Barney Ronay

There is a fair chance Mikel Arteta’s team won’t beat Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League. If they must lose, lose right

Is this thing … still on? After last week’s strangely enervated first-leg performance against Paris Saint-Germain at the Emirates Stadium it has been tempting to get a bit ahead of things, to see Arsenal’s season as already a zombie entity, still out there walking around the place, limbs twitching, skinny hands rattling the perimeter fence, not exactly dead, but not too far from undead.

Barcelona’s 17-year-old forward is a once-every-20-years talent who is causing the internet to spasm with man-worship

There’s always that guy. Never be that guy. Fight the urge to become that guy, to yearn always for the old, good, safe things, to feel headphone-panic and selfie-disgust, to see moral decay in haircuts. Except, sometimes it turns out you just are that guy, propped up in your easy chair, eyes blazing, smelling slightly of damp laundry, and holding forth on a theme as old as all human life.

With the pandemic in the rearview mirror it was clearly a boost for Fifa and Saudi Arabia but harmed grassroots sport and player welfare

Sound the trumpets, beat the drum, let loose the buttock-rockets of hope. One of the strangest and most unsatisfying things about the Covid‑19 pandemic, among a great many deeply strange and unsatisfying things, is that it never actually had a shared end date or ceremonial send-off.

With the pandemic in the rearview mirror it was clearly a boost for Fifa and Saudi Arabia but harmed grassroots sport and player welfare

Sound the trumpets, beat the drum, let loose the buttock-rockets of hope. One of the strangest and most unsatisfying things about the Covid‑19 pandemic, among a great many deeply strange and unsatisfying things, is that it never actually had a shared end date or ceremonial send-off.