Key events
Aston Villa v Newcastle is a few minutes away so we’re going to wrap up our preview blog. Thanks for your comments, company and emails. You can join Barry Glendenning for minute-by-minute action from Villa Park. Ta-ra!
Ed Aarons
“Are the obvious excuses for the relative inactivity and passivity of Palace in this transfer window substantial enough to make this excusable? Or is it a deliberate plan to encourage Oliver Glasner to move on asap?” asks John Piper.
The fact that Palace have spent less than any other club in Europe’s top five leagues this summer is a reflection of the uncertainty about which European competition they would be in next season and Glasner has already made his feelings known about their lack of activity. There is an understanding from those in high places at Selhurst Park that Palace must improve their squad but with the futures of Marc Guehi and Eberechi Eze still up in the air – even though they are likely to face Chelsea tomorrow – they are set for another frantic end to the transfer window. Keeping Glasner beyond this season could depend on whether Palace can match his ambitions but there is no question they are desperate for him to stay in south London.
Christmas Pessimism starts earlier every year
“So, here we are, another season,” writes Matt Dony. “And already I’m worried by Liverpool’s defence. Brilliant. Nice to see Mo Salah get his traditional opening day goal, and obviously we’d all take three points however they come. But it didn’t feel like the start of a straightforward (and, I still can’t really believe I’m going to say this) title defence! Ah well. Here’s to another nine months or so of worry and pessimism. Got to love football!”
Championship team news
Derby v Coventry
Derby Zetterstrom, Sanderson, Batth, Clarke, Nyambe, Thompson, Ozoh, Elder, Adams, Jackson, Morris.
Subs: Vickers, Forsyth, Osborn, Weimann, Goudmijn, Rooney, Ward, Brown, Clark.
Coventry Rushworth, van Ewijk, Thomas, Kitching, Dasilva, Overgaard, Grimes, Wright, Rudoni, Mason-Clark, Thomas-Asante.
Subs: Wilson, Kesler-Hayden, Bidwell, Brau, Allen, Andrews, Borges Rodrigues, Obikwu, Simms.
Referee Anthony Backhouse (Cumbria)
Portsmouth v Norwich
Portsmouth Schmid, Williams, Poole, Shaughnessy, Ogilvie, Swift, Dozzell, Lang, Segecic, Murphy, Bishop.
Subs: Killip, Swanson, Devlin, Matthews, Le Roux, Kosznovszky, Bianchini,
Waddingham, Yang.
Norwich Kovacevic, Medic, Darling, Cordoba, Stacey, Nunez, Topic, Pape Diallo, Marcondes, Crnac, Sargent.
Subs: Grimshaw, Fisher, Chrisene, Schlupp, Gibbs, Wright, Schwartau, Makama, Kvistgaarden.
Referee Stephen Martin (Staffordshire)
Wrexham v West Brom
Wrexham Ward, Cleworth, Coady, Brunt, Barnett, Dobson, Matty James, O’Brien, McClean, Windass, Moore.
Subs: Okonkwo, O’Connell, O’Connor, Longman, Mendy, Lee, Broadhead, Smith, Hardie.
West Brom Griffiths, Furlong, Phillips, Campbell, Styles, Molumby, Mowatt, Fellows, Price, Ahearne-Grant, Heggebo.
Subs: Wildsmith, Bielik, Wallace, Maja, Johnston, Collyer, Taylor, Diakite, Cole.
Referee John Busby (Oxfordshire)
“League Cup weekend in Scotland and I’m taking my daughter to her first away game,” begins liveblog regular James Humphries, who seems in a surprisingly chipper mood tod- oh. “Apropos of nothing, can I take this moment to yell at the clouds wrt stadia being plonked on the edge of town so that if you’re going by public transport you have to come at them from about three different angles like a particularly indecisive sheepdog? What a lot of faff just to watch Motherwell getting beat one-nothing off St Johnstone.”
