Newcastle’s long, barren run without lifting a trophy is well publicised, with them last picking up major domestic silverware almost 70 years ago when they won the 1955 FA Cup final against Manchester City.

Gordon joined Newcastle from Everton for £45m in January 2023 and the team had the opportunity of glory just a month later but were beaten in the Carabao Cup final by Manchester United.

He said he had been “hurt”, external by the manner of his exit from Goodison Park after the Toffees “failed to thank” him for his services and initially struggled for form in the North East, failing to score in any of his 16 Premier League appearances during the remainder of that season.

Howe’s side, though, made a return to the Champions League with a fourth-placed finish, allowing Gordon to showcase his talent in Europe’s elite club competition.

They may have finished bottom of their group but the season was a success on an individual level for the player, who scored 12 goals and provided 11 assists in 48 games.

Since joining Newcastle from Everton, his goal and assist contributions have increased from 0.27 to 0.44 per game, while the number of chances he has created every 90 minutes has improved from 1.25 to 1.65.

Following the announcement of the new deal, boss Howe said Gordon had “grown as a player and as a person” during his time at Newcastle and he has continued to “prove just how good he is on the biggest stage”.

But despite a stellar showing in his first full season on Tyneside, his future seemed to be in real doubt in the summer as it looked at one stage that Gordon may leave to help the club balance its financial position.

Newcastle’s issues with Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR) meant they needed to sell before the 30 June deadline to comply. With the cut-off point fast approaching, the club found themselves needing to consider offers for one of Isak, Guimaraes or Gordon.

A boyhood Liverpool supporter – despite coming through at Everton – Gordon’s dream move was on the cards when Newcastle offered the Reds a price of £70m, as well as taking defender Jarell Quansah the other way in a separate deal.

But Liverpool turned down the proposal and Newcastle ended up doing business with Nottingham Forest instead, selling 21-year-old midfielder Elliot Anderson for £35m, and allowing winger Yankuba Minteh, 20, to go to Brighton for £30m.

Though they lost two potential stars of the future, the deals meant they could make up their PSR shortfall and, rather importantly, keep Gordon too.

“The Football Association of Wales confirms its intention to submit a formal bid to Uefa to host the 2027 Women’s Champions League final at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff,” the FAW said in a statement.

“Having submitted a declaration of interest to host the 2027 final, the FAW bid will be developed in collaboration with the Principality Stadium and local partners, highlighting a shared commitment to bringing the prestigious event to Wales.

“The Uefa Women’s Champions League final is one of the most prestigious events in European football, and securing the 2027 final for Cardiff would be a momentous achievement for Wales.

“Hosting this event would serve as a catalyst for the continued development of women’s football in the country, inspiring a new generation of players, coaches and supporters while amplifying the visibility of the sport nationwide.”

Francesco Bagnaia’s face in the post-race press conference at Phillip Island on Sunday, after finishing third in MotoGP’s Australian Grand Prix, was the best imaginable projection of the 10 seconds that separated him from the victorious Marc Marquez and runner-up Jorge Martin.

Reigning two-time champion Bagnaia’s gesture was one of concern, a logical reaction considering that Marquez created that gap over him despite losing ground at the start when he ran over the plastic visor that he himself had just thrown to the ground. That mishap cost him 12 positions and put him back in 13th, before he staged one of the best recoveries in recent memory to claim his third grand prix win of the season.

Leaving the Desmosedici’s obvious potential aside, another key factor that led Marquez to forgo the final year of his multi-million dollar Honda contract to sign with a Ducati satellite team for 2024 was the sophistication of the protocols used by the Borgo Panigale brand to increase the overall performance of the eight bikes it currently has.

The computers that receive the information downloaded from the bikes each time they return to the garage send this data to a server, to which the authorised technicians of each team have access. Not only does this operation take place in near real-time, but it is also combined with sophisticated analysis tools, including artificial intelligence, with a very high capacity for interpretation. With this in mind, it is much easier to understand the leaps in quality made by certain riders, both from Friday to Saturday and from Saturday to Sunday, when the sprint race becomes the best generator of all that information.

“We all know that Pecco will be there to win on Sunday. It doesn’t matter if he seems to suffer a little bit on Friday, because on Saturday he takes a step and on Sunday he takes another step,” says any member of the grid whenever he is asked.

