Author: Charles

Chelsea injury issues created an interesting bench for the Blues for Saturday’s game against Liverpool.

With so many players out, Enzo Maresca named two goalkeepers and a few youngsters on the bench – notably Landon Emenalo.

Youngster getting closer to first team bow

Son of former sporting director Michael, Emenalo was last seen in the first team on the bench for the home game against Legia Warsaw in the Conference League quarter finals last year, Emenalo has since continued his superb progress in the youth ranks at Chelsea.

Shortly after that came his definitive promotion from the Under 18 group to the Development Squad. He’s now a regular for them at left back, and has started all their PL2 games plus both in the UEFA Youth League. His England Under 17 games have come there as well.

His dad – who now works for the Saudi Pro League – was there on Saturday to see his son dressed in the squad for the Premier League for the first time.

Left back option creates more opportunities for Ememalo

Midfield is still Landon’s primary position – but this new versatility is very interesting. It certainly opens up some better options for him in terms of first team minutes. Behind Marc Cucurella and Jorrel Hato there’s not a huge amount of cover – could we see Emenalo as a sub in the EFL or FA Cup, or a Champions League dead rubber later in the season? It’s not impossible. If Hato or Cucurella get hurt, it almost becomes likely.

While there’s good depth in central midfield now so many players are back, it feels more likely that Maresca rewards the youngster with some minutes at full back if there’s a chance. Keep a close eye on those Wolves and Qarabag games to come…

More Stories about Landon Emenalo

Oct. 7 (UPI) — The Cincinnati Bengals agreed to trade for Cleveland Browns quarterback Joe Flacco, the teams announced Tuesday.

Flacco, who started four games this season and was benched last week, will join a Bengals quarterbacks room that also includes Jake Browning. The Bengals also released quarterback Brett Rypien, who served as Browning’s backup in Week 5, in a corresponding transaction.

“Joe is an experienced quarterback with a history of winning,” Bengals coach Zac Taylor said in a news release. “He is a leader with a skill set that will fit our personnel well.

“He is a gifted passer with a strong arm, and we are excited to have him on our team.”

The Browns agreed to send Flacco and a sixth-round pick in the 2026 NFL Draft to the Bengals in exchange for a fifth-round pick in the swap, which is pending a physical.

The move came just a day after Taylor told reporters that the Bengals would “evaluate everything,” when asked if Browning would start in Week 6.

“We’ll see where it goes,” Taylor said. “Like all personnel decisions, we’ve got to evaluate it. Jake has been very accountable for how the [Week 5] game went for him. I’ve got to be accountable for how the game went for me as well.”

Browning threw for a season-high 251 yards and three scores in Week 5, but also logged three interceptions in the loss to the Detroit Lions on Sunday in Cincinnati.

“We have to take care of the football,” Taylor said. “That’s the No. 1 thing, eliminating the turnovers.”

The Bengals, who lost starting quarterback Joe Burrow to turf toe in Week 2, also have Sean Clifford on their practice squad. They announced earlier Tuesday that they released veteran backup Mike White from their practice squad.

Flacco’s departure from Cleveland will likely result in Shedeur Sanders being promoted as the Browns’ second-string quarterback, behind fellow rookie Dillon Gabriel. Bailey Zappe is the Browns’ practice squad quarterback.

Browning completed 64.5% of his throws for 757 yards, six scores and eight interceptions over four appearances so far this season for the Bengals. He went 0-3 over the last three weeks. The three-year veteran, who joined the Bengals as a undrafted free agent in 2023, completed 68.4% of his throws for 2,693 yards, 18 scores and 15 interceptions over his first 16 career appearances.

Flacco, 40, completed 58.1% of his throws for 815 yards, two scores and six interceptions through his four starts this season. He went 1-3 before being benched.

The 18-year veteran and Super Bowl XLVII MVP earned Comeback Player of the Year honors in 2023, when he completed 60.3% of his throws for 1,616 yards, 13 scores and eight interceptions over five appearances for the Browns. He went 4-1 during that span, while helping the Browns reach the playoffs.

Flacco completed 61.6% of his throws for 46,512 yards, 259 touchdowns and 168 interceptions over the first 200 appearances of his NFL career. He signed a one-year deal with the Browns in April.

The Bengals (2-3) will take on the Green Bay Packers (2-1-1) at 4:25 p.m. EDT Sunday in Green Bay, Wis. The Browns (1-4) will battle the Pittsburgh Steelers (3-1) in an AFC North divisional matchup at 1 p.m. Sunday in Pittsburgh.

