England star holding out for Liverpool offer after REJECTING Spurs
Liverpool are facing uncertainty in the centre-back position heading into the off-season. The 2024/25 Premier League champions succeeded in tying down Virgil van Dijk to a new contract - with the captain now set to stay put until 2027.
However, elsewhere in the backline, there could be significant disruption in the transfer window. Joe Gomez has suffered a poor campaign on a personal level and could be sold with the club having considered offloading him last summer.
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Jarell Quansah could be sacrificed in order to fund much-needed incomings elsewhere. And perhaps the most worrying situation concerns Ibrahima Konate.
With still no breakthrough in contract talks, the French defender could be sold before he leaves on a free in 2026. It all means that Arne Slot and sporting director Richard Hughes could be in the market for a new centre-back this summer.
Having seen Dean Huijsen wrap up a move to Real Madrid, the champions will have to look elsewhere for reinforcements.
Guehi back on the menu for Liverpool
And England international Marc Guehi could be back on the menu if a report in Football Insider is to be believed.
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Tottenham failed with a last-gasp move for the 24-year-old back in January but his Crystal Palace contract expires in 2026. The FA Cup winners have little choice but to sell Guehi this summer and previous reports suggested he could be available for only £40m.
The latest report states that Guehi has REJECTED a renewed attempt from Spurs to persuade him and that he is holding out for an offer from a team who consistently challenge for trophies.
Newcastle are also expected to follow up on their interest in Guehi, who joined Palace from Chelsea in 2021 for £18m.
© IMAGO
Newcastle to compete with Liverpool
'Palace boss Oliver Glasner will be powerless to keep Marc Guehi this summer amid interest from the Magpies as well as Liverpool, who are also understood to be at the table,' the report reads.
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'Newcastle United are expected to make another move for the 24-year-old after four bids were rejected in the summer of 2024.'
Guehi is a Premier League-proven international and players of his calibre don't normally come as cheap. If Hughes and Slot are planning to safeguard against depletion in the backline, they could do a lot worse than adding the Eagles' captain.
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19 minutes ago
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‘People think I have disappeared': Joe Morrell raring to go after 492 days out
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How to watch Edmonton Oilers vs. Florida Panthers Stanley Cup Final rematch: Streaming, TV channels, schedule, storylines to watch and more
The end of the 2024 Stanley Cup final was a devastating one for Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers. After going down 3-0 in last year's championship series to the very same Florida Panthers, the Oilers almost made history after coming back to even the series at three apiece. Near-glory ended in utter agony for McDavid and the Oilers, however, with the team falling a goal short in Game 7 as Florida claimed it's first-ever Stanley Cup. McDavid, fellow superstar Leon Draisaitl, Evan Bouchard, Stuart Skinner and Co., have clawed their way back to the Cup final after cruising through the first three rounds of the 2025 postseason. They've now earned themselves a rare crack at the ultimate revenge: halting Florida's semi-dynastic three-year run and bid for a second-straight Cup as No. 97 gets a chance to lift the trophy over his head for the first time in his already illustrious NHL career. The defending Cup champs out of South Florida will have something to say about that, though, as the team enters its third-straight Cup final appearance on a heater of its own, winning seven straight series dating back to last postseason. The Panthers, like the Oilers, have earned their latest Cup final berth on the heels of two five-game series wins — against the Tampa Bay Lightning in Round 1 and Carolina Hurricanes in Round 3 — while putting up two dominant, clutch road victories in Games 5 and 7 against the Toronto Maple Leafs to seal a series victory in Round 2. Will the Panthers continue that road dominance or have they met their match in Edmonton's home-ice advantage? Will this be the year McDavid starts to cement his championship legacy? How will the depth players and goaltenders match up for each side? Is this the year Canada's frustrating Stanley Cup drought finally ends? 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Dates: Wednesday, June 4 — Friday, June 20 Format: Best 4-of-7 series Puck drop: All games scheduled to start at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT Streaming: Sportsnet+ TV channel: Sportsnet, CBC, TVA (French-language) Locations: Edmonton, Alberta and Sunrise, Florida Game 1: Wednesday, June 4, from Rogers Place in Edmonton, Alberta Game 2: Friday, June 6, from from Rogers Place in Edmonton, Alberta Game 3: Monday, June 9, from Amerant Bank Arena in Sunrise, Florida Game 4: Thursday, June 12, from Amerant Bank Arena in Sunrise, Florida *Game 5: Saturday, June 14, from Rogers Place in Edmonton, Alberta *Game 6: Tuesday, June 17, Amerant Bank Arena in Sunrise, Florida *Game 7: Friday, June 20, from Rogers Place in Edmonton, Alberta * = If necessary Sportsnet is broadcasting each and every Stanley Cup Final game. Therefore, you can stream this Oilers-Panthers matchup on Sportsnet+ basic or premium. A monthly subscription currently starts at $24.99/month. 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Modern McDavid contemporary Sidney Crosby went through something similar in 2008 as Sid and the Penguins lost in the final to the Detroit Red Wings before the same two teams went at it in the final once again the following season with Crosby getting it done the second time around to secure his first championship. McDavid has a prime opportunity to do the same in 2025 in what would be a dream season for No. 97 if he can get it done after scoring the 4 Nations Face-Off overtime winner for Canada in February. Florida's success over the past three seasons has largely been due to the fact they have an absolute rock in the crease in Sergei Bobrovsky, who will make his 60th consecutive playoff start in Game 1 on Wednesday. During that time, "Bob" has posted 40 wins, six shutouts, and a .911 save percentage while leading Florida to three Finals appearances and one Stanley Cup title. 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28 minutes ago
