Celtic's Maeda considered by Fenerbahce
Celtic forward Daizen Maeda, 27, is being considered by Fenerbahce, who plan to overhaul their squad. (fotoMac, external, in Turkish)Meanwhile, Celtic have received £5.5m following Jeremie Frimpong's move from Bayer Leverkusen to Liverpool, as part of a sell-on clause from when he departed Glasgow. (Sky Sports), externalDefender Gustaf Lagerbielke, 25, will return to Celtic following a loan spell, with a permanent move to Twente Enschede seeming unlikely. (Glasgow Times), externalForward Youssef El Kachati, 25, who has been linked with Celtic, is confident of a lucrative summer move from Telstar. (National - subscription required), externalRead Saturday's Scottish gossip
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Sun
34 minutes ago
- The Sun
Bruno Fernandes enjoys dinner with Al-Hilal ‘secret agent' Joao Cancelo as he faces Man Utd exit decision
FANS reckon Bruno Fernandes is "leaving breadcrumbs" as clues after the Manchester United skipper dined with Al-Hilal "secret agent" Joao Cancelo. Fernandes ' agent has already held "productive" talks with the Saudis as they press for a £100million transfer. 6 6 6 6 And now the Red Devils ' star midfielder, 30, has met with Al-Hilal 's former Manchester City full-back Cancelo. A clip of the Portugal pals at a group meal in a restaurant, has sent speculation soaring that a deal could be sorted within days. Cancelo was 31 last Tuesday - and a birthday cake with blazing candles was presented to him at the eatery. An X account for Al-Hilal fans shared a video from the meal - and cheekily suggested Cancelo was trying to talk the Red Devils hero into moving. The post read: " Bruno Fernandes with Cancelo today... Can Cancelo do it? " One fan responded: "Yes, it's his Portugal teammate but given all the rumours and all the speculation about his future this can't be a pure coincidence. "Of course they discussed his possible move to Al-Hilal. Bruno is leaving breadcrumbs for us. First the quote yesterday now this." That "quote" is thought to be a mysterious message Fernandes posted on his Instagram story. 6 Its English translation was: "If you tried and failed, congratulations! There are people who don't even try." Some fans believe "in the context" of Al-Hilal's interest, those words means Fernandes WILL be leaving Old Trafford. 'Players are not acting in the right manner' - David Beckham slams Man Utd stars' behaviour after fans clashes on tour But nothing is certain yet. And when the dining clip went up on social media, a few observers warned against reading too much into it. One wrote: "Friends go out for dinner together." And another added: "They are international teammates enjoying off season." A third posted: "So this video could mean nothing or it could be everything." And although some viewers pointed out it was Cancelo's birthday week, they also felt it was inevitable a Fernandes transfer was one topic. Such verdicts included: "One can be certain that Bruno considering Al Hilal's offer means talking to all his Portuguese buddies in Saudi to assess opinions on things like the standard of the game, his support system if he goes there etc. " 6
Daily Mail
35 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
The Review: When it comes to boardroom bungling, last season's Championship takes a bit of beating
The inept, hapless way a number of Championship clubs have gone about their business these last 12 months goes some way to explaining why they are there in the first place. Sure, they are strapped for cash in the lower divisions, stretched to the limit and therefore more prone than most to human error, but last season's catalogue of boardroom bungling takes a bit of beating. It got off to an inauspicious start when Raith Rovers decided after one match to get rid of the manager, Ian Murray, who had taken them to the Premiership playoff final the previous season. Pretty soon, Dunfermline were matching them for incompetence - not necessarily with the sacking of James McPake but with the appointment of a young successor, Michael Tidser, who lasted only 59 days. Then there was Queen's Park, who dismissed Callum Davidson a month after his team had beaten Rangers at Ibrox. On and off the pitch, the club went into freefall, losing their main financial backer, as well as any semblance of the ambition they had shown since turning professional. Nor did it stop there. As the summer approached, an 'administrative error' led FIFA to ban Morton from registering players. And Hamilton were relegated amid a row over stadium ownership, which means that they and Clyde are ready to effectively swap grounds. Last week, Partick Thistle continued the theme by contriving to lose the manager who had guided them so skilfully to the playoff semi-final in his