring. There have been no winners - not Newcastle, who failed to adequately prepare for an Isak sale, despite given plenty of advance notice. Not Isak - or his “team” - who went scorched earth on the entire situation, refusing to return to training with the club, essentially going on strike until a resolution was found, immediately alienating him from the club who adored him until now.

And certainly not us, subjected to the endless drip-feed of “updates” from the transfer-industrial complex. The transfer saga dementors that shill every EXCLUSIVE, BREAKING, TUNE IN AT 10PM FOR A HUGE UPDATE. It’s been the summer of hanging onto every word of David Ornstein and Paul Joyce, as Liverpool and their Premier League colleagues spend at an unprecedented rate, with almost every mooted transfer rumour coming to fruition.

It’s been the summer of Indy Kaila, a once lighthearted Twitter In-The-Know and figure of football comedy, becoming an established rumour mill churner, gaining authority from the aforementioned Ornstein and others as his stories seemingly became more accurate and trustworthy than not, suggesting the account has passed hands to more connected figures in the football transfer quagmire. A bizarre development, almost like Alan Partridge being handed the keys to Match of the Day.

It’s been a summer of non-update updates. Social media posts that proffer absolutely nothing of substance beyond a few more thousand quote tweets and extending the speculation machine for another day or two. Newcastle are BRACING themselves for a second Liverpool bid. Isak is still PUSHING for Liverpool. Cool, very good to know.

The social media transfer machine that has seen “Here We Go” become canonised in the Oxford dictionary and David Ornstein become a verb, where transfer updates by standard are prefixed with siren emojis, has fed the masses of football fans who I’ve long been convinced are more concerned about transfers, net spend and the instant gratification of transfer confirmations, a hit of dopamine to react and hot take to, after weeks of speculating on the very same transfer.

Transfers aren’t simply news or high level speculation resigned to gossip columns on corners of ad-laden football blogs, they’re now big business, theatre and content to be consumed and refreshed, a hit of dopamine on demand.

I often refer back to this excellent piece by Dean Van Nguyen, specifically on the mind of the unhealthily online Liverpool fan, but a theory that can easily be extended across football and fans in general.

The first thing you must understand about these fans is that transfers are the barometer by which they believe all footballing achievement must be gauged.

There’s winning the window, which Liverpool have undoubtedly done this summer, but the irony is they crave and clamour for more.

Rather than see a player like Rio Ngumoha flourish and have space to grow into his role, transfer sleuths wonder if Malick Fofana can be extracted from Lyon. Rather than seeing if Giovanni Leoni could be the answer at centre back or if the generally solid Ibrahima Konate can get over his slow start to the season, Marc Guehi must simply be signed.

Harvey Elliott, an otherwise popular and productive member of the squad, is shilled to Tottenham and Crystal Palace, his prospective transfer fee weighted into the net spend formula.

And yet, despite all the noise, transfer sagas are just desperately boring. They last too long, repeat themselves endlessly, and almost always end with a bit of a shrug. Alexander Isak may well sign for Liverpool this weekend, but after a summer of such nonsense it’s really hard to be too enamoured by the whole situation. Liverpool get their man, Indy Kaila will have been right all along, but until he actually gets on the field and connects with Mo Salah and company, it’s an entire story of make-believe.

Looking back at the initial Virgil Van Dijk to Liverpool saga, Cristiano Ronaldo’s eventual move to Madrid, the multi-window Jadon Sancho to Manchester United feed - they were all exhausting, repetitive, and eventually resolved in the most functional way possible, by the player joining for the club they wanted to join all along. The content machine thrived for those months. In hindsight, the saga part is forgettable. The football is what endures - the transfer either worked out or it didn’t.

So if and when Isak finally signs, the story of the summer will evaporate within a few days. All a blur, with no winners - not until the reality of the actual transfer plays out on the field. Another saga concluded, but not without us having to endure the utter nonsense of it all. The saga itself? Until next summer, just more white noise in the endless stream of transfer rubbish.