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Man Utd 3-1 Aston Villa (Casemiro 53′, Cunha 71′, Sesko 81′ | Barkley 64′)

OLD TRAFFORD — If Manchester United are going to rekindle former glories, Bruno Fernandes has to be persuaded that his Premier League dreams can still come true if he stays put a few more years yet.

Years of broken promises have turned his head. The shoulders are weary after carrying this sleeping giant since he arrived on our shores, ready to conquer all. Saudi Arabia advances offered a lucrative way out, with other top European clubs still interested, despite his advancing years.

There are genuine fears among senior United figures that, after showdown talks scheduled for before Portugal head to the United States for the World Cup, Fernandes, at 31, will say enough is enough.

No matter how many hundreds of millions United intend to spend on a midfield overhaul this summer, the likes we have never seen at Old Trafford, such an eventuality cannot be allowed to happen.

Bruno Fernandes cuts through the Aston Villa defence and Matheus Cunha restores the Red Devils' lead! pic.twitter.com/R23cYXSH7I

— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) March 15, 2026

Fernandes is everything as a player United want to be as a club: possession of unrelenting intensity, ability to rile the opposition up like no other, all while remaining world class in all that he does.

His two assists in a vital 3-1 win over top-four rivals Aston Villa on Sunday ensures that only two players in Premier League history – Robin van Persie in 2012-13 and Eric Cantona in 1992-93 – have earned United more points with their goals and assists in a single season than the captain this season. And there are still eight games to go.

It is the timing of many of his sublime assists – he now has 16 this season, a United Premier League record – that separates Fernandes from his peers and makes him wholly irreplaceable.

Some sloppy defending allowed Ross Barkley the freedom of Stretford to level against a labouring United. Another missed opportunity beckoned.

With one defence-splitting pass into Matheus Cunha, a superhuman pickout no rearguard would ever be able to cut out, Fernandes turned one point into three. The slide-rule pass should be heralded as the assist of the season, but such instances are all in a day’s work for the Portuguese magnifico.

That is what is scary about Fernandes – despite his unfathomable numbers, his two assists taking him to 100 for United – he remains criminally underrated.

Roy Keane cannot see it. There is much to be annoyed about how Fernandes goes about his business, especially to perfectionists like Keane. But that is part of it – Fernandes is a maverick. He does things his way, to devastating effect.

With Casemiro seeking pastures new in the summer, losing Fernandes too could set Ineos’ restoration project back to square one.

There is an argument that if Elliot Anderson and one other come in, a young, vibrant midfield, equipped with born-again Kobbie Mainoo, shouldn’t be as reliant on Fernandes as the current incumbent is. If the club can bring in £50m or more for a 31-year-old, those more business-savvy have credence to claim it is also time to cash in.

Only a handful of players in history, however, can produce passes like Sunday’s sensational assist. Even fewer at the most crucial moments.

A return to the Champions League will help, but the charm offensive must begin in earnest. Fernandes cannot be allowed to leave, no matter the cost.

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The Six Nations comes to a close today with France, Scotland and Ireland all in the running to become champions.

The day’s action begins with a huge clash in Dublin as Ireland host Scotland. Wales then take on Italy before England close out the championship when they travel to Paris this evening.

France are in pole position to be crowned winners and a bonus-point victory would guarantee the trophy regardless of what happens in the day’s other matches.

It is also a busy Saturday in the Premier League with five games taking place, including Arsenal hosting Everton and Chelsea playing Newcastle United.

Arsenal are seven points clear at the top of the table with eight matches left to play, although second-placed Manchester City have a game in hand.

City are away at West Ham United this evening, while in the day’s other fixtures Burnley host Bournemouth and Sunderland welcome Brighton.

Elsewhere, Championship leaders Coventry City, who sit eight points above Middlesbrough, continue their push for the title.

Follow The i Paper’s updates below…

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West Ham United have been issued with a dire warning about their immediate future where a “fire sale” of players could take place in the event of relegation to the Championship.

