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🚨 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.”

🚨 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.”

🚨 Arsène Wenger on Arsenal players being left out of the Ballon d’Or top 10: 🗣️ Arsène Wenger: “No Arsenal player finished in the top 10. Declan Rice is fifteenth. William Saliba is joint twenty-ninth. That is the ranking. These players spent the season in the Premier League and the Champions League. They faced the strongest opposition in Europe every week. They were not peripheral. They were central to results against the best teams. Their performances were consistent and they were decisive in matches that mattered. Yet they are outside the top 10. “Michael Olise finished ninth. Lionel Messi finished fifth. Olise played at Bayern Munich in the Bundesliga. He was one of the most important players in that league. He created chances, he scored, he influenced games at a high level. Messi played at Inter Miami in MLS. The standard of opposition is different. The physical demands are different. The pressure is different. Still, Messi is fifth and Olise is ninth. Arsenal’s players, who competed in a more demanding environment, finished behind both. “Rice was asked to control the midfield against top sides in England and Europe. He did that repeatedly. Saliba was asked to defend against the best attackers in those competitions. He did that at a high level. These were not isolated performances. They were sustained across a full season of difficult matches. The ranking places them outside the top 10 while placing a player from MLS above them and above Olise. “The Ballon d’Or is presented as a recognition of the best seasons. These positions do not reflect the seasons Arsenal’s players had. They do not reflect the level of football they played. They do not reflect the quality of opposition they faced week after week. The list puts Messi fifth, Olise ninth, and Arsenal players outside the top 10. That is the outcome of the voting. “People will point to reputation or individual moments. Those factors exist. They do not explain why players who performed consistently in the Premier League and Champions League finish below someone who was in MLS. They do not explain why Olise, who was central to Bayern’s season, sits below Messi. The ranking does not align with the demands of the seasons. “This is what the voters produced. No Arsenal player in the top 10. Rice fifteenth. Saliba joint twenty-ninth. Olise ninth. Messi fifth. The football played by Arsenal’s players does not support those positions. The ranking stands as it is. It does not match the year they had.”

🚨 Zinedine Zidane on Harry Kane winning the 2026 Ballon d’Or: 🗣️ Zinedine Zidane: “Kane has won it. I have seen the list. Mbappé took the Golden Boot at the World Cup, the Champions League and La Liga. Olise was the best in the Bundesliga and the best at Bayern. Kvara was the best in the Champions League. Yamal was the best in La Liga and he won the World Cup. Bellingham was England’s player of the year. Kane did not win a single Player of the Tournament award. He finished first. That is the decision. “People say trophies matter. Fine. Then explain why no PSG player made the top five. Explain why Messi is fifth while he is playing in MLS. He is there largely because of a World Cup. The players who won the major awards are behind Kane. That is what the ranking says. I do not understand how that ranking is built. “This award has been subjective for years. Journalists vote based on what they prefer. That is why the same arguments come back every season. It is not only about Mbappé. It is about the process. The individual awards go one way. The Ballon d’Or goes another way. People are asked to accept it. Many of them do not. “Kane is a good player. He scores goals. That is not the argument. The argument is the gap between what the players achieved and where they finished. Yamal won the World Cup and La Liga Player of the Season. He is third. Mbappé won three Golden Boots. He is second. Kane is first. Those are the positions. That is what the voters produced. It does not match the trophies. It does not match the individual awards. It is what it is.”

