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If fortune really does favour the brave then Oli McBurnie should be on the brink of the most remarkable promotion to the Premier League with Hull City.

This most interesting footballer, a throwback centre-forward who admits he wears “toddler’s shinpads” due to superstition and has a passion for travel, is certainly not afraid to take a risk. When he was 19 he nearly left Bradford City to join Freiburg, a move he had his heart set on after Googling Baden-Württemberg and thinking it looked “pretty picturesque”.

Two years ago he turned down a contract offer from Sheffield United to uproot his young family and join Las Palmas, learning Spanish within a few weeks and embracing life in the sun-kissed Canary Islands, where he became something of a cult hero.

Last summer he was at it again, taking another huge leap of faith to join Hull. The Tigers were a club under a transfer embargo, who had just appointed a little-known manager and were among the favourites for relegation. The general consensus when he signed: what on earth is he thinking?

Hull City felt different

“There were a few raised eyebrows, for sure, but I don’t like taking the safe option,” McBurnie tells The i Paper of his decision to join the Tigers over former club Sheffield United and a clutch of rival Championship clubs who were vying for his signature.

“But Hull felt a bit different. I like to do my due diligence and I had a few conversations – with [sporting director] Jared Dublin and (manager) Sergej Jakirovic. Acun [Ilicali] is also such an enthusiastic owner and that really came across but he wanted me to make a football decision, not an emotional one.

“He was almost sitting in the background until I signed, then when I made the decision he couldn’t do enough for me. Maybe you didn’t see it from the outside but I thought all the ingredients were there to be a successful team and successful club.”

Nine months on McBurnie feels his hunch has been “vindicated”. Having over performed all season Hull regained their momentum to sneak back into the play-offs on a dramatic final day of the season that saw them leapfrog Wrexham and tee up a two-legged semi-final with Millwall. The club are the underdogs in the play-offs but are embracing it.

“I’d never thought of it this way but someone said to me the other day we were the only club who wanted to be in the play-offs on that final day,” McBurnie says.

“Millwall and Middlesbrough were playing for an outside chance of second, maybe that will have an impact, who knows? We’re all buzzing, there’s no fear, we’re just looking forward to it and I just think it’s going to be a special night, an ‘old school’ sort of Friday night game under the lights. It feels like whole city is up for it.”

Jakirovic gets it

Ilicali, the larger-than-life Turkish media mogul who bought the club four years ago, has driven the project and was in tears at the final whistle on Saturday. He came into the dressing room after the game and gave the players a memorable speech.

“He has promised a few things, yeah. He said to us ‘You will see how crazy I really am if we get promoted’ so I like the sound of that. I’d like to see what he means.”

If they’re going to do that, you’d think McBurnie will have a big say in it. His 17 goals – already two more than he promised Jakirovic when they first met – have played a huge part in Hull’s success but so too has their unheralded manager.

In an era of bosses hung up on projects and philosophies, McBurnie believes he “gets” the Championship as well as any manager he has played under.

“One of the best things I can say about the manager is his adaptability. It’s not kind of his way or the highway, it’s not a dictatorship. He’s not stubborn like a lot of managers typically are and I think that’s been one of the reasons we’ve done so well this year,” he explains.

“It’s probably hard to game plan us against us because we play so many different ways against different teams.

“It’s been brilliant for me – the manager’s giving me the freedom to go out and play how I want to play and kind of making the game plan about getting balls in the box.”

World Cup hopes

Mystifyingly it has not been enough to turn the head of Steve Clarke which is why McBurnie’s second aim this season – to get into Scotland’s World Cup plans – is likely to evade him.

“I’m happy with my efforts. I have done all I can and ultimately it’s the manager’s decision. I have to respect whichever way he goes,” he says.

McBurnie’s other frustration is that he is regarded by some as belonging to the category of forwards who are too good for the Championship but not good enough for the Premier League. Nonsense, he insists.

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“I think I’ve got nearly 100 Premier League games now, probably nearly half of my footballing career has been in the Premier League,” he says.

“The last two out of the three seasons when I was top scorer for Sheffield United [that was] in the Premier League and the last year that I was there was really hampered by injuries.

