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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.

Read more

• Daniel Storey: How Hull City made the data nerds look silly
• Michael Hincks: Aston Villa are being unfairly punished

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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Hull City have been one of the most fascinating teams in England this season.

Predicted by many to finish in the Championship’s bottom three back in August after surviving relegation on goal difference, Hull still have a decent shot at promotion.

The Tigers entered the top six on 10 December and have largely stayed there ever since.

But here’s the rub: Hull are a remarkable statistical outlier. Their expected goals differential, a measure of how many goals we would have expected them to score minus how many we would have expected them to concede, has them above only Sheffield Wednesday. 

So are Hull City the luckiest team in the country this season, or is the model itself that judges this overperformance failing to properly assess their greatest strengths?

The numbers are indeed silly…

Hull rank 19th for shots in the Championship and fourth for goals scored. They have had fewer touches in the opposition penalty area this season than Leicester City, their opponents on Tuesday night who have been relegated.

Fine, you say, they’re probably a very good defensive team. Well, not according to the raw numbers. Hull have allowed 653 shots – only Charlton Athletic and Sheffield Wednesday have allowed more. They have conceded the fourth most goals in the division too, so it’s not like they aren’t being punished.

And we have to refer back to that xG differential: not only would it have Hull 23rd in the Championship, they would be five goals worse off than 22nd on that particular measure. This is weird.

…but remember what xG really is

Expected goals is a measure of chances according to averages taken across vast swathes of data. It provides a useful level by which we can judge overperformance or underperformance over a period of time. For those who say “well this player is better than average,” yes! If xG accounted for every variable then it would not need to exist. You’d simply have the final score.

Hull have indeed been quite fortunate, in isolation and across a whole season. There is a wonderful homemade compilation of all the missed chances against them that I urge you to watch below. Many of those misses came at crucial times of crucial matches and them not being taken allowed Hull to generate momentum and belief that began to feel unshakeable.

Hull City Opposition Miss of the Season #hcafc pic.twitter.com/zTs4cM9WGk

— Nathaniel (@NathanielWhitto) April 20, 2026

But Hull are also good; you tend to generate your own luck when you play to your strengths, minimise your weaknesses and maximise the impact of your best players. And that’s exactly what Sergej Jakirovic has done.

Counter-attacking kings

Hull might concede an awful lot of shots, but that is a deliberate strategy. They sacrifice possession (ranking 20th by that measure) and territory, allowing opponents into their own penalty area and even to shoot (from low-value areas, ideally). They aim to win possession and, when they do, aim to attack at speed.

And they’re really good at it. Hull might rank 19th for shots but they rank sixth for shots from counter attacks and ninth for total shots on target. And when they choose to, the high press works too: only Ipswich have scored more goals from winning the ball in their final third of the pitch.

When you counter attack efficiently, the chances you create tend to be better because opposition defences are not set. Before Tuesday evening, 95 of Hull’s 480 shots were classified as big chances by Opta. By way of comparison, Middlesbrough’s total was 96 big chances from 694 shots.

A magnificent front two

We have shown that Hull have a strategy for allowing lots of shots and taking far less, maximising quality and forgetting about quantity. Their goals per shot is the second best in the league; their goals per touches in the box is the best.

But last summer they also signed the perfect strike partnership for the plan: Joe Gelhardt and Oli McBurnie, a retro little and large pair. To understand how efficiently Hull have serviced both strikers, know this; McBurnie and Gelhardt both rank in the top five players for individual xG in the Championship.

To supercharge that service, the two strikers have also outperformed expectations. McBurnie and Gelhardt have a combined 29 league goals from 22 xG. Jakirovic has found something that works and that few opposition managers have been able to stop.

Read more

• Daniel Storey: There is a weird feeling at Cardiff City
• Daniel Storey: Coventry City’s promotion is a monumental victory for resilience

Game state is a thing

There is another explanation for Hull’s regular overperformance: they need to attack less than most other teams. Jakirovic’s side have scored first in 26 league games this season, second only to Coventry City.

Also look at when Hull score their goals. No team in the Championship has scored more in the first 30 minutes of matches and only Southampton and Coventry have spent a higher proportion of their matches leading.

If you score first and do not have vast strength in depth, you tend to sit back and your opponents will have more shots than you. That isn’t a reason for criticism, it’s a logical progression.

