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My Sporting Life is The i Paper’s look behind the curtain at what drives sports stars to greatness. James Milner is the Premier League’s record appearance-holder, winning three titles and one Champions League across spells with Manchester City and Liverpool. He also won 61 England caps, featuring at two World Cups and two European Championships. At 40, he is still playing for Brighton & Hove Albion.

I couldn’t lift my foot for six months

Last year was the closest I came [to retirement], in terms of not being able to lift my foot for six months. At my age and the injury I had, but that sort of drove me on really to be able to come back from something like that at my age. That’s probably carried me through my career in terms of ‘I’ll show you, you don’t rate me, I’ll prove you wrong’. It’s going to end at some point. Football changes very quickly.

How I stay fit at 40

We’re very fortunate how we get looked after, sports science-wise and physios. After training I’d do extras every single day into my early 30s, then you get to a certain age and you have to adapt a bit. Your training gets adapted in terms of the amount of distance you’re covering, because I’ve always been one of the players who does the most distance. Then there’s that scientific side, getting treatment, doing your extra gym stuff, making sure your body’s getting the extra work in the gym to protect yourself from injuries – ice baths, recovery, eating the right things, making sure you’re getting your fluids, sleep.

It’s not really having a day off in terms of being a footballer. You can have days off in your rest days, but in terms of thinking what you’re doing, when’s the next meal, when’s my next game? There are hard times when you’re on holiday with the family and you’ve got to leave around the pool to go and do a session.

The Premier League won’t stay like this for long

This period right now is more set pieces and a certain style, but football goes through fashions and three or four years it’ll change again. Teams might go back to playing one small striker one big striker, it might be five at the back. Because we look at other teams and who’s been successful, teams will start doing that and this is the phase we’re in for this season. It doesn’t mean that it’s going to be the same next year. If you look back through football, it’s always had those changes and formations and things teams are doing. That’s this season, I don’t think it’ll go on in that certain way.

I can’t decide if I want to be a manager

It gives you a buzz to go out and coach, but then on the other side, the pressure and the amount of leeway you get as a manager, you can be doing really well with new contracts and then you’re sacked six weeks later because you can’t win a game. It’s pretty relentless and ruthless. I think my opinion on coaching changes every day. One day I’ll think it’ll be a great idea and others not.

I’m old enough to be the Brighton players’ dad

There’s quite a few players here old enough to be my son. I suppose in my world, I’m pretty old. It’s important for me to try and understand them. We have a lot of players from different parts of the world, different personalities. As you get older, you become more patient if someone’s not doing something they should be – it’s not just ‘give them a rollicking’. It’s ‘what’s the reason?’ Does he not understand? Is he missing back home? Are we not being clear enough how we show him?

My one regret

I got relegated with Leeds. It’s your hometown club, and I only get a chance to play for two seasons. The year before I made my debut we’d got to the Champions League semi-final. Maybe if I could have been born a year earlier, I’d have been involved in that. Maybe I wasn’t good enough – [Arsenal’s] Max [Dowman] playing at 15, I was 15 and a half at that point so maybe I should have been better at that age to get involved in the Champions League. But being relegated with Leeds is a big regret.

I wouldn’t still be playing if I hadn’t retired from England duty

It was definitely the right moment to step away [in 2016]. I went to a major tournament and was playing well with my club and didn’t play too much in the tournament. Sam [Allardyce] took over, I’d played with Sam, he didn’t say ‘we don’t want you’, or anything like that. It was an open honest conversation. It just felt like the right time to do it. Then Gareth [Southgate] took over and after that, asked me to come back but by that point I’d already committed. I had no regrets.

I wouldn’t be playing now if I hadn’t done that. Also for the England team, in terms of taking up a squad spot and being a good traveller when younger players can come in and take that spot. I’ve never really missed it since that moment, so that’s a nice thing for me that I was in control of that. It was a major honour playing for England and going to World Cups and Euros, but since that I had a successful time in my club career and still going now, so I think it was the right thing to do.

The advice Jurgen Klopp gave me

Jurgen always said to me, whatever you do next, I think you need a break after you finish. I feel like the intensity I’ve been at for such a long time, that’s something that’s important to have a break, see the family a bit more than I have. Jurgen, as an all-round manager, as a man, he could give you a rocket, or around him you were a bit nervous, but also I could go up and have a joke and a laugh with him.