However, in the context of a close duel like the current one, there are ways of camouflaging information to try and complicate that improvement a little. The last event in Australia was a case in point.

Bagnaia was a subdued third in the Australian GP, surpassed by Marquez after his sluggish launch

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

The 10 seconds that split Marquez and Bagnaia’s factory bike on Sunday can be explained by several factors that aligned and worked against Ducati’s leading rider. First of all, the track had been resurfaced, which put the previous years’ record into question. Add to this the weekend’s tricky weather and we get a race with more unknowns than certainties: an ideal Sunday for Marquez’s genius and Martin’s explosiveness, but less conducive to the cerebral Bagnaia.

Friday morning’s storm forced the organisers to cancel the first free practice session, so there was less information to gather. Second practice, already valid to generate the cut between Q1 and Q2, was the first contact with the dry but cold new asphalt.

The rain meant that Saturday’s practice was held on a still-damp track, and so the pack went out for a qualifying session that seemed to bear Marquez’s name as the rider who adapts best and fastest to the changes. Few expected that it would be Pramac rider Martin, with a stratospheric last lap, who would take pole by almost six-tenths over Marquez. The lap gave a preview to Martin’s form ahead of his sprint race victory, while on Sunday he duelled with Marquez until reaching the conclusion that it wasn’t worth risking a crash.

“Jorge was playing with us, because he was much faster” Francesco Bagnaia

“It was an incredible weekend, I scored as many points (32) as I could have hoped for here,” Martin told Motorsport.com after stepping off the podium. “I could have fought for a win or I could have crashed. I don’t focus so much on the wins as on being competitive, and I think we have to continue in this vein.”

Shortly before the race, someone close to him told Motorsport.com that the strategy for the final stretch of the championship had changed. “On the circuits where we know Jorge has some margin, we will not show everything from the first moment, we are not going to give that information away,” said this authoritative voice.

Martin arrived in Australia 10 points ahead of Bagnaia in the standings and will go to Thailand having doubled that advantage, with only 111 points left to play. Considering the distribution of points so far, one can see that the Spaniard has built his chances on Saturdays. In fact, in the pre-sprint era, Bagnaia would lead the standings with a 14-point cushion over the Pramac rider (295 points to Martin’s 281).

On the assumption that in Buriram, where Martin won the sprint and grand prix last year, he will once again look superior to his rival, it is likely that Martin will try to hide his cards until the last moment.

Martin unleashed blistering pace to snare pole, from which he cruised to victory in the sprint

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

“There are ways to play the game of misdirection in order not to give clues,” the track engineer of one of the world champions on the grid explained to Motorsport.com. “For example, looking for the performance of a particular sector, or plotting a particular corner, on a ‘bad’ lap. You always try to show your weapons as late as possible, to avoid the others, who can see your data, benefit from it.”

This paddock voice has no doubt that Martin made his rivals dizzy on Saturday and that feeling was also felt by Bagnaia after the sprint: “Jorge was playing with us, because he was much faster.”

All things considered, Martin will land in Thailand as the favourite to take the crown, which could be sealed in Malaysia in less than 10 days. On the other side of the scale is Bagnaia. He is not only a ‘victim’ of Ducati’s promise not to intervene in the duel, but seems increasingly aware of the strength with which new team-mate Marquez will arrive and how the multi-champion could become the judge of this world championship.

Could misdirection be a key to Martin’s first MotoGP world title?

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

Former Manchester United keeper Anders Lindegaard has swapped saves for savings… by getting a job with a bank.

The Denmark international spent five years at Old Trafford, making 29 senior appearances.

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He left for West Brom in 2015, and went on to play for Preston and Burnley before retiring in 2022.

Lindegaard, 40, has now landed a post with global investment bank UBS.

He will advise top-level footballers and other sportspeople for the Swiss-owned company.

The five-cap international said: “New beginnings, new job, new career.

“My role is to help the bank better understand successful athletes, and provide them with meaningful and valuable service from the leading asset manager.

“I will always be an athlete by nature. Helping other athletes navigate through their sports adventures seems both natural and meaningful to me.

“In that way I see myself and my role as being employed by UBS, but I work for the athletes.

“For me personally this is the start of a different career. I always wanted to stay in football, but I didn’t want to work on the pitch.

