150-1 Qirat causes huge upset in Sussex Stakes
"It's turning into a cracking year," jockey Richard Kingscote told ITV."Ultimately, we were there as a helping hand to go an even gallop and we were somewhat ignored early, then took a lead off Wayne [Lordan on Serengeti]."This horse likes the track and Ralph said even though we're here to help, he can do his best."I feel like a villain, but when I saw it wasn't a grey nose coming towards me, I kept going."Trainer Beckett added: "He is a real Goodwood specialist and Richard is very good in this role."Henri Matisse took third in the £1m race, while the John and Thady Gosden-trained Field Of Gold laboured to a fourth-placed finish.
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Daily Mail
4 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
New striker, same old problems for Arsenal, the young Gunner who continues to impress and the glaring frailities within Mikel Arteta's XI: THINGS WE LEARNED from 3-2 defeat by Villarreal
Arsenal 's Emirates homecoming was spoilt on Wednesday night as a Villarreal side boasting a couple of former Gunners ran out 3-2 winners in north London. Nicolas Pepe and Denis Suarez, who made just six appearances for the club during a 2019 loan spell, were involved in a couple of the goals for the LaLiga side. The former bagged the 16th-minute opener before Karl Etta Eyong doubled Villarreal's advantage just after the half hour. New Gunners signing Christian Norgaard halved the deficit before the break. Suarez then provided the pinpoint pass that allowed former Tottenham forward Arnaut Danjuma to restore the Spanish side's two-goal advantage. Mikel Arteta had by this point made a raft of changes and the revamped roster rewarded his faith by notching the side's second of the match. Arsenal's frustrating afternoon was confounded during the penalty shoot-out that followed the match. Villarreal were again victorious after Mikel Merino, Gabriel and Noni Madueke missed from the spot. Our reporter ISAAN KHAN watched on as Arteta's men stumbled on their north London return. Mikel Arteta will be left frustrated by the result in his side's first pre-season fixture after returning from their tour of Asia GYOKERES STARVED OF SERVICE Thousands of Arsenal fans descended upon the Emirates wearing Viktor Gyokeres' No14 shirt. They had long been crying out for a striker. So when the north London club finally obliged last month, spending £64million on the Swedish attacker, their optimism resulted in Gyokeres' shirt becoming one of the fastest shirt sales for a new signing in Gunners history. Yet on the pitch, it was the same as usual around these parts — an Arsenal frontman being starved of service and feeding off scraps. It's a scene that has been re-enacted time and again last season, and one which will need to be fast rectified if this club are to properly utilise their shiny new striker. Gyokeres showed glimpses of hold up play, including an early flick on, as well as his presence in closing down space when off the ball. But after receiving flack for his 13-minute run out against Tottenham on the Gunners' pre-season tour of Asia, he will have been keen to show what he can do in front of goal. Instead he had to make do with an unrewarding shift in darting around, though not being picked out by team-mates. They did occasionally go aerially to him to limited avail. And Mikel Merino played him through on the hour mark, Gyokeres' shot saved by Luiz Junior. Overall, though, he will be hoping the likes of Martin Odegaard, who started on the bench, will have a much better radar in finding him. WONDERKID DOWMAN SHINES AGAIN A slew of substitutions were being readied on 62 minutes. Yet the loudest cheer was reserved for the introduction of 15-year-old Max Dowman, who the stadium announcer prefaced with: 'making his Emirates debut for the first team'. He, and those in attendance, knew this will be the first of many times Dowman will feature at the Emirates in the coming months. The Arsenal attacking midfield wonderkid, who dazzled on their pre-season tour of Asia, was given another chance to shine — and he did. On 69 minutes he shimmed past a couple of players, shooting wide, before winning a penalty after being pulled to the ground by Pau Navarro who had been wrong-footed by his trickiness. He carried on in the same vein, being picked out by team-mates to frighten the opposition backline with his watertight dribbling abilities and fearlessness to attack the box. The teenager played in a number of crosses which had to be desperately snuffed out. This kid is special. DEFENCE IN PIECES Villarreal's opening two goals saw David Raya pull off good saves, only for an opposition player to steer the rebounds home after pushing past Jakub Kiwior on the back post. The defender could've done better in these instances. More broadly, the backline sorely missed Gabriel. The Brazilian underwent a hamstring operation in