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How do you stop Arsenal causing chaos from set-pieces?

It’s the question everyone keeps asking – but few find an answer.

The Gunners are Europe’s leading force in scoring from set-plays over the last couple of seasons and, it has been such an formidable tactic, for many it has proved impossible to prevent.

Step forward Liam Rosenior and Chelsea, who tried an innovative way of stopping them in their Carabao Cup semi-final second-leg tie on Tuesday night – just days after former Manchester City and Newcastle goalkeeper Shay Given had suggested similar on Match of the Day.

While it wasn’t able to stop the Gunners securing a 1-0 win – and 4-2 aggregate success – to book their place in the EFL Cup final, it might at least have given rivals some food for thought.

Just as Arsenal were about to whip in their two corners, Chelsea sent three players sprinting from defence to attack – forcing the hosts to quickly react and send players back themselves.

Monaco and Crystal Palace have also left players up against Arsenal‘s set-pieces before – but no team has attempted such a late attempt at forcing Mikel Arteta’s men back towards their own half.

Perhaps they had been listening to Given on Match of the Day on Saturday night.

After watching Arsenal score from two set-pieces in their 4-0 thrashing of Leeds, he said: “I wish someone would try something different.

“Take nothing away from Arsenal, but I see the same set-up every week – Arsenal players loaded at the back and causing carnage. Every set-up is the same.

“Someone can try something different to stop this brilliant form of attack. What can teams do different to create more space? If they leave three up, Arsenal have to leave at least three, maybe four players back.

“Then, in the defending box, that leaves a lot more space for the defenders and the goalkeeper. Yes, it leaves more space for the forwards as well, but all those numbers caused so much confusion.”

Since the start of last season, Arteta’s men have scored 53 goals from set-pieces across all competitions – 13 more than anyone else in the Premier League.

And Chelsea‘s tactic – while not enough to secure them a place in the EFL Cup final – at least stopped Arsenal from scoring from a set-play.

Ex-Liverpool midfielder Jamie Redknapp was less impressed though.

He told Sky Sports: “I like the plan, but my problem is Enzo Fernandez was left marking Gabriel and he has 10 yards to attack the ball.

“Chelsea are trying to negate there being too much traffic in the area, which Arsenal try to cause chaos with. They obviously have a plan but if Arsenal have the right delivery, Enzo Fernandez has no chance.”

Will other teams follow suit?

Ryanair has told passengers to stop packing a popular toiletry in their hand luggage. If you make the mistake, it could cause a few problems at airport security

There’s nothing like jetting off to a hot location during the winter months, but you need to ensure you pack your belongings in the right cases. In fact, airline Ryanair has told passengers they need to avoid placing a popular toiletry in their hand luggage if they want to travel through airport security with ease.

It’s worth paying attention to as, if you fail to follow the expert advice, it could land you in a spot of bother. In fact, it was recently brought up on Reddit after a traveller was left a little confused about the rules as to what he could carry in his hand luggage.

This isn’t the first time vital air travel information has been brought to people’s attention either. Back in December, a travel expert also shared the airport rule that all passengers should follow.

On Reddit, a social media user posted: “I recently started using safety razors and I was wondering if I could carry mine with one blade inside or a packet of blades. I don’t have a checked bag, only the carry-on.

“Previously I was always able to bring disposable razors with the blades stored in the plastic compartment. In the General terms & Conditions, Ryanair says safety razors are allowed but, I asked the support and, even though he wasn’t anywhere specific to answer my query, he said that sharp objects are not allowed.

“So, if I bring the safety razor with me with a blade in it, the worst that can happen is they are just going to remove the razor and give me the head/handle (enclosure thing) back?”

The question got a lot of people talking, as one person replied: “Safety razor will be fine. Really comes more down to the airport you are going through, not the airline, and even then it also comes down to the individual person you deal with.”

Another added: “OP (original poster) is not asking about safety razors per se. He’s asking about the blades, which are definitely prohibited items. Someone intent on causing harm could quite easily unscrew the razor and use the blade or spare blades as weapons.”

A third also replied: “NO, you cannot. Razor blades, including straight razor blades and replacement blades, are prohibited items because they could be used as weapons.

“However, as you said, fixed cartridge razors (disposable razors) generally are allowed in carry-on luggage. Safety razors (with blades in a plastic head) also are usually permitted in carry-on luggage. But NOT the type where you can unscrew the head and extract the blade.”