The ‘Boring James Milner’ Twitter account was good fun 

I quite like the boring tag, to be honest. It means people don’t know a lot about me. I wasn’t on social media at the time. and it was just obviously a bit of craic, then when I started doing social media I thought it was good fun to jump on the bandwagon.

James Milner has been working with Specsavers’ Best Worst Team campaign, bringing grassroots football back to the forefront of the game.

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Andre Onana could be about to make his stay in Turkey permanent as two clubs look to seal a permanent switch for the Manchester United loanee.

Onana is on loan at Trabzonspor in the Turkish Super Lig, where he has impressed after a disappointing time in the Premier League.

The i Paper understands, as a result, Trabzonspor are hoping to make the Cameroon international’s stay permanent, while Turkish giants Besiktas are also understood to be interested.

At this stage, it is unclear what both would be willing to pay. United would look to recruit some transfer fee, given the club splurged £50m on the Cameroonian stopper three years ago.

“Onana’s career is already established,” Trabzonspor president Ertugrul Dogan said this week.

“We like him. I’ve said this before. He has a certain plan for his career. If the conditions are right, we want him to stay. The final decision will be Onana’s.”

Onana’s time in Manchester was error-strewn, with his last appearance coming in the embarrassing Carabao Cup defeat to Grimsby in August, when he kept out one penalty in the shootout but couldn’t prevent Ruben Amorim’s side from losing in sudden death.

His efforts in shootouts have drastically improved. On Thursday night his three saves from spot kicks from Lubomir Satka, Marius Mouandilmadji and Yunus Emre Cift helped Trabzonspor overcome rivals Samsunspor after a goalless 120 minutes of football to reach the Turkish Cup semi-finals.

The Turkish club will now face Genclerbirligi on 13 May for the right to play Besiktas or Konyaspor in the final on the last weekend of the season.

Read more

• Pete Hall: I went in search of Mark Goldbridge – and found why Gary Neville paid him millions

• Kevin Garside: Man Utd need to sell Bruno Fernandes before it’s too late

Those closest to Onana harboured the belief that the 30-year-old could still have a future at United, even after his loan spell.

Senne Lammens’ quick assimilation to life in Manchester has put pay to much of those hopes. Onana is due a payrise as a result of United potentially returning to the Champions League next season, which is why the club’s hierarchy are keen to get him off the books.

Turkey international Altay Bayindir is also expected to leave in the summer, with a return to Turkey also likely. Radek Vitek, on loan at Bristol City, is highly regarded and could become understudy at United to Lammens next season. Onana is seen as far too expensive an outlay to sit on the bench.

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Dan Walker’s mournful lament at the passing of Football Focus, where he spent 12 fruitful years in the presenting chair, makes the point for the BBC’s head of sport, who decided before the national broadcaster’s punitive cost-saving drive that the game was up.

Walker turns 50 next year. Only old people mourn its passing. Young football junkies are so spaced out on a never-ending smartphone diet of clips and reels they have no bandwidth left for outmoded previews of the weekend’s fixtures or perfunctory interviews.

The surprise is not so much the fall of Football Focus, but that its progenitor, Match of the Day, continues to broadcast to a diminishing audience, down 10 per cent according to the latest published figures.

The conditions that torpedoed Football Focus are the same epochal forces pushing MOTD into the margins. Though the BBC claims the figures for MOTD are buoyant, the reality is they are lumped in with the highlights clips of every Premier League match available on digital platforms two hours before the show is broadcast on TV.

Continued investment in legacy programming from the analogue age seems economic madness when the corporation is engaged in 10 per cent job cuts to save half a billion quid. The eight-minute reels meet the needs of the modern consumer, who appears less inclined to invest cognitive power in processing the thoughts of lads on sofas in the post Gary Lineker period.

And that is not a reflection of Lineker’s replacements, Gabby Logan, Kelly Cates and Mark Chapman, who bring their own broadcast expertise and sporting depth, qualities which find a more apposite home at live matches with commercial broadcasters.

Watching Match of the Day and Football Focus was a cultural staple shared by the community of football lovers in an era of scarcity. The 24-hour content provided across myriad platforms today was not the reality for viewers in 1974, when your options amounted to weekend highlights programmes on BBC One and ITV, coupled with Sportsnight on Wednesdays.