April but came on in the second half as he pushes to be fit for Arsenal's opening Premier League match against Manchester United next Sunday. Cristhian Mosquera came on at half-time for Ben White and looked good at right back. He showcased composure on the ball and pace in covering the backline well. The glaring miss, though, was Gabriel partnering his sidekick William Saliba from the beginning. It's a fearsome duo who form the bedrock of Mikel Arteta's defence. When one is missing, a lack of synchronisation is felt. That could be seen in those first-half back post tussles and when the opposition attack broke on counter-attacks. Gabriel will need some time to get back to full match fitness — and Arteta will be keenly assessing. TOO SAKA CENTRIC That sheer imbalance between the two Arsenal flanks continues. Bukayo Saka's talents make the activity on the right wing inevitably lopsided. Most teams would do the same to utilise such a sheer talent. The problem, though, lies with the drop off in quality on the other side where the Gunners are unable to exploit the extra space. Gabriel Martinelli, as ever, looked energetic on the ball but, as ever, failed to make real inroads with a final ball. It points to why Arsenal signed Noni Madueke, who had a short cameo late on, and are still eyeing other attacking signings like Crystal Palace's Eberechi Eze. In fact, in the couple chances Madueke had on the ball he arguably showed more directness. There is a good player in Martinelli, but he needs to up the ante - and fast, or risk losing his place. RETURN OF PEPE Dismal, dire or underwhelming would all describe Nicolas Pepe's time at Arsenal. The £72million signing had such a torrid time in north London that he eventually left on a free transfer to Turkish side Trabzonspor in September 2023 after four years on Arsenal's books. On Wednesday he showed signs as to why the Gunners signed him in the first place, giving Myles Lewis-Skelly a tough test on the right flank. The 30-year-old scored Villarreal's opener, striking a post with a curling effort before collecting a rebound to score past Raya. On a few occasions, he twisted and turned in sprints at Lewis-Skelly, who was occasionally caught on the back foot but battled back. Pepe didn't celebrate his goal, raising his hands in the air. Though on the night Arsenal unveiled their star summer signing in Gyokeres to the Emirates, it was their former flame who came back to haunt them.
The Guardian
34 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Oasis-style ticketing and expendable fans: the battle to retain football's soul
'I'm a bit younger, so this is all I've known,' says Nick Clarke, 'but something that defines this moment is the feeling that it's our last chance. You know that phrase: 'The game's gone'? I think the game is genuinely going away. It's excluding traditional supporters and the communities that built the clubs in the first place.' Clarke has just celebrated his 30th birthday and is coming off the back of a big season. As one of the four season-ticket holders behind the MCFC Fans Foodbank Support, Clarke has been active among the Manchester City fanbase and in the community since the pandemic. With the growing concern over the pricing and provision of tickets at his club last year, he helped coordinate protests by fans whose rivalries go back generations, but whose problems are increasingly shared. Supporters of Everton, Liverpool and Manchester United and others joined City fans under the banner 'Stop Exploiting Loyalty' and in doing so became part of a new wave of supporter activism. 'I know there's all these things about multi-club ownership, private and state ownership, playing games abroad, accusations of killing the soul of the game,' Clarke says. 'But, really, what is the game? It's the communities that go to it, it's the communities that have made the clubs who they are, going back four, five, six generations till their very inception. 'The wider football supporter community are only just now cottoning on that we have so much more in common and if we don't stand together the game is going to be gone before we know it. That's all we have to do and all we can do. We just need to really keep up that momentum.' It already seems there will be reason for fans to take a stand once more this season. It is not the first time they will have come together to demand change, but for those with clubs at the top of the pyramid there is a sense the ground is shifting and the needs of fans is becoming an afterthought, if not an outright problem. At the heart is a concern that clubs want to move away from having matches filled with season-ticket holders towards something more casual, and more lucrative. Imagine every Premier League fixture becoming more like an Oasis gig, for ever. 'The problems are different at different levels of the game,' says Tom Greatrex, the new chair of the Football Supporters' Association, who drove the Stop Exploiting Loyalty campaign. 