“I think I had maybe six goals, four assists but I only started 14 games or something due to injuries and a couple of suspensions, which might be my own fault.

“From that I’ve always felt like I could compete at the top level. I do feel like I’ve got unfinished business in the Premier League.”

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Sport does an effective line in signposting your second chances, daring you to look failure square in the eyes as you try to nick redemption out of its back pocket. In the final home game of last season, Grimsby Town had a shot at the top seven in front of their biggest crowd in 12 years and they blew it.

In the final home game of this season, against Swindon Town, the same bumper crowd and the same opportunity. Grimsby Town won 4-0. David Artell’s men were rampant. It felt like a redemption, a celebration and an exorcism all in one. The prize comes this week: two games from Wembley.

I am forever drawn back to this place. I love everything about Blundell Park: the sea, the terraced housing, watching tankers from the old big stand, the sense that everybody is coming together, the sheer permanence of the place, rising like a church over a small town. It is the club whose staff are the friendliest in the country and that is something that sticks with you.

It is undeniable that this part of the UK has struggled badly. The decline of the fishing industry took jobs away and nobody was told of any plan to replace them. It created deep, understandable resentment.

They wanted someone to listen and the only people who even seemed to try were bad faith actors. Play it on repeat in end-of-the-line coastal towns where the residents feel disenfranchised through the deliberate ignorance by governments of their lot.

It is also true that Grimsby Town struggled too and impossible to ignore how those two strands become intertwined, even if it is purely coincidental and fatalism is bunk. It is 20 years since Grimsby competed in Football League play-offs and it might as well be half a lifetime.

Then they hoped it was the end of the three-year slide: 24th (relegated), 21st (relegated), 18th. But no such luck. Grimsby didn’t go up and just fell down again. Over the last 15 years, they have spent almost half of their life as a non-league club after 99 consecutive years of league football. Around here, that was a calamity.

Grimsby Town’s fortunes changed in 2021, when Jason Stockwood and Andrew Pettit, two men of the town and lifelong supporters who made their money elsewhere, came home again.

Their intention, and their delivery, has been not just to revitalise the football club but help the local area too. They have achieved fine work in both. Those intertwined strands become visible again, but this time not as a self-destructive cycle but as symbiosis.

Their wealth has made a huge difference, although it is invested rather than spent wildly and there is a plan to make the club one of the most sustainable in the EFL. It is both unhelpfully patronising and romantic to suggest otherwise. Nothing makes things change like money.

But I believe that it does make a difference who they are too. There is an emotional devastation caused by seeing desolation manifest in the place you grew up and it creates a charge to lead a movement.

The reflective pride is greater too. So is your authority and your authenticity and both generate buy-in from the people.

The local area is rebounding. It is a world leader in offshore wind power. There is a £100m regeneration project and it can be a natural home of the renewable energy industry.

The only jokes about fishing are the self-deprecating ones sung from the Findus Stand.

On the pitch, Artell has been better than almost all before him at creating that works and entertains and one that is capable of overcoming a setback before it leads to a rut, never easy at clubs who have been burnt in the recent past.

Until September 2024, Grimsby hadn’t won consecutive league games for 18 months.

Grimsby wobbled after their magnificent cup run in the autumn, but recovery was emphatic. Since Christmas they top the League Two table. They have three players with 10 or more league goals, a rare diversification of goal-scoring here. This season is Grimsby’s highest-scoring in the Football League since 1979.

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But most of all this is an accumulation of good sense, on and off the pitch, coming together to create better. Incoherence and uncertainty are the two biggest barriers to progress in the EFL. This is a club and a team that knows itself, a quiet revelation. As such, it doesn’t appear as vast overachievement – rather the optimism of competence.

Promotion would be the next step and an important one, given its symbolism – projects need mileposts and places to hang their hats. But something has changed anyway, and hopefully for good.

For too long, Grimsby, Cleethorpes and Grimsby Town were places where people looked back with resentment at what went wrong or what might have been. Now people are looking forward again. As someone who loves coming here, I think that is pretty great.