If you usually carry razors with you when you travel, which a lot of people do, it turns out there are some rules you need to follow. All you need to know is detailed on the Ryanair website.

What does Ryanair say?

The website reads: “The following items must not be carried on board, but may be carried as part of your checked baggage. Objects with a sharp point or sharp edge capable of being used to cause serious injury, including razors and razor blades (except safety or disposable razors with enclosed blades and razor heads held in plastic compartments).”

It also detailed all the other items that are banned in carry-on luggage. While each airline may differ slightly when it comes to its regulations, generally there are some rules you should follow.

Even though all razors aren’t banned in carry-on luggage, certain types are prohibited. Some airlines allow disposable razors, cartridge razors and electric shavers/epilators to be carried in hand luggage.

However, traditional safety razors, straight razors and loose razor blades are usually not allowed in the cabin and must be packed in checked luggage. This is due to the fact that they are so sharp.

If deemed dangerous, security can confiscate them and the mistake could see you facing delays at the airport. In a nutshell, it’s a packing mistake that’s really not worth making.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Lauren Betts overcame early foul trouble to score 23 points and pull down nine rebounds, leading No. 2 UCLA to an 80-67 win Wednesday night over Illinois.

Betts, the Bruins’ 6-foot-7 AP All-American center, picked up her second and third fouls — the latter on a technical foul — with 1:29 left in the first quarter.

She sat out the rest of the first quarter and the second quarter, returned to the court after halftime, and ended up playing nearly 24 minutes. She had just six points at halftime.

Angela Dugalic scored 12 points for UCLA (20-1, 10-0 Big Ten), which won its 14th straight. Gabriela Jaquez had 11, and Kiki Rice, Gianna Kneepkens and Sienna Betts — Lauren’s sister — each added 10.

Cearah Parchment had a career-high 26 points and seven rebounds for Illinois (15-6, 5-5) before fouling out with 36 seconds left. She was 10 of 13 from the field.

Destiny Jackson had 15 points and six assists, Maddie Webber scored 12 points and Berry Wallace had 11 for the Illini.

Illinois, which played without injured Gretchen Dolan, has lost five of seven after an 11-game winning streak.

UCLA led 45-31 at halftime. Illinois cut the lead to five points twice in the third quarter, but didn’t get any closer.

The Bruins won despite making just one three-pointer, going one of 10 from distance. They had 48 points in the paint to Illinois’ 24 and also doubled the Illini in bench points, 24-12.

UCLA hasn’t lost since it fell 76-65 to No. 4 Texas on Nov. 26 in Las Vegas.

In the 10 games before facing Illinois, the Bruins beat their opponents by an average of nearly 40 points and scored an average of more than 91 points a game.

For just $95, the acquisitive President Trump could have a replica of the iconic “The Buck Stops Here” sign that sat atop President Truman’s Oval Office desk, gift-boxed from the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum Store. But this gewgaw isn’t gold; it’s wood. And yet that’s not the reason it wouldn’t be at home on Trump’s desktop.

Here’s why: As far as Trump is concerned, the buck never stops with him.

That’s never been more evident than this month, in the president’s fly-above-it-all attitude toward his administration’s armed occupation of Minneapolis. Ostensibly a campaign against immigrants who lack legal status, the occupation has (at this writing) killed two U.S. citizens exercising their 1st Amendment rights to protest the anti-constitutional brutality of federal agents.

Trump couldn’t even be bothered to postpone his black-tie White House screening of Amazon’s $75-million gift documentary of his wife, “Melania,” on Saturday, just hours after 37-year-old VA nurse Alex Pretti died and as Minneapolis seethed. When the president did interject, he mostly just escalated tensions. Again.

After the earlier killing of Renee Good, Trump posted to Minnesotans: “The day of reckoning and retribution is coming!” and deployed an additional 1,000 armed, masked agents for a total of 3,000. Further mayhem was widely predicted. And on Saturday, after at least two of those agents pumped 10 shots point-blank at Pretti while he was pinned down, Trump’s first reaction was this escalatory, blame-the-victim post over a photo: “This is the gunman’s gun, loaded (with two additional full magazines!), and ready to go.”

Got that? According to the president, Pretti was the gunman in what I and many other Americans saw as his murder by Trump’s militia. The buck, and the bullets, stopped with Pretti.

