Stories By Jamie Smith

• Sport

  Who would make a Chelsea and Manchester City combined XI?

  The two favourites for the Premier League title meet at Stamford Bridge this weekend with Premier League champions Manchester City taking on Champions League winners Chelsea. It promises to be a titanic tussle with City looking to bounce back from a surprising goalless draw at home to Southampton, while Chelsea were irresistible in their 3-0 win at Tottenham.

• Sport

  Tottenham vs Chelsea – 5 classic games

  The game of the weekend is a London derby, as Tottenham vs Chelsea takes place on Sunday. Both clubs have made a strong start to the new season, though Spurs’ 100 per cent record under new boss Nuno Espirito Santo was shot down in style at Crystal Palace last week.

• Sport

  Who are the contenders for the 2021 Premier League sack race?

  After a handful of games of the new Premier League season, some managers are already feeling the heat after their teams made a poor start to the new campaign. No chairman enters a season expecting to have to change their manager after just a few weeks but the spectre of relegation and the financial impact it brings has a tendency to focus minds.

• Sport

  6 free agents for Premier League clubs to consider

  The transfer window might be closed until January but that does not mean Premier League clubs are prevented from adding new players to their squads. Players who are free agents are able to negotiate with teams and, as long as a club has room in their squad to register them, they can do so despite the window being closed.

• Sport

  5 Premier League players who returned to former clubs

  A blockbuster summer transfer window saw Romelu Lukaku and Cristiano Ronaldo return to their old clubs in massive deals, signing for Chelsea and Manchester United respectively. Heading back to familiar surroundings is often a popular move for players who may feel they have something to prove, in the case of Lukaku who struggled to break through in his first spell at Stamford Bridge, or who like Ronaldo are aiming to end their career on a nostalgic high.

• Sport

  Who were the bargains of the transfer window?

  The summer transfer window was characterised by mega-deals, with players such as Romelu Lukaku, Cristiano Ronaldo and Jadon Sancho among those on the move in big-money transfers. But with many clubs still struggling financially as a result of the pandemic, others teams had to try to find diamonds in the rough at a much lower price point.

• Sport

  2021 transfer window: Who were the winners and losers?

  There are no points for ‘winning’ the transfer window but with the market rebounding after a period of depression caused by the pandemic, it was a fascinating summer of deals. Some squads are undoubtedly stronger than they were at the end of last season, while other clubs have spent huge sums of cash without seeming to have made any real improvements.

• Sport

  Could Harry Kane join Man City in a swap deal next summer?

  Swap deals are rare in the Premier League. The 2018 move that saw Alexis Sanchez leave Arsenal for Manchester United and Henrikh Mkhitaryan go the other way was very unusual and it also acts as a cautionary tale, with no parties happy with the end result of that transfer.

• Sport

  Arsenal need Arteta to start repaying faith quickly

  Arsenal appear to lurch from one crisis to the next and, after just two games of the Premier League season, Mikel Arteta is already starting to come under pressure. A difficult pre-season was followed by a 2-0 defeat at newly-promoted Brentford in the new campaign’s curtain-raiser, with Arsenal then losing at home to Chelsea by the same score.

• Sport

  5 of the best Arsenal vs. Chelsea matches ever

  This weekend sees the first big London derby of the new Premier League season when Arsenal welcome Chelsea to Emirates Stadium. The rivals had contrasting opening fixtures with Chelsea enjoying a routine 3-0 home win over Crystal Palace while an Arsenal side, without some star names, collapsed away to Brentford.

• Sport

  An XI of unwanted Premier League players

  With a couple of weeks to go until the transfer window closes, Premier League clubs will be trying to add quality new faces to their squads to boost their chances of a successful season. But in a depressed post-pandemic market, many deals have been hard to get done and that has left managers across the league staring at squads that are cluttered with deadwood.

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