Manchester City are looking to move on from the Pep Guardiola era and topple Arsenal in the Premier League title race

Fair play to Aston Villa, who said they wanted more for Morgan Rogers than Manchester City paid for Elliot Anderson and found someone willing to pay it. The usual bores will blame the Blues for inflating the market and many of them may well support Arsenal, who wanted Rogers but didn’t think he was worth £117m.

Time will tell on both players, but Chelsea jumping the gun to sign Rogers means that Anderson’s time as the most expensive English footballer in history has been extremely short-lived. He is still weeks away from kicking a ball for his new club and has already had that mantle taken off him.

That might be nothing, but you never know. Jack Grealish was considerably less carefree when every second mention of him labelled him the £100m player. “I’ve noticed in the past six months, especially, it’s constantly [a talking point],” he said after his first season at the Etihad.

“If I was worth £20m, I think I could play games, not have a good game and people wouldn’t say a thing. But because it’s £100m, everyone talks about it, that side of it it’s a bit annoying.”

Anderson’s cost will still be spoken of, but Chelsea have moved the dial by meeting Villa’s valuation for Rogers. City will hope that their 23-year-old recruit has the temperament to cope with the extra pressure on his shoulders, yet it is already no longer as heavy.

The other aspect of Chelsea buying Rogers is that Arsenal have missed out on a top target. Where the Gunners may have hoped to wear Aston Villa down over time and pressure, as Liverpool did with Newcastle over Alexander Isak last year, the Midlands club simply found another bidder to pull the rug from under their negotiating table with Arsenal.

Mikel Arteta’s side remain the team to beat this season, having clinched the Premier League trophy in May. City came closest to them but have had to deal with the departure of Pep Guardiola and a disrupted pre-season with so many players at the World Cup.

It feels like Enzo Maresca will be crossing his fingers and hoping to get through the first weeks of the campaign before City can build their strength up again, so the less prepared Arsenal are for the season the better for the Blues. Having to change transfer plans so significantly definitely counts in that regard, leaving the champions having to regroup and rebuild with the season nearing.

Having had to publicly apologise to Chelsea after being appointed City manager, Maresca might privately be thanking them for stepping in to hijack a transfer for Rogers.

Former India player Aakash Chopra has opined that the Men in Blue need to bat aggressively in the upcoming T20I series against Zimbabwe. He highlighted that the Indian batters played conservatively in the preceding two T20I series against Ireland and England.

India will face Zimbabwe in a three-match T20I series, with the first game to be played in Harare on Thursday, July 23. Sanju Samson is the only batter missing from the side that played against Ireland and England.

In a video shared on his YouTube channel, ‘Aakash Chopra,’ the former India opener noted that the visitors’ batting would be in focus in the three T20Is, highlighting that they have deviated from their fearless playing approach lately.

“RoKo (Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli) are not there, but we are saying thoko. We create an atmosphere like that with the kind of team we pick and the kind of philosophy we talk about, although if we see the previous few games, there was a big question mark on that philosophy. There was nothing carefree. We became extremely conservative. We were a pale shadow of what we can be,” he said.

Chopra added that the Indian batters need to dominate and decimate the Chevrons’ bowling attack.

“You are selecting the team for a fearless approach. However, will you be able to play with that approach? This is the series in which we must assert ourselves. Domination and the opposing team’s decimation should be seen because we are better. However, are we actually better? For that, I want that approach,” he observed.

India suffered 2-0 and 4-0 defeats against Ireland and England, respectively, in their previous two T20I series. They were found wanting especially in the batting department and were even bowled out for a paltry 76 while chasing a 202-run target in the third T20I against England.

“We are expecting something similar from Vaibhav Suryavanshi here” – Aakash Chopra ahead of ZIM vs IND 2026 T20Is

In the same video, Aakash Chopra noted that India would expect Vaibhav Suryavanshi to replicate Abhishek Sharma’s performance from their last tour of Zimbabwe.

“After the 2024 T20 World Cup, we unleashed a left-handed opening batter in Zimbabwe – Abhishek Sharma. He was probably playing at No. 3 at that time, and he went on to become the best T20I batter in the world. We are expecting something similar from Vaibhav Suryavanshi here,” he said.

The cricketer-turned-commentator added that the focus will be on Suryavanshi as he would potentially open with Abhishek after being left out of the playing XI for the final T20I against England.

“He has played only three games at the international level, but he has already had the experience of getting dropped. He is going to make a comeback because he didn’t play the last match for India. So, the focus will be on him. You haven’t even picked Sanju because you wanted to give full chances to Vaibhav. So this is the opportunity,” Chopra observed.

Aakash Chopra pointed out that the focus will also be on Shreyas Iyer as a captain. The analyst highlighted that although the middle-order batter has been among the runs, he has won just one of his previous 14 games as skipper, including defeats in all six completed matches as India’s T20I captain.