Ndidi leaves Leicester City for Besiktas
The fee for Ndidi is not disclosed but is widely reported to be about £8m.He is the fifth high-profile player to leave the club - after Jamie Vardy, Connor Coady and goalkeepers Daniel Iversen and Danny Ward - following the Foxes relegation from the Premier League last season.Leicester begin their Championship campaign at home to Sheffield Wednesday on Sunday [16:30 BST].
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13 minutes ago
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Wrexham AFC: Conor Coady reflects on Southampton defeat
Phil Parkinson's men, fresh from securing a record-breaking third successive promotion, lost 2-1 in front of a full-house at St Mary's Stadium. Josh Windass gave the Reds the lead from the penalty spot midway through the first half but the Saints, relegated from the Premier League last term, equalised in the 90th minute before scoring the winner deep into added time. It was a heartbreaking end after Wrexham produced a superb display for the majority of the contest and that only gives summer signing Coady heart going forward. 'I am hugely disappointed,' said Coady. 'I'm someone who's shocking when we get beat anyway so to get beat in that manner was tough. 'When it dies down a little bit over the next couple days, we will look back on the performance and pick out some really good bits. 'Have we got to learn? Of course we have 'I think the whole football club has got to learn, including myself, and we will look back at the result and see where we can get better. 'But I thought we really hurt Southampton at times. The way we played, we had our moments in the game. 'We had a couple of chances in the first half, me as well with the chance I put over the bar. 'Just them little moments in the game, can we get right because I think if we do, and we go two or three nil up, it's a perfect performance so really disappointed, but we can take positives.' Ten-time England international Coady, who joined from Leicester City, adds experience to the squad with 485 professional appearances, 198 coming in the Premier League. After starting his career at boyhood club Liverpool where he made two senior appearances, Coady also played for Sheffield United, Huddersfield Town, Wolves and Everton. He is one of eight new signings at The Racecourse, with more expected before the transfer window closes, and he believes the early signs are good with new-look Wrexham still gelling but the 32-year-old insists there is still room for improvement. 'I'll look at it individually what I can do better, how we can get better, how we can get better as a club, but we will get better,' added Coady. 'Let's not take anything away from Southampton, they were in the Premier League last season and Wrexham were in League One. 'We're in a position now where we're fighting with these teams. We're showing that we can play, we've shown we've got an idea. 'New lads have come into the team and playing really well. 'I think it's something to build on and show that we can trust ourselves to be at this level because we've shown against a team who got relegated last season that we can perform. 'Just make sure it's one game at a time. The next one is Tuesday night and just keep it a game at a time and enjoy the ride.'
Metro
13 minutes ago
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Martin Dubravka injury latest ahead of Tottenham vs Burnley
Martin Dubravka is a doubt for Burnley's Premier League opener against Tottenham on Saturday. Burnley signed the 36-year-old from Newcastle United last week as a replacement for James Trafford, who completed a return to Manchester City in a £27 million deal last month. Dubravka did not take part in Newcastle's pre-season tour of the Far East due to a shoulder injury and his last game for Eddie Howe's side was a friendly against Celtic on July 19. 'Martin was scheduled to travel out but he had a shoulder problem and went to see a specialist and I think he had an injection,' Howe told Chronicle Live earlier this month. 'We are awaiting feedback. I think he will be OK.' In The Mixer: Exclusive analysis, FPL tips and transfer talk sent straight to your inbox every week – sign up, it's an open goal. Burnley were beaten 1-0 by Lazio in their final pre-season fixture on Saturday but Dubravka was not part of Scott Parker's squad. Vaclav Hladky started the match in goal, while Max Weiss, who was signed in a £4.3m deal from German second-division side Karlsruhe in June, came on at half time. More Trending 'We're still balancing the load of some players, including the new lads,' Parker said after the defeat to Lazio on Saturday. 'There was a game at the training ground this morning [against Manchester City]. 'Lesley [Ugochukwu] got 60 minutes under his belt and some of the other lads got some important game time too. 'We've looked at the data of the new players and felt it was probably just a bit too early for Martin and Armando [Broja] to play, that's why only Lesley got game time today out of the three of them.' For more stories like this, check our sport page. Follow Metro Sport for the latest news on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. MORE: £104m star told why he should snub Man City for Man Utd transfer MORE: Jadon Sancho in talks with two new clubs as Manchester United seek transfer resolution MORE: Jose Mourinho submits bid for Arsenal star as Mikel Arteta drops asking price
The Independent
13 minutes ago
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The damage Newcastle's disastrous summer could do to their wider project
It was as early as the first days of June that Eddie Howe and his staff feared this summer was going to be 'a big problem' for Newcastle United. The reason then was not yet failed purchases, the departure of sporting director Paul Mitchell or even Alexander Isak. Or at least just Isak. Newcastle already knew about the Swede's ambitions to leave for months. Now, the same fears were growing about Tino Livramento and Anthony Gordon, with the added concern that any unrest could lead to more agitation in the dressing room. The mood was so foreboding that Howe's staff even asked others in football about potential solutions. It was a huge shift from the satisfaction felt mere weeks before, and the end of a season that was the club's best in decades. The Carabao Cup closed that long wait for a trophy, bringing a sense of release around the club. The final-day qualification for a second Champions League campaign in three seasons then seemed to take that further; to embolden everyone, and