Colorado coach Deion Sanders, who said after Saturday’s game that he was in pain and suffering from more blood clots in his foot, said today that he will have surgery but will not miss any time coaching.

Sanders told reporters that he’s set for a four-hour surgery but is confident that he’ll be back to work immediately afterward.

“I’m having a procedure today. Prayerfully I’ll be right back tomorrow because I don’t miss practice, I don’t plan on doing such. But it is what it is, we found what we found, we knew what it was,” Sanders said.

Sanders was in good spirits, joking that he has never gotten high in his life but was looking forward to feeling like Snoop Dogg under anesthesia.

“I’m gonna be all right,” Sanders said. “Thank you and God bless you.”

It’s the middle of the afternoon in the middle of the week, and former UFC middleweight Chris Leben is lounging on a leather coach in his San Diego gym talking about the strange way life has of picking you up and turning you all around before setting you down somewhere new.

This comes up a lot for Leben, whether he likes it or not. And it’s not just in his gym, where the young guys still sometimes come in all excited to tell him how they just streamed the first season of “The Ultimate Fighter” and can’t believe what a wild man their coach was once. But it’s also when he shows up to work as a referee or judge, two side gigs that, collectively, take up most of his weekends.

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“There’s two different reactions I get from fighters when I’m working these events,” Leben says. “One is, ‘Oh man, it’s such an honor to have you reffing my fight, I watched you growing up,’ and all that. The others don’t have any idea who I am a lot of the time, to tell you the truth. I’m just a ref to them, and that’s fine.”

Some days, it’s more than fine. Being recognized and remembered is a tricky thing for Leben. It comes with some baggage. He knows he could dye his hair red again, just like the old days, and be instantly recognizable. It’s a conscious choice to let it grow mousy brown atop his great big buffalo head. It allows him to sink into something a little closer to anonymity.

The face is still there, under all the scar tissue. Some of the old hardcores who were around for his heyday, they still recognize him. But the version of him that fight fans remember is not the same guy he is now. It’s not the person he wants to be.

Leben broke through on that first season of the UFC’s reality TV show as the hard-drinking, hard-slugging spark plug of the debut cast. He then spent the next eight years of his life in the UFC, holding down a roster spot as a fan-favorite middleweight who reliably delivered a certain kind of show to the tune of the fifth-most bouts in division history (22). Leben was never the guy who was going to win them all. But he was the guy who would plant his feet and throw leather without very much concern for his own well-being.

He was also the guy who’d black out and put his fist through a pane of glass. He was the guy who, a few days before fighting Brian Stann at UFC 125, went berserk on a Las Vegas casino bathroom and had to bribe his way out of handcuffs just to make it to the fight. His tagline on “TUF” was that he could roll into the gym “smelling like booze and dirty strippers” and still knock guys out. A few times he was called upon to prove it.

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The fight game always has a place for people like that. And when they appear to be living at the same reckless pace outside the cage, somehow it only tends to make us more fascinated by their various demonstrations of public self-destruction.

“I think what drove me when I was young is spite,” Leben says. “Really, I think that was the main thing. People thought I was nothing and I was going to be nothing, so f*** them, you know? I’m going to prove them wrong. So I built this whole ‘Crippler’ alter-ego for myself, this kind of persona, and it worked. But the people who know me just for that, you know, that was a damaged person who did those things. That damaged person was trying to prove that he was tough and he was worthy. And then once I’d proved that, then at a certain point I was trying to prove that I wasn’t crazy.”

Leben’s life after the UFC was a tumultuous one. In 2015, he pleaded guilty to felony weapons charges, as well as charges that he’d violated a restraining order when he broke into his ex-wife’s apartment. He retired from fighting, came back for a few bare-knuckle boxing matches, then retired again.

Before opening this gym — The Training Center, a spacious and modern facility in a prime location on Garnett Avenue in the hip Pacific Beach area of San Diego — he did all kinds of work. Flood restoration. Construction. All types of manual labor. And when some promoter would offer him just one more check to wade in blood at some bare-knuckle event, he’d answer the call. For time.

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“At that point, I was actually feeling good,” Leben says. “I was sober. After the way my UFC career ended, I wanted to show I could get it together. And I felt great there for a while. But I was pushing 40 and it was like, what are you doing? These kids are getting faster. You’re getting slower. You came back, had a few knockouts, had a few wars, and you didn’t end your career sitting on the stool. So let it go. Could I find a promoter willing to give me [$30,000 or $40,000] to take one more fight? Probably. But the damage that would do to me — not just physically, but in my life, to go back to that now — it wouldn’t be worth it.”