Trump continued to blame the victim for days, including on Tuesday in Iowa, by repeatedly contending (over the angry opposition of his pals in the gun lobby) that Pretti “shouldn’t have been carrying a gun.” It was a holstered handgun that Pretti legally owned and carried, which he never “brandished” as the feds claimed and which was taken from him before he was shot.

Not once in the year since he loosed this militant deportation campaign in U.S. cities has Trump openly questioned the lawless tactics. Since Pretti’s killing, the president hasn’t publicly upbraided his Department of Homeland Security or his most senior advisors — Stephen Miller, the White House architect of Trump’s anti-immigrant policies; Kristi Noem, his puppy-killing Homeland Security secretary; and Gregory Bovino, his cruelly performative (former) Border Patrol commander in Minneapolis (after Los Angeles, Chicago and New Orleans) — for their immediate and repeated slanders of Pretti as a “domestic terrorist” and “an assassin” who aimed to “massacre law enforcement.”

Those were all lies, as the world soon saw thanks to the courageous protesters on the scene documenting the agents’ lawlessness with cellphone cameras. And now, even some (few) Republicans in Congress are assailing Noem, Miller and Bovino, calling for their resignation, firing or, in Noem’s case, impeachment.

Enough, however, with the focus on Noem, Miller, Bovino or others of Trump’s “best.” It’s good that Republicans are finally rousing to object to administration actions. But they should quit cloaking their complaints in language that absolves the boss. These Republicans would have us believe that Trump is faultless, ill-served and misled by his advisors.

Among the foremost modelers of this behavior is Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who grew a bit of spine in the summer after he announced that he wouldn’t seek reelection. Yet he still blames everyone around Trump, not Trump himself.

What Noem has done in Minnesota “should be disqualifying,” Tillis told reporters Tuesday. “It’s making the president look bad.” Later, he ranted about both Noem and Miller, lamenting that immigration used to be Trump’s and Republicans’ best issue until that duo “destroyed it through their incompetence.” Last week, he blamed Miller for “getting the president in a difficult circumstance” over Greenland, as if it wasn’t Trump himself who insanely demanded that Denmark and NATO allies hand over the island protectorate to the United States — because it’s “psychologically important for me.”

This is Trump’s paramilitary force at Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol. These advisors are his hires at the White House and in the Cabinet. And these are his policies.

The president is consistently the arsonist who attempts to take credit for putting out his own fires (like last week’s conflagration at Davos over Greenland) when they get out of control. Which is to say, when poll after poll confirms both the policies’ and Trump’s growing unpopularity.

Forget that he won’t accept the buck: It still should stop with him.

As Noem insisted in a statement to Axios on Tuesday: “Everything I’ve done, I’ve done at the direction of the president and Stephen [Miller].”

She and Bovino, heretofore so fond of cosplaying in getups that scream “I’m tough,” are now wearing tire tracks. With Trump’s dispatch of border advisor Tom Homan to Minneapolis, they’ve essentially been designated as scapegoats for the tragedies in Minnesota. But not Miller: “The president loves Stephen,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Axios.

Of course he does. Miller is Trump’s Mini-Me. Which brings us back to: Blame Trump.

The imperative to hold Trump accountable is why I’m cool to calls to impeach Noem. Democrats seeking her removal include House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and they’re joined by a few Republicans. It feels good to say it, and such calls are fine as a message of disgust, especially in a midterm election year. But Congress is Republican-controlled, remember, which is to say Trump-controlled.

For the same reason, Trump himself is insured — for now — against impeachment. But as he’s acknowledged, if Democrats take control after November, that would probably change. Forget that the Senate probably wouldn’t convict him, just as it declined to do twice after his impeachments in his first term. But at least, come 2027, he could be forced to take the buck.

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Ryanair has told all passengers to stop putting a popular item in their hand luggage from January. It turns out, it should never be stored there and could cause problems at security

With the UK being so wet and dreary at this time of year, it’s no wonder people dream of escaping to other parts of the world, but there are some things you need to know if you’re preparing to hop on a plane. When it comes to packing, there are some important rules you need to follow to ensure your airport experience goes smoothly.

According to Ryanair, certain items should never be packed in your hand luggage, and one of them is super popular at this time of year. From January, you may want to think a little more about how you’re preparing to travel.

