Premier

TOM CLEVERLEY is reportedly in talks with a Premier League club just days after being sacked by Watford.

The former Manchester United star was axed by the Hornets earlier this month after missing out on the Championship playoffs.

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Cleverley, 35, took over at Vicarage Road in March 2024 as he replaced Valerien Ismael.

But he could be set for a quick return to the dugout with Southampton interested.

The Guardian have claimed that he is one of the leading candidates to take over at St Mary’s next season.

It is suggested that he has a “strong chance” of being appointed as the new Saints boss.

Cleverley has taken charge of 59 first-team games, winning 20, drawing 14 and losing 25.

The Southampton team is currently playing under caretaker Simon Rusk, who took charge after the sacking of Ivan Juric.

They are a top-flight club for two more games, which come against Everton and Southampton.

Juric was only in charge for 14 Premier League games after replacing Russell Martin.

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Cleverley does face competition for the job from fellow Englishman Will Still.

Still has left Ligue 1 outfit RC Lens following the end of the season in order to move back to England.

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The manager wants to spend more time with his Sky Sports presenter partner Emma Saunders.

His exit came just one season into a three-year deal.

Reports have claimed that Still is in “advanced talks” with Southampton over the vacant manager role.

In his final game, Lens beat AS Monaco 4-0 at the Stade Bollaert-Delelis.

Neil El Aynaoui netted twice while Adrien Thomasson and Anass Zaroury wrapped up the scoring.

The victory sealed an 8th-placed finish in the Ligue 1 table.

Still has also had interest from Hull City and has previously turned down Rangers.

Sheffield Wednesday‘s Danny Rohl is also believed to be in the running for the job.

Meanwhile, Watford have already replaced Cleverley with former Real Valladolid boss Paulo Pezzolano.

The Uruguayan becomes the 22nd manager to take charge of the Hornets since Gino Pozzo’s takeover in 2012.

Liverpool, England – “I love it when it gets like this,” exclaimed the man beside me as he rubbed his hands with glee.

It was the Halloween of 2009 and in the gloom of an early winter’s afternoon, Goodison Park was at its best.

Everton were playing Aston Villa in a league match, which was becoming increasingly bad-tempered. Two late red cards, an appalling referee and the floodlights taking full effect. It was the perfect recipe for a big bowl of Goodison fury.

The game finished as an unmemorable 1-1 draw, but the sheer delight of the man in the neighbouring seat long stayed with me. His excitement was a reminder to relish those rare occasions when the entire audience at this glorious theatre of football are united in emotion.

And nowhere does emotion quite like Goodison Park.

Fury, relief, joy and despair – and that’s just a two-nil defeat to Norwich in the League Cup fourth round.

Fans sitting in this footballing relic have felt it all throughout the stadium’s long and illustrious history. If they gave out Ballon d’Ors for booing, Everton would need a separate stadium just to house the trophy cabinet.

But on Sunday, there will be new emotions to add to the list – because everything is about to change.

A 133-year chapter in the story of Everton is about to end, as Goodison Park hosts the men’s team for the final time.

“Goodison has just always been there, there’s not an Evertonian alive that has watched Everton anywhere else,” said Matt Jones, host of the Blue Room podcast.

Like thousands of fellow fans, he will spend the weekend grappling with various emotions.

“I feel a bit like a dad watching his daughter get married at a wedding and everything’s starting to make him cry. As you get closer and closer to the day, you get more and more emotional,” Jones told Al Jazeera Sport.

At its most basic level, Sunday’s fixture against Southampton is game number 2,791 for the Everton men’s senior team at Goodison. But for Evertonians, it represents so much more. A small part of our identity is about to be lost.

I’ve grown from a boy to a man in various seats in every stand of that grand old stadium, learning every swear word there is to know along the way.

The highs and lows of the last 30 years have been intertwined with trips there, with the ground somehow able to block out everyday life for 90 precious minutes. Much like the inability to get a phone signal inside, you leave your troubles at the turnstile.

I’ve taken various partners to Goodison (one said that she had “never seen rage quite like it”), with most of those relationships ending in the same sort of heartbreak as an Everton cup run.

But I’ve always felt privileged to sit inside a real-life museum of football. Surrounded by history, tradition and furious middle-aged men abusing anything that moves.

The next page of the Everton story will see the men’s team relocate to a 53,000-capacity stadium at Bramley Moore Dock. The impressive structure sits on the banks of the river Mersey and, for the sake of sponsorship, will be called the Hill Dickinson Stadium.

Life in such a shiny, modern arena will be a huge adjustment for one of the oldest teams in English football.

“It’s that feeling of leaving your family home. It’s the only way I can describe it,” said Merseyside-based sports reporter Giulia Bould.

“You know you’re going to a house with a load of mod cons and you know your life’s going to be so much easier in this new house, but you’ve got to leave your family home. It’s weird,” she added.

This season has been filled with finals for Everton, although sadly not the ones that are played at Wembley with a trophy on the line.

Instead, each fixture at Goodison has ticked another final occasion off the list. From the final cup game to the final night match, even the final Saturday 3pm kickoff has had a shoutout.