What Leben realized, he says, is that eventually fighters all have to learn how to be something else. And not just something, but someone else. The old you must die so the new you can be reborn. The ones who don’t manage to make that transition, well, we see what happens to them. Leben saw it with friends and former opponents. Guys like Stephan Bonnar, who died at the age of 45 of an accidental fentanyl overdose. Also guys like Phil Baroni, who was arrested in Mexico in 2023 for the murder of his girlfriend.

“Look at Wanderlei [Silva] at this boxing thing, getting knocked out by a stranger. That made me so sad,” Leben says. “A lot of guys from that era. I remember Stephan Bonnar, he came out here to visit me, and he was ‘The American Psycho’ still. He showed up to fight as ‘The American Psycho.’ He did commentary as ‘The American Psycho.’ He went to dinner as ‘The American Psycho.’ And Phil Baroni is another one. He was still trying to be ‘The New York Badass,’ still trying to be that same guy.

“I get it. It’s hard when people are coming up to you and they still expect you to be that guy. I get people coming up to me, talking to me like I’m still who I was on ‘The Ultimate Fighter.’ They don’t realize that was 20 years ago. That’s one thing TV does. It freezes time in a way. … But if you want to live a quality life, there comes a point where you have to let that character go. You’ve got to cut ties with that character. I think, because of recovery, I learned a little bit about how to do that.”

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These days Leben’s focus is on stability and structure. During the week, he’s in his gym, teaching and coaching. On the weekends he’s traveling to events to work as a judge or referee. He’s worked UFC events recently, but before that it was long drives just to work a local show for little more than gas money, all to get the experience he needed.

In his free time, he goes to the batting cages with his son. He takes Monday mornings off from the gym to linger at home with his fiancé. He focuses on staying right there in the middle of the emotional range, leaving the wild swings of the fighter life in the past.

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“I don’t want those lows anymore,” Leben says. “I don’t want the highs, either. I want to stay right in the middle.”

For a young, emotionally unstable man, he points out, the fighter lifestyle carries a certain appeal. It’s a feast-or-famine world. You could go from a nobody to a star in a year or two. A handful of good nights could make you a champion and a millionaire. But more than that, it gives you only a short-term future to consider while allowing you to ignore the bigger picture. You simply book a fight, train for a fight, then show up and bleed.

“For someone who has a lot of issues, a lot of baggage like I did, a two-month chunk of your life feels manageable,” Leben says. “A five-year plan? That’s hard to see for yourself. I still have trouble seeing it sometimes. But now my focus is on being 1% happier every day. I want to gradually bring my well-being and my happiness up a little bit every day.”

These days the body doesn’t always cooperate the way he’d like. Leben turned 45 over the summer. He blew out his knee recently. His shoulder is likely going to need to be replaced. There are some troubling discs in his neck that will also require some attention soon. He nods his head at the young fighter walking in for practice and tossing his gym bag down with the fluid movements of a man whose joints still work with silent ease.

That was a damaged person who did those things. That damaged person was trying to prove that he was tough and he was worthy. And then once I’d proved that, then at a certain point I was trying to prove that I wasn’t crazy.

“A couple years ago I could still get out there and throw him around,” Leben says. “Now, man, I was trying to show a double-leg [takedown] earlier today and I can barely get down to go over the knee. At the same time, I wouldn’t trade it. I’ve got friends who are old and beat up and they didn’t even fight. Two years from now I’m going to be two years older. There’s nothing I can do about that.”

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Sometimes people ask him, wouldn’t it be amazing if he’d gotten sober sooner? Imagine what his UFC career could have been if he wasn’t his own worst enemy throughout so much of it. Imagine what he might have achieved if he had figured out some of his own issues sooner.

But Leben isn’t so sure. For one thing, if he hadn’t grown up as angry kid on the poor side of town, he might never have found his way into MMA at all.

“I think, like, would I have done some of those things if I hadn’t felt like I needed to prove something? And I don’t know,” he says. “Those extremes, they carried over into all areas of my life. Everything in excess. Nothing in moderation. I think that’s why I fought the way I did.”

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It made him a popular fighter in the UFC, one who could always be depended on for a fun, wild fight. It became his brand and his personality, until he was forced to find some way to undo it and learn a new way.

