Wolves sack Pereira, buildup to Celtic and Rangers and two Premier League games – as it happened

12.35pm GMT With that thought, I shall leave you. Plenty of live action coming up with Guardian sport this afternoon. As ever, thanks for all your emails and comments. 12.30pm GMT It worked last season for Wolves, this season the teams that have come up are stronger. Who comes in is going to be crucial, maybe in this Premier League of set-pieces and direct football some of the fossils of the Barclays era can be dusted off. Tony Pulis anyone? Foxesbcn 02 November 2025 12:12pm At least Wolves have given themselves a chance by acting now. If he'd been at Leicester, he'd have been given the rest of the season and a six figure pay-off. 12.17pm GMT Every weekend they arrive with their boots and their grief, their studs and their memories of the Grenfell Tower fire which changed their lives for ever and killed 72 people. But the Grenfell Athletic football players, in two men’s teams and a women’s side, also bring hope, pride and even joy as they climb up their Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning amateur league tables with growing conviction that their club is a rising force. Grenfell Athletic were founded by Rupert Taylor, a community leader and local inspiration, and Paul Menacer, who was asleep in the tower on the night of 14 June 2017 when the building turned into a blazing inferno. Together, they started a football club to help their community cope with the devastating loss. A new documentary shows community unity helping a football club rise against a backdrop of a tragedy-hit building that is only now coming down. Read Donald McRae’s latest on the inspiring story of Grenfell Athletic: Related: ‘They saved my life’: Grenfell Athletic create hopeful future despite pain of loss in tower fire Updated at 12.19pm GMT 12.10pm GMT How much of this is on Pereira? Wolves have been treading water since Nuno Espírito Santo left and don’t seem to have much ambition beyond survival each season. PeterPrincey 02 November 2025 11:59am Well, it looks like Vítor Pereira has managed to keep his average stay at clubs more or less intact, maybe even lowered it a bit. 12.02pm GMT In answer to Moonwreck’s question, probably not. I think Sarina Wiegman actually comes out of this episode looking fairly good. She picked a goalkeeper who made a string of big saves to win the Euros and, it seems, gave Earps every chance to be involved to the point of trying to dissuade her from retiring. Moonwreck 02 November 2025 11:29am I don't see the Mary Earps revelations as a "Scandal". It would be foolish to think that everything is fine in a national team, if that was the case they never needed a Manager and a Managerial team of people. On the other hand Earps issue is not with Hannah but with Sarina. And that opens another can of worms. Is it "Smart" to antagonize with your twice undefeated manager and contradicting her? 11.59am GMT The WSL action is just about to get underway, follow along with Yara Al-Shaboury: Related: Leicester v Arsenal, Brighton v Manchester United, and more: WSL – live 11.53am GMT Breaking news: Wolves sack Pereira Wolves have sacked Vítor Pereira in the wake of their 3-0 defeat by Fulham, which left them bottom with two points from 10 games and eight points adrift of the last safe spot. The move comes despite his signing a three-year contract in September. More here: Related: Vítor Pereira sacked by Wolves after bleak 10-game winless run 11.41am GMT Premier League has turned a tactical corner but set-play trend will surely fade Only nine of the 241 goals scored in the Premier League going into this weekend have come from throw-ins, but it feels like far more. Forty-five have come from corners – 18.7%. Were that proportion to be maintained over the season it would present a remarkable leap on the high of 14.2% from 2010-11. The reality is there’s likely to be a regression to the mean: if a glance at the proportion of goals scored from corners shows anything, it’s that there really isn’t much of a pattern at all. The proportion hovered at 11 or 12% most years to 2009, since when it has been at 13-14% – a trend which, if anything, goes against the assumption that everybody stopped taking corners seriously in the peak years of guardiolismo only to rediscover their love of a booming inswinger last season (when, in fact, the proportion of goals from corners fell to its lowest level since 2013-14). Read