But on Sunday, it really will be the finale – although only for the men’s team.

Just days before what was due to be the final ever Goodison game, Everton announced that the old stadium would be granted a stay of execution. The bulldozers won’t move in – instead the women’s team will.

“I think it’s perfect,” said Bould as she reflects on the decision from Everton’s American owners to pass Goodison over to the women’s team.

“Under the previous owner, the women’s side has long been ignored and run into the ground really, it’s been pretty much treated as second rate. But now it has been put on a level where it should be, setting the precedent for everyone else,” Bould told Al Jazeera Sport.

Goodison Park is no stranger to setting a precedent. It was the first purpose-built football stadium in England and the first to install dugouts and undersoil heating.

The Toffees’ long run without relegation means it’s hosted more English top-flight football games than anywhere else.

Goodison was also the venue for an FA Cup Final and a World Cup semifinal, with Pele and Eusebio both also scoring there during the 1966 tournament. Even North Korea has graced the Goodison turf.

The storied history of Everton’s home has caught the imagination of some of the greats of the modern game.

Jose Mourinho called the place “the history of English football”, while Arsene Wenger described it as “one of the noisiest” stadium’s he’s managed in.

Sir Alex Ferguson once spared former Evertonian Wayne Rooney from an afternoon at Goodison with Manchester United, purely because of the abuse he would receive.

Visiting Goodison Park today feels vastly removed from the riches of modern English football. To put it bluntly, the stadium is no longer fit for purpose. But that is what makes it magical.

“It is the closest you can get to travelling through time to watch football,” said photographer and Evertonian Gary Lambert. That time travel begins before you even set foot in the stadium.

“Physically, Goodison is an imposing place. It appears out of nowhere between the rows of terraced houses,” said Lambert.

Once inside, the stadium’s history unravels through the various sights and sounds. Obstructed views are common, with posts and pillars causing many a strained neck.

And the unique Archibald Leitch criss-cross design runs down the middle of the ancient Bullens Road stand.

“Goodison Park is the bluest place on earth. The brickwork on three-quarters of the ground is painted a vivid shade of royal blue.

“It doesn’t matter what tweaked blue hue the latest kit manufacturer might tone the latest home shirt, it’s that blue outside which is Everton’s blue,” Lambert told Al Jazeera Sport.

But there is one particular quirk that stands out above them all and it happens whenever Everton go on the attack.

“There are still so many old-fashioned wooden seats, so the seats bang and click as everyone moves to stand up,” said Bould.

The chorus of wooden clangs is something she will miss when Everton move away from their historical home.

“That clicking noise, you don’t hear that anywhere. That, for me, is Goodison.”

Like all Everton fans, I’ll miss the matchday routines around Goodison. Parking near the snooker hall, a pre-match pint in Crofts Social Club, the endless queues for the loo. I might even miss the lack of legroom.

It’s troubling to comprehend life after Goodison for Everton’s men. The two are so connected and so well-suited. Everton is Goodison and Goodison is Everton. A divorce after 133 years was always going to hurt.

But change is needed for a club still clinging to former glories. Everton’s new ground could be the chance for a new start. The Hill Dickinson Stadium doesn’t suit us, but it represents the new world of football, where money is power.

In many ways, Sunday’s fixture will be a changing of the guard as the grand old team are hurtled into the modern age.

“We’re at the end of such a long journey now at Goodison. And at just the very start and the very first step of a new one.

“And maybe we’re quite privileged to be at this crossover point and experience both of them,” said Jones.

Nathan Aspinall took the Premier League nightly win in Aberdeen to close on a play-off place while Luke Littler sealed top spot.

Aspinall is on the brink of qualifying after beating Chris Dobey 6-1 in the final on a dramatic evening which saw Gerwyn Price hit a nine-darter.

Dobey claimed a decider to win his semi-final 6-5 against world champion Littler, who earlier won a classic against world number one Luke Humphries that featured 14 180s.

Despite averaging 110.01, Humphries could not halt Littler, who averaged 115.96 to guarantee he would finish top of the league phase.

Defending champion Littler had already qualified for the four-man play-offs in London on 29 May alongside Humphries and Price.

Price hit his second nine-darter of the campaign but ended a 6-4 quarter-final loser to Stephen Bunting.

Aspinall moved above seven-time champion Michael van Gerwen into fourth spot with a 6-3 victory over the Dutchman before dispatching Bunting 6-1 and going four points clear after his final triumph.

If Van Gerwen does not claim the night win in Sheffield next week, Aspinall – who finished fifth in 2023 and 2024 – will claim the last play-off spot.

“All I have said to my family, I don’t want to come fifth again. I’ve put one foot in the finals. I play Michael [van Gerwen] again next week and the pressure is on him,” said the English player.

“It’s a do or die game. I save myself three hours of misery if I can beat him at 8pm, I’m going to the O2 which is a dream of mine. It’s in my hands.”

CHAMPIONS LEAGUE? You’re having a laugh.