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He’s happy with that way now. He’s got a good life, a good gym. There’s a sense of satisfaction in clawing his way out of the various graves he dug for himself. But if he hadn’t done all that, he wonders, could he have found his way here?

“I don’t know,” Leben says. “I can look back on all these mistakes I made and think about what would’ve been. But I also look around and go, I’m here now. This gym, it’s a home for a lot of people. I’ve got a family here. I have a lot going for me.”

It might have been a damaged person who did those things in the UFC, but it was a better version of the same man who built the life he has now. If it took one to have the other, well, maybe the rough ride to get here was worth it after all.

When the NFL knew they were going to be getting a two-way star like Travis Hunter, no one was sure what to expect with him. He won the Heisman Trophy in 2024 and became the first defensive player to do so since Charles Woodson, which is good company to have. But could someone pull off double duty in the NFL?

Through five weeks of the NFL season, that answer still has not emerged, but Hunter has seemingly had fun in the process, attempting to do it for the Jacksonville Jaguars. They traded up to get him and have gotten a good return, but there is a reason he is the only player in the NFL doing this type of workload.

But should he be?

ESPN explored the idea of each team having one player who could pull double duty for their team. For the Bucs, they made the unique choice of highlighting defensive lineman Vita Vea as the man for the job, in a similar role to the Chicago Bears legend William “The Refrigerator” Perry.

Vea is suggested to be a running back for the Bucs.

ESPN’s Jenna Laine writes, “Vea might be pushing 347 pounds, and his home is always going to be defensive line, but he also played running back at Milpitas High School in California, where he had 13 rushing touchdowns his senior year and averaged 12.3 yards per carry on 47 carries. In the NFL, he has lined up a couple of times on offense at the goal line, becoming the heaviest player to score an offensive touchdown in league history in 2019 with a 1-yard touchdown catch against the Falcons.”

Can we take a minute to imagine trying to tackle the high school version of Vita Vea as a running back?

The Bucs have teased the move several times by lining him up in the backfield, as Laine mentions. Seeing them lean more into it, especially in the era of The Tush Push, would make sense. Perhaps Josh Grizzard will pull a trick out of his bag later in the year.

The Philadelphia 76ers will head into the 2025-26 season with hope that they will be able to bounce back from a tough 24-58 season. Injuries ravaged the roster in a way that really ruined any chances the Sixers had at contending in the Eastern Conference.

The one constant for Philadelphia in 2024-25 was Tyrese Maxey. The All-Star guard was available for a majority of the year before injuries ended his season after 52 games, but he averaged a career-high 26.3 points. On the flip side, his shooting percentages dropped due to the defensive attention he received on a nightly basis.

HoopsHype ranked Maxey No. 31 on their top 100 players list:

A volume scorer with good playmaking ability, Tyrese Maxey missed out on All-Star honors last season, but he performed at that level. Maxey even had a career season on the defensive end, averaging nearly two steals per contest, playing the role of chaotic pest well on the less glamorous end of the floor.

Maxey’s efficiency did take a hit last year, and playing without former league MVP Joel Embiid may have played a role in that, as the former Kentucky star boasted a 56.2 true shooting percentage in 2024-25, his lowest mark since his rookie season.

Regardless, Maxey remains one of the top scoring-minded point guards in the NBA today thanks to his elite quickness and valuable pull-up shooting ability, and the Philadelphia 76ers rightfully value him as such.

Maxey continues to take on the leadership mantle for the Sixers as they move forward on their championship chase. He kept that young team together despite the injuries and adversity and Philadelphia will continue to look to him even when Joel Embiid and Paul George return to the floor.

Lawrence Shankland has not given up on his World Cup dream despite missing out on the current squad poised to face Greece and Belarus in European qualifying Group C.

Steve Clarke decided to stick with the same strikers who helped his side draw in Denmark and win away to Belarus in last month’s opening games of the campaign.

As the Scotland squad prepare to host Greece on Thursday, Hearts striker Shankland was picking up his Scottish Premiership player of the month award.

It was reward for scoring three goals in two games during September to become the league’s top marksman this season – and the leading scorer over the 12 years since the SPFL was established – while helping his side to the top of the table.

Asked if he was especially disappointed not to be in Clarke’s current squad given those facts, Shankland told Sky Sports: “You always want to be involved if you can.

“Obviously there’s a World Cup not too far round the corner as well, so hopefully the boys can keep getting the results.

