🚨 Michael Carrick on JJ Gabriel wiping Manchester United from his Instagram and being left out of the Brighton squad: 🗣️ Reporter: “He wiped the club off Instagram and he’s not in the squad tomorrow. Is this over?” 🗣️ Carrick: “He’s 15. I don’t pick squads from Instagram. He didn’t train. So he’s not in. That’s tomorrow night. The door isn’t closed. We’re not cancelling a child. If he wants this shirt, he puts it back on at Carrington. Not with a caption. With boots.”

🚨 Xavi on Raphinha’s form and how important he is to Barcelona: 🗣️ Xavi: “He is playing at a level that not many people expected. And that is what makes it special. They moved him into the middle. Into the number nine role. And he has taken it. Fifteen goals in the league. Top scorer. Scoring when they need him. Scoring against the big teams. Scoring when the game is open and when it is tight. That is not easy. Because he has always been a player who worked from the sides. Who ran. Who created. Now he is the one finishing as well. And he is doing both. Flick has said it. The numbers show it. The fans can see it. When Raphinha is in that form, the team looks different. Because he gives them the goal threat and the work rate at the same time. He does not just wait for the chances. He makes them. And then he takes them. I have seen players try to play that role and struggle. Because it asks for different things. Movement. Timing. Decision-making in the box. He has found it. And that is why he is so important right now. Look at the games. Two against Alaves. Goals against Real Madrid. Two against Aston Villa. He is not scoring in one type of game. He is scoring in all of them. And the team is relying on that. That is the difference. When a player becomes the one who decides the result, not just the one who helps create it. He has become that player. And Barcelona are better because of it. He has matched some of the numbers Messi had at the start of seasons. That is not normal. And it is not just the goals. It is the consistency. The focus. The way he is leading the team while he is doing it. That is why he matters. Because right now, if he is not in that form, the team does not look the same. And everyone can see it.”

🚨 Gian Piero Gasperini after Roma’s defeat to Manchester United: 🗣️ Interviewer: “How does it feel suffering back-to-back comebacks against United? First with Atalanta in 2021, and now again tonight with Roma?” 🗣️ Gasperini: “It feels like a joke. And not a funny one. In 2021 we were the better team. We had the game. We were controlling it. Then they decided they were not finished and they took it. I thought that was just one of those nights. One of those results you do not want to think about again. Tonight we were 2-0 up. We had the chances. We were playing well. The first half was ours. And then the second half started and they just decided they wanted it more. Bruno scores the penalty. Cunha scores twice. And suddenly we are the ones chasing a game we were winning. It is the same story. Different club. Same coach. Same result. I do not know what to say. For 45 minutes we were fine. We were the ones dictating. Then they started running like the result actually mattered to them. Like they had something to prove. And we could not stop it. I have seen this from them before. Against my Atalanta side they looked out of it. The game was going away from them. Then they were not out of it. Tonight it was the same. They looked finished. Then they were not. And we have to live with it. Because when a team decides they are going to come back, and you cannot stop them, there is not much else to say. You can talk about the chances you missed. You can talk about the moments you should have controlled. But the truth is they wanted it more in the second half. And they got it. They did it again. Against the same coach. And that is why they won.”

🚨 Raphinha pays an emotional tribute to Jesus de Miguel: 🗣️ Raphinha: “Today I do not want to talk about football. I do not want to talk about the match. I do not want to talk about goals or points or anything that normally fills our days. I just want to send all my strength to the family of Jesus de Miguel. May he rest in peace. When the news came through it stopped everything. One moment we were preparing for the game. The next we were reading the words and trying to understand them. And you cannot understand them. Not really. Because this is not supposed to happen. Not to someone like him. Not like this. I keep thinking about how quickly everything can change. How one day someone is just living. Just doing their job. Just existing in the same world as the rest of us. And then they are gone. And the people who loved them are left with nothing but the empty space where they used to be. It is hard to explain how that feels when you see it. You sit there and you read the message again. And again. And you keep waiting for it to make sense. But it does not. It just hurts. I have thought about his family all day. About his people. About how they are feeling right now. About the messages they have to answer. About the silence that is waiting for them when the phone stops ringing. And I just want them to know that we see them. That we are with them. That they are not alone in this. From me. From the players. From the staff. From the club. We are thinking of you. We are praying for you. And we are sending every bit of strength we have to your family. Football will still be here tomorrow. The training. The games. The noise. But today none of that matters. Today the only thing that matters is that we remember him properly. That we do not let this pass like it was just another piece of news. He was a person. He had a life. He had people who loved him. And those people are still here. And they need to know that the rest of us have not forgotten. May he rest in peace. And may his family find some peace in the days that are coming.”

