News Thread

After two months without Europe's top club competition, the Champions League is back. The round of 16 gets underway this Tuesday, and there are some tasty knockout games around the corner. Last year's champions Manchester City travel to FC Copenhagen to get us underway on Tuesday alongside 14-time winners Real Madrid, who face a trip to East Germany to play RB Leipzig.

Rasmus Højlund continued his remarkable turnaround by scoring in his fifth consecutive English Premier League game as Manchester United claimed a significant 2-1 win over Aston Villa to boost their Champions League hopes. It took the Danish striker 14 games to register his first league goal - coincidentally against Villa - but he’s beginning to deliver on his undoubted potential.

This Premier League season is set go down as one for the ages. The division is well on course to smash the record for the most goals scored in a Premier League campaign. Last season actually holds the current accolade with 1084 goals. If this term continues with the same scoring rate we have seen so far for the run-in, it's on course for there to be over 1,200 goals, shattering the achievement set last year.

Manchester United’s current four-game unbeaten run in the Premier League is their longest this season and it’s revived their Champions League aspirations. Ahead of this weekend’s fixtures, United trail Tottenham Hotspur in fourth place by six points and Aston Villa in fifth by just five points.

In an era where players are increasingly judged based on their attacking numbers, we’ve ranked the top twenty players in Europe that have registered double figures for both goals and assists. Players across seven different European leagues feature in the list with four English Premier League stars ranking in the top ten - Manchester City's Phil Foden sits just outside in 11th place with Liverpool’s Darwin Núñez 12th.

The Premier League is unquestionably the world’s most popular football league and much of that is down to the fact that the English top-flight spends money unlike any other division in Europe. This season alone has seen the league’s 20 clubs spend no less than €2.93 billion on transfer fees, which is more or less the combined spending of Ligue 1, Serie A and the Bundesliga in the same period of time. In no uncertain terms, the Premier League is in a league of its own when it comes to spending money.

Pedro Neto has firmly established himself as one of the most exciting wingers in the English Premier League this season. Wolves are surpassing expectations amid financial constraints under the increasingly impressive Gary O’Neil and Neto has been instrumental to their success. 

The January transfer window was largely dominated by the furore around the returning Ivan Toney, with the Brentford striker heavily linked with Arsenal, Chelsea and many other top clubs. That’s because strikers are in demand. Since Erling Haaland revitalised the traditional number nine role in England, scoring goal after goal at centre-forward for Manchester City, the old-school number nine is back in fashion. And top clubs around Europe are searching for their own out-and-out goalscorer in an attempt to keep up with last season’s treble winners.

Bukayo Saka picked up the ball on the right-wing for Arsenal, turned his defender and fired the ball into the corner of the net. A sight becoming so repetitive, one could be forgiven for suspecting déjà vu. It was the case again at the Emirates on Saturday evening. At just 22 years of age, Saka is one of the world’s best wingers right now and is performing at a remarkably consistent level for Mikel Arteta’s team. His excellent strike in Arsenal’s 4-1 win against Newcastle on Saturday was Saka’s seventh goal in his last five Premier League games. As a team, Arsenal are on fire - 25 goals scored in their last six league games since the winter break, and Saka is at the epicentre of everything good for the Gunners right now. 

While the Premier League may be the competition that draws in the best footballers from around the world, when it comes to winning trophies and silverware in English football nothing offers the history and prestige of the FA Cup. Since 1871, the cup competition has set a gold standard for knock-out football across the sport and to this day remains a high point in any player’s career if they’re lucky enough to win the famous trophy. So which players have had the most success in the competition in the last 154 years?