“I’ll keep doing what I do at club level and hopefully if the opportunity arises again then you just stay ready for it.

“Everybody who is Scottish around the world would want to be at a World Cup.

“I have had the experience of being at the Euros and stuff in the last campaign and you just stay ready and keep doing what you do for your club.”

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Get Spanish Football News sat down with former England international Stan Collymore to talk about his former club, Real Oviedo, and their return to the top flight of Spanish football, and to look at why more British players are treading a similar path and moving away from the Premier League. 

Real Oviedo are back in the top flight for the first time in 24 years. How big an achievement was it for them to return, and what do you think of their chances of remaining in La Liga? 

Yeah, it’s difficult; they’re near the bottom of the table, and there are some serious teams down there. The likes of Girona, Mallorca, Real Sociedad. So it’s very early days, a bit like Aston Villa, which is the club that I support, the club that I played for. [Like Oviedo], they’re on six points after their first few games.

I think having a player like Santi Carzola there, that bleeds blue, that people can rally around, is incredibly important, and his experience is going to be incredibly important. I wasn’t across all the outgoings and incomings, but I know that they’ve been active in the market and took Leander Dendoncker. 

In terms of how difficult it’s going to be, I think when you’re a promoted team, it’s that first season. You see it year in and year out. If you can get beyond the first season in any of the three big leagues, Italy, Spain, or England, then you’ve got a real chance of staying. And I hope they do stay up; it’s a huge club. 

My time was short there; it was fractious, and there’s no need to massively delve into that. But I do keep an eye on how they’re doing, and I hope they do well. It’s a really important footballing part of the country, the Asturias, not just Oviedo but Gijon as well. I’d love to see both of them in the top flight. 

The first season is the most important, and they’ll start to get the area and the region believing that they are a top-flight Spanish club again. Just the one win so far, but that’s not so bad. They haven’t lost all their games, and winning one is vitally important. 

I think they’ll probably have another look at the transfer market come January. And I always think again, it doesn’t matter the name of the club really, if you’re back in the division for the first time. If you can nick one, two, maybe even three players on loan that have the experience of the level and can help you for six months, and pay their wages, that’ll be vitally important for Oviedo moving forward as well. 

So to answer your question, it is just about getting enough points for the first season, as from there you can start to recruit on the basis that we’re a La Liga staple. 

Your time at Oviedo was famously short (lasting only five weeks). But can you tell us about your first impressions of Oviedo and why you wanted to join? 

I wanted to play abroad. When I was a kid, a lot of British and Irish players were playing in Italy, the likes of Trevor Francis, Liam Brady, Joe Jordan, Ray Wilkins, and La Liga was very much the place to go. 

The Tartiere is a fantastic stadium. We used to train at the old [stadium]. And then obviously playing at the new one, a beautiful 30-odd thousand seater stadium. 

So Oviedo obviously wasn’t a cosmopolitan place like Madrid or Barcelona, but I spoke to Radomir Antić (the manager of Oviedo at the time), someone I knew, as I was a bit of a football geek as a kid, from his time at Luton Town. I spoke to Radomir, and he sold the club very well. He sold the region very well. It’s a beautiful part of Spain. 

I met them and I went out there. After that, I don’t really need to go into it, as it’s all on record. But in terms of wanting to join the club, absolutely, I did. I had a young family at the time, and I was to take them out and live the life there, and to play in La Liga. 

That was the other thing, I’d played in the Premier League for a number of years, you could argue now that the Premier League is the pre-eminent league, but at that time, you had players like Steve McManaman, Michael Owen, and David Beckham going to Real Madrid, and you could argue that La Liga was the pre-eminent league. 

I remember one of the magazines, and I was on the front of it with Pablo Aimar, and the headline was ‘Liga de la Estrellas’. It was a very exciting time to join any La Liga club; it still is. Whether it be marketing or the talent, I’d say the Premier League is better now, but back then, La Liga was the place to go. 

There’s been a bit of a returning trend of England internationals moving out to La Liga, like with Trippier, Gallagher, Bellingham, and now Alexander-Arnold. Can you talk a bit about the appeal of the league? 

I think Real Madrid will always sell itself. Players will always want to go there simply because of their Champions League legacy. I think players know Real Madrid as the biggest club in the world. And I don’t think you’d have any pushback from a Liverpool fan, Manchester United fan, Arsenal fan, or a fan from any other Premier League club if you said Real Madrid is bigger than your club. I think most sane fans would say ‘Yes.’ 