The Hammers are currently 18th in the Premier League and battling against the drop. It would be a dreaded outcome to deepen the financial troubles at the east London outfit, where it has been revealed that a loan of £124m has been secured from Rights and Media Limited, a company which assists clubs who have been refused extra funding from traditional banks.

Cheshire-based RMF borrows funds from opaque offshore companies in order to lend to football clubs. It currently has just one director, David McKnight. Everton had previously been a debtor for £225m to RMF – a sum which also accrued approximately £30m in interest – until their takeover by the Friedkin Group in 2024.

West Ham, who reached the FA Cup quarter-finals with a win over Brentford on Monday, could, in a worse-case scenario, also risk losing its ownership of properties such as the club’s training ground at Chadwell Heath.

In the short term, relegation would mean a very serious likelihood of departures for prize assets such as Crysencio Summerville, Jarrod Bowen, Aaron Wan-Bissaka and Mateus Fernandes, who have a combined, current market value of around £100m. All four are on long-term deals with the Hammers. Others, such as Lucas Paqueta and Mohammed Kudus, have already been sold this season.

“They would have to enter the Championship with a much reduced squad, sell their best, most expensive players”, Paul Quinn, a football finance and governance expert, told The i Paper. “They’ll end up with a younger squad with less established players.

“They have to reduce costs, even if they avoid relegation. They cannot continue to spend more money than they earn – the squad cost has to be reduced.

“Whilst RMF have charges over the properties and land, it’s most likely West Ham would have a massive fire sale of players to reduce their loan and they would have to use their parachute payments if relegated to pay down the debt.”

Despite the team winning the Europa Conference League in 2023, West Ham chairman David Sullivan and the board have come under sustained criticism from supporters in recent years for their running of the club, where it is spending more money than it earns, mainly on player salaries and operating costs.

And Quinn has also warned of interest payments on the £124m loan amid the Hammers’ difficulties on and off the field.

He said: “There’s no doubt that in recent years the club has been terribly run and poor commercial and footballing decisions have been made.

“The reason clubs need this type of funding is relatively simple. The clubs are spending more money than they earn.

“They spend that money on wages, transfers and running costs. The shortfall can only be made up by selling assets (players), the owner putting more money into the club, or in the absence of either by borrowing from non-traditional lenders.

“Based on the loan charges Everton paid, the interest rate is likely to be the UK base rate plus 5 per cent. Currently, the base rate is 3.75 per cent, so it’s likely West Ham are paying around 8.75 to 9 per cent. That’s likely to produce an interest cost of £10-11m a year.”

According to previously released documents relating to offshore companies, the case of Everton’s RMF debt led to Michael Tabor, a Monaco- and Barbados-based racehorse owner and leisure entrepreneur. However Quinn feels it is very unlikely Tabor would be interested in a possible West Ham takeover.

He said: “I very much doubt it to be honest. A likely buyer would be Daniel Kretinsky who is already a significant (West Ham) shareholder.

“If I was a West Ham fan I would be asking why are shareholders incapable of or unwilling to fund the losses caused by the poor business and football decisions they have made. If they are not willing to fund the losses or find an executive team to turn the club around, the only option is to sell to owners who can.”

In a wider sense, Quinn shares the concerns of football fans when companies such as RMF are the beneficiaries with money lost to the game.

“It’s hugely concerning to all football supporters that so much money leaves the game because clubs spend more than they earn,” he said. “They don’t have owners who are prepared (or able) to fund the losses themselves.”

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So the footballers of Iran would be wise not to travel to the World Cup this summer, says Donald Trump. “For their own life and safety.”

Whatever can the president of the United States mean? No shit Sherlock springs to mind. Would their lives be at risk from MAGA hit squads were they to contest their scheduled fixtures in Los Angeles and Seattle? Even if that were the case, some would argue their prospects would be massively improved by being in the United States rather than being bombed by the United States in their own homes.

The man waging war in their country on grounds that shift like sand in the Maranjab Desert claims Iran would be welcome to compete, which would be reassuring to the Iranian football federation had they not already joined the dots in a statement from sports minister Ahmad Donyamali a day prior.