Live football then was a delicacy taken one day in May on the occasion of the FA Cup Final, a marvellous double dollop of football exotica broadcast by both the BBC and ITV, which began at the crack of dawn outside the team hotels and rolled until the winners climbed the Wembley steps to lift the trophy.

Read more

Pete Hall: I went in search of Mark Goldbridge – and found why Gary Neville paid him millions

Daniel Storey: Liam Rosenior epitomised everything wrong with Chelsea

Oddly cricket and tennis were the primary source of live sport on TV in the 1970s with England Test matches broadcast across the summer, and Wimbledon filling its traditional late June slot, brought to us by another Dan, the inestimable Maskell.

Other than the FA Cup, football gloried in the home internationals. Yes, England played annual end-of-season fixtures against Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. How brilliantly quaint, and way more nourishing than today’s tepid international breaks.

With so little live viewing to consume and nil social media, the weekly fix of Football Focus delivered by presenters in jackets and ties was unmissable, offering heavily digested talking points debated all weekend and on Mondays by schoolchildren arguing the toss over their teams.

Bob Wilson formed arguably deeper attachments to his BBC audience than to punters on the North Bank at Highbury, in front of whom he played for a decade. He was certainly better known as a television presenter than a goalkeeper by the time he put down the Football Focus mic after his 20 years in the post.

Wilson quit the show in 1994, two years after the Premier League launched with its Sky Sports broadcast deal, which transformed football coverage and began to erode the significance of the type of weekly digest served up by Football Focus.

Perhaps, it should have gone with Bob, gracefully accepting relevance had passed. What is it they say in this game? Leave the football before it leaves you.

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You have probably already made up your mind about Mark Goldbridge.

He’s loud. Brash. Obnoxious. Blasphemous. Often much worse when Manchester United lose again. Certainly not most people’s cup of tea.

But what those more traditional among us fail to recognise is that he is exactly what millions of others want.

Gary Neville has seen the light. Despite not always seeing eye to eye with the enigmatic YouTuber in the past, the former right-back turned mega entrepreneur has decided he wants a slice of the Goldbridge audience-conglomerating pie. To the tune, insiders believe, of over a million pounds.

The i Paper had been trying to speak to Goldbridge, real name Brent Di Cesare, for some time. The 47-year-old likes to remain in the shadows, so acquiring an interview was always going to be difficult.

Mark Goldbridge is fuming as his Sky connection goes…

As it comes back, Leeds score pic.twitter.com/DCzS1lBpoY

— george (@StokeyyG2) April 13, 2026

He felt, however, especially elusive. Like something seismic, a merger with Neville’s media company The Overlap for instance, was in the offing. Looking to keep details of the acquisition of Goldbridge’s YouTube channels, The United Stand and That’s Football, under lock and key, any chance to pick the brains of football broadcasting’s most mysterious figure was therefore off the table.

Rather than give up there, the intrigue into why someone as business savvy as Neville had made such a shock purchase only heightened. Those who know Goldbridge best, who work with him on a daily basis, could tell us more about the man himself than any PR-influenced interview ever could.

First up then, was a visit to The United Stand’s surprisingly lavish studios, a stone’s throw from Old Trafford.

“Mark doesn’t come here,” producer Ryan Johnston says. “We are kind of left to it. And Mark does his thing from home.”

The production gallery is on par with anything Sky or the BBC have to offer. There is a set with a touchscreen tactics board for in-depth analysis and a lounge, magazine-style discussion area for further United-based conversation.

Goldbridge’s team of producers and presenter Beth Tucker put together daily United content, with a range of guests examining everything from who the next manager will be to issues over the new stadium.

Meanwhile Goldbridge is at home, in a plush part of the West Midlands. He operates his content himself, from watchalongs on United games – what made him in the first place – to other reaction videos on news for The United Stand. Then there are more watchalongs for That’s Football, as well as watchalongs for live Bundesliga. Such is the power of brand Goldbridge, Germany’s top flight pays him to stream live games on his channels, not the other way round.

The numbers are extraordinary. Goldbridge has amassed almost 3.8m subscribers across his YouTube channels, while accumulating nearly two billion views. Single United watchalongs, not even for the biggest games, can bring in over 500,000 views.

