🤑 Ratcliffe's SIXTH bid... 🤔

Gm football fans. Route One here.

Let’s get into it.

Today’s newsletter includes:

• 📰 Morning brief… Sancho exiled, Makelele leaves role at Chelsea, Barnes out til 2024

• 👋🏼 Deep dive… handballs on the rise? Explained

• 💰United takeover… Ratcliffe is getting desperate…

RESULTS

Caraboa Cup - Third Round
Tuesday, 26 September 2023

FIXTURES

Caraboa Cup - Third Round
Wednesday, 27 September 2023

🗞️ MORNING BRIEF
Everything you need know

🚨United players urge Sancho to apologise to Ten Hag… but he’s refusing to swallow his pride. He has been ‘exiled’ from first-team facilities including the team dining room… more in The Mirror.

👋🏼 Claude Makelele leaves his role as technical mentor at Chelsea. This comes a day after reports that Bruno Saltor left his role as first team coach… what’s going on at Chelsea? 🤔

✈️ United fans fly ‘Glazers Out’ banner over Tampa Bay Buccaneers stadium. This comes as Jim Ratcliffe revitalises his proposal to take over the club… more on this story below.

🤔 Arsenal backtrack… and say that Declan Rice could be fit for their game against Man City on October 8.

🤕 Harvey Barnes is out until 2024 due to a ‘substantial’ and ‘very unusual’ foot injury…

COLLAB
Something you didn’t expect to see today…

• Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, visits Real Madrid’s headquarters in Valdebebas today. He shared a video of his visit on X.

• Cook was keen to learn more about how the youth teams were managed and how they handled the GPS data during matches and training sessions via iPad.

• It was officially not a business trip, but the club does hope to collaborate with the tech giant in the near future…

DEEP DIVE
Handballs on the rise…? 👋🏾 ⚽️

Three things are certain in life:

1. Death

2. Taxes (a lot of them)

3. A penalty awarded for handball

The Athletic analysed handball decisions this season… but we’ll skip over the boring stuff.

So, apart from the 2016 season (let’s be honest, that was a whacky year anyway), penalties awarded for a handballs are substantially higher from 2020 onwards…

Why is this?

// A new rule was introduced in 2020 which penalised players who make their bodies “unnaturally bigger”.

This means there is little leeway for defenders.

The PL guidelines say that a player should be penalised for handball if:

• The hand/arm is clearly away from the body and outside the "body line".

• The ball travels some distance.

• A deflection clearly makes no difference to the ball touching a hand/arm that is clearly extended away from the body and/or above the shoulder.

• Immediately after touching the ball with the arm, even accidentally, the player scores a goal or creates a goal-scoring opportunity.

// Also, intent does not matter… except if the player’s body is “a consequence of, or justifiable by, the player’s body movement for that specific movement for that specific situation.” 

// and, well, VAR has played its role

But, the main issue is… what does “unnaturally bigger” mean?

Can it be argued that John Egan is making his body unnaturally bigger against City this weekend?

What about Romero against Arsenal?

These are natural positions for a defender when they’re balancing their bodies.

The distance from ball to hand is a yard, if not less.

The letter of the law deems them handballs… and while this is be good news for FPL managers, it’s not ideal for the Premier League…

TAKEOVER
Ratcliffe’s SIXTH bid for United…

There are two questions that no one can answer confidently:

1. Is there life after death?

2. When is the Man United takeover saga going to end…?

At this point, we’re just going round in circles.

Bloomberg has reported that Jim Ratcliffe is restructuring his Man United takeover bid.

What do we know so far?

// Earlier this year, Ratcliffe proposed a 69% takeover of share in United. But this wasn’t well received by minority share holdings, including Lindsell Train, Ariel Investments LLC, and Eminence Capital, who felt that deal offered them little benefit

// This restructuring means that Ratcliffe is willing to submit a 6th (!) bid to the Glazer family.

Ratcliffe’s previous deals were “dead in the water” but his new proposal may revitalise his chances of taking over.

AROUND THE WORLD
What else is there…

• Duncan Ferguson, former Scotland and Everton striker, is the new manager at Inverness Caledonian Thistle.

• Xavi Alonso is set to replace Carlo Ancelotti as Real Madrid manager next season after impressing in his first year as Bayer Leverkusen coach.

• Phil Jones has returned to Man United to complete his global football sport directorship course with the FPA.

• Roma want to turn Romelu Lukaku loan into a permanent transfer, and are willing to offer Tammy Abraham back to Chelsea as part of the deal.

BIG-GAME PLAYER
The puzzle section

Today’s quiz is based on the 2022-23 Premier League season…

1. Which goalkeeper kept the most clean sheets?

2. How many of the league’s 10 top scorers were English?

3. How many different managers took charge of a Chelsea game last season?

Tuesday’s answer:

1. Against who did Shearer score his first friendly goal for Newcastle United? Lincoln City

2. Which team did Newcastle defeat to win the 1951 FA Cup Final? Blackpool

3. What was Newcastle first called, when they were founded in 1892? Newcastle East End

MEME