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Chelsea have drawn up a shortlist of possible managerial candidates to replace Liam Rosenior as the club’s hierarchy consider calling time on his disastrous reign, The i Paper understands.

Sources say the club are “considering their options” after a run of five straight Premier League defeats without scoring a goal, with the possibility of an interim head coach leading the team for the rest of the season.

That would represent a major change from previous backing for Rosenior but the situation is viewed by some as untenable after Chelsea conceded ground in the race for the Champions League.

Missing out on a return to Europe’s top tier competition could cost the club as much as £90m.

The players were on a scheduled day off on Wednesday but the club’s leadership were locked in talks about their future direction.

Rosenior was viewed by BlueCo executives as the obvious choice after Enzo Maresca’s departure given his fine work at Strasbourg, but despite the club reaching the FA Cup semi-finals, they are worse off in the Premier League and could miss out on Europe entirely.

Rosenior was only appointed in January but fans turned on him during Tuesday’s dismal 3-0 defeat at Brighton, during which he was barracked by large sections of the visiting support, who also called out the club’s ownership.

Ominously for Rosenior, co-owner Behdad Eghbali was in attendance at the Amex Stadium.

It has now emerged that they are looking into alternatives to Rosenior, with uncertainty over whether he will be in charge for this weekend’s FA Cup semi-final against Leeds United.

Quite where Chelsea go next is unclear. The club’s former defender Filipe Luis was interviewed to replace Rosenior at Strasbourg and has admirers at Stamford Bridge but it feels inconceivable that they would go with another inexperienced coach to lead a project in danger of veering off the rails.

Former player Cesc Fabregas, who has Como in the European places in only his second season as manager, is an obvious choice but there are other options to take over permanently in the summer, with increasing uncertainty over Marco Silva’s future at Fulham.

Bournemouth’s Andoni Iraola will also be a free agent but some who work in the Premier League believe the way the club operates – with influential sporting directors and a hands on ownership – will put off truly elite managers from taking the role.

Read more

• Kat Lucas: The unstoppable rise of Chelsea’s ‘little Messi’
• Daniel Storey: Liam Rosenior epitomises everything wrong with Chelsea

Rosenior was meant to be the compromise; a highly promising coach who bought into the overall strategy.

However, it has unravelled at frightening pace and his criticism of the players after Tuesday’s loss makes it difficult to see how he continues from here.

Previously the club had publicly backed Rosenior with the intention of reviewing his position at the end of the season. But news of the meeting of senior figures suggests Rosenior is far from safe.

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Liam Rosenior is not the only problem at Chelsea; he is not even the biggest problem. The BlueCo model is broken. Some non-football private equity folk stormed in and believed that they could rewrite the rulebook on how an elite football club can maintain success. What happened next will shock you: they were wrong.

It’s all about player trading, you see. You buy very young (and very expensively), develop, win trophies, sell for profit and have more money than when you started to reinvest (or take out those profits yourself). You try to take a structure from another club, even though that rarely works. You double down on things that aren’t working for some reason. Maybe it’s because you aren’t spending enough and the contracts aren’t long enough?

Still, Rosenior is a problem because he epitomises the misguided fallacy of the model. Chelsea hand out long-term contracts to spread out their cost through amortisation; it allows them to buy more. That is one of the tenets of the project.

Long-term contracts for employees inevitably reduce accountability, even subconsciously. Why does it matter how you play now if your wage is guaranteed for the next six years? That’s the complication of long-term projects at elite clubs: they require shorter-term results otherwise everyone drifts.

In those circumstances, you need a manager who generates accountability on their own. They do so through instilling discipline. Or through their past record at similarly-sized clubs. Or through their tactics. Or through inspirational man management.

And, sorry, but Rosenior had none of the four that made him a fit for this position, with these players, in these circumstances. If that weren’t enough, he also played into the fears of Chelsea supporters about the direction of travel under BlueCo because he was a nepo-baby hire from within their multi-club system. Rosenior became the personification of BlueCo. The hard job got harder.

All the while, Rosenior’s media persona has generated deeply unhelpful scrutiny because it has become its own self-fulfilling prophecy: the sillier the soundbites, the worse the performance.

Former Rosenior's teammate at Hull City, Kevin Kilbane:

"I played with Liam at Hull, and I got on well with Liam; he used to tell some great stories of Roy Keane when he was his manager at Ipswich.

