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Test your ball knowledge against today's Who Am I?, Five in Five and Brainteaser.

Has the real Alexander Isak finally arrived at Liverpool after his two-goal display in their Premier League win at Ipswich Town, asks chief football writer Phil McNulty?

The Football Association's review into England's World Cup campaign will canvass the opinions of players involved in the tournament.

The Football Association's review into England's World Cup campaign will canvass the opinions of players involved in the tournament.

The Football Association's review into England's World Cup campaign will canvass the opinions of players involved in the tournament.

Premier League updates from the 8pm BST kick-offLive scoreboard | Read Football Daily | Email ScottThe teams are out! Ipswich in blue, Liverpool in red. A wonderful start-of-the-weekend, possibly-a-few-pints-to-the-good atmosphere under the lights at Portman Road! Not long now. In the meantime, here’s Dave Estherby with some pre-match words of encouragement for Liverpool: “Not really sure what’s going on upstairs at Anfield. Another summer where they’ve spaffed money up the wall for unproven PL players without realising they need a goalkeeper, two full backs, a centre half, two forwards, a winger and a replacement for whatever Mac Allister is supposed to do. AND back up for Ekitike who probably won’t play until the new year at least. Shambles. I feel sorry for Iraola, he couldn’t really turn them down but it might end up a backwards step.”Pre-match postbag. “Leaving aside Liverpool’s less than imperial start to the season, you have to admit that’s a very tasty teamsheet on offer tonight - the right blend of youth, experience, Hungary’s answer to Bryan Robson and a World Cup winner in the middle of the park, a striker coveted by Man City, a Champions League winner on the bench and in Wirtz our very own Juan Sebastian Veron!” – Peadar de Burca Continue reading...

• All the latest news and previews before the weekend• Premier League: 10 things to watch for | Email JohnThe chief executives of the Football Association, Rugby Football Union and England and Wales Cricket Board have joined forces with leading broadcasters and YouTube in writing to the chancellor requesting tax credits for production companies to help deliver more television coverage of women’s sport. Continue reading...

Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now!That icy wind rattling the rafters is the cold reality of what follows the closure of the transfer window, a hungover pall of regret. Despite £3.5bn shelled out in the men’s window, several things will not be happening in the Premier League when they might have been. When Arsenal host Chelsea for a most super of Sundays, Vinícius Júnior will not be playing in their attack, and neither will Gabriel Martinelli, whose lengthy social media disgrace farewells on his departure for Saudi Arabia pointedly made no mention of Mikel Arteta.Re: yesterday’s Football Daily. Perhaps Messrs Vardy and James thought they had booked Jasper Carrott to kick off their hilarious podcast party. And got the not-so-funny doppelganger Mike Dean instead?” – Jim Arrowsmith.With Premier League clubs now owned by a motley assortment of hedge funds, petrostates, billionaires and so on, perhaps the time is right to take a leaf out of pro cycling’s book and name the teams after their owners and sponsors. It will be a regular reminder to fans that the football entities they support are far removed from the community-based groups of like-minded individuals that the word ‘club’ denotes, and that they are instead cash-cow playthings of the mega-rich. As for me, I’ve been a fan of Fosun International Debet since they were known as Bhatti Brothers Manders Paints and Inks” – Neil Withers.As someone who likes watching football rather than wasting time on transfers, this week has been boring, to say the least. Not so dull that it’s been enough to pick up a book, mind, but still. However, the result was that, after finding out that West Ham have a midfielder called Engels, I was sent down an internet wormhole and discovered that there is also a Brazilian midfielder called Marx Lenin (his real name, not just a nickname). Now, if only we could get them to play together, we would have something. Revolutionary tactics, no one in the centre or on the right wing, e

The Scottish FA is proposing financial incentives for clubs to play more young home-grown footballers.

After a difficult year at Chelsea the striker hopes to get his career back on track at the City Ground“You can imagine it: he’s a centre-back, I’m a striker,” says Liam Delap, Nottingham Forest’s £45m club-record signing, smiling as he sets the scene. He is reliving taking on his younger brother, Finn, in the garden. These days, they are each other’s biggest supporters – Liam attended Finn’s victory for third-tier Burton on Wednesday – but as kids there was a friendly rivalry. The elder brother says: “There were probably a lot of tears, a lot of fights … whether it was playing Monopoly or football, it always ended in either the table being flipped or kicking the shit out of each other.”It is a competitive streak that has stuck and Delap is determined to make his presence felt at Forest, for whom he could make his full debut against Tottenham on Saturday. It has been a testing 16 months; he left Chelsea a season into a six-year contract and after one goal in 28 top-flight appearances, a dozen of those starts. “It is never a linear path straight to the top,” Delap says, his right hand taking flight in the City Ground boardroom, the 1979 and 1980 European Cups shimmering behind him. “I just want to get my head down, focus and keep improving because I’m still so young and I have so much to learn. I even at times probably think I’ve been in football a lot longer than I have. I’ve still, hopefully, got a long career ahead. Continue reading...

Recruiting ex-pros. Inflaming Ukraine-Russia tensions. Suing the SEC and being sued back. The school is adapting to a new reality – and also creating a new oneIn 1893, a chemistry professor named Charles Coates arrived at Louisiana State University and wrote that, to his surprise, “there was practically no athletics in the student body: no football, no tennis, and only very little baseball in the spring.” A broad program of sports struck him as the kind of thing a school should have, particularly as US universities were beginning to tout intercollegiate athletics as critical to a balanced higher-ed experience and another way to justify the cost of entry. But 133 years on, sports aren’t merely the main attraction at LSU. They’re the school’s raison d’être, the blinkered obsession that consumes the university and its most prominent ambassadors.Any doubt that the business of educating college students is just a nettlesome distraction from the business of college sports in Baton Rouge has been emphatically dispelled over the past 10 months. On the football side, the school has spent or committed roughly $162m to its last three head coaches: Ed Orgeron, the folksy national champion in 2019 who received a $17m buyout when he was fired two years later; Brian Kelly, the unloved underachiever who received a $54m buyout after being fired last October; and Lane Kiffin, the Kelly replacement whom it signed to a $91m deal a month later. Clemson, the opponent for LSU’s season opener at home on Saturday, are about to find out what all that money buys. Continue reading...

The Independent Football Regulator approves investment into the Cobblers by a Brazilian consortium.

The Independent Football Regulator approves investment into the Cobblers by a Brazilian consortium.

The Independent Football Regulator approves investment into the Cobblers by a Brazilian consortium.

The Independent Football Regulator approves investment into the Cobblers by a Brazilian consortium.

Letter sent to chancellor, John Healey, on Friday‘Audience demand for women’s sport is growing’The chief executives of the Football Association, Rugby Football Union and England and Wales Cricket Board have joined forces with leading broadcasters and YouTube in writing to the chancellor requesting tax credits for production companies to help deliver more television coverage of women’s sport.In a letter signed by 25 representatives of the country’s biggest sports and broadcasters, including Sky Sports and ITV, the government is urged to extend to women’s sport production the audio-visual expenditure credit scheme that provides tax relief to independent films and children’s television. Continue reading...

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Ten years after lining up with Marcus Rashford for Manchester United, Joe Riley tells BBC Sport about his new career - and why he does not miss full-time football.

Ten years after lining up with Marcus Rashford for Manchester United, Joe Riley tells BBC Sport about his new career - and why he does not miss full-time football.

Ten years after lining up with Marcus Rashford for Manchester United, Joe Riley tells BBC Sport about his new career - and why he does not miss full-time football.