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Enzo Maresca is “ready and waiting” to take over from Pep Guardiola this summer if, as many in football circles increasingly believe, the Manchester City boss decides to call time on his glittering spell at the Etihad.

Guardiola is keeping his cards characteristically close to his chest when it comes to a decision over whether to see out the two-year contract he signed in 2025. The i Paper has been told, however, that City’s succession planning has seen them sound out Maresca – to the extent that the former Chelsea boss is now seen as “off limits” by other top Premier League and European clubs who are searching for a manager.

Succession planning has been one of the areas City have become a market leader in, with several sources telling The i Paper that should Guardiola go this summer, there are plans in place beyond the next appointment.

One source close to the club said that Vincent Kompany being appointed manager in a few years, after Maresca has steadied a transitional City side, is “inevitable”.

After an inauspicious start to life in management at Burnley, Kompany has created one of the most exhilarating teams to watch in Europe at Bayern Munich. While sources stressed he will not want to leave Munich yet, given his Bavarian project is still in its infancy, City will “always be appealing”.

Kompany had a statue erected outside the Etihad Stadium in recognition of the role the former club captain had in City’s rise.

Guardiola, arguably the greatest manager of all time, can make a decision whenever he wants – he has earned that right. If there is even a chance he stays, City will hold on for as long as possible.

The uncertainty around Guardiola is nothing new. All season there have been rumblings that he believes his legacy has been cemented and, having carried the project into a new phase that has seen his Treble-winning side replaced by a younger, hungrier group who can challenge for the Champions League again, it is time to hand over the reins.

But what does feel new is some of the jockeying for position ahead of a managerial market that will see Manchester United, Chelsea and Real Madrid appoint new managers this summer. City and Liverpool – who retain confidence in Arne Slot for the moment – could yet join the table while there will be international jobs vacant after the World Cup.

An accomplished, experienced and trophy-winning manager like Maresca would be assumed by many to be in the mix for a many of those roles but – according to at least one top-flight executive involved in this space – he is “Manchester City’s man” if Guardiola goes.

There is a logic to it. As a former Guardiola apprentice at City, he is familiar with the structure and set-up at the Etihad. He worked in the academy and then as part of Guardiola’s backroom set-up for three years and is understood to be close to Hugo Viana, City’s sporting director.

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He is also keen on the role and available, even if the terms of his exit from Chelsea mean that there would need to be negotiations between City and the Blues to agree compensation. That is not expected to be a major factor preventing him from making the move if Guardiola goes, though.

It feels like the obvious move – but with Guardiola, you just never know. Earlier this year City were more confident he would stay until 2027 and he has reacted with incredulity to questions about his future in recent months. But the fact he is yet to nail his colours to the mast is probably not good news.

Maresca is not the only one waiting with bated breath.

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Whatever happens now, this season has been a sensation for Millwall; no higher league finish since 1990, Teddy Sheringham, Tony Cascarino and all that. Whatever happens now, they have muscled in with the parachute payment crowd and the free spenders. Whatever happens now, Alex Neil has outperformed all optimistic expectations, let alone the reasonable ones.

Whatever happens now, there is something to build upon and whatever happens now something significant has already been built. John Berylson’s tragic passing in 2023 could have left a vacuum in south London. Whatever happens now, his son James has done his father proud in every way.

And whatever happens now is the most exciting bit of all. Not for 22 years has Millwall’s Championship season extended beyond 46 matches. The play-offs have one certainty: to give you the worst or best day of your football season. So make peace with it and just dream your own dream.

Millwall are still being undervalued, for no good reason. They finished third in the Championship. They lost once away from home against the top eight in the division (Coventry City, in January).

Over the final 30 matches of the regular season, they sat a point off the top. The only reason to write them off is because you never expected them to be there at all and you haven’t really processed it yet.

It is the result of a masterclass in tactical coaching from Neil, who found a formula that worked and has maximised its advantages. Millwall ranked 17th of 24 for possession and 22nd for completed passes but played the highest percentage of their passes forward and recorded the most crosses and accurate crosses.