We’ve all heard it. The derisory chant from opposition fans when one of the so-called ‘big guns’ is having an off day.

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For example, Southampton supporters had every right to aim it at the multi-billionaires of Manchester City last weekend, when they couldn’t find a way past the worst team in the Premier League.

Only now what was once a mildly amusing terrace jibe sums up perfectly what the leading club competition in the world has become. A joke.

Next season there will be a record SIX English teams in the Champions League.

Almost one third of the entire Premier League will be waved straight into the bizarre league phase by Uefa’s welcoming doormen at an empty small town disco on a wet Tuesday night.

Anyone can come in. From Liverpool who finished top, right down to hapless Tottenham or abject Manchester United hovering above the relegation zone.

It is time to officially ban the phrase ‘elite competition’ whenever the Champions League is mentioned on TV and radio or written in print.

There was a time when you had to win your domestic league to progress into the highest level of European football the following season.

Simple as that.

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We are now at a point where English Premier League teams have to work harder to stay out of the modern Champions League than to get in.

Spurs and Man United, regular participants in the past, have done spectacularly well trying to cock up their seasons. Yet

by virtue of winning the Europa League one of them will be alongside Liverpool, Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich, the already declared winners of their respective leagues.

Erratic Chelsea, under the guidance of boss Enzo Maresca, have lost to Ipswich, Fulham and Brighton.

From winning five Premier League games in a row, they went winless in the next five and couldn’t string a pass together.

They lag 20 POINTS behind the bona fide champions of England from Anfield and are fifth.

Don’t bet against them being in next season’s Champions League.

The constant tinkering and chiselling away at a once simple game has led to Uefa getting its knickers in a right old twist.

Fifth in this year’s Premier League grants a free pass into the treasure trove of the Champions League thanks to the coefficients which measure success where once it was about winning.

A whole page is devoted to thrill-a-minute ‘coefficients’ on the governing body’s website to explain how a system that would baffle Stephen Hawking’s much cleverer cousin actually works: “Uefa calculates the coefficient of each club each season based on the clubs’ results in the  Uefa Champions League, Uefa Europa League and Uefa Conference League.

“The season coefficients from the five most recent seasons are used to rank the clubs for seeding purposes (sporting club coefficient).

“In addition, the season coefficients from the ten most recent seasons are used to calculate revenue club coefficients for revenue distribution purposes only.”

And that’s just the overview.

There’s a gag in there somewhere about how many coefficients does it take to ruin a game of football? Only I can’t see a funny punch line.

There was a time back when the world was black and white in the 1950s when two imaginative French journalists took inspiration from South America and came up with the idea of the best clubs from each country competing for a trophy on our continent.

Ironically, it wasn’t called the Champions League back then. It was the plain old European Cup. A cup fought over by teams in Europe. Simple eh?

Liverpool’s first steps into the European Cup came in 1964, our sole representatives having won the league the previous season under Bill Shankly.

Next season they share the honour with five other English teams and some of them are pretty ordinary.

If Spurs win the Europa League and follow it up by winning the Champions League next year, the champions of Europe will come from a team currently 17th in England’s top division.

You can argue it won’t happen. Yet somehow a side which has lost more league games than it has won this season is in a European final next week.

That’s cup football for you and it’s a wonderful lottery. Qualification for the Champions League is not. It’s a boring carve up.

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FORMER Ipswich manager George Burley has received the all-clear following his cancer diagnosis.

The 68-year-old publicly announced his diagnosis in September but did not disclose the form of the disease.

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He said: “It has been a difficult time, but I am feeling much brighter now.

“In fact, I am able to get to matches at Portman Road and I am enjoying watching the team playing back in the Premier League.

“We are grateful to the club (Ipswich) for the support they have shown me and my family and I would ask that everyone is respectful of our privacy at this time.”

Burley, who played for Ipswich before managing the club, underwent six cycles of chemotherapy as well as an operation which left him in hospital for three weeks.

But the former defender has this week revealed that he is now cancer free.

He told BBC Radio Suffolk: “It’s been a long road – it didn’t happen overnight.

“It started almost a year ago where I was having symptoms and wasn’t feeling great.

“It was great to eventually come through it all – I’ve been very, very lucky with the amount of support I’ve had.

“My family’s been unbelievable… and I’ve been very well looked after.”

Burley felt unwell for several months before being diagnosed with cancer.

Opening up on the early stages of his battle, the Ipswich legend continued: “Eventually, when I did get diagnosed, I thought I’ve got to get on with it.

“The people around you, you’ve got to make sure you’re not moping around [and] keep their chins up.

“It’s not easy because initially you don’t want to speak much about it, but once you grow into it, people around you know you’re accepting the fact – and [you] get on with life as normal as possible.”

The Ipswich hero also said he was “lucky” his body responded to the treatment and believes the fitness levels he built up as a player helped him in his recovery.

Burley enjoyed spells with Sunderland, Gillingham, Motherwell, Ayr United, Falkirk and Colchester United as a player.

But his longest term came in the form of 13 years overall at Ipswich.

After hanging up his boots, he spent eight years as manager of the Tractor Boys.