“Given that this corrupt government has assassinated our leader, under no circumstances do we have the appropriate conditions to participate in the World Cup,” he said in an interview with broadcaster IRIB. “Our boys are not safe, and conditions for participation do not exist.”

As the Middle East burns, few are untouched by the rippling consequences of the tragic US/Israeli power play. In the context of rocketing oil prices, melting stock markets, rising inflation, not to mention the death of innocents in the region, the impact of the conflagration on a football tournament is a piffling concern.

Trump could not care less about the fate of Iran’s footballers, nor the tournament for that matter, other than its value as a propaganda tool. Trump will be all over it as he was the Ryder Cup, sundry Super Bowls, UFC, US Open tennis, etc., shamelessly manipulating the world’s attention through the sporting prism.

The message to Iran’s footballers on Trump’s Truth Social platform was another cynical subversion of reality, creating an impression of sincere concern where none exists. To pass comment on Trump’s rambling incoherence risks giving it weight it does not deserve. It is the vague whiff of menace associated with the phrase “for their own safety”, that disturbs in this case.

And the certainty that Trump is on the right side of history by highlighting the possibility of danger that Iran might face, as if it were somehow justified. We are told that sport should remain separate, uncontaminated by politics. Why, therefore, would any well-adjusted, right-thinking American feel anything other than sympathy for the plight of Iranian footballers forced to submit to the authority of an abhorrent, theocratic, medieval government.

If Trump really wanted to make political capital out of the mess he has inflamed and expose the Iranian regime for what it is, he would be better served by ensuring Iran’s participation and rewarding any squad members seeking escape with political asylum.

But that would require strategy and genuine concern to be shown by the world’s most powerful figure. When political analysts the world over struggle to determine the real point of the war in Iran, Trump is left with little option but to deflect, deny, and delude.

Iran’s self-imposed exclusion at least opens the World Cup door to another nation, ostensibly from the same Asian confederation, although you would not rule out an executive order from the Oval Office announcing the re-entry of Russia to the top table of international sport.

Perhaps this is what it is all about, not imminent nuclear threat, regime change, control of global oil supply or Epstein Files diversion, but a scheme conjured by Trump and Vladimir Putin to facilitate Russia’s unconditional return to international sport and to normalise despotic authoritarianism. Nothing is off the table in Trumpland. It’s Trump’s world, we are just living in it.

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When the Reedtz brothers took over from Alan Hardy in July 2019, Notts County were in a deep mess. The world’s oldest professional club had just been relegated to non-league for the first time in its history, were due in the High Court for a winding-up order and the financial issues had left Notts unable to sign players that summer.

To say that it was a step into the unknown is an understatement. Alex and Chris Reedtz were aged 31 and 36 respectively, had built the analysis company Football Radar but had never been involved inside the game like this. They had taken on one of the biggest challenges in English football: rebuild a historic club that had long since allowed the weeds to strangle all positivity.

Since then, extraordinary work. Notts took four seasons – and three failed play-off campaigns – to get out of the National League, latterly recording 107 points behind AFC Wrexham. For the last four seasons in a row they have finished in a higher position than the last and that is likely to be five come May.

Notts are a point off the automatic promotion places in League Two. Only twice since 1981 has this club managed automatic promotion. It would be a magnificent early legacy.

Notts County became a test case for Football Radar’s data analysis and database. In raw terms it helps determine who to sign and when to sell, but broadly it helps to work out how to best extract value from the playing budget. They know that this is no exact science. But they firmly believe that the proprietary nature of their data can give them an advantage.

The key bridge between owners and the coaching staff is Richard Montague, the director of football who worked with Alex and Chris for a decade at Football Radar. Montague left Notts County for the same role at Swansea City in February last year but is now back at Meadow Lane and delighted to continue his work.

Some people have perceptions of how data can be overused in football. They suppose that the humanity of football, its emotional relationships, sit outside the remit of numbers and thus “the data guys” can fall down on that point. Which is where Montague comes in.

“I think the really challenging thing for clubs to do well is that it’s so hard to not let emotion get in the way of decision-making and yet you cannot ignore the significance of emotion,” he tells The i Paper.

