A Sticker's Worth 500 Words

Just under a fortnight ago Senegal won their second ever African Cup of Nations tournament thanks to an extra time goal from Pape Gueye sealing a 1-0 victory over hosts Morocco. On paper this sounds like the classic cagey international final but in reality there was more drama than an entire series of The Traitors and that was just in second half stoppage time. First of all Senegal had a perfectly good goal disallowed with the added farce of VAR not being consulted. Luckily fans of prolonged delays and questionable decisions only had to wait a few minutes for Morocco to be awarded a penalty when Brahim Diaz was held in the box. The understandably enraged Senegal manager Pape Thiaw instructed his team to leave the pitch in protest and, while captain Sadio Mane spent fifteen minutes talking his teammates back into finishing the game, there was an attempted pitch invasion and a fight in the press box. When the Senegalese players returned Brahim Diaz decided that this had all been a bit du...

When Leeds United, Burnley and Sunderland returned to the Premier League promised land at the end of last season there were very few pundits providing their fans with optimism ahead of the 2025/26 campaign. BBC Sport’s Phil McNulty condemned both the Clarets and Mackems to an instant return to the Championship in his pre-season predictions. FourFourTwo went further and decided all three newly promoted sides were doomed. As it happens Max Rushden in The Guardian had the current bottom three spot on with only Burnley cut adrift which suggests he might have had the misfortune of seeing Scott Parker’s charges play beforehand. Leeds have put together some impressive results in recent weeks by means of reminding Dominic Calvert-Lewin that’s he’s a decent striker while Sunderland have shocked everyone by not being anywhere near as shite as they were on Netflix for a few seasons. To give the soothsayers their due promoted sides have had a knack of struggling in the Premier League in recent ye...