🚨 Eric Cantona on the United fan shouting at Omar Berrada and Jason Wilcox as they left the directors’ box: 🗣️ Cantona: “The fan was right to shout. Security had to get involved. Of course they did. Because that is what happens when the people who run the club forget who the club actually belongs to. Berrada and Wilcox walk out of the directors’ box and a supporter has had enough. He says what he has been thinking for a long time. And suddenly it is a problem that needs security. The problem is not the fan. The problem is the people who have been making the decisions that led to him shouting in the first place. This club used to have standards. It used to have people who understood what it meant to wear the shirt. Who understood that the fans were not just customers. They were the reason the place existed. Now the people upstairs make their choices. They spend the money. They pick the direction. And when it goes wrong, they walk past the anger like it has nothing to do with them. That fan was not out of control. He was saying what a lot of people have been thinking. And he was saying it to the people who are supposed to be responsible for it. You cannot keep taking the support and then act surprised when someone finally decides they have had enough. You cannot keep failing and then expect silence when you leave the ground. The security staff did their job. But the people who needed to hear that message were the ones walking past it. And until they start listening, there will be more fans who decide they have waited long enough.”

🚨 Roy Keane on Manchester United’s second-half comeback against Roma: 🗣️ Keane: “They were 2-0 down at half-time. Booed off. Looking like another night that was going nowhere. And then they decided to do something about it. That is the difference. Not the manager shouting at them. Not the fans singing. The players taking responsibility on the pitch. Bruno steps up for the penalty. It gets retaken. He scores. That is leadership. That is a player who does not hide when the pressure is on. Then Cunha. Two goals in three minutes. One from a mistake. One from a bit of quality. He takes the chance when it is there. He does not wait for someone else to do it for him. That is what used to happen here. Players looked at each other and decided the game was still there to be won. They did not wait for the manager to change it. They changed it themselves. The first half was poor. Open. Soft. Giving the ball away in bad areas. Letting Roma get in behind too easily. That has been the problem for a while. But the second half was different. They pressed. They ran. They wanted the ball. They wanted the win. I have seen teams go 2-0 down here and just accept it. Tonight they did not. And the fans saw it. That is why the noise changed. Because the players started playing like they cared about the result. Carrick will get the credit. That is fine. But the players are the ones who had to run. The ones who had to score. The ones who had to defend when it got tight at the end. That is the standard. Not talking about it. Doing it when the game is going against you. They were nine games without a win before tonight. That is a long time. But one performance like that does not fix everything. It just shows what is possible when the players decide they are going to take it themselves. They did that tonight. And that is why they won.”

🚨 MAJOR BREAKING: Manchester City has been completely cleared of all 115 charges after a private appeal that lasted less than four hours. A source close to the process claims the Premier League panel watched a presentation from City’s lawyers, then unanimously voted to drop every single charge before lunch. The league is now said to be preparing a full public apology, a formal statement admitting the investigation was “flawed from the start,” and a private compensation package worth over £750 million to avoid further legal action. City have reportedly requested that the Premier League also issue a letter to every other club explaining that the charges should never have been brought, and that any previous points deductions discussions are now permanently closed. No sanctions. No fine. No European ban. No ownership review. Just a public acknowledgment that Manchester City were wrongly accused, and a promise that nothing like this will ever be allowed to happen to them again.

🚨 Ian Wright on Mac Allister’s dive to try and get Madueke sent off: 🗣️ Wright: “That was embarrassing. Mac Allister goes in on Odegaard. Says something. Taps him while he is on the floor. Then when Madueke steps in, he throws himself down like he has just been headbutted by a heavyweight. Everyone saw it. The contact was nothing. Madueke barely moved. Mac Allister just decided that was his moment to try and get a red card. VAR looked at it and said there was nothing violent in it. The referee booked both of them and moved on. Gary Neville called it over the top. He called it embarrassing. And he was right. That is not defending. That is not passion. That is a player trying to con the referee into sending someone off because his team is losing. Liverpool fans are saying it should have been a red. They are saying Arsenal got away with one. Fine. Keep saying it. But the truth is Madueke did not headbutt anyone. Mac Allister just wanted him to. And he went down hoping the officials would buy it. They did not. Arsenal won 1-0. They scored early. They defended properly. Liverpool had seventeen attempts and not one on target. That is the game. Not a dive in the 79th minute. Mac Allister can keep rolling around. His teammates can keep appealing. It does not change what happened. And it does not change the result. If you are going to try and get someone sent off, at least make the contact look real. Because that one was not even close. And everyone watching knew it.”

