Scott Murray's Blog, page 52
June 30, 2022
Switzerland 0-4 England: women’s international friendly – as it happened
Sarina Wiegman’s team go into the Euros on a high after a Swiss stroll
1 min: Switzerland start brightly. Bachmann turns into space down the middle and lays off for Maendly, who scoops a pass down the right for Sow. She’s got time and space, but can’t find anyone in the middle with her low cross. England clear.
Switzerland get the ball rolling ... but only after both sets of players take the knee to warm applause. There’s no room for racism. 11,000 tickets have been sold for this game, a Swiss women’s record.
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The Fiver | Richarlison heads for tangible reward and glory with … Tottenham
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It was a great season for Everton. By spectacularly avoiding relegation, they achieved that rare thing in the Premier League era: a memorable campaign, one for the ages to go alongside the time they avoided relegation in 1998, and the time they avoided relegation in 1994, and the year they finished proudly above Rafael Beneath-Us who then won Big Cup a couple of weeks later. But the best players set their sights even higher than these lofty goals, which explains why Richarlison wants out, up and away. He’s leaving to pursue tangible reward and glory with
Continue reading...June 28, 2022
The Fiver | Newcastle United’s third kit reminding us of something familiar
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Newcastle United boast one of the most iconic shirts in world football. Black stripes and white stripes, basic yet beautiful, a stone-cold elemental classic. That hasn’t stopped kit designers through the ages sticking their nebs in to varying degrees of abject failure, though. The blue trim. The all-black chest panel. The Micky Quinn-era irregular stripes that really did look like an actual barcode. And of course last season’s why-didn’t-we-think-of-this-when-we-were-scribbling-it-down-on-the-back-of-a-fag-packet 4 abomination. Oh Adidas, Puma, Umbro and Castore! How could you, you, you and you.
Continue reading...Football transfer rumours: Anthony Gordon and Richarlison to Spurs?
Today’s tittle-tattle is distinctly Spursy
October 1958, and new Tottenham Hotspur manager Bill Nicholson applauds his team off the pitch after they belt Everton 10-4 in his very first game in charge. “It can only get worse,” deadpans Danny Blanchflower. Spurs of course go on to win the double not that long after. Now they’re planning to do another spectacular number on the Toffees, by running off with Richarlison and Anthony Gordon. Antonio Conte to follow in Bill Nic’s title-winning footsteps? You wouldn’t put anything past him.
Tottenham are also interested in Barcelona defender Clément Lenglet. Spurs have never beaten Barça, never mind by six goals.
Continue reading...June 26, 2022
Women’s PGA Championship: Chun In-gee wins third major title – as it happened
Chun In-gee recovers after a shaky start to land her third major title, condemning Lexi Thompson to another painful near miss
Kim Sei-young is going backwards at pace. A careless three-putt bogey on the par-five 11th, her third in four holes, sends the 2020 champion back to -3.
The final trio respond by quickly sending away their tee shots at the downhill par-three 10th. Choi dunks into a bunker to the left. Thompson and Chun find the green, but neither are particularly close. Choi can’t get up and down. She slips back to -3. Thompson leaves her long first putt four feet short, the sort of distance that’s been so troublesome for her over the years. But she pops in a fine saver. A fuss-free two-putt par for Chun. Meanwhile all will be wary of the presence of the new US Open champion Minjee Lee, who having started cold with bogeys at 1 and 2, has since birdied 5, 9 and now 11 to move into serious contention.
Continue reading...June 23, 2022
The Fiver | The Football League fixtures are out!
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The new Championship season starts in 37 days. For goodness sake will someone please STOP FOOTBALL. They’re not going to, though, are they, and to belabour the point, The Man has now released the fixture list for it. Running to 74,391 pages, it’s quite the screed, those poor burned-out packhorse players, no holiday for them, surely at some point somebody’s got to listen to Jürgen Klopp. But such a sizeable document will inevitably contain one or two nuggets of interest, and we’re pretty sure we can get two more paragraphs out of it. If we brazenly vamp.
Continue reading...June 22, 2022
Football transfer rumours: Real Madrid to pip Chelsea for Sterling?
Today’s rumours are standing strong
Manchester United boss Richard Arnold [subs please check] is, as has been previously reported in the Rumour Mill, on the verge of making Ajax defender Lisandro Martínez his first signing. But he also wants the Brazilian winger Antony, and Ajax will only sanction the sale of one or the other, so it’s time to choose. Expect both, or neither, or one of them to turn up at Old Trafford soon, according to your own particular levels of pessimism.
Newcastle are going to start throwing their weight around in the market sooner or later. Reims striker Hugo Ekitike is primed to be their first summer signing, though Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich may have something to say about that.
Continue reading...June 19, 2022
Matt Fitzpatrick wins 2022 US Open – as it happened
The 27-year-old from Sheffield claimed his first major by winning a thriller at Brookline with a superb bunker shot on the 18th
The very early clubhouse leader is Guido Migliozzi. The 25-year-old Italian, who finished in a tie for fourth last year at Torrey Pines, signs for an excellent 66. That’s better than anything posted yesterday, and shows what is possible. Scottie Scheffler doesn’t seem in need of any such advice, though, as he rolls in his 15-foot birdie putt on 2, joining the leaders in short order. Hadwin meanwhile can only advance his ball from the thick fescue to lighter rough, but does extremely well to get up and down to limit the damage to bogey.
-4: Scheffler (2), Zalatoris, Fitzpatrick
-3: Rahm
-2: McIlroy (2), Bradley
-1: McCarthy (4), Burns (2), Hadwin (2)
June 18, 2022
US Open golf 2022: third round – as it happened
Not the start Matt Fitzpatrick wanted. A three-footer for par pulled left at 1. He slips back to -1. He left the flagstick in there, as he usually does, but the wind was blowing it around like crazy. That surely can’t have helped. A fair chance he’ll be taking it out for the shorter putts from now. Meanwhile on 6, Will Zalatoris misses the green to the right and doesn’t get particularly close with his chip on, but he steers in the left-to-right 12-footer to remain at -3.
-5: Morikawa, Dahmen
-4: Buckley, Rahm, McIlroy, Wise, Hossler
-3: Zalatoris (6), Hardy, Scheffler, NeSmith, Rodgers, Harman
-2: Burns (2)
-1: Kim (6), Lingmerth (4), Vick -a- (2), Hadwin (2), Fitzpatrick (2)
June 17, 2022
US Open golf 2022: second round – as it happened
Sam Burns sends his drive at the short par-four 5th into thick fescue up a bank to the right of the green. He’s got a bunker to navigate as well, but plenty of green to play with. He whips a high lob to five feet, which is nothing short of miraculous from where he was, then calmly strokes the birdie putt into the centre of the cup. His third bird of the day, and he suddenly becomes a serious part of the conversation at -2.
... so perhaps Adam Hadwin’s street-fighting par on 10 was the harbinger of a scrappy day. He sends his tee shot at the short 11th into the heart of the green, but rolls an excitable downhill 20-footer six feet past, and can’t make the one coming back. All of a sudden, debutant MJ Daffue has a three-stroke lead at the US Open!
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