🚨 Gary Neville on Manchester United’s record with and without Bruno Fernandes starting: 🗣️ Gary Neville: “Look at the numbers carefully. Since the 2022/23 season, when Bruno Fernandes starts, Manchester United have played 149 games. They have won 72 of them, drawn 33 and lost 44. That works out to 1.6 goals a game, a 48.3 percent win ratio and 1.7 points per game. Those are not outstanding numbers for a club of this size, but they are functional. They score. They pick up points. The team has a platform. “Without him starting, it was 10 games before today. One win. Three draws. Six defeats. 0.7 goals a game. A 10 percent win ratio. 0.6 points per game. Now it is 11 games without him starting after the Bournemouth match. One win in 11. That is not a slight drop. That is a collapse. The goals almost disappear. The points almost disappear. The results become consistently poor. That is the pattern over multiple seasons, not one bad run. “Carrick has benched him for Bournemouth. He has made the decision after the form and after Bruno’s comments about the tactics following the Como game. As the manager he is entitled to make that call. But the data without Bruno is clear and it has been clear for a long time. When he does not start, the team scores less than half a goal a game on average. They take less than a point a game. They win once every 11 matches. That is not sustainable. That is not a small sample. That is 11 games across different managers and different situations, and the outcome is the same. “Bruno has not been playing well. The team has not been playing well. Everyone can see that. But these numbers show what happens when he is removed from the starting eleven. The midfield creates less. The chances become fewer. The opposition finds it easier to control the game. The team becomes less of a threat in every department. That is not an opinion. That is what the record shows over nearly 160 games with and without him. “Carrick has chosen to go without him today. The record without him starting is one win in 11. The goals drop from 1.6 a game to 0.7. The points drop from 1.7 to 0.6. Those are the facts. The decision has been made. The numbers are what they are. Manchester United have been a different team without Bruno Fernandes starting, and the difference is not small.”

🚨 Roy Keane on Michael Carrick benching Bruno Fernandes against Bournemouth: 🗣️ Roy Keane: “Carrick has dropped him. The captain is on the bench. That is a big decision. It follows the bad form and it follows what Bruno said after Como. He went on television and spoke about the tactics. He pointed at the staff. Now the manager has made his choice. “This is what happens when you do that. You cannot criticise the manager in public and then expect everything to stay the same. Bruno has not been performing. The team has not been performing. Carrick has decided he is not starting. That is the manager’s right. That is his job. “Bruno is the captain. He should be leading by example. Instead he has been talking about what the staff decided. Now he is watching from the bench. That is the consequence. Manchester United need results. They need players who are ready. If the captain is not in the team, that tells you where things stand. “Carrick has acted. He has made a decision. Bruno will have to respond. Either he comes back better or this becomes a bigger problem. You do not drop the captain lightly. He has done it. That is the message.”

🚨In 2007, after Francesco Totti turned down Manchester United: Sir Alex Ferguson said, "De Rossi is the most dangerous player in Roma." The journalist asked, "What about Totti?" Sir Alex Ferguson replied, "I don't know that player." Totti responded, "I'll make sure Ferguson knows me on the pitch." The match ended 7-1 for United.

🚨 Bruno Fernandes on the burglary at his home while he was playing against Como: “I only found out after the game. We had just lost 4-1. I was already angry. Then I got the call. Someone had broken into our house while I was on the pitch. Ana was waiting for me. She was shaken. She had to deal with it alone until I got back. That is the part that hurts the most. “You leave your home to go and play. You trust that everything will be fine. Your wife is there. Your life is there. And then you come back to police, to broken doors, to things missing. It does not feel real. We have lived in that house for years. It is supposed to be safe. It is supposed to be our place. Now it feels different. “I was trying to focus on the match. I was trying to be the captain. I did not know this was happening. When I heard, I could not think straight. Ana is strong, but she should not have had to go through that by herself. I should have been there. I was not. That is what stays with me. “The police are looking into it. We are dealing with everything. But it is hard to sleep. It is hard to switch off. You play a bad game and you think that is the worst part of the night. Then you realise someone came into your home while you were away. That is worse. Much worse. “We will get through it. We have to. But right now it feels heavy. Ana is upset. I am upset. It is not something you just move on from. Not straight away. We just want our home to feel like our home again.”