WWII veterans speak of sacrifice and freedom on France's D-Day battlefields, 81 years later
OMAHA BEACH, France -- The D-Day generation, smaller in number than ever, is back on the beaches of France where so much blood was spilled 81 years ago. World War II veterans, now mostly centenarians, have returned with the same message they fought for then: Freedom is worth defending. In what they acknowledge may be one of their last hurrahs, a group of nearly two dozen veterans who served in Europe and the Pacific is commemorating the fallen and getting rock-star treatment this week in Normandy — the first patch of mainland France that Allied forces liberated with the June 6, 1944, invasion and the greatest assembly of ships and planes the world had known. On what became known as ' Bloody Omaha ' and other gun-swept beaches where soldiers waded ashore and were cut down, their sacrifices forged bonds among Europe, the United States and Canada that endure, outlasting geopolitical shifts and the rise and fall of political leaders who blow hot and cold about the ties between nations. In Normandy, families hand down D-Day stories like heirlooms from one generation to the next. They clamor for handshakes, selfies, kisses and autographs from WWII veterans, and reward them with cries of 'Merci!' — thank you. Both the young and the very old thrive off the interactions. French schoolchildren oohed and aahed when 101-year-old Arlester Brown told them his age. The U.S. military was still segregated by race when the 18-year-old was drafted in 1942. Like most Black soldiers, Brown wasn't assigned a combat role and served in a laundry unit that accompanied the Allied advances through France and the Low Countries and into Nazi Germany. Jack Stowe, who lied about being 15 to join the Navy after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, said he gets 'the sweetest letters' from kids he met on previous trips. 'The French people here, they're so good to us,' the 98-year-old said, on a walk to the water's edge on Omaha. 'They want to talk to us, they want to sit down and they want their kids around us.' 'People are not going to let it be forgotten, you know, Omaha, these beaches,' he said. 'These stories will go on and on and on.' At the Normandy American Cemetery that overlooks Omaha, the resting place for nearly 9,400 American war dead, workers and visitors rub sand from the beach onto the white gravestones so the engraved names stand out. Wally King, a sprightly 101-year-old, wiped off excess sand with a weathered hand, resting the other atop the white cross, before saying a few words at the grave of Henry Shurlds Jr. Shurlds flew P-47 Thunderbolt fighters like King and was shot down and killed on Aug. 19, 1944. In the woods where they found his body, the townspeople of Verneuil-sur-Seine, northwest of Paris, erected a stele of Mississippi tulip tree wood in his memory. Although Shurlds flew in the same 513th Fighter Squadron, King said he never met him. King himself was shot down over Germany and badly burned on his 75th and last mission in mid-April 1945, weeks before the Nazi surrender. He said pilots tended not to become fast friends, to avoid the pain of loss when they were killed, which was often. When 'most veterans from World War II came home, they didn't want to talk about the war. So they didn't pass those experiences on to their children and grandchildren,' King said. 'In a way, that's good because there's enough unpleasantness, bloodshed, agony in war, and perhaps we don't need to emphasize it," he added. "But the sacrifice needs to be emphasized and celebrated.' With the march of time, the veterans' groups are only getting smaller. The Best Defense Foundation, a non-profit that has been running veteran trips to Normandy since 2004, last year brought 50 people for the 80th anniversary of D-Day. This year, the number is 23. Betty Huffman-Rosevear, who served as an army nurse, is the only woman. She turned 104 this week. The group also includes a renowned romantic: 101-year-old Harold Terens and his sweetheart, Jeanne Swerlin, were feted by France's president after they tied the knot in a symbolic wedding inland of the D-Day beaches last year. D-Day veteran Jake Larson, now 102, has made multiple return trips and has become a star as "Papa Jake" on TikTok, with 1.2 million followers. He survived machine-gun fire when he landed on Omaha, making it unhurt to the bluffs that overlook the beach and which in 1944 were studded with German gun emplacements that mowed down American soldiers. 'We are the lucky ones,' Larson said amid the cemetery's immaculate rows of graves. 'They had no family. We are their family. We have the responsibility to honor these guys who gave us a chance to be alive." As WWII's survivors disappear, the responsibility is falling on the next generations that owe them the debt of freedom. 'This will probably be the last Normandy return, when you see the condition of some of us old guys,' King said. 'I hope I'm wrong.'