So how does a father of three, former police investigator, not a bobby on the beat as is the common misconception, who changed his name due to the nature of his previous job, do it?

“Work ethic, personality and his opinion,” Tucker says.

“Things just happen to him on videos. The [viral] pineapple video being a prime example. He retweets out-of-context videos of himself all the time. He can laugh at himself.

“You have to be a certain type of person, of huge appeal, to hold an audience of that size, on your own, for that long, day after day. Mark will do anything and people will watch. Somebody said to him ‘you could probably make a video of you making a cup of tea and you will hit 100k [views]. So he did just that [the video from 2022 now has 136,000 views].”

"This is NOT the way Man Utd should play!"

"The football, I do NOT think it's very good… I think it's very similar to Ole and very similar to Gareth Southgate." pic.twitter.com/aOycp7AfEi

— The United Stand (@UnitedStandMUFC) March 28, 2026

Down the years, Goldbridge has clashed with pretty much everyone associated with United. The club do not allow The United Stand into the press box and have had some fiery exchanges.

But it is confrontation that helped make Goldbridge a multi-millionaire, after he went full-time as a content creator in 2018.

“We used to be well behind AFTV [a rival Arsenal fan channel] but since we took over them in 2020, we have pulled well clear,” Johnston says.

“We have just cracked it. Their watchalongs have like nine people on there. Ours is more interactive; it is Mark talking to you.

“This is a more intimate setting. He is more likely to read out your comment. This intimacy works. Others have tried it, like the Anfield Agenda, but they don’t have Mark’s personality. So many others are trying to replicate it. But they aren’t Mark.”

Everyone you speak to about Goldbridge is much more complimentary than the public perception of this angry United supporter.

He likes to spend time with his wife and three children and prefers to live the quiet life in his native Midlands. Rumours circulated that he is in fact not a United fan. Those closest to him insist this was fabricated by a rival, rather jealous podcaster to discredit him.

The measured public appearances away from his watchalongs have been purposeful. The allure comes in not knowing what the real Goldbridge is like.

“The perception of Mark out there is ridiculous,” Johnstone adds. “Yes he is loud on screen, but that is his thing, and why he has got where he is today.

“Outside his watchalongs, he is a nice guy. He has raised hundreds of thousands doing charity watchalongs. You don’t know he does that, because he doesn’t broadcast it. He doesn’t want the recognition.

“He has grown as a person as these things have grown so big. Obviously, when he started doing these videos in his bedroom when he was younger, of course he was more immature. But I lost count of the amount of messages we got during Covid saying that Mark got them through that, mental health-wise. Live two or three times a day, people became used to him.”

Who's ready for Mark Goldbridge ball? pic.twitter.com/he5bdVeJZa

— Sky Sports Football (@SkyFootball) March 16, 2026

When the Neville takeover was announced, the fact that the only images publications around the world could use of Goldbridge were screenshots of his watchalongs was telling.

There has been, as this big news was preparing to surface, a real push to get Goldbridge into the limelight more, to garner the exact audience Neville is targeting.

Goldbridge has recently become a team manager in Baller League, an innovative new league targeting a younger audience, one perhaps disenfranchised by having to sit through 90 minutes of watching dull Premier League matches week after week.

Younger crowds have shorter attention spans, so Baller League, with its myriad of big names involved from the footballing and influencer worlds in equal measure, offers something different: shorter, small-sided games, where the emphasis is on skill and, more pertinently, goals.

“Mark was on our radar since we started,” Baller League marketing director Harry Hesp tells The i Paper.

“He brings us something totally different. Mark has a very strong appeal to a football audience and we’re really keen that a proper football audience sees Baller League as well, as we truly believe that this is a really good football product.

“He really does kind of have a very loyal following and a very broad following: both football fans and fans of content creators, YouTubers and influencers. He’s mastered that bridge of bringing those two fandoms together like nobody else.”

The i Paper went along to Liverpool to see a round of Baller League action.

Wayne Rooney was in attendance, but more cameras remained fixed on one man.

As Gold Devils FC lost out to Clutch FC, coached by Arsenal and England Women forward Chloe Kelly, Goldbridge streamed the whole night’s action on his YouTube channel, popping into a booth before and after his match to give his input.

Baller League is still in its infancy, but the numbers are very promising. Sold out arenas in London – they filled the O2 for finals day last year – and now Liverpool are testament to such.