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Anders Lindegaard’s career

A brief look at Lindegaard’s playing career…

2003 – 2009: Odense BK

2008: Kolding FC (loan)

2009: Aalesund (loan)

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2009 – 2015: Manchester United

2015 – 2016: West Brom

2016 – 2017: Preston North End

2017 – 2019: Burnley

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2019 – 2022: Helsingborgs IF

“I’ve been doing this all my life, and now I think it’s time to try something new.

“It’s not easy to retire from professional sports. It is undoubtedly a high-risk moment in every athlete’s life.

“I am proud to have made what for me is a successful transition. And I’m relieved that I have developed Anders Lindegaard 2.0.”

Lindegaard hung up his boots after a spell with Swedish top-flight club Helsingborgs.

A £3.5million United buy from Norwegians Aalesund in 2009, he helped the Red Devils win their last Premier League title in 2013.

Since ground-effect cars returned from the start of 2022, Formula 1 engineers have faced big headaches in working out ways to get the most performance from them.

In particular, the difficulty has been in managing the compromise between the aero and mechanical platforms, with the cars liking to run super close to the ground because that is where they produce the most downforce.

The challenge is made even harder because of the phenomenon of porpoising, where the car bounces up and down as it gains and loses downforce.

At the start of this year, Mercedes technical director James Allison believed that F1 had suffered because of the nature of this generation of cars.

“I’m sure I bang on about this because it’s been a bugbear of mine, but I personally don’t think it’s a great thing,” he said.

“I don’t think it’s good having the cars operating, when they leave the garage, with that much space [signalling a few millimetres with his fingers] to the ground.”

But as work has advanced on new regulations for 2026, with their latest version signed off at the FIA’s World Motor Sport Council last week, one characteristic change that has emerged is that the cars should not have to run so close to the ground.

F1 2026 FIA car renders

Photo by: FIA

The FIA’s head of single-seater matters Nikolas Tombazis said: “It is much less of a Venturi effect than the current generation.

“The main driving force for that is we wanted to have cars that are not quite running as close to the ground as current cars, so maybe we try to relax a bit that aerodynamic mechanism.”

Allison had suggested that places like Austin, where the demands of the car stretch across a wide spectrum of the speed range, were especially difficult when the cars needed to be so low all the time.

“[Under the old rule set] you could have a car that was a little bit more one-dimensional at tracks that are a bit more one-dimensional,” he said.

“So if there isn’t a big speed range, then you could maybe set your car up such that the corners coincide with where your good bit is, and you don’t suffer horribly for it dropping away either side.  

“But when you go to a place that’s a bit more of a broad test of a car, like Austin for example, where you’ve got real fast stuff, some slow stuff, and some in-between stuff, and some decent straights, and some bumps, then that’s going to test the bit where it’s falling off the back end of the performance.

“It’s going to test the end-of-straight [downforce] failure, it’s going to need to stay strong in the fast [corners]. And it’s hard to persuade the car to do all of those things with a set of rules that basically don’t want to do anything except be near the ground.” 

St Helens topped the gradings having received the highest score of 17.02 points out of the maximum of 20 available, while quadruple winners Wigan were second on 16.91.

Last year’s grade leaders Leeds (16.84) slipped to third place off the back of a disappointing 2024 campaign on the field, with Sam Burgess’ Warrington fourth on 16.27.

Hull KR (15.97) and Catalans Dragons (15.52) also retained their A grading and were joined by Leigh (15.13), while Wakefield surged into the top eight with 15.09. Castleford completed the grade A teams on 15.02 points.

The 2025 Super League cohort is completed with three B-grade teams – Hull FC (14.51), Huddersfield Giants (14.48) and Salford Red Devils (13.97), with the latter narrowly retaining their top-flight status despite finishing fourth under Paul Rowley this season.

Toulouse (13.58) and London (12.65) missed out on a Super League place but achieved grade B status along with York (12.42), Bradford (12.15), Barrow (11.22), Featherstone (10.75), Keighley (9.02), Halifax (8.79), Sheffield (8.77), Widnes (8.60) and Doncaster (7.52).

Workington (7.26), Swinton (7.15), Dewsbury (7.13), Oldham (7.00), Hunslet (6.98), Rochdale (6.47), Midlands Hurricanes (5.66), Cornwall (5.29), Newcastle (5.20) and North Wales Crusaders (4.72) all achieved Grade C status, with data unavailable to give Batley and Whitehaven a grading.