🚨 Mikel Arteta on Arsenal’s first win at Anfield as manager: 🗣️ Arteta: “Fourteen years. That is how long it has been since we last won here in the league. I was a player the last time. September 2012. Podolski and Cazorla scored. We won 2-0. I remember the feeling when the final whistle went. The noise from our fans. The silence from theirs. I have thought about that day more than once since I became manager. Because Anfield is different. You feel it the moment you arrive. The history. The expectation. The way the crowd can make a team play differently. And for a long time, we did not handle it well enough. Tonight we did. Kai scored early. Rice put the ball on a plate. And after that, we defended. We controlled the spaces. We made them play in front of us. We did not give them the transitions they wanted. And when they had the ball, we made sure they did not have clear chances. People will look at the numbers. Seventeen attempts. No shots on target. That is wasteful. That is a team that had moments but could not turn them into something real. We made it difficult for them. That is the plan. That is what we worked on. It is not always beautiful. Sometimes it is about being hard to play against. About waiting for the right moment and then taking it. And about not giving the other team what they need. Fans have been waiting for this. I have seen the messages. The hope. The frustration from previous trips. They wanted this more than a lot of other results. And they deserved it. I was one of the players who last won here. Now I am the manager who has finally done it again. That means something to me. It means something to the club. Because winning at Anfield is not just three points. It is a statement. It is proof that the things we have been building can work in the places that used to be the hardest. Liverpool will be disappointed. They should be. They had the ball. They had territory. They did not have enough quality in the final third. That happens. But it does not change what we did. We came here. We scored. We defended. We won. And for the first time in a long time, we leave Anfield with three points.”

🚨 Andres Iniesta on Lamine Yamal’s performance against Alaves: 🗣️ Iniesta: “People have been talking about him all week. The Ballon d’Or. The defeats to PSG and Madrid. The pressure. And then he goes out against Alaves and scores two and assists one. I watched the first goal. From outside the box. Left foot. No hesitation. The ball hits the net and he celebrates like he has been waiting for it. That is the Yamal I know. The second one was different. More controlled. More like a player who has already decided the game is his. He receives the ball, sees the space, and finishes. No drama. Just quality. And the assist for Fermín. Simple. Clean. The kind of pass that looks easy until you try to do it at that speed, with a defender on your shoulder. He sees it early and he delivers it. People will say it was only Alaves. Fine. But you still have to play the game in front of you. You still have to take the chances. And after the week he has had, he could have hidden. He could have forced things. He could have tried to do everything himself. He did not. I remember what it was like to play at that age. The noise is loud. Every touch is analysed. Every decision is questioned. And when you are the best young player in the world, the expectations do not wait for you to grow into them. They arrive early and they stay. Yamal does not wait either. He takes the ball. He makes the decision. He finishes. And then he does it again. People will compare him to the players we had. To the team we built. That is normal. But he is not trying to be us. He is trying to be himself. And tonight he reminded everyone why that is enough. Two goals. One assist. A 5-0 win. And a smile at the end. That is all that matters. The rest is noise. And he already knows how to ignore it. I have seen young players disappear under this kind of attention. They start thinking about what people are saying instead of what the game is asking. Yamal does not do that. He plays. He creates. He scores. And when the game is finished, he moves on. That is rare. And if he keeps doing it, people will stop talking about the week he had. They will start talking about the player he is becoming. Because performances like this do not happen by accident. They happen when a player decides that the noise does not matter. And tonight, Lamine decided. Fifteen goals. Twelve assists. Twenty-seven goal contributions already this season. More than Kane. More than Olise. More than Mbappé. More than Haaland. More than Raphinha. More than anyone else. He is nineteen years old. And he is still just getting started.”