“What Chris and Alex work incredibly hard on is making sure that those of us who help them make decisions try and think in the same way as they do: try and reduce bias in decision-making as much as you possibly can.

“Data is such a catch-all term for something that powers so many of our industries now. The people who do that best are the ones who can marry that cold, rational, objective data with real-life situations and try and pick the way through those to get the perfect marriage. Football presents a unique challenge within that because you have players, managers, coaches and supporters who all play into the human aspect.”

Talent identification and player trading lie at the heart of the ownership model, but the real legacy here is sustainability. The Reedtz brothers are not fabulously wealthy by English football standards. Notts County have the highest average attendances in League Two, which helps.

The owners want to be here for a long time. They are as desperate as supporters for the obvious markers of success – promotion – but sustainable success is the only real success because it is the only way this can last into the long term.

That is what some of the conjecture about data-driven decision-making can miss: it is not just about who you buy, but how the money gets spent. At Meadow Lane, the improvements are significant: new fan zone, new pitch, new electronic advertising boards, refurbished hospitality areas, padel courts (the first in the area and thus ahead of the curve), a new PA system.

The Nest is a vast new supporter hub – big screens, bars, tables – that hosts home fans on matchdays but also away supporters when Forest are at home and hundreds of non-footballing events annually that creates income during the week and off-season. Find new, innovative ways to generate revenue and you can increase the playing budget. Last year, the brothers waived a £10.8m loan from Football Radar that allowed Notts to register an annual profit. These are the marks of their commitment.

Sustainability is not easy; breaking even is almost impossible if you want to move forward. This has been a brilliant season for balance sheet overachievement in the EFL, with Lincoln City and Bromley top of their respective divisions, but Montague is acutely aware that the landscape incentivises overspending. It takes effort to persuade all football supporters against keeping up with the Joneses.

“It’s a really interesting time to be talking about lower league football,” he says.

“Like: what is it for? Should people care that owners are losing three or four million pounds a year to stay in League One? I don’t know, but it feels important to me anyway. We need to work out what and who the English pyramid is for.

“If you aimed to break even, even as a regular-sized club in League Two, you would be probably tying yourself to a very low playing budget relative to your peers. I do think it needs a bigger conversation about what we are happy with. I think it’s pretty clear that the way it’s set up currently, it just encourages teams to spend more and more on wages.”

Whatever happens between now and the end of May, I reckon Notts County are in good hands. Two Danish brothers who were obsessed with football and found their own niche decided to take the plunge. Some, in 2019, feared that their club was being used as a plaything or a petri dish for a data system. Alex and Chris have done everything since to show that they have submerged themselves in the culture of this club and its community.

Promotion would be a significant statement: Notts County back in the third tier after more than a decade, the years before the dark days. But it matters and does not matter. Home attendances are higher than they have been since the early 1990s. The community arm is being allowed to do magnificent work and has been brought closer to the bosom of the club. The team is playing well, the aim is to play decent football and score goals and none of that has been built upon sand.

As a resident of this city and a supporter of its other club, that brings me joy too. For too long Notts County was a punchline, the historic club for whom the present was grim and the future looked worse. Now Notts County can be proud of what it represents again, thanks to Chris, Alex, Richard and all that they are working towards. And that is just about all you can ask for.

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Hegemony is not what it was. Over five winless games and one humiliation the neck of the Premier League has been well and truly wound in. All that pearl-clutching at Uefa over the financial heft of football’s mother country looks entirely misplaced.

Perhaps they should relent and allow English clubs competing in Europe to spend more than they earn (as teams not in Europe are allowed to do) to bring them wholly to heel.

Despite the mortification of Tottenham in one quarter of Madrid and the humbling of Manchester City in another, the commentary died hard.

If Richarlison had netted for Spurs with the score at 4-1 against Atletico on Tuesday, who knows what might have happened was the sentiment poured through the ether by TNT’s Spanish deniers.

Twenty-four hours later in Paris, Glenn Hoddle shared the view that Chelsea had nothing to fear from Paris Saint-Germain and, with the score at 3-2 with four minutes to go, will fancy their chances in London.