And you see the way he is now, to me, he’s unrecognisable to the player and… pic.twitter.com/Ogt4nX5SHQ

— Vince (@Blue_Footy) March 24, 2026

Kevin Kilbane, Rosenior’s former teammate, may have sounded a little mean when he said Rosenior sounds “like he’s swallowed a psychologist’s manual”, but this stuff matters. Players see it; supporters see it too. Rosenior sounds like he learnt motivational management at evening classes and that doesn’t help. He needed to prove that he was big enough for this challenge and his own words made that work more difficult.

It’s hard to fathom just how quickly this has got toxic. Chelsea have now lost five matches in a row without scoring for the first time since the Titanic sank; just the metaphor they need. There was a desperate switch of formation against Brighton that made no sense and didn’t work. Senior players have talked up their chances of leaving the club. One of them, Enzo Fernandez, was suspended for two games and yet was made captain on Tuesday evening. The club that outclassed them was the same one they took the structure wholesale from.

The biggest problem of all: Chelsea couldn’t afford to get this one wrong. Last month they announced the largest annual losses in English football history. The women’s team and the buildings have been sold. They need Champions League revenue next season and even finishing in the top half seems doubtful now. In those circumstances, appointing Rosenior might just have been the worst mid-season appointment at an elite club in decades.

“Liam has the ability to get the best out of this squad quickly and joins us with the responsibility and the backing to ensure Chelsea continues to compete at the top level in all competitions this season and in seasons to come,” read Chelsea’s welcome statement 107 days ago. It sounds like a bad joke now, or some inadvertent harbinger of doom.

But the real punchline? Chelsea followed the pattern of their own model by giving Rosenior a contract until 2032. There is a real chance that he fails to reach six months in charge of a club that agreed to pay him for six years. Ain’t that just the BlueCo way.

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Fulham are a club approaching a crossroads.

Amid uncertainty over the future of head coach Marco Silva, whose contract expires at the end of June, the Cottagers are now obliged to weigh up options ahead of next season.

Those include the possibility of sourcing a replacement for the Portuguese, who has been at Fulham for five years, or enticing Silva with a new deal and strengthening the squad.

The west London outfit are currently 12th in the Premier League and still have an outside chance of European football in 2026-27.

However, with a squad perceived to be lacking in sufficient depth and a surprising FA Cup exit to Southampton last month, Silva has faced some supporter criticism.

As such, talks between the club hierarchy and the manager need to be resolved as quickly as possible.

Fulham are also looking at contingency plans, should Silva – previously linked with Tottenham Hotspur – choose to depart.

“If Fulham finish strongly between now and the end of the season, he may stay but the club is at a crossroads,” a club insider told The i Paper.

“The club has ensured investment is there and Marco Silva is good at blending in players to the squad, but some fans suggest he is not looking enough at academy prospects.

“Silva is very guarded at the moment. He thought he might be in for the Tottenham job earlier in the season and there was interest from Brighton, too. In terms of his ambition, he wants to manage in Europe and that’s what makes the last part of the season so important for Fulham as they try and reach a qualification stage.

“If Marco stays then expect the backroom team to be bolstered. I think he feels it is a bit thin at the moment, compared to other clubs, but things like that are getting closer in discussions around his future.

“However, if Marco does go, Tony Khan [Fulham sporting director] has a contingency plan. Any replacement manager would have to be Premier League ready, with a similar profile to Silva. Someone who also knows European leagues and is a tracksuit manager.”

Intriguingly, someone who is available and broadly fits the bill in the event of Silva leaving Fulham is Thomas Frank.

The Dane left Brentford for Tottenham last June, only to become a managerial casualty of a fraught season after just eight months in north London.

Frank attended the scoreless derby between Brentford and Fulham on Saturday, fuelling speculation that he could be a potential new boss at Craven Cottage.

“He [Frank] lives in Sheen, south west London and would be a good fit for Fulham, but Crystal Palace are also interested,” the source explained.

“The Khan family are big on someone nice to deal with in and around the club, and Thomas Frank is a really decent guy.

“Older and younger Fulham fans may have different views on the idea of him, but he is a good fit for younger player development which worked well at Brentford.

“This has obvious appeal for the Khans. I’m not sure he would be the top choice if Marco left, but he is a choice. He was at the Brentford-Fulham game for something, maybe he was looking at Fulham?

“He knows the Premier League very well so would certainly be a consideration if things were to change.”

