Football News: Review Of The Day 24th May 2023

Review of the Day

Contracts

Bukayo Saka has signed a new deal with Arsenal which will run until 2027.

Everton have triggered a one-year option on Malu international midfielder Abdoulaye Doucoure's contract to keep him there for next season.

Championship club Birmingham City have taken up options to extend the contracts of Oliver Basey, Rico Browne, Tate Campbell, Tommy Fogarty, Nico Gordon, Marcel Oakley and Kieran Wakefield.

Ted Cann has signed a 1-year contract extension with West Bromwich Albion tying him to the club until 2024.

Athletic Bilbao have given veteran full-back Oscar de Marcos a new one-year deal for next season.

Bolton Wanderers midfielder MJ Williams has signed a one-year contract.

Birmingham City youngster Nico Gordon has agreed a 1-year contract.

Transfers

Brighton & Hove Albion head coach Roberto de Zerbi has hinted that both Moises Caicedo and Alexis Mac Allister will be allowed to leave the club in the summer: "When I work, I think for myself, I think for my club - but I think still for the players. The players have one career, one life and we can't decide for them....They can have the possibility to change because they deserve to play in another level."

Ryan Kent, Allan McGregor, Alfredo Morelos, Scott Arfield and Filip Helander are all to be released by Rangers at the end of the season. The SPFL runners-up are still in discussions with Steven Davis about his future, with the Northern Irish midfielder currently recovering from an ACL injury.

Birmingham City have released Troy Deeney, Harlee Dean, Maxime Colin, George Friend, Jordan Graham and Kevin Long.

Wigan Athletic are releasing six senior players, club captain Tendayi Darikwa, former Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur defender Steven Caulker, Joe Bennett, Ryan Nyambe, Jordan Cousins and Gwion Edwards.

Livingston captain Nicky Devlin has confirmed that he will sign for Aberdeen in the summer as a free agent.

Tom Rogic, Jake Livermore and Kean Bryan have been released by West Bromwich Albion.

Burnley have released Matt Lowton.

Bristol City have released former Chelsea youngster Jay Dasilva, Taylor Moore and James Morton. Nathan Baker, who has already retired on medical grounds, was also released.

Former Liverpool youngster Daniel Ayala is leaving Blackburn Rovers at the end of the season along with Bradley Dack, Ben Brereton Diaz and Dan Butterworth.

Joel Dixon, Kieran Lee, Lloyd Isgrove and Elias Kachunga have been released by Bolton Wanderers.

Ipswich Town have let Richard Keogh, Joel Coleman, Matt Penney and Kane Vincent-Young go.

Forest Green Rovers are releasing Luke McGee, Baily Cargill, Regan Hendry, Alfie Burnett, Jacob Jones, Sean O'Brien, Jordan Moore-Taylor, Dylan McGeouch, Ben Stevenson and Lewis Thomas.

Paul Coutts, Harry Anderson and Calum Macdonald have been released by Bristol Rovers.

Accrington Stanley have released Mitch Clark (who is facing misconduct charges from the FA over 312 bets on football matches - Toney was given an 8-month ban for 232), Anthony Mancini, Joe Hardy, Rhys Fenlon, Enock Lusiama and Dylan Moonan.

Doncaster Rovers have re-signed former Manchester City youngster Ian Lawlor.

Former Aston Villa forward Andre Green has been released by Slovan Bratislava.

Inter Milan have released Roberto Gagliardini.

Burnley have made Michael Obafemi's loan move from Swansea City into a permanent deal.

Nottingham Forest have released Jack Colback.

Job Changes

Malky Thompson will leave his role as manager of Rangers' women to revert to a role in the club's youth academy, after the Women's Scottish Cup final on Sunday.

Blackpool have reappointed Neil Critchley as their head coach. The Tangerines have been relegated to League 1 this season, a division Critchley led the club up from before leaving to join Steven Gerrard's backroom staff at Aston Villa in June 2022.

Glenn Whelan has hung up his boots and changed from being a player-coach at Bristol Rovers to become a first-team coach at the League One side.

England's U20s World Cup campaign will see former England Women's head coach Hope Powell work with them as a Technical Advisor.

Newcastle United have completed the set-up of their new scouting network with the creation of a position-specific scouting team. Traditionally scouts will be assigned geographical areas to look at, but the Toon's Technical Director Dan Ashworth has changed over to the model that he also put in place while doing the same job at Brighton & Hove Albion. The position-specific team will be headed up by Ciaran Hughes, who has joined from Manchester City in the role of Lead Video Analyst. Under him will be five positional analysts: Josh Appleyard (formerly of Norwich City), Oliver Slater (previously at Blackburn Rovers), Graeme Tiffin (joining from Middlesbrough), Chris Nix (moved from First Team Recruitment Analyst) and Peter Clark (who was Arsenal's Head of UK Scouting).

Also joining Newcastle United, this time to become Recruitment Operations Manager of their academy, is Claire Burrows. She was previously Leicester City Academy Recruitment Operations Manager.