🚨 Ruud van Nistelrooy on the difference between Amorim and Carrick: 🗣️ Van Nistelrooy: “Amorim and Carrick were given two completely different jobs. And only one of them is being asked to do something difficult. Amorim was brought in to implement a style of play. To reset habits. To build structure. To change the identity of the team. That takes time. It also costs points in the short term. And United fans hate that. They want results now and a process later. They always have. Carrick, on the other hand, is here for six months with one clear objective: get United into the Champions League. Nothing more. Nothing less. No identity. No project. Just points. Short-term coaching is about maximising what you have. Long-term coaching is about building something that lasts. That’s why Carrick can collect more points with the same players Amorim was trying to rebuild. Because he doesn’t care how it looks. He just cares that it works. Amorim refused to take the easy route. Sitting deep. Playing safe. Chasing quick fixes. He stuck to the process even when it hurt him. And they sacked him for it. Or they let him leave. Same thing. Some fans look at the table. Others look at the direction. United fans only look at the table. They always have. And then they wonder why nothing ever changes. That’s the difference. One manager was asked to change how the club thinks. The other was asked to get results before the end of the season. And right now, only one of those jobs is being judged by the points on the board. The other one is already forgotten. People will say Carrick is getting more out of the same squad. Fine. But what is he actually getting? A few more points? A temporary climb up the table? And then what? The same players, the same habits, the same problems waiting for the next manager. Amorim was trying to fix that. He was trying to make them uncomfortable. To make them press. To make them play out from the back. To make them understand that winning the ball high up the pitch matters more than sitting deep and hoping for a counter. United fans called it naive. They called it stubborn. They said he was too wedded to his ideas. And when the results didn’t come fast enough, they turned on him. Now they have a manager who will do whatever it takes to pick up points. And they’re happier. For now. But the table doesn’t lie about the long term either. If you keep choosing the short-term fix, you keep ending up in the same place. Near the bottom. Looking for the next man to save you. Carrick might get them into the Champions League. He might not. Either way, the problems Amorim was trying to solve will still be there when he leaves. And United will be looking for another manager who can fix them. Again. That’s the cycle. And until the club decides it wants more than short-term points, it will keep repeating.”

🚨 EXCLUSIVE: Manchester City have been told that even if they win every remaining Premier League game this season, the maximum they can finish on is 108 points. An 80-point deduction would leave them on 28. A 60-point deduction would leave them on 48. A 100-point deduction would leave them on 8. If confirmed, City would be mathematically relegated before the season is halfway done. Rival clubs are already discussing how the table would be recalculated. No official statement yet from the Premier League or the club.

🚨 Roy Keane on Michael Carrick after the Chelsea defeat: 🗣️ Keane: “People keep saying the players are average. Fine. They’re not great. But they’re not this bad either. And that’s the problem. Because when a team looks this lost, this slow, this confused for ninety minutes, you have to look at the man telling them what to do. Alonso changed the game in the second half. No substitutions. Just a change in how Chelsea approached the match. And suddenly they looked like a team with a plan. What did Carrick do? He carried on with the same thing. Same shape. Same instructions. Same lack of intensity. And when it went wrong, there was no answer. You cannot watch a game like that and tell me the manager is getting the best out of this squad. You cannot watch players looking like they don’t know what to do next and say the problem is only the players. Yes, they missed chances. Yes, Martinez was stupid. Yes, they gave up after the red card. Those things are on the players. But the manager’s job is to make the team better than the sum of its parts. To find solutions when things go wrong. To make average players look organised. To give them a clear idea of what they’re supposed to do. Carrick is not doing that. He’s been given time. He’s been given support. And the team still looks like it has no idea what it is trying to do. No pressing. No structure. No response when the game turns against them. Fans are calling for him to be sacked. I’m not surprised. When you sit near the bottom of the league and you lose games like this, with no obvious plan, people will ask questions. And the question is simple. If the players are not this bad, and the results are this bad, then what exactly is the manager doing? Because right now, it doesn’t look like he’s doing enough. Tomorrow everybody will discuss whether he should stay. Of course they will. It’s Manchester United. That’s what happens. But who is asking why the same problems keep appearing under different managers? Why the team looks the same no matter who is in the dugout? I remember managing. I remember standing on the touchline. If the players were not doing what you asked, you changed it. You demanded more. You did not just hope the same thing would work after half-time. That’s the part I don’t recognise anymore. If I’m sitting in the boardroom tonight, I’m not having another meeting about how unlucky the result was. I’m asking whether this is the standard we want from a manager. And if the answer is no, then what are we prepared to do about it? People will say, ‘Roy, you can’t sack somebody after one bad game.’ Of course not. That’s not what I’m saying. You judge the pattern. You judge the performances, the decisions, the solutions. You ask whether the manager is helping you build the team you want. And if the answer keeps coming back no, then you make a decision. Even if he’s popular. Even if he played for the club. Even if you have to go looking for somebody else in November. That’s how a serious club behaves. You don’t keep a manager because changing him is inconvenient. Imagine what the rest of the dressing room learns when the club finally says, ‘Enough. We need somebody who can give us a clear idea.’ They learn that results matter. They learn that the players won’t always be the only ones paying for poor performances. I don’t want Carrick to fail. I want him to understand the responsibility he has. But if you keep watching a team with no plan and nothing changes, then the problem is no longer the players. The problem is that nobody believes there will be consequences. And until that changes, Manchester United can keep the same manager as long as they like. They’ll keep asking him to solve problems the club refuses to confront.”