His deliberation was interrupted by a flash of brilliance by Khvicha Kvaratskhelia that took the score to 4-2. He would rubber-stamp that with another in added time, three goals in 15 minutes rubbing English hauteur into the dirt.

Premier League leaders Arsenal required a late goal to exit Leverkusen with a draw in the early match, a feat beyond Liverpool in Tuesday’s hors d’oeuvres in Istanbul, where again the commentary team struggled to reconcile what we were seeing with their framing of the tie.

Even though they led early, Galatasaray did not do so by virtue of their own quality, according to the general tenor of the commentary, but as a result of the mistakes made by Liverpool, who would shortly set that right to reaffirm eminence.

Except they didn’t because Galatasaray were a handful spearheaded by that noted penalty box vandal Victor Osimhen, supported by a swarm of fleet-footed attackers with whom the English audience was largely unfamiliar.

Khvicha Kvaratskhelia scores again in stoppage time to make it 5-2

Chelsea have a mountain to climb in the second leg…@tntsports & @discoveryplusUK pic.twitter.com/HAHVgoUIRi

— Football on TNT Sports (@footballontnt) March 11, 2026

There is always next week, of course, when the teams gather for the second legs. Liverpool will hope Anfield stills the feet of the opposition, and Arsenal have the power to progress should they overcome the creep of performance anxiety triggered by fear of defeat, which seems such a problem for them.

It would be negligent not to reference Newcastle’s draw with Barcelona. But for a clumsy challenge on Dani Olmo in the sixth minute of added time that brought Lamine Yamal into the game from the penalty spot, St James’ Park would have been celebrating a deserved win. In that encounter at least, the hauteur was all Barca’s.

The strength of the Premier League is its depth, made so by the equitable spread of the vast broadcast wealth it attracts. This is a feature worth applauding. And it must be said, the sense of superiority it engenders is not shared in the same way by the players and coaches, who experience elite competition in a different way to supporters and broadcasters selling product.

The capacity of Real Madrid to set aside domestic form in the Champions League, especially for the visit of Manchester City, would not have been a shock to Pep Guardiola, who, like all the English coaches must negotiate the consequences of that deeper domestic depth, fatigue, injuries, etc. Nevertheless, he could have done without a first half hat-trick from Federico Valverde.

The performance of Real’s Uruguayan skipper was a reminder that underpinning the Galactico model is a base level of grunt required of all successful teams. At least Guardiola did not choose this game to change keepers, although he might had he had prior warning of Gianluigi Donnarumma’s weird reluctance to use his left arm for the first goal.

The selection of Antonin Kinsky over Guglielmo Vicario at the Metropolitano had the feel of an ill-judged gamble by the ill-fitting Igor Tudor even before he lost his footing and then his mind. Similarly in Paris, where Liam Rosenior’s decision to axe the imperfect Robert Sanchez for a keeper untested at this level always felt like an abstraction too far by a young coach seeking to prove his credentials. 

Filip Jorgensen demonstrated his technical qualities in denying Bradley Barcola and Ousmane Dembele with fine saves, but suffered a mental lapse with the match poised at 2-2 by gifting the ball to an attacker on the edge of his box. His subsequent fragility was then exposed by the Georgian Messi.

As former England manager Graham Taylor was fond of saying, the bad days are never as awful as they seem and the good never as great as they appear. The English had better hope there is something in that when the teams reconvene. Hubris is the hardest pill to swallow.

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Zak Vyner would never have wanted to be the poster boy for this, but the cap fits. The academy kid, the boyhood fan, the longest-serving player; it all mattered. And then Vyner left for AFC Wrexham in January, a cut-price fee because his contract was up in the summer.

It was Vyner’s first words as a Wrexham player that stung the most. Asked why he had left Bristol City after six straight seasons of Championship football, to cross the border, Vyner was sure: “It’s the ambition. I think the project is well underway and you can’t help but admire it from afar.”