'In the Premier League, and at the top of the Championship, Stop Exploiting Loyalty has helped to bring to the fore a set of issues that have been developing over a period of time. 'We are seeing that parts of clubs' fanbases, which have traditionally been loyal and go home and away, are now almost expendable to not all, but many of the people that currently run a number of those clubs. It's gone beyond exploitation to expendability.' Fans are suffering rises in ticket prices, the lowering or ending of ticket concessions and initiatives that require season-ticket holders to attend a certain number of games each season or risk losing their place, as examples of this trend. According to Greatrex, the effects are being felt in some grounds. 'The number of people who are there almost to experience something which they're not necessarily part of has tipped into a significant proportion to the extent that it undermines the thing they're going there to experience,' he says. 'There is a real danger that in a short-term push for increased revenue from matchday tickets and associated spend that clubs are in danger of actually undermining the whole 'product' they're so proud of.' One topic that crystallises the anxiety over expendability is that of matches being selected for TV. There will be more televised games than ever this season, with Sky showing a minimum 215 Premier League fixtures. With each televised match comes possible rescheduling and a potentially challenging (or even impossible) journey for fans. Sign up to Football Daily Kick off your evenings with the Guardian's take on the world of football after newsletter promotion 'There can be very very short-notice changes, which make it very difficult for people to be able to attend those matches. I don't think there's been enough focus on things that could be done to mitigate some of the frustration that comes from those changes.' The FSA has called for a 12-week notice period on fixture rearrangements, the provision of more 'football special' trains and the extension of the £30 cap on away tickets into the EFL. The Premier League has committed to giving six weeks' notice of fixture adjustments on all matches until January, but last month had to apologise after failing to meet its own deadline of announcing all September adjustments by 9 July. It is striking that the mood among fans is so febrile at the time the government has passed legislation designed, in part, to give supporters more influence over their clubs. Fan consultation is a central requirement of the new Independent Football Regulator for the English men's elite game and legislation is, in part, the result of long-term campaigning by the FSA. It is not a panacea and its influence is unlikely to take hold for some seasons yet, but Greatrex, a former Labour MP, believes it can form a platform for better understanding between fans, clubs and competitions. 'More than ever, there is an appreciation – among some, it's reluctant, but among others, it's embraced – that supporters have a legitimate voice that deserves to be heard and their views to be considered,' he says. '[The regulator] is actually the basis for a much more constructive approach, which means that if clubs are sensible you can prevent a lot of the flashpoints getting to the point at which they become high profile, because you've dealt with it sensibly ahead of that time.' Clarke would much rather have dialogue than protest. 'I don't want to be doing another protest all my life,' he says. 'I know there's no easy answers but a lot of this protest energy has come because people feel they're not being listened to. That's where the anger comes from.'
BBC News
34 minutes ago
- BBC News
'I pride myself on being a natural goalscorer' - Guiu arrives on loan
Striker Marc Guiu has said sees his time at Sunderland as "a huge opportunity" after sealing a season-long loan move from 19-year-old Barcelona academy graduate scored six goals in 16 appearances for Enzo Maresca's side after arriving from the La Liga giants for £5m last becomes the Black Cats' ninth signing of the transfer window."I'm feeling great and really looking forward to the season ahead," Guiu told Sunderland club media."I see myself as a powerful striker who can make a difference on and off the ball, and I pride myself on being a natural goalscorer."This year is a huge opportunity for me to help take this team where it truly deserves to be."Sunderland sporting director Kristjaan Speakman added: "In a loan acquisition, we not only have to convince the player but also the parent club, and we thank Chelsea for placing their trust in us."Most importantly, Marc wanted to come to Sunderland and be a part of our club. The competition for his signature was significant and he had many high-quality options."Marc's a progressive striker who has key attributes that align with the role in our team."