There is a Millwall type of goal: win possession in their own half, two quick passes, a winger set free and a cross for an onrushing forward. They were also third for set-piece goals. They are direct and they are exciting and that works here because it is exactly what their supporters want to see.

It also works because Millwall have been excellent at soaking up pressure. Jake Cooper is a modern club legend, named Player of the Year and part of a defence that kept the most clean sheets in the Championship. Tristan Crama, equally massive and equally dependable, sits next to Cooper.

This can’t happen without effective squad-building. Between January and August 2025, Millwall received the three highest transfer fees in the club’s history. They effectively supercharged a player trading model, reinvesting by signing five players for fees last summer, all 25 or below.

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Six of their eight players with more than 30 league starts this season are still aged 24 or under. It’s the fifth lowest average age with a bottom-half wage bill finishing third – what’s not to like?

“What’s not to like?” is a loaded question where Millwall are concerned. There are things that you have heard about elements of the fanbase and there are things that you may well have seen for yourself. Deliberately ignoring those issues is counterproductive.

But there are two important things to say here. The first is that I haven’t been inside a club that does better work – earlier, harder, more groundbreaking – to try to erode that reputation, to educate and to (where necessary) remove those who refuse to abide by the principles of anti-discrimination. They set up the first anti-discriminatory body at an English football club in 1994 and they continue to lead the way. You don’t have to believe that, but it’s true.

Secondly, the pantomime elements – booing injured players, taunting opposition supporters, vitriol towards officials – is prevalent at lots of football clubs and barely merits mention at any of them. And where the line is crossed, it reflects a football problem not a Millwall problem and a societal problem not a football problem.

Off the pitch has been exciting for a long while. Last year, Millwall purchased the freehold of the club’s training ground, allowing greater investment in facilities to bring the club to the upper level of the Championship.

Hospitality areas in the stadium are being upgraded and their home itself is now safe after years of campaigning. It will form part of the greater New Bermondsey regeneration project to transform an area of inner-city, industrial south London.

Now football is going hand in hand with the rest and life is rosy enough that it’s hard to trust it at all. As Nick Hart of the Achtung Millwall podcast jokes, exciting and fun are words that he’s never really associated with Millwall before. The halcyon days don’t always have to exist in the past.

Millwall won’t ever be popular. They can make their peace with that and they can continue to make it their niche. If it means that everyone else overlooks the excellent stuff – the progress, the growth, the investment in infrastructure and the work of a family to honour a man they lost – then it will only help them. Millwall are brilliantly run, brilliantly managed and brilliantly positioned to make the next step.

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EMIRATES – The roar and red mist that thrust Arsenal into their biggest night since this stadium was built were never just a carnival hangover from the night before. Whatever torturous days lie in store for England’s champions-elect, 90 minutes are all that stand between them and glory: European glory at that. Flights booked, passports ready: they are heading for Budapest.

It always mattered immeasurably. But it mattered more in the month they are dreaming of ending a separate two decades of heartache. On overcast north London evenings like this, the air full of gloom and damp, the usual fear of impending clouds were banished for a moment, hopes of another unlikely triumph fuelled by Manchester City’s Merseyside implosion.

You will have heard the aspersions about this Arsenal side: that they are incapable of getting over the line, powerless to break out of stale, familiar patterns. Perhaps you will have heard there are misconceptions about Atletico Madrid too, that they are nothing like the Diego Simeone set-ups of old. If not, then they still do a frustratingly good impression.

To put an end to this bloody, two-legged war of attrition, a moment seized, and a prayer answered from Bukayo Saka, who knelt on the pitch after a breakthrough created again by Viktor Gyokeres.

In answer to the naysayers, only four Premier League players have scored more goals than Gyokeres all season. That will surprise a few people, but it was his build-up play that discombobulated Atletico enough to allow Leandro Trossard’s strike to be parried into Saka’s feet by Jan Oblak.

Criticisms have not just been levelled at Gyokeres, who admittedly blazed his own best chance over the bar. Almost every one of these players has been doubted, on occasion vilified. Bottlers. Chokers. How about: Champions League finalists.