“On Football Manager, I’m old enough to have the analogue version, a brilliant 70s board game called Soccerboss,” writes Jeremy Boyce. “Four divisions with promotion and relegation, FA Cup, European glory, transfers, suspensions, fines… Very much the Monopoly of footie-inspired games. I struggle to understand why anyone would need a non-tactile, impersonalised electronic version.”
Wait till you hear about “smartphones”.
These are the XIs for Aston Villa v Newcastle, a match you can follow separately with Barry Glendenning.
Aston Villa (poss 4-2-3-1) Bizot; Cash, Konsa, Mings, Digne; Kamara, Onana; Rogers, Tielemans, McGinn; Watkins.
Subs: Wright, Bogarde, Maatsen, Pau Torres, Jimoh, Buendia, Iling-Junior, Malen, Guessand.
Newcastle United (4-3-3) Pope; Trippier, Schar, Burn, Livramento; Guimaraes, Tonali, Joelinton; Elanga, Gordon, Barnes.
Subs: Ramsdale, Hall, Thiaw, Krafth, Botman, Miley, Murphy, Park, Osula.
Referee Craig Pawson.
Aston Villa v Newcastle United team news
Peter Lansley
I’m here at Villa Park but Alexander Isak and Jacob Ramsey aren’t (unless in very dark glasses and hoodies).
Newcastle’s want-away Swede is out of the squad and out of supporters’ hearts as he continues to try and force his way out to Liverpool. Anthony Gordon looks like he’ll play down the middle today.
Ramsey is believed to be up on Tyneside continuing his medical ahead of his £39m move from Villa, today’s opponents.
Ollie Watkins has scored five in five pre-season games and has a great record against Newcastle, scoring in the first minute of their last meeting here.
Villa were edged out of the Champions League places by Newcastle on goal difference on the last day of last season when Emi Martinez was sent off and is therefore suspended for this game. Marco Bizot, the Netherlands goalkeeper signed from Brest, therefore makes his Villa debut.
Anthony Elanga, fresh from his £52m switch from Nottingham Forest, makes his Newcastle debut, with Harvey Barnes on the other flank. Malick Thiaw, the new £35m defender, is on the bench.
For Villa, Tyrone Mings, having signed a new contract this summer, is preferred to Pau Torres alongside Ezri Konsa in the heart of Villa’s defence.
London football Q&A with Ed Aarons
Do you have any questions on the London teams for our football writer Ed Aarons? If so, send them to matchday.live@theguardian.com by 11.45ish and he’ll answer as many as possible.
Championship
There are three lunchtime games in the EFL, all 12.30p[m kick-offs.
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Derby v Coventry
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Portsmouth v Norwich
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Wrexham v West Brom
We’ll have team news for those games, plus Aston Villa v Newcastle, shortly.
This is great fun – an interview with Kevin Toms, the man who invented the original Football Manager game back in the 1980s.
Football Manager was first released in the early days of the gaming industry – copies were sold via mail order or at computer fairs. But by 1982, high street stores started to take notice of the emerging video game sector. “WH Smith got in contact and said, ‘We like your game, we want to stock it’, and they invited me down to London. They eventually placed an order for 2,000 units – the invoice for that order was more than I was earning in a year. About a month later, my girlfriend rang me at work and said: ‘Oh another order has come in from WH Smith, it’s 1,000 units.’ When I got home I realised her maths was pretty crap – it was 10,000.”
“Here we GO” is the subject of Charles Antaki’s email.
It’s here we go again time, isn’t it, for fans? Hopefully not Here We Go, which started off as an anthem of righteous resistance in the 80’s, and we know how that turned out. More like here we go round the mulberry bush, ending up, most probably, at much the same place in the league table. Maybe some fun along the way. Hope abounds.
It’s back! No, not football; we’re talking about the phrase ‘stay humble’.
And here’s our interactive guide to all the deals in the women’s game this summer.
“G’day Rob,” writes Chris Paraskevas, our resident Newcastle fan. “Isak looked like he was downing tools well before the end of last season (I’m pretty sure it was called out on the MBM a few times).
“Problems like this are arguably good to have, because it shows that you’ve got the best players in the world that are desired by the biggest clubs. But within the context of an operational/power/time-and-space vacuum at boardroom level, the optics on the situation change drastically.
