Steven Gerrard admits that returning to Liverpool as an opponent for the first time will stir sentiments he must subdue. The Aston Villa manager says he does not know what kind of reception awaits him at the club he served with singular distinction as a player but his mission is to ensure it has no bearing on the outcome of an eagerly anticipated Premier League clash.

Golden generation survivor Steven Gerrard is writing his own origin story | Barney RonayRead more

“Of course there’ll be emotion because of where it’s at and my history with the team we’re playing against, Liverpool, but that’s the challenge, to try to control it as much as I can,” Gerrard said. “I’ll respect [the reception] in terms of whatever happens but one t…

The key to England’s success under Sarina Wiegman has been consistency but injuries are causing uncertainty, an unfamiliar feeling for the Lionesses. Entering the World Cup without some key players is a problem but they have plenty who know how to be successful to counteract the losses.

One player who has excelled under Wiegman is Keira Walsh. She is in Australia after a Champions League-winning campaign with Barcelona, so will be confident. As a deep-lying playmaker, she is crucial to England’s style and opponents know that. Walsh is a highly intelligent player who reads the game superbly and has been targeted recently because teams know if they stop her they give themselves a good chance of winning. Australia showed the blueprint in Ap…

In sports, everyone is a winner—some people just win better than others. Like the Sacramento Kings, who showed up two-and-a-half quarters late (like the fans at a Miami Heat game) and still managed to pull out a win. The Kings trailed the Bulls by 35 points with 8:50 left in the third quarter last night, but eventually won the game by four. It was the biggest comeback in an NBA game in 13 years and was lovingly cradled toward victory by former Memphis Tiger Tyreke Evans, who had 23 points, eight rebounds and also won the Rookie of the Year award between periods. Previous Memphis Tiger-turned-Rookie of the Year Derrick Rose? Never heard of him. Oddly enough, I think the state of the Bulls is not summed up by the home fans booing them off the court following this putrid fourth quart…

Kyrie Irving, a splendid basketball player with a habit of speaking like his entire vocabulary of multisyllabic words is operated by a lotto machine, went on Geno Auriemma’s podcast and told the coach that his eagerness to join the Boston Celtics came down, in part, to “intellectual human being” Brad Stevens: “Brad fits perfectly in terms of that because he has an intellectual mind and is an intellectual human being,” the Celtics guard told Auriemma. “It was something I was unbelievably craving in terms of what I wanted for my career.” No doubt Irving was “unbelievably craving” access to Stevens’s big honkin’ brain because former coach Tyronn Lue lacked the intellectual capacity to understand what the fuck “ if you’re very much woke, there is no such thing as…