Read more

• Julian Taylor: Tottenham are running out of time and hope
• Mark Douglas: Mikel Arteta only has himself to blame for giving Man City the advantage

With conversations ongoing over Silva, it should be noted that the majority of Fulham fans would prefer the former Everton and Sporting Lisbon coach to remain. 

Harry Wilson may leave the club shortly too, which is another concern in relation to summer rebuilding and reinvestment.

The i Paper understands Silva has significant concerns over the right-back and forward positions.

“I think a lot of fans are still in the camp of wanting Marco Silva to stay,” the source noted.

“The Premier League has been a bit stale this season. Look at Chelsea in sixth down to Crystal Palace in 13th place. They are all much of a muchness. Fulham’s inconsistency is a concern as is the squad depth.

“While it pays for Silva to assess options, would he be seen as a strong option for Newcastle United if Eddie Howe leaves? I’m not so sure. The club have been good to him.

“Ideally he would like to stay – he knows from previous jobs that the grass isn’t always greener.

“From the club’s perspective they want him to stay, but they also want the team to finish the season in style. So these weeks are very important in terms of Silva staying or going. I do feel he owes some loyalty to Fulham. The players love him. It’s ‘do or die’ time for Fulham, really.”

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With their hands tied, Aston Villa are outperforming a club who spent £446m in the summer and another who have splashed out £1.6bn in the last five years.

Liverpool, the Premier League champions who got recruitment badly wrong last summer, could yet catch Villa in the table, but both clubs are still primed to secure Champions League football next season.

That is in part thanks to Chelsea, who have slipped from contention after a torrid run, ensuring the Blues are no closer to where they want to be under BlueCo despite another £295m spent on players this season.

Villa meanwhile spent the least among Premier League clubs, while they are also 17th for net spend the last three years, a period in which they have juggled the restraints of profitability and sustainability rules (PSR) while playing European football.

You only have six guesses for the six clubs topping net spend in that time. It is of course the Big Six, with Arsenal, Tottenham, Manchester United, Manchester City and Liverpool all north of £320m and Chelsea £188m.

Premier League net spend

• 1. Arsenal – £409m
• 2. Tottenham – £405m
• 3. Man Utd – £392m
• 4. Man City – £367m
• 5. Liverpool – £322m
• 6. Chelsea – £188m
• —
• 17. Aston Villa – £42m

Last three years per Transfermarkt

Villa’s £42m is more than four times lower than Chelsea, and almost 10 times less than relegation-threatened Spurs, an indication of how much the Midlands club have had to rein it in after a £130m net spend the previous three years (their outlay was helped significantly by selling Jack Grealish for £100m in 2021).

Now the Big Six in all-but name given Villa and Newcastle United have both disrupted the established order in recent seasons, Tottenham’s plight is a particular reminder that money is no guarantee of success.

And yet it stings Villa to know they could not have spent as freely, nor as they would have hoped, more wisely, without being punished.

The rules are there to stop this league from becoming a state-owned or multi-billionaire’s playground, but the fact this door only closed after Chelsea and City reached the summit is why theories abound about the league protecting its wealthiest assets while inflicting pain on others.

Only Everton and Nottingham Forest have been deducted points in the Premier League for breaches in the PSR era, while in March Chelsea were fined £10.75m after admitting to secret payments over a seven-year period when owned by Roman Abramovich.

Chelsea’s “proactive self-reporting” and “exceptional cooperation” were noted by the Premier League as it considered various sanctions.

Few would argue against a £10.75m fine being short change for billionaires, while ever fewer need reminding that 130 charges still loom over Manchester City, all of which they strongly deny.

Co-operating has led to drastic measures. Last year both Chelsea and Villa were fined for breaching Uefa’s financial rules. They also both sold their women’s teams to their respective parent companies in order to comply with PSR.

But despite those similarities, Chelsea and Villa are on either side of the door, with the latter’s ambition shackled because they were not owned by a person or entity with vast wealth early enough.

Villa head coach Unai Emery has been vocal about such restrictions. Ahead of their season opener against Newcastle, the Spaniard noted both sides are “clubs doing good management, who will never be allowed to dream” in his programme notes.

Defender Ezri Konsa said PSR “killed” Villa last year, while both Tyrone Mings and John McGinn bemoaned the loss of boyhood Villan Jacob Ramsey to Newcastle.