The thought of jetting off abroad may be lovely, but air travel comes with its stresses. There are some key guidelines you need to follow when it comes to your hand luggage.

Previously, the topic came up on Reddit when a social media user asked: “Looking for a trekking pole to buy. Which kind of pole (collapsible/telescopic) would be better so that it could be brought as a carry-on bag on Ryanair/Iberia?”

It got a lot of people talking, and they were quick to point out an essential piece of information, and it’s worth noting if you’re planning on going skiing any time soon. One person replied: “I don’t think it really matters what airline you fly. You have to get past security with them, and they are usually not allowed.”

Another wrote: “You will always be taking a risk unless you put them in a checked bag.” A third also replied: “Trekking poles are not allowed in your carry-on. This rule is not always enforced, but that is the rule.

“One time I flew to a location with my poles in my carry-on, but they wouldn’t let me on the flight to come back with those same poles in my carry-on (same airline).”

However, according to Ryanair, this isn’t the only thing you need to be aware of. If you’re going skiing any time from January, you need to stop packing poles in your carry-on luggage too.

What does Ryanair say?

According to the airline, various items are prohibited in carry-on luggage, and all of these are detailed on the website. However, when it comes to poles, it offers specific advice.

It reads: “The following items must not be carried on board, but may be carried as part of your checked baggage. Objects with a sharp point or sharp edge capable of being used to cause serious injury.”

Ski poles and hiking poles feature in the list, so it’s important you don’t take them in your hand luggage. Generally, they need to be checked in, as they are deemed too sharp to carry through airport security.

Due to their length and sharp tips, they are considered potential weapons. While some travellers may find success with collapsible poles tucked away, security agents typically require them to be checked.

Though some airline guidelines may differ, the safest option is to put them in your checked luggage. This will help avoid any problems or delays at airport security.

If you opt to try and take them through, you risk having to surrender them at airport security. It’s a gamble that’s really not worth taking when you travel.

A film buff has shared 10 lesser-known psychological thrillers including Fresh, No Exit and Strange Darling that are described as masterpieces that will mess with your mind for days

We all adore films that have us gripping the sofa, pulse pounding, eyes glued to the screen. That’s why psychological thrillers are so popular!

The films excel at delivering these spine-tingling sensations – and there’s a wealth of brilliant examples you might have missed. TikTok user horror_hideout91 has compiled a selection of underrated thrillers perfect for your viewing queue.

Some are hailed as masterpieces that’ll haunt your thoughts for days afterwards – so why not give them a whirl:

First up is ‘No Exit’. The plot follows a university student who discovers a kidnapped girl at a remote motorway services during a snowstorm, with the abductor lurking close by.

Following that, there’s ‘Fresh’. This chilling tale revolves around a woman fed up with dating apps, who hands her digits to an apparently delightful bloke she meets whilst shopping. Yet appearances can be deceiving.

The third recommendation is ‘Deep Water’. A husband who permits his spouse to conduct extramarital relationships to prevent divorce becomes the main suspect when one of her loversvanishes.

Alternatively, consider ‘The Lie’. This centres on a dad and daughter who encounter the girl’s closest mate beside the motorway. When they pull over to offer transport, they discover their kind gesture has triggered dreadful repercussions.

Alternatively, there’s ‘The Woman in the Window’, which follows an agoraphobic woman who observes her neighbours for entertainment – only to discover she’s witnessed a horrific crime.

The cinema enthusiast also suggested ‘Exam’, featuring eight job candidates competing for a corporate position. They’re placed in a room and must answer one straightforward question. The catch? Working out what the question actually is.

Next up is ‘Burn’, centring on a lonely and unstable petrol station worker constantly living in the shadow of her more charismatic colleague. When they’re robbed one evening, she seizes it as the ideal chance to forge a bond with the robber.

Alternatively, give ‘Take Shelter’ a go. It tracks a man tormented by apocalyptic visions who must determine whether to protect his family from an impending catastrophe – or shield them from himself.

The penultimate recommendation is ‘Strange Darling’, depicting a one-night stand that descends into darkness, spiralling into a serial killer’s brutal killing spree.

Finally, the list concludes with ‘Milk & Serial’, where a surprise prank sees a well-known social media pair forced to confront the ramifications of their behaviour.

So there you have it – 10 chilling recommendations guaranteed to keep you gripped throughout!