Jonathan Wilson’s latest column: Related: Premier League has turned a tactical corner but set-play trend will surely fade | Jonathan Wilson 11.38am GMT Comments like this are why Guardian live blogs are the best live blogs. Well done below the liners: thisisanicknamelol 02 November 2025 10:31am All elite sportspeople have to have a degree of arrogance that tells them they are better than the next person, so to be replaced by someone you view as not showing the same levels of professionalism must sting and at that point why hang around to be a backup?To expand on this point, I think there is a broader failure to reckon with the psyche of sportspeople. It is a major pet peeve of mine to see players express self-belief and then immediately get lambasted for being arrogant, self-absorbed, disrespectful etc, when it is that very same self-belief we expect them to manifest as part of becoming some of the greatest athletes in the world. We create these conditions (thumping Hans Zimmer-style music, flame jets and fireworks, ominous lighting, jump cut-filled ads, managers screaming at them from the touchline) where they're under immense pressure to be better than each other and constantly "on it" all the time, but heaven forbid they verbalise that confidence in any way. And bear in mind that elements of the media often frame their questioning in a way to tease out such sentiments from them, such that they have to express that self-belief in a manner that makes it sound arrogant.I think back to players like Bendtner, Ibrahimovic and Ronaldo, and things they've said over time (though in Ibrahimovic's case, to be fair, he did play it up a little for the pantomime value), and not only is that image held against them for the duration of their careers and beyond, people seem to actually take glee in them not fulfilling their own ambitions. Bendtner is still a figure of fun on some corners of the Internet just for not becoming, as he had hoped (and I am sure every player hopes), the best striker in the world. People actually take pleasure in someone failing in their ambitions to be good at what they do. Ignoring the fact that anyone who gets anywhere near this level is already the 1 of 1 of 1% of anybody who's ever attempted it.We can't just hope to see, from our privileged positions, athletes fulfilling their hopes to be the best they can be; we have to yearn to see them fail, convinced they deserve to because it's "arrogance". It's perverse. Now imagine for a goalkeeper, who has to compete for a position only one player can play at a time and one player can nail down for two decades, what kind of self-belief is required in order to even want to pursue that position in the first place, and what feeling of vindication you must feel if and when you get into that position. By the stupid standards we create, all goalkeepers are arrogant. And god bless them for it. 11.36am GMT This has struck me in the early part of the season. There is a lot of interesting narratives in the Premier League but the football has been poor. Bournemouth are good to watch, but none of the ‘top’ teams are very fun. Perault 02 November 2025 10:32am Echo Barneys thoughts on the quality of the game. I do think the Premiership for all its clamour has increasingly got a product problem. The ball is in play so very little, the game is stop start. Last night at Spurs was a horrible watch as an event. Players screaming injury, wanting treatment, utilising the head injury at every possibility. I pity the health professionals who have to work out what is a real injury these days. Add in Substitutes agogo, one minute towelling for long throws and the perennial comms issue as the referee looses their mic and can no longer see an luminous flag being lofted anymore. 11.31am GMT You can follow all the WSL action with Yara El-Shaboury over on the live MBM blog: Related: Leicester v Arsenal, Brighton v Manchester United, and more: WSL – live 11.29am GMT Team news: Tottenham v Liverpool Tottenham XI: Kop, Nilden, Naz, England (C), Holdt, Rybrink, Vinberg, Hunt, Spence, Summanen, Koga.Subs: Heeps, Grant, Bartrip, Neville, Ahtinen, Graham, Gunning-Williams, Thomas, Tandberg. Liverpool XI: Kirby, Risa, Fisk (C), Evans, Woodham, Nagano, Kerr, Holland, Enderby, Olsson, Kapocs.Subs: Laws, Borgraffe, Szymczak, Lundgaard, Clark, MacLean, Silcock. 