🚨 Roy Keane on Michael Carrick after the Chelsea defeat: “People keep saying the players are average. Fine. They’re not great. But they’re not this bad either. And that’s the problem. Because when a team looks this lost, this slow, this confused for ninety minutes, you have to look at the man telling them what to do. Alonso changed the game in the second half. No substitutions. Just a change in how Chelsea approached the match. And suddenly they looked like a team with a plan. What did Carrick do? He carried on with the same thing. Same shape. Same instructions. Same lack of intensity. And when it went wrong, there was no answer. You cannot watch a game like that and tell me the manager is getting the best out of this squad. You cannot watch players looking like they don’t know what to do next and say the problem is only the players. Yes, they missed chances. Yes, Martinez was stupid. Yes, they gave up after the red card. Those things are on the players. But the manager’s job is to make the team better than the sum of its parts. To find solutions when things go wrong. To make average players look organised. To give them a clear idea of what they’re supposed to do. Carrick is not doing that. He’s been given time. He’s been given support. And the team still looks like it has no idea what it is trying to do. No pressing. No structure. No response when the game turns against them. Fans are calling for him to be sacked. I’m not surprised. When you sit near the bottom of the league and you lose games like this, with no obvious plan, people will ask questions. And the question is simple. If the players are not this bad, and the results are this bad, then what exactly is the manager doing? Because right now, it doesn’t look like he’s doing enough.”

🚨 Didier Drogba on Romeo Lavia’s performance against Manchester United: “Some players control games. Lavia decided this one. I watched him and I kept thinking about how we used to control the middle of the pitch. Not by running more than the other team. By deciding what happened next. Lavia did that today. He bossed the midfield. He won the ball in important areas. He moved it quickly. And when he won it for the first goal, he did not just pass it. He gave Rogers the chance to run at their defence with space. That is the difference. People talk about Bruno Fernandes. He is a good player. He creates. He takes responsibility. But today he looked average. He looked like a player who was waiting for the game to come to him instead of making the game come to him. Lavia did not wait. He pressed. He recovered. He connected. He made the other Chelsea midfielders look better because he gave them a platform. I remember when we played United. We knew if we controlled the middle, we controlled the game. Makelele. Lampard. Essien. Ballack. Different players. Same idea. You do not need five midfielders. You need one or two who understand that the midfield is where you win or lose. Today Lavia understood that. He made United look slow. He made their midfield look like they were chasing the ball instead of deciding what to do with it. And when you do that against a team that is already struggling, the game becomes easier for everyone else. I am not saying he is Makelele. I am not saying he is Essien. Those players had years of playing together. But I am saying that for ninety minutes, a young midfielder at Chelsea made the opposition’s best players look ordinary. That is what good midfielders do. And if he stays fit, if he keeps playing like that, then people will stop talking about him as a player with potential. They will start talking about him as a player who decides matches. That is the standard. And today he met it.”