Real Madrid are always cyclically going to be able to take [players like] McManaman, Owen, Beckham. Trent Alexander-Arnold has obviously gone out there. Beyond that, I think there is a rejuvenation of Barcelona; both Real Madrid and Barcelona have had financial issues. I think Atlético Madrid, with the likes of Connor Gallagher, was an interesting one. 

I think players will continue to go out there, but I think players will naturally gravitate to those three or four clubs. Like for example, I go out to Seville three or four times a year and see my mate who’s a huge Real Betis fan, and we’ll go and watch Betis, and we’ll also go and watch Sevilla as well. And we haven’t really seen many English players or British Isles-based players go to Betis, Sevilla, or Valencia. 

There seems to be a lot of the younger players [leaving the Premier League], like with Jadon Sancho when he went off to Dortmund, likewise Jude Bellingham. You see players going on loan to the likes of AC Milan, another huge club that sells itself. But I’d actually like to see more English players go and play for provincial clubs in Spain, Italy, France, and Germany. 

One, because they’ll still get paid Premier League wages, which is the biggest motivation for most moves. I really like the fact that lots of younger players are going out and embracing the lifestyle. You look at Scott McTominay in Naples. The man is almost a god now. If you had said he’d go from being a bit of a laughing stock in Manchester to treading in the footsteps of Diego Maradona in Naples, people would call you crazy. 

Why English players haven’t gone much beyond Madrid, I think, is obvious. The language, the culture, but as we’ve seen [something new] with players that have gone to Italy and Germany. You know Dortmund is in the Ruhr Valley, a steelmaking industrial part of Germany; it’s not a particularly sexy part of the world. Likewise, Naples, a beautiful city, but a reputation of being a bit sketchy. 

I’d absolutely love more English and British players to go to Spain, and if they did, I’d give them a huge tourist pack of Seville, because I think, particularly playing for Sevilla or Betish, two clubs that in any season could be competitive towards the top of La Liga, and live the lifestyle that the city offers is almost perfect. It’s certainly one that if I had my time again, Sevilla or Betis, I’d have been all over that. 

There was a strong reaction from some Liverpool fans over Alexander-Arnold leaving for Madrid at the end of his contract. Can you understand it, or do you think it was unfair? 

It’s the modern reality of the game. I wrote a column the other day about the way Raheem Sterling and Axel Disasi at Chelsea. And I use that as an example of why players either run their contract down or they say, ‘I’m not turning up to training, I’m going.’ 

Players talk to other players; they’ve all got their WhatsApp groups. Even if they’re playing for the same club, they’re keeping in touch, of course, they do, why wouldn’t you? You grow up with them, you play with them at underage levels. And a lot of players would have seen Sterling playing at 8 pm on AstroTurf, which is not the norm; he trains mostly at the Cobham training ground.

The takeaway is ‘Look, once we don’t care about you, you’re out, you’re finished.’ Now Chelsea have a responsibility to that player, so when the players all talk, the likes of Yoanne Wissa and Alexsander Isak will go, ‘Look at Sterling, look at how he’s been treated. Brentford and Newcastle are saying they want us to stay here and will lavish us with long contracts, but if we were surplus to requirements, we’d be doing what Sterling was doing.’ 

And it’s exactly what’s happened with Liverpool, whether Alexander-Arnold’s a scouser or not. A lot of Liverpool fans will be angry because they hold him to a different level because he was the scouser in the team. But the reality is, if you can run a contract down, you’re going to get paid an extra, particularly with Real Madrid, and you saw they paid the £10m just to get him there for the week in the FIFA Club World Cup, which is crazy, but they wanted him there. That he will pocket another £30m or £40m, and that’s the reality of it.

And for us football fans, and I’m a match-going fan as well as a former player, you just have to accept that while they’re playing in your shirt, enjoy them, when they’re not playing so well, they’ll go off radar and go somewhere else. And I think if you take that attitude, you can still love your club, you can still support it, but with a lot less anger and less concern. 

Liverpool have got in now, Jeremie Frimpong and Milos Kerkez, and they’ll settle into the team, and you’ll see their performance become more and more consistent. But to go back to my first answer to you, once Real Madrid comes knocking, they’ll get you. If they say enough times, ‘We want you to come to Real Madrid’, there are very few players in the world that will resist. 

Stan Collymore was speaking exclusively to Get Spanish Football News on behalf of NewBettingSites.uk. 

GSFN | Nick Hartland