“It seems to be the way football is set up these days,” McGinn said.

Related stories

• Daniel Storey: Chelsea’s gross rule-bending must make Everton and Forest feel like fools
• Mark Douglas: ‘The Premier League has a problem’: What Chelsea’s £10m fine means for Man City

Frustrations have been tempered and words carefully chosen, but really Villa should be angrier.

They are fourth with PSR in place. They pushed Arsenal and Manchester City close in the winter, and though their title ambitions faded, they are edging closer to a second Champions League campaign in three years and are three games away from winning the Europa League.

All this while being held back, thus underlining both the strength of their greatest asset, Emery, and the reality that we will never truly know what heights they could have reached under his watch had they been freer to strengthen where he saw fit.

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SELHURST PARK — The wait for Brennan Johnson to fulfil the expectations of his £35m move to Crystal Palace continues.

Since arriving as Palace’s club-record signing in January, before being trumped in the same window by Jorgen Strand Larsen, Johnson’s attacking account has been flimsy. 

There has been a consistent absence of end product from the Welshman, who ventures into promising positions but stops short of delivering the final ball or applying the finishing touch. That lack of quality has been a thread running through his nearly four-month stay at Palace, with the forward failing to score in 19 appearances and registering just two assists.

Against West Ham on Monday night, he should have netted his first Palace goal. An exquisite cross from Jefferson Lerma offered Johnson a free header less than 10 yards from goal, but the 24-year-old got his angles carelessly wrong and guided extremely wide of the target. It was the best chance of a relatively drab affair, as Johnson’s panicked header epitomised the disappointment of his early career in red and blue.

A foolish yellow card on El Hadji Malick Diouf followed. Although there was a hint of his quality, receiving the ball from Yeremy Pino before taking a touch and releasing a prompt effort narrowly wide of the post. On the whole, however, he struggled to have the desired impact.

His manager, Oliver Glasner, papered over the cracks in his post-match press conference — insisting Johnson’s performance marked progress as he attacked areas and occupied spaces he had previously struggled to, while demonstrating a better grasp of Palace’s defensive habits.

“He was a constant threat,” Glasner said. “It was his best performance out of possession; the job he did was amazing. In the last games, he didn’t come into great situations, so it was a great step in the right direction. The first step is getting into good areas and getting chances, then the next is to convert. When I see how he finishes in training, I am pretty sure he will score a few goals before the end of the season.”

In some ways, Glasner was right. This was an improvement, although it is more of an indictment of Johnson’s sluggish start than a glowing endorsement of his display against West Ham. Notwithstanding that Palace paid a hefty sum for attacking results, not defensive traits. 

There is little invention, he is not overly progressive, has little flair to beat a man and does not carry the ball — making him appear like a passenger. He has crossing ability, which he demonstrated at times against West Ham, but there must be a more concerted effort to find him in those wide areas to get the best out of him. 

There is merit in the argument that Johnson requires time to adjust to Glasner’s system, which utilises narrower attackers rather than wingers, with his experience coming out wide. But that is why it beggars belief that Palace spent £35m on him midway through the season when there is little time to bed in a new signing who is essentially learning on the job. The time to adjust – especially within a hectic European schedule – is non-existent. 

A mid-season fix, especially when making a club-record outlay, should be compatible with the style of play to improve the chances of an expeditious impact. After all, Johnson was signed as Palace had a shortfall in attack from the start of the campaign. Midway through the season, the recruitment should have been much more considered, with a quick result in mind. Instead, the discourse is whether Palace have wasted £35m.

Johnson may benefit from Glasner’s departure in the summer, should Palace opt for a manager who prefers wingers to inside attackers. He is more accustomed to playing out wide and timing his blistering runs to the back post, losing his man to finish clinically. There have been very few opportunities to demonstrate that efficient part of his game, which enabled him to score 18 goals in 51 appearances under Ange Postecoglou at Tottenham Hotspur last season. 

That may still come in a Palace shirt, and a reset in the summer, accompanied by a full pre-season, could serve him well. But the signs have been uninspiring. 

As Palace continue to contend in Europe, Glasner is intent on using his attacking options in the squad to keep it fresh: starting Johnson in the last two Premier League games, with Ismaila Sarr having played in Europe. With Shakhtar Donetsk on the horizon, opportunities are likely to continue as Palace seek Conference League glory – the onus is on Johnson to start taking his chances.

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