However, the club were rocked at the weekend after Marc-Andre ter Stegen suffered a potentially season-ending knee injury during their 5-1 victory over Villarreal.

The former Brentford striker's protracted flirtation with a move to a top Premier League club ended on August 30 as he sealed a £40million move to Al-Ahli.

Thug Harry Thorley appeared before magistrates in London on August 27 after he walked up to the City fan in a car park at the Community Shield curtain-raiser and punched him in the face.

CHRIS WHEELER AND LIAM MORGAN: A separate arena for the women's and academy teams will not be part of the initial design to regenerate the area around a £2bn stadium.

ISAAN KHAN: After a bruising 2-2 draw at Manchester City on Sunday, the Gunners face Bolton on Wednesday in the Carabao Cup third round and Mikel Arteta has little option.

The stats boffins have been crunching the numbers and running the algorithms ahead of this year's new-look format and have conjured up of which teams are most likely to go all the way.

Suspicion was raised that a deal had been re-agreed after Greenwood donned yellow and orange Nike boots during his side's win over Lyon at the weekend. Nike, however, have now rubbished that theory.

UEFA has gone back to the drawing board after authorities could not offer guarantees that refurbishment work at San Siro and the surrounding area would not affect the match.

Allardyce clearly approved of how Arteta's men stifled City's flow, having deployed similar tactics against some of the Premier League's biggest teams while in charge of Bolton in the 2000s.

IAN HERBERT: Consider the individual whose evidence is at the core of the Premier League's case, though, and it is hard to share in all this schadenfreude.

UEFA will need to move the Champions League final to a new stadium.

Aaron Hill was given special permission to break the rules at the British Open.