🚨 Bruno Fernandes on the defeat to Chelsea: “People can say what they want about the manager. I’m not interested in that conversation right now. This result is on us. The players. We had chances in the first half. Good chances. The kind you have to take when you’re away from home and the game is still level. We didn’t take them. Amad had opportunities. I had one myself that should have been better. Matheus had a goal ruled out for offside. These are the moments that decide games. And we missed them. Then came the second half. Lisandro picks up a yellow. A few minutes later he gives away a stupid foul in the box. Second yellow. Penalty. Red card. Game over. That is not on the manager. That is on the player. You cannot make decisions like that when the team is already under pressure. You have to be smarter. You have to think about the consequences. And after that, we gave up. I’m not saying we stopped running. But the intensity dropped. The belief dropped. You could see it. Chelsea controlled the rest of the game and we looked like a team that had already accepted the result. Fans are angry. They should be. They travel, they pay, they watch, and they see the same mistakes. Missed chances. Unnecessary fouls. Players making the game harder for themselves. Michael sets the team up. He gives us a plan. He speaks to us during the week and at half-time. But he cannot take the shots for us. He cannot stop a player from committing a foul that leads to a red card. He cannot force us to keep fighting when the game turns against us. That part is on the players. We are in a bad position in the table. Everyone knows that. But we are not going to get out of it by blaming the manager every time we lose. We have to look at ourselves first. Because if we keep missing chances, if we keep making stupid fouls, if we keep switching off when things get difficult, then the result will be the same no matter who is standing in the technical area. And right now, that is the truth.”

🚨 Ryan Giggs on people calling Cristiano Ronaldo’s 2008 season overrated: 🗣️ Ryan Giggs: “I’ve seen people questioning Cristiano’s 2008 season again. I wonder how many of them actually watched us play that year. I was there. I played with him. I saw what teams were doing to try to stop him, and I saw what happened when they couldn’t. “Defenders would mark him with two men. They would follow him everywhere. I remember telling him once that he had two of them worried about him. He just said it meant someone else was free. That was how he thought. He knew that if they focused on him, the rest of us had space. He kept making runs even when he wasn’t getting the ball. He never stopped. He would say if he stopped running he wouldn’t score. You couldn’t argue with that. “Moscow is what I remember most. He scored our goal against Chelsea. Then he missed his penalty in the shootout. He had scored 42 goals that season. He had helped us win the Premier League. He was standing there thinking he might have cost us the Champions League. When Edwin saved the last penalty, the rest of us were celebrating. Cristiano was crying. He had just had the season of his life and he still felt like he had let people down. That is how much it meant to him. “People look at clips and statistics nearly 20 years later and try to say it wasn’t special. We were playing against some of the best defenders in Europe. They prepared for him all week. Then he would do it anyway. We had a brilliant team. I was in that team. Having Cristiano next to us made our jobs easier, not harder. He carried so much of the attention that the rest of us could play. “I saw him win his first Ballon d’Or that year. I saw him win more after that. There is still something about that 2008 season that people who weren’t there will never fully understand. He was different. He was unstoppable. The defenders knew what he wanted to do and he still did it. That is what we watched every week. That is why the criticism does not make sense to those of us who were there.”

🚨 Konstantinos Tsimikas on juggling the ball before missing the penalty against Chelsea: 🗣️ Konstantinos Tsimikas: “I was standing over the penalty. I started juggling the ball. I wanted to stay loose. I wanted to feel confident. Then I stepped up and I missed it. The ball went over. Liverpool were 4-3 up. It was the chance to put the game beyond Chelsea. I put it over the bar. “I made it look easy. I juggled the ball in front of the crowd. Then I missed. That is on me. You cannot do that and then fail to score. It looks confident until the ball does not go in. Then it looks bad. The goalkeeper did not move. I still missed. “I should have focused. I should have just taken the penalty. I should not have juggled the ball. I wanted to show I was relaxed. I showed I was not ready. The miss is mine. The moment is mine. I made it bigger than it needed to be and then I failed to put the ball in the net. “Liverpool still won the game. The miss did not cost us the result. It still looked bad. You do not juggle the ball and then miss a penalty in front of your own crowd. That is not how you take a penalty. That is not how you handle the moment. I will learn from it.”