Goldbridge’s involvement is only going to send the numbers one way. His Midas touch when it comes to content creation knows no bounds.

Read more

• Pete Hall: The mystery of Man Utd’s missing man
• Kevin Garside: Man Utd need to sell Bruno Fernandes before it’s too late

How the link-up with Neville works will be fascinating to watch. It is our first real glimpse into the worlds of the ex-player chatterati and content creation colliding.

Rio Ferdinand has had a public spat with Goldbridge this week, but the new-age media mogul doesn’t have to get on with whoever he is debating with. In fact, the more disagreements the better.

“They [Neville and Goldbridge] have not got on in the past, but they don’t have to be best friends,” Tucker adds.

“It’s kind of the point. Debate comes from differences of opinion.

“This is surely only the start of this kind of thing. I just hope that with Gary Neville on board, fan media starts to get taken more seriously.”

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Blackburn Rovers are not going down; not this year. They beat Sheffield United on Wednesday evening to confirm their Championship status with one game remaining. They will finish 20th or 21st, most likely, and that being a cause for celebration is damning.

It also continues the perfect Blackburn Rovers loop: seventh, 19th, seventh, 21st, or near enough. This club’s new existence is so monochrome that it can’t even commit fully to a crisis. And when the good seasons do come along, they end with Rovers in the highest league position that means nothing at all, naturally

You get exactly the same impression in real time. Against Coventry City last Friday, a team that has just confirmed their title, Blackburn were never outclassed. There was effort and quality. They took the lead and absolutely deserved it.

The game ended level, Rovers players unsure of whether to even attempt to score or be happy with their lot despite winning only four home games this season. You never sensed that this team was in trouble, yet it had been in trouble for weeks, months, years.

The spectacular irony – not lost on supporters – is that there is a direct correlation between allowing the club’s infrastructure to drift and the panic towards the end of this season. With the Ewood Park pitch in a terrible state, a match against Ipswich Town that Blackburn were leading was abandoned after 81 minutes They drew the rearranged fixture.

An existential question with no pleasant answer: is this really living? Up a bit and down a bit, nothing meaningful ever really lasting and supporters getting gradually more disillusioned all the time. Blackburn exist in a closed loop system

It is tempting to blame owners Venkys for all this; perhaps it’s even appropriate and necessary. Certainly it oversaw a gross decline in its first decade here. But this is also a tale of English football itself. Apathy and atrophy feel like crimes against hope, but then you look at other clubs in worse positions and wonder. Is staying above the lowest bar really a reason for cheer? More pertinently, is it a reason to keep coming back?

The wider question, and it doesn’t just apply to Blackburn, is how you re-energise the club and re-engage the fanbase. Ewood’s capacity is 31,400 and this season’s average home attendance is 14,800. Even that is assisted by an away end that constitutes an entire stand. Coventry supporters filled it. They know plenty about coming back from their nadir.

Employing a manager who wants to stick around would help. Michael O’Neill has made himself very popular, but this is a part-time, short-term gig. John Dahl Tomasson lasted 90 matches but offered to leave months before because of cuts to the playing budget.

John Eustace left for Derby County. Valerien Ismael left due to underperformance but one arm was tied behind his back for most of the tenure. There must be greater cohesion between the component parts that persuades Blackburn managers that it’s worth committing fully to the project and sticking around to see it through.

Part of that is a necessary improvement in recruitment laid bare by this season. It is not true that Venkys hasn’t spent money: around £10m in transfer fees alone this season, more than it recouped in sales. It was primarily data-led and focused on mainland Europe and Scandinavia. Players were signed from Norway, Belgium, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, Scotland and Germany.

Five of those players were reportedly signed for more than a million pounds and only one of them ranks in Blackburn’s top ten league appearance makers by minutes played. Sidney Tavares, six starts; Dion de Nevez, nine starts; Dapo Afolayan, one start. Championship clubs cannot afford to make many of these expensive mistakes.

Read more

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• Daniel Storey: Liam Rosenior epitomised everything wrong with Chelsea

Off the field, there may finally be changes. An almost year-long recruitment process is reportedly likely to end in the appointment of a new chief executive soon. Deep frustrations with director of football operations Rudy Gestede remain and the same is true of chief operating officer Suhail Pasha. Many fans would conclude that nothing will really change until they do.

The eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed that this covers just about everything. This is indeed a huge task. Too much of this club isn’t working properly and hasn’t for too long. In fact, not working properly is basically the identity. They have spent 13 years in the Championship since relegation and never finished in its top six.

Something has to be allowed to build here. It can be done. If it is, they will come back and this can still all be history one day. But Blackburn Rovers cannot be held in suspension like this any more, waiting for something to bend, break or break out.

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Pretty soon – in a matter of “weeks” rather than months – Newcastle fans are set to get a visible sign of the Saudi Public Investment Fund’s continued commitment to the club.

Confirmation of a further tranche of investment by the club’s majority owners – earmarked to purchase the site of where a new state-of-the-art training ground will be built near the city’s airport – will land in the near future on Companies House, The i Paper understands.

While the impact of leaks and the pace of legal work prevent anyone from giving an absolutely cast-iron timeline, the funding has the green light. With doubts swirling about the club’s direction and Saudi commitment to investing in sport itself, confirmation of the first major infrastructure project of the PIF era cannot come a minute too soon.

The training ground – which may not open its doors until close to the 2030 date that chief executive David Hopkinson has optimistically set for Newcastle to be regularly competing for the Premier League title – will be funded by a combination of PIF investment and capital raised through the club taking on debt.

That last point feels important. While the hope of Newcastle fans (and fear of their rivals) was that the club would be viewed as a trophy asset by a fund with deep pockets, that was never, ever intended to be the reality.

“PIF is acting like an institutional investor because it is an institutional investor,” was how one source put it. No private equity fund in the world would write a blank cheque to fund a stadium or training ground and PIF is no different. Which is why Newcastle, unlike teetering LIV Golf, does not face the prospect of being cut adrift anytime soon.

Are PIF still committed to Newcastle?

Several sources contacted by The i Paper were unequivocal. Despite the speculation around LIV there is “no change” in the long-term plan for Newcastle.

Rumours that they are readying a sale of their stake in the club – which swirled around football circles last week – have been categorically denied by sources, who suspect they are partly the work of opportunistic investors or third parties who would be keen to test the water for a possible Newcastle takeover.

Last week PIF announced a new strategy which split the fund’s investment into three “pots”. The first, “Vision 2030”, is for domestic projects. The second, “financial”, is for investments in equity projects and stocks and shares.

Newcastle sits in the third pot: “strategic”. PIF sources have always said that while the investment is relatively small by the fund’s standards it is important because it is so public-facing. One source went further, referring to it as a PIF “crown jewel” because it gives them a presence in the globally respected Premier League.

Is Newcastle viewed as a good investment by Saudi Arabia?

Quite apart from the steep improvement on the pitch – with the exception of this season – it is also viewed by PIF as a successful investment off the field. Including the sale price of £305m, PIF have invested around £800m in Newcastle so far. According to the fund’s own internal metric the valuation of the club has significantly outstripped that investment.

One source familiar with football acquisitions believes Newcastle are now worth more than £1bn based on the price paid for similar clubs. Contrast that with LIV Golf, which is projected to require further hefty injections of cash to compete with the established golf tours, and you can see why sources describe the two investments as “chalk and cheese”.

Newcastle is still growing. The club have this week advertised for a slew of academy recruitment jobs across the Balkans, Italy and Spain. Key new off-the-field roles, in strategy, data and recruitment, are to be confirmed soon.

For many fans, though, there is a sense of drift about Newcastle. PIF have no intention of challenging the financial rules that have hamstrung the club’s ambitions, which has caused disquiet.

On the ground Eddie Howe’s position has been called into question after a mediocre season began to tailspin while at least one big sale – quite possibly Anthony Gordon, with Bayern Munich interested – is necessary. There is frustration that the issue of St James’ Park expansion is not resolved a year on from a decision being supposedly imminent, although The i Paper has been told that the intention is a call will have been made by the end of the year.

A high-level visit by senior PIF figures next week, then, feels symbolically important.

How do PIF view this season – and Eddie Howe’s future?

Next week’s annual “off-site” meeting at Matfen Hall in Northumberland is important and comes with the club seemingly at a crossroads. The team are 14th and set to miss out on their pre-season target of European qualification, which will have a significant impact on their summer business. Frustration is building on the terraces.