afford the club the financial assurance to really press on. There was no longer a PSR need to sell stars like Isak. There were instead a host of other latent problems. Almost everything has gone wrong, from start to finish and top to bottom, and especially in transfer negotiations. The noise around Newcastle on social media no longer sees human rights groups criticising the Saudi state owners to the same prominence. It is instead jokes, and memes, about how comically haphazard this summer has been. Newcastle can't seem to buy what they need as stars want to leave. Worse, transfer pursuits seem to end in absurd ways, a bad joke, with the same punchline. As one figure at a rival club enjoyed quipping when it became clear Benjamin Sesko was opting for Manchester United, 'you can have the most serious owners but you'll still be Newcastle, not Man United'. That was said with some mischief, but is also a touch unfair. This Newcastle's structure is not what a progressive club should look like. That was all too clear from the start of the window, and the departure of Mitchell, since they've been negotiating transfers without a sporting director. Mitchell had immediately caused friction with Howe on his arrival in 2024, but the recruitment guru's most pressing concern was the 'trading model'. He realised just how much needed to be changed to make Newcastle PSR-compliant, right up to the strategy on player profile. The club had to be more nimble. That may be a surprise given Newcastle's success in signings like Isak, Sandro Tonali and Bruno Guimaeres, but most of those came through paying big out of PSR headroom following Mike Ashley's departure, as much as any market insight. As it was, Mitchell didn't sign anyone at all. Some sources relay another frustration, which is the long time it takes to do anything. Insiders talk of how any major decision has had to go through multiple layers and meetings way above the football side, often back to Riyadh. If it concerned a transfer target, one source complains, Newcastle found that rival clubs had stolen ahead in the time it took for them to finally go all in. If such bureaucracy sounds at odds with the vacuum of this summer, there is actually a strange consistency to it all. PIF have naturally been actively concerned with concrete financial decisions, as befits their status as an infinitely wealthy fund. They've just not been immersed in the minutiae, as befits their remoteness. Even players have complained of a lack of visibility from the hierarchy, with no apparent overarching strategy. Former part-owner Amanda Staveley had many detractors in football but her personality formed a culture. This may eventually change with the arrivals of Ross Wilson as sporting director and David Hopkinson as chief executive, but the current situation has inevitably exacerbated the chaos. Club insiders have even joked about who actually said 'no' to Liverpool's first offer for Isak. Howe and his staff currently have much more power than managers are usually afforded by modern clubs, and are described as 'almost running everything'. Such concerns have been accentuated by questions about Howe's powers of persuasion outside the training pitch. A number of targets have found they haven't fully synced with the manager. That happens everywhere, but what is conspicuous this summer is how often it has been mentioned. It's all the more jarring since Howe has done the hard part of restoring the actual football team to Champions League level. This was supposed to be what Saudi Arabia always wanted, the biggest stages. There are instead new doubts about the club's very place in that state strategy. Much has been made of how PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan could be decisive in the Isak saga, given his geopolitical clout. And yet that comes amid increasing talk he has been superseded in Saudi sports strategy by Turki Alalshikh. The rumours about the boxing supremo buying a club - which includes speculation about Sheffield Wednesday - have not gone away. They now run hand in hand with assertions that the Saudis always just wanted one of the biggest names, in Liverpool or Manchester United. The frugality at Newcastle is certainly a contrast to the bombast around other Saudi projects, from boxing right up to the 2034 World Cup and the Saudi Pro League project shaping its build-up. The strategy now looks to be about bringing everything into the kingdom, rather than spreading money outside. Those with knowledge of PIF nevertheless insist they remain fully committed to Newcastle, and that some of this summer's issues - the bureaucracy, the wait for appointments - are just in-keeping with a thorough emphasis on sound governance. Club sources have meanwhile constantly pointed to PSR restricting investment. And yet that very stance only makes the lack of action elsewhere more inexplicable. Why have the ownership not moved on easy PSR - and PR - solutions like sponsoring the training ground, let alone big projects like the stadium? There are more delays on announcements there. Maybe most conspicuously, we're not seeing the same vaunted headlines about investment in the region, an aspect that had repeatedly been raised to justify the highly controversial takeover. There are of course still many reasons to oppose a state owning a football club, above all on human rights grounds. And yet now, unexpectedly in this case, there's another. There's clearly an inherent risk in a club's strategy being dependent on a state's economic policy, and the wider forces of geopolitics. It might even play into the Isak saga. In a normal situation, there would be strong logic for an upwardly mobile club to sell Isak. Newcastle could actually enhance the wider squad, in the way Liverpool did after Philippe Coutinho and Juventus used to make a habit of in the 1990s. They even sold Zinedine Zidane for that purpose. Except, on one side, it's possible the PIF leadership get too hung up on pride and status, and what a sale would 'say'. On the other, selling Isak only works if you have the structure in place to prepare for it. Newcastle, as their staff feared early on, evidently do not. This certainly isn't what it was supposed to be. And yet there's another irony. If you took this summer on its own basic terms, it wouldn't actually be that bad. A good side now has the additions of Anthony Elanga and Aaron Ramsdale, with the sale of Sean Longstaff for £15m, amid some promising other work incoming. And yet, as Howe and his staff intimidated early on, almost everything about it feels 'a big problem.