🚨 Arsène Wenger on the Ballon d’Or controversies and the BOAT vote: 🗣️ Arsène Wenger: “Cristiano’s 2008 Ballon d’Or finished first in the public vote for the best of all time. It finished above Messi’s 2012. It finished above every other year. That season he scored 42 goals. He won the Premier League. He won the Champions League. He was the clear best player in the world. The public ranked that year number one. “France Football has now said the BOAT is not an official award. It is not a trophy. It is not presented at the ceremony. It is a public vote that fans had to pay for. They clarified it after the result became clear. Cristiano’s 2008 was leading. That is when they said it was only a fan poll and not an official honour. “There have been years when the Ballon d’Or process was questioned. There have been years when people said the award was shaped because they knew who was going to win and it was not the outcome they wanted. The public vote has now ranked 2008 as the best Ballon d’Or of all time. The organisers have said that ranking does not count as an official award. “If the Ballon d’Or was decided by public votes, Messi would not have eight. The same public that put 2008 at the top has not ranked every Messi season the same way. They have placed Ronaldo’s years higher. The official tally and the public ranking do not match. That is what the vote showed. “I watched that 2008 season. Ronaldo was different. He was stronger. He was faster. He took games over. He scored the goals that decided matches. He carried his team to the trophies. The public has looked at that year and put it at the top. The organisers have said the vote is not an official award. The ranking still exists. The performances still exist. “The controversies around the Ballon d’Or have always been about whether the process matched the clearest seasons. People have pointed to years when the standout player did not receive the award or when the process changed. The public has now ranked 2008 as the best. The organisers have said it does not count. That is the position. The vote has spoken. The clarification has followed.”

🚨 Sir Alex Ferguson on Cristiano Ronaldo’s 2008 Ballon d’Or being named the best of all time: 🗣️ Sir Alex Ferguson: “Cristiano’s 2008 Ballon d’Or has been voted the best of all time. It finished above Messi’s 2012. It finished above his own 2017. It finished above every other year. That season he scored 42 goals. He won the Premier League. He won the Champions League. He was the clear best player in the world. The public vote has put that year at number one. That is the result. “If the Ballon d’Or was decided by public votes, Messi would not have eight. The same people who ranked 2008 as the greatest Ballon d’Or of all time have not ranked every Messi season the same way. They have placed other years higher. They have placed Cristiano’s years higher. The public has shown where it puts the best individual seasons. 2008 is at the top. That ranking did not happen by chance. “I watched him every day in that season. He was different. He was stronger. He was faster. He was sharper. He took games over from the first minute. He scored the goals that decided matches. He carried Manchester United to the league and to the Champions League. He did not need anyone else to do the heavy work. He did it himself. “The public has looked at that season and placed it above every other Ballon d’Or year, including the ones that gave Messi his eight. They have looked at the goals. They have looked at the trophies. They have looked at the performances. They have decided 2008 stands above the rest. That is what the vote produced. “People can argue about other seasons. They can talk about numbers. They can talk about reputation. The public vote has already decided. 2008 is the best Ballon d’Or of all time. It sits above the years that produced Messi’s eight. The ranking is clear. The vote is clear. “Cristiano was at his peak that year. He was ruthless. He was decisive. He won the biggest trophies and he scored the goals that mattered. The public has recognised that. They have put that season at the top of the list. They have not put Messi’s seasons above it. That is the outcome of the vote. “2008 is number one. It is above Messi 2012. It is above Cristiano’s own 2017. It is above everything else. That is what the public decided. That is where the ranking stands. The vote has spoken.”

🚨 Roy Keane on Mikel Arteta’s reaction to Max Dowman after the red card against Fleetwood: 🗣️ Roy Keane: “Arteta has been filmed speaking to Max Dowman after the red card. The boy is 16. He made a mistake and got sent off against Fleetwood. Instead of protecting him, Arteta is telling him he will not get minutes any time soon. That is the message he chose to give him. “A 16-year-old does not need that. He needs to be told he made a mistake, then he needs to be backed. He needs to be told he will learn from it and come back stronger. He does not need his manager telling him he is finished for now in front of cameras. That is not how you handle a young player. That is not professional. “Dowman is a kid. He is still learning. A red card at that age is not the end of his career. It is a moment he will remember. How the manager treats him in that moment matters. Arteta chose to make it clear there would be no minutes. That is harsh. It is unnecessary. The boy needed support. He got a warning instead. “Managers talk about developing young players. Then they do this. Dowman made a mistake. Arteta made it public that the mistake would cost him games. That is the opposite of what a 16-year-old needs. It is the opposite of what good management looks like.”