It could not have happened without Gabriel’s inch-perfect challenge denying Giuliano Simeone once he had all but beaten David Raya. Atletico came at them relentlessly. It was far from certain that Mikel Arteta’s courage would be repaid, keeping faith with the adventurous Myles Lewis-Skelly and Ricardo Calafiori.

At the perfect time of year, bravery and boldness are reaping unthinkable rewards. Lewis-Skelly the born-again midfielder did some of his best work in the tussles with Julian Alvarez, a player Arteta plans to lure to the Emirates this summer.

Before that, Paris Saint-Germain or Bayern Munich lie in wait. The victors of this tie knew they would travel to Hungary as unfancied underdogs. Arsenal showed they possess the street smarts to at least make it a contest.

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Atletico had commenced the hostilities by filing a Uefa complaint over supporters setting off fireworks outside the team hotel in the early hours. That was about as sparkling as it was likely to get. If PSG vs Bayern was hailed as one of the greatest ever semi-finals, some thought this had all the ingredients to turn into one of the worst. Yet these are the two biggest clubs never to have been crowned European champions – more breath was held here than anywhere else.   

It could be felt in the flailing wrath of Simeone, encroaching onto the pitch and provoking Arsenal fans throughout. There is already enough edginess built into the fabric here, not helped by a burning sense of injustice. Some still believe that final 20 years ago would not have been lost to Barcelona without an early Jens Lehmann red.

With one last push, these are ghosts that can be buried forever. These are the nights that make or break history. Who would have thought it would all be superseded by the visit of Burnley in a fortnight’s time?

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In the spirit of a result that bore little relation to the data we might be excused a speculative punt regarding the meaning of it all. Was this some kind of cosmic intervention, perhaps a godlike arm reaching down from Delphi to nudge the title and Pep Guardiola away from Manchester?

Any who switched to the snooker at half-time would have been baffled by a finale that required Manchester City to score twice late on to take a point from a contest they dominated.

The absence of jeopardy was marked during a supine first half of Evertonian survivalism which revived the crushing sense of inevitably that accompanied City’s peak Pep period.

That this evolving iteration of the Guardiola model can throw up results like this from a seemingly impregnable position begs the question: is something seismic upon us?

Ten years and counting is a long time for any coach to spend at one club, and not just any club. Guardiola is football’s supreme being, one of the great innovators who, powered by a nation state, married aesthetics and power to an irresistible degree.

For 45 minutes at the Hill Dickinson Stadium it appeared this iteration might be the best yet, a front three of Jeremy Doku, Erling Haaland and Antoine Semenyo supplied by the waspish prompts of late-phase Bernardo Silva and Rayan Cherki, forcing Everton into a classic Moyesian rearguard.

Peak City might have cracked half a dozen to tighten their grip around Arsenal’s throat. Yet there is a creeping unreliability, even vulnerability about this ensemble that can be exposed if the opposition sets about them as Everton did, which in turn might hint at a similar fragility in the gaffer.

Was it my imagination or was Guardiola weirdly sanguine about the surrender of two points and the initiative in a title duel that looked to be heading towards a seventh coronation in 10 years? Like, whatever happens, he is working to a timetable that only he knows.

Even Michael Keane’s hooligan lunge that might have snapped Doku’s ankle in two was left to others to deconstruct. “Your pundits can say it,” was all Guardiola could muster.

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All of this is playing out against the backdrop of the inquiry into the financial architecture that transformed City and re-ordered the nature of competition in the Premier League.

City deny any financial wrongdoing in a case that at the very least calls into question the Premier League’s administration of a competition sold as world leading.

Guardiola rightly points out that the reputational damage is already done to his fine team. Supporters of other clubs are adjusted to the mind-bending sums that took a fading relic of old football to the vanguard of the new.

They don’t need a tribunal to pass judgment on the legality of the investments made. Either way the game has been warped by the inequalities that made City the team they are.

As Jose Mourinho gleefully pointed out in a discussion last week of Guardiola’s place in history, the beauty of his teams are undeniable, but, at City at least, he is benefitting from a structure that few in the history of the game have enjoyed.

The narrative around City, fuelled to a large degree by the failure of the Premier League to conclude their investigation into 130 charges of financial impropriety, inevitably colours the Guardiola epoch, casting doubt on the validity of his work.