The undertones were unintended, but bruised Bristol City supporters extrapolated them anyway: that club is going places: (this one isn’t); I gave my all (and for what?); I played well (but where did it really get us?). In an exit statement, Vyner described himself as “one of you [fans] now”. To which the sarcastic reply might be: unlucky, pal.

Bristol City supporters rarely get angry; apathy would be a far more accurate diagnosis. If anything, there is an argument that the fanbase has been a little too passive over the last six years. But in recent weeks, mutiny has bubbled over. At the Sheffield Wednesday game in January, “Sack the board” chants were audible. Owner Steve Lansdown and technical director Brian Tinnion are both coming in for serious flak.

For his part, Lansdown voiced his annoyance at the criticism. He pointed to the “hand in my pocket” investment over many years and the necessary long-termism: “People think we just do nothing – absolute twaddle… They’ve got to understand that we can’t do everything straight away.”

There is no crisis at Bristol City; not really. They sold Vyner and Anis Mehmeti in January, but money was reinvested. There is much doubt as to whether manager Gerhard Struber will work out and they have only won three of their last 12 games. They are mid-table in the Championship. Again, none of this is deeply unacceptable.

But it is not only a crisis that gets people angry. Bristol City, their fans say, have got completely stuck. In their last six seasons, Bristol City have won between 15 and 17 league games. They took 22 points from their first 12 league matches in 2025-26, just to raise the heart rate a little. It is 28 from 24 since.

It is not the hope that kills you, but hope only as a prelude to eventual disappointment sure wears you down. And here: a 13-game unbeaten run to go fifth in 2018-19, fourth in December 2019, third in November 2020, a current run of five straight seasons with a higher league finish than the previous year, a playoff place last season (they lost 6-0 on aggregate), the start to this campaign. Every time this team moves forward, it is magnetised back to mediocrity.

Expectation without resources or reason to believe equals entitlement; that doesn’t fit the bill here. Bristol City routinely post the highest revenues of non-parachute Championship clubs. This is the biggest club in English football’s bridesmaid city, ranked eighth according to population and god knows where according to football performance.

Nor can anyone claim that Lansdown has not spent money – a rough estimate is just shy of £300m over his long tenure. He built a new stadium that is certainly magnificent. The club regularly post significant losses that Lansdown permits, ostensibly through generosity and his connection to the club and the city.

None of that erases the question: where are Bristol City going other than nowhere? Clubs repeatedly talk about identities, but what is that here? Over the last 15 years they have had eight chief executives and nine managers. Fifteen years ago, they were mid-table in the Championship. They still are. All that money, all that effort, all that time, all that wastage.

There is a temptation to caveat supporter anger with a reflection of the Championship’s tilted stage; parachute payment clubs clearly have an advantage. But really, that does not wash here.

Look at the current top seven clubs in the Championship: Coventry City, Hull City, Ipswich Town, Millwall, Middlesbrough, Wrexham, Derby County. Three of those have been in League One since Bristol City were. Three others finished below them last season. The exception, Coventry, have a lower annual revenue. Why is promotion always someone else’s realistic dream?

I wonder if mid-table finishes create their own problems. Dealing with repeated seasons of the same experience is hard to process as a supporter as ennui loops to apathy and back. Loyalty disallows you giving up; Bristol City are still likely to have 22,000 season ticket holders next season.

But repetition is also hard for the clubs too. You tell yourself that better is just around the corner; there is never enough going wrong to rip everything up. We have seen it repeatedly: plight can often be a prelude to progress beyond where you started. At Bristol City, the opposite. The entire identity inadvertently becomes simply being a Championship football club.

There will be those, as ever, who warn that supporters should be careful what they wish for: local billionaires do not grow on trees. Which is both absolutely correct and yet misses the point. At Leicester City on Tuesday evening, there were barely 300 away supporters and they watched a performance with no modicum of positivity: 2-0 down early on, missed penalty, more chants against the club’s hierarchy.

The answer: there are no easy answers. But one thing is certain, and those in positions of power must learn to accept it: this club, and these supporters, need to believe in something. Hearing that things cannot change immediately is no good when nothing ever seems to change at all. Otherwise we can all meet here in another three years, ploughing ruefully over the same old ground.

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