🚨 Roy Keane on the referee counting Manchester United players when Como scored their fourth goal: 🗣️ Roy Keane: “I saw the referee counting the United players. He was looking around to check how many of them were still on the pitch when Como scored. That tells you everything. They were not organised. They were not ready. They were not in the right positions. A referee should not have to count your players in the middle of a goal. “That is not a small thing. When the opposition is attacking and your players are still coming back or standing in the wrong places, you are already beaten. Como scored and the referee had to make sure United had the right number of men on the field. That is embarrassing. It shows the lack of concentration. It shows the lack of urgency. “Manchester United used to be the team that made opponents count their players. Now the referee is doing it for them. That is how far the standards have dropped. You cannot keep conceding goals like that and then wonder why the result is 4-1. The players need to be ready. The referee should never have to count them.”

🚨 Roy Keane on the public fallout between Bruno Fernandes and Michael Carrick: 🗣️ Roy Keane: “This is a mess. Bruno is on television blaming the staff. Carrick is saying the players cannot choose when they want to perform. They are both talking publicly after a 4-1 defeat and neither of them is taking proper responsibility. That is not how you fix a football club. “The relationship is broken. You can see it. The captain is pointing at the manager. The manager is pointing at the players. The fans are watching all of it. When the senior players and the coach are doing this in public, the young players see it too. It creates doubt. It creates excuses. Manchester United do not need excuses right now. They need standards. “Someone has to stop this. You cannot have the captain and the manager at each other through the media. It does not matter who is right. It looks weak. It looks divided. Carrick has to get control of the dressing room. Bruno has to stop talking about the staff and start talking about what the players are going to do better. Until that happens, nothing changes. The results will not improve while they are busy blaming each other.”

🚨 Ruud van Nistelrooy on Bruno Fernandes calling out Michael Carrick and the staff after the 4-1 loss to Como: 🗣️ Ruud van Nistelrooy: “Bruno has gone on television and put it on the manager and the staff. He is saying the decision was not to press man-to-man and that they left space. That is not how a captain speaks after a 4-1 defeat. You do not go public and point the finger at the people above you when the team has just been embarrassed. “This is 10 times worse than what Martinez said. Martinez spoke out of frustration. Bruno has done it calmly on live television, as the captain, and made it about the staff. That is calculated. He is the captain. His job is to lead the players on the pitch, not to explain why the tactics did not work. Como’s centre-back was coming out to mark him in his own half. That is what happens when you do not press as a team. Instead of taking responsibility for that, he is telling everyone it was a staff decision. That is weak. “Manchester United captains do not do this. You can disagree inside. You can say it in the dressing room. You do not go on live television after a result like that and make it about the manager. The performance was unacceptable. Bruno should have been talking about what the players did wrong, not what the staff decided. That is not leadership. That is looking for cover.”

🚨 Michael Carrick on ignoring his players after the 4-1 loss to Como: “I went straight to the fans. They travelled. They watched that. They deserved something first. The players can wait. What they put out there was not just bad. It was unacceptable. I am not going to stand there and clap them after that performance. “They know it. I know it. The fans know it. We were beaten in every area. We did not press. We did not compete. We did not look like a Manchester United team. I am here to say sorry to the supporters. That is the priority. The players will hear from me inside. They do not need a clap on the pitch after a night like that. “I headed down the tunnel because I was angry. Angry at the result. Angry at the level. Angry that we gave the fans nothing. They can be upset that I did not acknowledge them. I am more upset that we played like that. Next time they have to give me a reason to clap them. Tonight they did not.”

🚨 Ryan Giggs on Bruno Fernandes’ clash with Bryan Mbeumo and the state of the Manchester United team: “The clash between Bruno and Mbeumo was not the real problem. The real problem is the whole team. Bruno was right to go at him. Mbeumo was not pressing. He was standing there while Como kept the ball. That is not acceptable. But it was not only him. The entire side looked slow, soft and unwilling to work. “Under Sir Alex Ferguson this would never have been allowed. Fergie would not have waited until the game was over. He would have been straight at them at half-time and told them the truth. If players were not pressing, he made it clear on the spot. He demanded standards every single day. Right now those standards are gone. Players are walking. They are not closing spaces. They are not winning their duels. Bruno can shout all he wants. If the rest of the team does not follow, nothing changes. “Fergie built teams that ran for each other. They hunted the ball together. They did not wait for one player to do it. Tonight United waited. Como pressed as a unit and United stood and watched. That is why they lost 4-0. The argument between Bruno and Mbeumo is just a symptom. The whole team has dropped the level that Fergie used to demand. Until they start running for each other again, results like this will keep happening.”