Tom Stockwell is leaving his role as Head of Scouting Operations at Southampton to work for Nottingham Forest and is being replaced by an internal promotion for Sam Stanton. Stanton will also head up scouting for Sports Republic's other club Goztepe SK in Turkey.

Disciplinary Charges

Pep Guardiola has called on for the 115 financial charges against Manchester City to be dealt with "as soon as possible". City were charged in February and accused of not cooperating with the Premier League's investigation into their finances. Considering over half of them they have already been found guilty of by UEFA (though largely time-barred under their regulations and so not punished for them after an appeal to CAS), you would think it would be possible to expedite this case. Though that would involve Manchester City's lawyers not trying to stifle the process with legal challenges to anything and everything around the case, including objecting to the appointment of Murray Rosen as chair of the independent commission that will hear the case on the grounds he is an Arsenal season-ticket holder. Presumably they were expecting a Man City fan to be appointed. Obviously Guardiola wants to keep his spotless reputation that has somehow escaped taint by being involved at Barcelona during their employment of match officials off-the-books for 'innocent' purposes that in no way were to influence decisions during matches. That's why they hid the payments for so many years as it was all totally pure and innocent. Or maybe Pep just wants out of City now, as he has pledged to stay until the charges are resolved?

Valencia have been handed a 5 match partial stadium closure after Real Madrid winger Vinicius Jr was racially abused, again, at their ground, both before the match and during. They are also fined €45,000 as well as having to close the south stand. Despite attempts to get the match officials to act as Valencia fans abused him, nothing was done during the match except to send off the clearly wound up Brazilian in the 97th minute. The Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) have said that the red card will not result in a suspension as the referee was "deprived of a decisive part of the facts" and that it was "impossible for him to properly assess what happened". Would that decisive part be the racial abuse that Vinicius had attempted to point out to him and that has been happening to him almost every week in La Liga and in the Spanish media? I would suggest that the referee is the one who should be facing a suspension for failing to act, especially as he mentioned they happned in his notes. Real Madrid have reported the abuse to the Spanish prosecutor's office as a hate crime, once more. But judging by previous times it has been reported to them, they will decide it did not go on for long enough to count as abuse or that the person's social media accounts show that the abuser does not appear "to be a person who intends to incite racism"! La Liga has now said it will request "more sanctioning powers" to punish incidents of racism in Spanish football, instead of their president Javier Tebas simply blaming the victim, presumably.

Three men were arrested by Spanish police for "racist behaviour" during the match between Valencia and Real Madrid. Earlier they had arrested four more people that are suspected of hanging an effigy of Vinicius from a bridge in Madrid earlier this year.

The Football Association of Thailand have banned two of their players for 6 months for their part in mass brawls that marred the men's football final at the Southeast Asia Games. Thailand were beaten 5-2 by Indonesia in a game that saw fights between the two benches after the Thais equalised in stoppage time and then again when Indonesia retook the lead at 3-2 in extra time. Four players were sent off, two of them, goalkeeper Soponwit Rakyart and substitute Teerapak Pruengna received the 6-month bans, reduced from a year because they are both "young" and were "under match pressure and have apologised". The goalkeeper had run half the length of the pitch to punch an opponent before his sending off. The initial fight was sparked after the Indonesian bench mistook the referee's whistle for a Thailand free-kick as the final whistle with their team leading 2-1. Their players and coaching staff celebrated only for the Thais to equalise shortly afterwards and the Thailand players celebrated by running over to the Indonesian bench. Thailand's goalkeeping coach and two of their team officials have both been banned for a year.

Juventus' points deduction has been reduced from 15 points to 10 points following a new hearing ordered by Italy's highest sporting court. A number of the club's officials have now been acquitted of wrongdoing, including legendary former player Pavel Nedved. The lengthy bans from football handed to Andrea Agnelli, Maurizio Arrivabene, Federico Cherubini and Fabio Paratici have been upheld. The club is still to face criminal proceedings over the accounting practices that have led to the points deduction.

Wolverhampton Wanderers forward Daniel Podence has been cleared of a spitting charge because of a lack of "convincing" evidence against him, according to the FA. Nottingham Forest attacker Brennan Johnson claimed Podence spat at him during the two team's 1-1 draw on 1st April this year. The referee took no action after asking VAR to look at the incident. Podence had told the FA's regulatory commission that he pretended to spit at Johnson in an attempt to provoke his opponent. Former Wolves player Morgan Gibbs-White, who had been due to give evidence to the committee, had failed to show and was uncontactable, despite telling the referee that he saw Podence spit at Johnson during the match, even pointing to where he said the saliva had landed.

Wigan Athletic will start next season with a four point deduction for multiple instances of failing to pay their players' wages on time during the season. They also have a further 4-point deduction suspended until 30 June 2024. Owner Abdulrahman Al Jasmi has also been charged with misconduct and fined £10,000. Wigan stated: "Wigan Athletic accepts the sanctions from the EFL and intend to fully comply with the conditions. A detailed statement will be made public once owner, Mr Abdulrahman Al Jasmi adheres to the terms of the agreed decision and deposits an amount equal to 125% of the club's forecast monthly wage bill."

Written by Tris Burke May 24 2023 04:54:11