”The best way to quiet the noise in football, as always, is on the pitch: a rare win at Villa would be the perfect pressure release for all concerned.”
The start of the Premier League season is inconveniently timed, as it crosses over with the last 18 days of the transfer window. Who do you think/hope/fear your club sign in that time? Drop us an email at matchday.live@theguardian.com.
Here’s our interactive guide to all the deals done so far this summer in the men’s game.
Brighton v Fulham (3pm)
Two of the Premier League’s overachievers meet at the Amex Stadium this afternoon. You can read our season previews for each team below.
Sunderland v West Ham (3pm)
The Black Cats are back in the Premier League for the first time since 2017. They come up against a West Ham side whose playmaker Lucas Paqueta starts the season a whole lighter than he was in 2024-25, and we’re not talking about fitness.
Wolves v Manchester City (5.30pm)
For almost a decade, Manchester City were the reliable constant of the Premier League. After a tumultuous 2024-25, nobody knows quite what to expect of them this season. And there’s plenty of uncertainty around their goalkeeping position.
Tottenham Hotspur v Burnley (3pm)
Tottenham’s latest attempt to rid themselves of the ‘Lads, it’s’ prefix began promisingly in Udine on Wednesday, when they held the best team in the world to a 2-2 draw before losing on penalties.
Thomas Frank’s first Premier League game as Spurs manager is at home to Burnley this afternoon. And they have a new captain, a man who will lead by heart-on-sleeve example, for richer and occasionally poorer.
Aston Villa v Newcastle United (12.30pm)
Can we call it a saga yet? If not, Alexander Isak’s (probable) departure from Newcastle is well on the way to becoming one.
Eddie Howe has handled a miserable situation about as well as could be expected, but it has inevitably affected Newcastle’s preparation for the new season.
Thanks Baz, morning everyone. A new season means new kit$, lots of them. Hannah Jane Parkinson has been sorting the wheat from the naff.
Rob Smyth is here to take up the cudgels. I’ll be back later with a minute-by-minute report on today’s early top flight game between Aston Villa and Newcastle United at Villa Park.
Manchester United: The fall from favour of Kobbie Mainoo, the midfielder who seemed to have solved England’s problem position is emblematic of Manchester United’s confused transfer policies. Words: Jamie Jackson.
Liverpool 4-2 Bournemouth: After the final whistle was blown in last night’s match at Anfield, Arne Slot was spotted deep in conversation with Antoine Semenyo, who had earlier prompted an interruption to the game after alleging he was racially abused by a Liverpool fan. A spectator in a wheelchair was seen being escorted from the ground by three policemen at half-time and after the game, Liverpool’s manager was asked about the incident.
“We don’t want this in football, we don’t want this happening in stadiums, especially not at Anfield,” he said. “We should talk about this for a long time because we do not want this at Anfield. It takes the shine off [the game] a bit because our fans were amazing, especially with the tributes to Diogo [Jota, who died in a car crash in July].”
Semenyo later shared another racist message he had received on his Instagram account, accompanied by the message: “When will it stop……”
Football Weekly live! On Thursday 11 September, Max Rushden will be hosting the first live “performance” of the Football Weekly podcast to take to the stage for two years. The show is taking place at London’s Troxy and we’d really love to see as many of our listeners as possible there on the night.
If you can’t make it, the show is also being live streamed around the planet and possibly beyond so you’ve no excuse to miss what promises to be a Big Night O’Fun. Jonathan Wilson, Nicky Bandini, Jonathan Liew and I will be on the panel, while we’ll have fleeting cameos from various special guests and our usual half-time spectacular. Book your tickets below and come along!!!
Spain and France: The Premier League isn’t the only major top flight kicking off this weekend, as the ball has got rolling in both La Liga and Ligue 1 too. In Spain, Barcelona get their title defence under way with a trip to Mallorca, which is nice at this time of year, while their bitter rivals Real Madrid will host Osasuna on Tuesday.