🚨 Arsene Wenger on reports Manchester City could face a 100-point deduction: 🗣️ Arsene Wenger: “One hundred points is not enough. It does not even begin to cover the damage they have done. For years they have spent money that other clubs could not match, signed players that other clubs could not compete for, and won titles that other clubs had no realistic chance of challenging. And now we are supposed to believe a points deduction is the full price of that. “The Premier League has been distorted. The table has been distorted. The transfer market has been distorted. Clubs that tried to play by the rules have been left behind while one club operated on a different financial planet. A hundred points does not give those clubs their seasons back. It does not give them the players they lost in the market. It does not give them the titles that were decided before a ball was kicked. “They should be relegated. They should be banned from Europe for longer than five years. The ownership should be forced to sell. And every title won during the period under investigation should be stripped. Anything less is an insult to every club that has been competing against an unfair advantage. “I have said for years that financial rules only matter if they are enforced properly. If the evidence is as serious as these reports suggest, then one hundred points is the minimum, not the maximum. The damage they have caused to the competition is bigger than any single punishment that has been discussed. The league needs to show it is willing to protect itself. Right now, even a hundred points looks like a compromise.”

🚨 BREAKING: Manchester City could face a 100-point deduction that would GUARANTEE their relegation from the Premier League. Sources claim the punishment under discussion includes: • 100-point deduction • Fine double the size of previous financial breaches • 5-year ban from European competition • Forced ownership change 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.

🚨 Pep Guardiola praises Enzo Maresca for his record-breaking start at Manchester City: 🗣️ Pep Guardiola: “What Enzo has done is special. Seven wins from seven games. No manager in the Premier League has ever started their career like that. I have been in this league long enough to know how difficult it is. You face good teams every week. One bad day and the run is over. He has not had that bad day. “I am happy for him. I am happy for the players. When I watched the team, I saw organisation. I saw players who knew exactly what was expected of them. That is not easy to achieve so quickly. He has given them clarity, and they have responded with results. “People will talk about the squad he inherited. They are right to. But the squad still has to be coached. The ideas still have to be implemented. Enzo has done that, and the table shows it. A record-breaking start is not just a number. It is proof that the players trust him and that he knows how to use them. “I wish him well. City are in good hands. If he continues like this, the record will only be the beginning. He deserves the praise. The results speak for themselves.”

🚨 Luis Enrique on resting eight key players for Strasbourg despite PSG sitting 6th in Ligue 1: 🗣️ Luis Enrique: “I know what people are saying. We have won only three of our six league games. We are sixth. And still I have left Doué, Dembélé, Vitinha, Ruiz, Mendes, Hakimi, Pacho and Marquinhos out of the starting team for Strasbourg. They look at the table and they say I am not taking the league seriously. “I am taking it seriously. That is why I am protecting these players. We have Barcelona in the Champions League in midweek. That is a match that can define our season. If I play the same eleven every weekend, I will arrive in Europe with tired players and a higher risk of injury. I would rather drop points now and have the right players available for the bigger games than chase every league point and then lose the ones that matter most. “The media will criticise the rotation. They always do. When we rest players and lose in Europe, they say we were not serious enough in the league. When we rest players and win in Europe, they say the league is too weak. I cannot control that conversation. I can control which players are ready on the night we play Barcelona. “Sixth place is not where we want to be. But the season is long. We have depth in the squad for a reason. Today Strasbourg will face a different PSG. On Wednesday, Barcelona will face the one we believe gives us the best chance. That is the decision I have made, and I will live with the criticism that comes with it.”