Key events

Sky are reporting that Reece James, who Chelsea confirmed this morning had undergone minor knee surgery, is expected to be out for three months.

Fulham fans fretting about life under Álvaro Arbeloa will not feel any better when they remember how things were under Marco Silva, who was one of the most effective managers in the Premier League when it came to making substitutions.

Silva’s substitutes were involved in the fourth-highest goal contributions last season and the most in the 2024-25 season. Fulham knew how to dig in and salvage unlikely points. But Silva left last summer, joining Benfica after concluding he could achieve nothing more at Craven Cottage, and his replacement is already under pressure after some puzzling tactical choices.

The worrying shift under Arbeloa was evident during Fulham’s collapse against Ipswich last weekend. The west Londoners were 1-0 up and looking good for their first league win of the season when Arbeloa weakened his midfield by replacing Shea Charles with Manuel Ángel in the 70th minute.

It was a strange way to shut up shop. Charles is physically imposing, has impressed since joining from Southampton and was doing well alongside Sander Berge. The 22-year-old Ángel is 5ft 7in, was making his Premier League debut and has little experience of senior football. Ipswich’s comeback to win 2-1 was not a surprise, particularly when Arbeloa’s other rejigs included bringing on Rodrigo Muniz and switching from a 4-2-3-1 system to a flat 4-4-2 in an attempt to defend the lead.

More here:

Can you name the three teams still without a win in this season’s Premier League? If so, you’re approximately 6.7% of the way to full marks in the sports quiz of the week!

Fulham’s Alvaro Arbeloa has held his press conference ahead of tomorrow’s home game against Hull, and has been quizzed on how confident he is that he will still be at the club in a week’s time if they are not able to win:

I am focused on tomorrow’s game, on my players, on my team, that is the most important thing. It’s not about me, it’s about the club, it’s about the players, it’s about the supporters. For me it’s been a normal week. We’ve been working hard. We were preparing for a difficult match against a very difficult team.

I saw the commitment of the players this week, how they have been training. They are so focused on tomorrow’s game. I saw them, how they can play. For me it is the most important thing, the performance of the players. It’s not about my future, it’s about the club and about the players. They are looking for their reward, and looking for a game where they can get a win for our supporters and I think they deserve it.

Donald Trump is likely to end up as the only political leader awarded the Fifa peace prize after Gianni Infantino was told at Thursday’s meeting of Fifa council to make major changes or scrap the controversial award.

The Guardian has learned that several council members demanded the award be abolished and others called for the prize to be depoliticised, with Fifa’s football social responsibility committee to make a recommendation before the next council meeting in Doha on 16 December.

More on this from Matt Hughes and Nick Ames here:

The Women’s Super League table is taking shape for 2026-27. The defending champions, Manchester City, have five wins from five games but more intriguing stories lie elsewhere. Why are Arsenal struggling, who is performing better than results suggest, and in which way are two promoted teams smashing expectations? Andrew Beasley has the answers:

Chelsea captain Reece James has knee surgery

Chelsea have announced that Reece James has had “successful” and “minor” surgery on a knee injury sustained in training. “Reece has already begun his road to recovery and will be supported by the club’s medical department at Cobham during this rehabilitation phase,” the club wrote on social media.

Newcastle head coach Matthias Jaissle says he is uninterested in dwelling on what might have been when highly-rated Aston Villa midfielder Johan Manzambi visits St James’ Park this weekend, writes the Press Association.

Manzambi looked set for a switch to Tyneside over the summer but the deal was hijacked as Villa swooped in to sign the Switzerland international, who has flourished during his short time in the midlands.

Johan Manzambi of Aston Villa, who had looked set to join Newcastle in the summer before Villa intervened. Photograph: Ed Sykes/Getty Images/Sportsphoto/Allstar

The 21-year-old opened the scoring in Villa’s 6-0 Champions League rout of Fenerbahce in midweek and he could rub salt into his former suitors’ wounds when Newcastle welcome Unai Emery’s side on Saturday.

But while Jaissle, who succeeded Eddie Howe after Manzambi snubbed a move to the north-east, is a fan of the youngster, the German side-stepped the question of whether he would have liked him in his ranks.

“He is a really good player,” said Jaissle, who will be looking for a response after Monday’s 4-1 loss at Coventry. “But I’m not here to talk now about players, about rumours, about potential signings. The pure focus is on our players. We have many things to do, many things to improve, and that’s the approach to not get distracted by anything else.”

Joelinton is poised for his first start of the season for Newcastle on Saturday while Dan Burn looks set to be on the bench again, with Anthony Elanga and Jacob Ramsey poised to return to light training next week.

Is there a correlation between running more and winning more in the Premier League, I wonder? We have the answer for you! And it is, to summarise, um, kind of but not really but maybe a bit. Read about it, with graphs and everything, here:

Preamble

Hello world, and happy Friday! Yes, we are all one day closer to finding out if there are any new depths for our teams still to plumb, which is certainly an exciting prospect for my fellow Watford fans. In unusual coincidence news, this Premier League weekend sees all four English teams who were in action in Europe last night play each other on Sunday – Bournemouth v Sunderland, Brighton v Crystal Palace – while the two Scottish teams who played in Europe last night also play each other on Sunday, with Hearts heading to Celtic. Meanwhile table-topping, relegation-bound Manchester City host Ipswich and second-placed Arsenal head to Nottingham Forest, while Fulham and Spurs, like Bournemouth winless in the league this season, seek those magic three points at home to promoted teams, Fulham v Hull on Saturday and Spurs v Coventry on Monday.

But we get the ball rolling with an apology, after Lisandro Martínez begged forgiveness not for what he said about the shambles at Manchester United, but for the fact that the “time and place … perhaps were not the right ones”, which the way I read it is very much a partial climbdown rather than the fulsome version that some are interpreting it as. Anyway, read all about it!