With Yasir Al-Rumayyan expected to jet into the North East to attend it is being viewed as a chance for the chairman to “grill” Howe on this season’s failings. The reality will be different.

The i Paper understands that Al-Rumayyan enjoys a warm relationship with Howe and has regularly enthused about his track record at Newcastle.

It’s been stressed that no one gets a “free pass” at St James’ Park and there is clearly frustration at the way the Premier League campaign has unfolded but as it stands the plan is to continue with Howe next season.

He has been part of all the club’s preparations for the coming campaign and recruitment planning – which has stepped up this week – has been tailored to bringing in players who would operate well in his system and favoured style.

But PIF are, in the words of one source who has worked with them previously, “obsessed with the numbers”. They will want to be across all the data and information and will expect things to change. Insiders suggest lessons of last summer’s fiasco of a transfer window have been learned and work has gone into ensuring there is improvement. The era of signings like Anthony Elanga and Yoane Wissa seems over.

The smart money remains on Howe being in charge – but of a very different looking outfit come August.

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Perhaps taking the opposite path to Tottenham will become the modus operandi of more clubs in the years to come.

Many have lazily labelled Leeds’ attitude to the transfer market as a “No dickheads” policy, but it is much more methodical than that. As Spurs focused their recent recruitment on young players with the potential to reach for the stars, Leeds went for the tried and tested, especially ones with that crucial knowhow in the relegation dogfight. Like Sean Longstaff’s propensity to pop up with a 97th-minute equaliser.

And as we entered the business end of the season, Spurs have gone one way, with Leeds hurtling in the opposite direction, to put themselves on the verge of safety with games in the bank. They head to Wembley on Sunday looking to book a second FA Cup final appearance in the club’s history.

Leeds looked to be “doing a Leeds” not so long ago, giving supporters a feeling of déjà vu as another season threatened to end in disappointment – the story of most Whites fans’ lives.

Seven games unbeaten later and their sensible summer is paying off. Club insiders highlighted several players who have been crucial to making sure Leeds do not, as their own supporters like to opine, fall apart again.

Dominic Calvert-Lewin was a shrewd acquisition up front. Getting into double figures on the goal front is only half the story. Sources have told The i Paper it is the standards the England striker asks of his teammates that has helped eke out that telling, survival-defining few yards when it has mattered most.

Patrick Struijk is another who gets more from his teammates in training, sources added. Ethan Ampadu provides guidance for anyone who needs it, leading by example on and off the pitch. James Justin is another dressing room influencer. His previous experience of relegation scraps is seen as a big part of Leeds’ resurgence. More surprisingly, Jaka Bijol is another Daniel Farke believes could be a future captain.

Farke himself has impressed those behind the scenes. His position has been called into question with regularity. Sources added that while the German’s position was never under review, worrying results earlier in the campaign caused some to consider looking at alternatives.

“Daniel is a calm leader,” one source said. “It is a huge job getting a club of Leeds’ size, with the pressure the job brings, into the Premier League. People forget that.

“He knows when to put an arm around the shoulder and when to issue a rollicking. He has been key to ensuring morale has stayed high, even in the tough moments.”

Part of the reason those within the club refused to panic was the feeling remained that the performances were there – away at Sunderland, a superb showing in defeat at Manchester City – but Leeds were not getting the points their endeavours deserved.

The club’s owners have to take some credit for the turnaround. Supporters rounded on club officials to splash the cash on a striker in January. Leeds were interested in Jorgen Strand Larsen, before he elected to join Crystal Palace.

The Norwegian was interested in a move to Elland Road, but the ownership refused to meet Wolves’ valuation, as it would have pushed them perilously close to punishment for breach of Profitability and Sustainability Rules.

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Leeds understand that the lessons of spending beyond their means need to be learned – especially when there is real optimism that things are also heading in the right direction off the pitch too.  

Elland Road’s much-needed revamp is underway. The initial phase of its upgrade will take capacity up to 48,000. The same architects who have completed Anfield’s expansion have been brought in, to ensure construction will be carried out on top of the current structure, without any disruption to their current schedule. Sources added the hope is that it will take two to three seasons to finish.

With Chelsea in disarray, Leeds travel south to Wembley – roared on by a support that could have sold out their section two or three times over – with confidence their impressive season could have any even more memorable finale yet.

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