He is reconciled to this of course, and, persuaded by assurances from the owners that compliance with the regulations has always been met, has carried on regardless.

However, as the weeks and months drag on, you wonder how long Guardiola can keep the energy going, and moments like Monday serve up snippets, tiny shifts in behaviour and attitude that invite us to wonder if something more fundamental is in the wind.

The draw at Everton has certainly tilted the momentum back towards Arsenal. City face Brentford on Saturday night knowing the title is out of their hands, a prospect as unthinkable at half time on Monday as the idea Pep might walk.

Yet, as that result reminds us, little is as it seems in this game.

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Public tirades often signal the beginning of the end for football managers, the parting shot of a civil war only going one way. That is not the case for Richie Wellens at Leyton Orient.

The 46-year-old unleashed a remarkable seven-minute scolding of his players on Saturday for two reasons. He has enough credit for another season in charge, and because he knows he won’t be coaching a good number of this squad when he does.

Wellens was in no mood to celebrate despite Orient escaping relegation. He berated his players for passing it around the back towards the end of the 2-2 draw with Burton, which secured their League One status by three points after Exeter City lost to Bradford City.

And that was just the start. Wellens said “one year of my management career has been wasted by the players”, called the squad “really, really weak” and claimed they “served up rubbish”. He then apologised to the supporters. “They deserve to be clapped,” he said. “But then don’t be celebrating with your family. Get off the pitch, it’s been an embarrassing season.”

"Get off the pitch, it's been an embarrassing season"

Leyton Orient boss Richie Wellens was angry at his players for celebrating avoiding relegation on the final day. pic.twitter.com/ecUXXx7V5D

— Sky Sports News (@SkySportsNews) May 3, 2026

The most salient point of his outburst was around recruitment. Last year, after Orient lost the play-off final to Charlton Athletic, Wellens called that group of players “special”, “one of the best I have ever worked with as a player of manager”.

Orient’s poor recruitment

Former director of football Martin Ling also hailed the impact of their loan players in 2024-25, including Jamie Donley and Josh Keeley from Tottenham Hotspur. Charlie Kelman scored 21 league goals on loan from Queens Park Rangers.

In 2025-26, the opposite effect. No loanees shone, further proving the EFL is a roll-of-the-dice game of loans where there is rarely a middle ground. In 12 months, Orient went from free-scoring and winning regularly to leaky and shot-shy, with fans falling out of love with who they were watching.

“Our supporters last year had songs for about 10 players, we have songs for two players this year,” Wellens pointed out.

Had it not been for striker Dom Ballard, everyone at the club knows what would have happened. Rarely does a club who finishes 20th also boast the league’s player of the season, but the 21-year-old collected the EFL award, Young Player of the Season, and the Golden Boot with 23 goals.

A player on the up, Ballard’s standout campaign amid Orient’s regression – or as one supporter called him on social media, their diamond in a pile of manure – means the club’s fans are already mentally preparing for life after the forward, who reportedly has Wrexham among his suitors.

Ballard’s future

Wellens insisted Orient want to keep Ballard but admitted it is possible chairman Nigel Travis will allow him to leave for the right fee.

Regardless, a summer of upheaval looks inevitable. With defender Dan Happe and midfielder Theo Archibald among the players out of contract, and others set to be sold, a refresh could give the Orient boss the two things he craves: more athleticism and more character.

That is not easily bought. The fear will be that the scars of this season, coupled with Ballard’s potential departure, undo the hard work that saw Wellens take the club from mid-table in League Two to a game away from the Championship.

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‘The fanbase is divided’

The rant has also split supporters. “Many are saying, ‘good on him’ for his honesty on a squad which has clearly underperformed, but at the same time much of the fanbase saying Richie must assume some responsibility for this season’s form,” Steve Nussbaum, host of Orient Outlook podcast with Paul Levy, tells The i Paper.

Heading into a fifth full season in charge, it will be on Wellens – and whoever he may have at his disposal – to prove one step back hasn’t obliterated those three taken forward. Or else this tirade would have been the early death knell after all.

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