capacity as interim boss. Having been captain, top scorer, women's manager and now successful first-team caretaker, Brian Graham was steeped in the Firhill club, but somehow they couldn't sell him the job. Graham said no, which doesn't just mean that Thistle have lost a promising manager. They have, in all probability, lost a striker who was rattling in the goals and still has a year of his contract to run. It is not exactly a flying start for Ian Baraclough, who came in as sporting director in April. In the end, Thistle (who also spoke to Morton's Dougie Imrie) settled for Mark Wilson, who had been alongside Graham during that temporary period. All in all, they don't sound like a club with their ducks in a row, ready to go one better this season than they did last. The impression is that they and too many others in the Championship don't have the wherewithal off the pitch to fulfil their potential. At least Dunfermline seem to have emerged from their mid-season brain freeze, and indeed the apathy of recent years, by welcoming new owners who have made Neil Lennon a permanent appointment and promised to give him the backing he needs. Assuming the US analytics firm who took over in January do not repeat the mistakes made in their first transfer window – a handful of data-based project signings did for Tidser - there is no reason why the Fife club cannot become promotion challengers under Lennon. If they do, they will have two or three obvious rivals to contend with, all of whom have a plan that involves joined-up thinking, a vision from top to bottom and a decent transfer budget into the bargain. Ayr United are among them. Their manager, Scott Brown, seemed to cast doubt on his future after their playoff defeat by Thistle, but he is still there, as are the people upstairs who are getting so much right at Somerset Park. So, too, will St Johnstone and Ross County be among the contenders, if only because they have just come out of the Premiership. They have got a lot wrong in recent years, and have paid the price with relegation, but they have a clear idea of what they want to be and how they want do it. In an attempt to rebuild themselves on and off the pitch, St Johnstone appointed Simo Valakari last October and are to be commended for standing by him. It might not work, but he is central to a project that will be given every chance. So, too, have County kept faith in Don Cowie, despite his team's catastrophic end to the season, which culminated in a playoff defeat by Livingston. As ever, club owner Roy MacGregor will provide the funds needed to turn it around. Reports suggest that MacGregor is intending to recruit former County and Inverness manager John Robertson as an assistant manager. The idea is to provide Cowie with an experienced sounding board, as Jim Duffy will for Sean Crighton at Queen's Park. Rather than get rid of the manager, the thinking in both cases is to give him the best chance of succeeding. It makes perfect sense in a division not known in recent years for its rational thinking. Who knows, maybe it will catch on.
Times
43 minutes ago
- Times
Why Scots are ready to hold their nose and vote for Reform
If Reform fails to win the Hamilton, Larkhall & Stonehouse by-election on Thursday, it will not be for want of trying by the establishment parties. They have been giving Nigel Farage's fringe party, which has only five MPs and even fewer policies, unprecedented publicity. The Reform candidate, councillor Ross Lambie, a defector from the Scottish Tories, is sounding chipper. 'We can't lose this week even if we don't win,' he says tautologically. The prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, last week delivered what sounded like a campaign speech against Farage, as if this were a general election and Reform a prospective party of government. John Swinney has taken to declaring Hamilton as a 'two-horse race' between the SNP and Reform, crediting the Faragists as a potential opposition in Scotland. No wonder the former leader of the actual Scottish Tory opposition, Douglas Ross, got himself thrown out of FMQs in despair. So, when Farage arrives in Aberdeen on Monday he will be embarking on a kind of victory tour. A politician who is supposedly anathema to Scots will be basking in the attention he is getting from the political classes. 'Look,' he's saying. 