Last night, Real Oviedo marked their return to the Spanish top flight with a 2-0 defeat at Villarreal, a game in which Salomon Rondon missed a penalty for Oviedo before the deadlock was broken. The promoted side also had to play for over an hour with 10 men after losing midfielder Alberto Reina to a red card. In last night’s other La Liga encounter, Rayo Vallecano won 3-1 at Girona.
In France, Rennes beat Marseille in last night’s Ligue 1 curtain-raiser, while Paris Saint-Germain will get their title defence under way with a trip to Nantes tomorrow.
Meanwhile in the EFL: Hillsborough stages its first match of the season when Sheffield Wednesday welcome Stoke City this afternoon and more fan protests are expected from the locals as they implore their owner Dejphon Chansiri to sell his beleaguered club for a reasonable asking price before it goes out of business.
Ipswich Town will host Southampton at Portman Road, with Kieran McKenna’s side hoping to get their first win of the season on the board after securing an extremely fortuitous draw agasinst Birmingham City on the opening day of the season, before losing to lowly Bromley on penalties in the League Cup. Southampton, by contrast, are looking for their third consecutive win under Will Still, having already beaten Wrexham in the Championship and seeing off Northampton in the League Cup.
Wrexham hope to secure their first second tier win since 1982 when they host West Brom at the Racecourse Ground. Ryan Mason’s Baggies beat Blackburn Rovers on the opening weekend of the season before going out of the Carabao Cup in midweek on penalties against Derby County.
Off to flier in League One, big-spenders Huddersfield Town are hoping to maintain their perfect record with a win over a Blackpool side that were fancied to do well under Steve Bruce this season but have lost each of the three games they have played in the league and Carabao Cup.
And League Two side Barrow will be hoping to break an unenviable duck by scoring their first goal of the season at their fourth attempt when they host Notts County at Holker Street this afternoon.
Today’s Premier League action
Overnight headlines: Liverpool’s win was marred by an incident in which a home fan is alleged to have racially abused the Bournemouth forward Antoine Semenyo and Merseyside police have launched an investigation. A man in a wheelchair was seen being escorted from the ground at half-time by three policemen.
Elsewhere, Thomas Frank has said he has no concerns over Cristian Romero’s commitment to Tottenham Hotspur. His new skipper, who has replaced Son Heung-min as captain of Spurs following the South Korean’s departure to Los Angeles, has been accused of caring more about playing for Argentina in the past and has been the subject of interest from Atletico Madrid in this transfer window. Personally, I’d have thought it completely normal to be more emotionally invested in playing for one’s country than one’s club but maybe that’s just me. Thoughts?
Graham Potter has said a weight was lifted off Lucas Paquetá’s shoulders when the West Ham midfielder was cleared of spot-fixing after a two-year Football Association process and as a result, he is expecting great things from the Brazilian this season.
And Brendan Rodgers is growing impatient with Celtic’s’s lack of activity in the current transfer window. Asked once again when he expects to bring in some new players after his side’s routine 4-1 over Falkirk in the Premier Sports Cup last night, the Scottish champions’ head coach answered with a terse “I don’t know”. Given the reservoir of cash Celtic have in reserve and the apparent reluctance of the club board to spend any of it, his frustation, which is shared by Celtic’s fanbase, seems completely understandable.
Matchday live
The Premier League is up and running, as are Liverpool, the reigning champions, following their not-entirely-convincing victory over Bournemouth last night. Arne Slot’s side left it late before securing all three points after surrendering a two-goal lead but eventually ran out comfortable winners on an emotionally charged night at Anfield.
There’s plenty more top flight action today and here on matchday live we’ll be brining you all the build-up ahead of kick-off in today’s early match between Aston Villa and Newcastle. Later this morning our reporter Ed Aarons will be here to answer your questions on today’s game between Tottenham Hotspur and Burnley or any queries pertaining to London clubs you may have.
His particular field of expertise is his beloved Crystal Palace so feel free to send any questions you have to this address. We’d also love to hear what your matchday plans are for the first big afternoon of top flight action.