'I'm the new force in Scottish politics and you lot can't help confirming it.' John Swinney's comic-opera 'summit against the far right' last month turned out to be the curtain-raiser for Farage's in-your-face tour. Aberdeen is an appropriate starting point too. It is the epicentre of Scottish deindustrialisation. All the parties, Tories included, are implicated in the mismanagement of the North Sea oil and gas industry. By banning exploration, when we still rely on fossil fuels for 75 per cent of overall energy use, and by imposing punitive taxation on oil and gas companies, governments in Holyrood and Westminster have connived in the destruction of one of Scotland's few remaining sources of high-paying jobs. At least that is how Farage will put it. He will say we are mugs for importing oil and gas from America and Norway at high cost when we have our own resources in the North Sea. He will ridicule SNP plans to scrap a million gas boilers in Scotland for expensive heat pumps. And here is the thing: many Scottish voters agree. The bien-pensant Scottish intelligentsia, if it still merits the term, is in despair at the very thought of working-class voters turning to a party they believe is composed of soft-shoe fascists. But the more Farage is accused of being a 'climate change denier' or a 'racist' by the Scottish Green Party, the more he likes it. Farage revels in being an environmental iconoclast and loves poking the left by condemning mass immigration. The left's instinct is to take to the streets this week as they did in 2013 when Farage, then the leader of Ukip, had to be rescued by police from an Edinburgh pub. But if they retain an ounce of sense, the organisers of Sunday's 'Stand Up To Racism' conference will cancel their plans to 'drive Farage out of Scotland'. Times change. Voters change. The left is bereft of an answer to the Reform phenomenon, and the public are sick of superannuated student protesters noisily parading their dodgy virtue on the streets. The Faragists deliberately provoked progressive Scotland by launching a social media race war against the Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, claiming he intends to 'prioritise the Pakistani community'. After Sarwar accused them of racism, Reform doubled down. They started posting videos on social media of the Labour leader lamenting the fact that so many Scots in high places are 'white … white … white'. The former first minister, Humza Yousaf, delivered a similar litany of racial complaint at the height of Black Lives Matter in 2020. Why was Reform playing the race card? For publicity, obviously, but also because it appears to be doing them no harm in Lanarkshire. This does not mean Scots are turning racist, however. Many just feel that the Holyrood political class care more about minority groups and benefit claimants than they do about struggling working and middle-class families who have seen their livelihoods wither, their children turn to drugs, and old people freeze because of high fuel prices and the loss of the winter fuel payment. It is no good condemning Farage's 'opportunism' in promising to restore the payment in full and scrap the two-child benefit cap while cutting taxes. Nor that Reform's sums do not add up. Right now, none of the UK parties' sums add up. Voters care little for finger-wagging politicians and columnists effectively chastising them for even contemplating voting for Reform. It leaves them cold. They see how Starmer has himself taken to speaking the same language as Farage, talking about the UK becoming an 'island of strangers' because of 'the failed experiment in open borders'. They are not going to take any lectures on nativism from John Swinney. After all, the SNP was the original ethnic nationalist party. Immigration has rarely been an issue in Scotland, largely because there has been so little of it. But there is a widespread feeling that the attentions and affections of the political classes are elsewhere. Reform is a repository of the collective resentment at the political class, who seem more interested in promoting transgender ideology, immigration and net zero than maintaining Scottish jobs, fixing the NHS and maintaining living standards. However, I do not think that, come polling day, many Hamilton voters will actually vote for Reform. Most will express their discontent by not voting. Of course, anything could happen in a three-horse race on a low turnout. The by-election is conducted under first-past-the-post, which makes prediction a mug's game. The latest Norstat opinion poll in The Sunday Times suggests that support for Reform may have peaked and that, intriguingly, support for independence edges up to 58 per cent if Nigel Farage were to become prime minister. This may explain why Swinney is talking up their prospects. The paradox of the Hamilton by-election is that Nigel Farage remains an unpopular figure in Scotland, even as his party is apparently registering unprecedented support. But that is not so strange, really. No one thinks Nigel Farage is going to be prime minister. Voters want to express their disgust at the way politics has been conducted in Scotland. It is a plague on all your houses — and if Farage is the plague-carrier, so be it.