11.25am GMT Team news: Leicester v Arsenal Leicester XI: Leitzig, Kees, Swaby, Thibaud, Ale, Tierney, McLoughlin, Cain, Rantala, Cayman (C), O’Brien. Subs: Ayane, Eiríksdóttir, Goodwin, Keane, Las, Mouchon, Sherwood, Van Egmond. Arsenal XI: Van Domselaar, McCabe, Catley, Hinds, Laia Codina, Foord, Little (C), Caldentey, Mead, Russo, Blackstenius.Subs: Borbe, Fox, Harwood, Kelly, Liddiard, Nighswonger, Pelova, Reid. Updated at 11.28am GMT 11.20am GMT Team news: Brighton v Manchester United Brighton XI: Nnadozie, Minami, Kafaji, Symonds (C), Cankovic, Seike, Kirby, Hayes, Olislagers, Camacho, Rule. Subs: Baggaley, Mpome, Noordam, Carabali, Auee, McLauchlan, Tsunoda, Martin, Heron. Manchester United: Tullis-Joyce, Sandberg, Le Tissier (C), Toone, Park, Malard, Terland, Riviere, Janssen, Zigiotti, Hinata.Subs: Middleton-Patel, Rendell, Blundell, George, Rolfo, Awujo, Naalsund, Williams. Updated at 11.28am GMT 11.13am GMT Team news: Aston Villa v Everton Aston Villa XI: D’Angelo, Wilms, Patten, Deslandes, Maritz, Taylor, Kendall, Maltby, Kearns (C), Mullett, Hanson. Subs: Roebuck, Sallaway, Seymour, Mayling, Scott, Daly, Salmon. Everton XI: Ramsey, Pacheco, Fernandez, Stevevik, Wheeler (C), Mace, Van Gool, Hayashi, Payne, Vignola, Gago. Subs: Startup, Ishikawa, Hobson, Kitigawa, ladd, Weir, Momiki, Jones. Updated at 11.28am GMT 10.47am GMT Team news from the midday WSL games coming shortly… 10.45am GMT Real talk, I had a PE teacher at school whose actual name was TJ Hooker and a science teach called Robin Graves. Wild. This is a sensible opinion, mind: TJHooker71 02 November 2025 10:13am The result in the semi-final at Hampden today will probably have a significant short-term effect. A Rangers win will do much to ease the beginning of Rohl's spell as manager at Rangers, and compound the bad feeling around Celtic this season. A Celtic win will ease some of that malaise and put a lot of pressure on Rohl to quickly improve Rangers league form and to catch Celtic in the league.Longer term, much will depend on who Celtic pick as their next manager and what kind of backing he'll get from the board, and whether Rohl really can help Rangers climb out of their ongoing slump and break their cycle of firing one manager per season. 10.26am GMT Mike Ashley, an owner so bad he made the Saudi PIF seem like an attractive proposition, is in the running to buy Sheffield Wednesday. According to the latest from Matt Hughes, American billionaire John McEvoy, who holds minority stakes in the National Hockey League team Nashville Predators and Major League Baseball’s Colorado Rockies, is an interested party, while there has also been contact from at least one British and one other American group. Does anyone want to Ashley back in football? Related: Mike Ashley prepares to enter fight for Sheffield Wednesday with £10m bid 10.12am GMT Thank you below the line pedants for pointing out that the first round began on Friday. I stand corrected. This is a good shout for an upset, any other fixtures look promising? NotDrivingAMiniMetro 02 November 2025 9:59am Good luck to the non league teams in the Cup.South Shields going great in the league so could be an upset 10.00am GMT This is interesting from Hibernica, although I would say both Celtic and Rangers are stuck in a bit of a downward spiral in terms of player recruitment. With such a big financial lead over the other clubs in the Scottish Premiership, neither really ever sign plyers that allow them to consistently compete in Europe these days. It is quite telling that in one window Hearts have put together a team that is challenging the Old Firm domestically. Hibernica 02 November 2025 9:50am It's accurate enough to suggest that Celtic and Rangers are both in crisis at the same time but there's a world of difference between the two crises.Celtic's manager has walked out after the board failed to invest in enough new playing staff to build on last season's achievement of getting out of the Champions League group phase.Rangers are a club trying to emerge from a decade and a half of permanent crisis, has a penchant for needlessly sacking managers who are doing ok, and now isn't ever in a position to attract the manager it wants.Celtic's crisis is one of temporary stagnation. But Rangers' crisis is centred on the undeniable fact that the club is a complete shambles. 9.54am GMT Personally, I find Earps’ take on her retirement quite understandable. All elite sportspeople have to have a degree of arrogance that tells them they are better than the next person, so to be replaced by someone you view as not showing the same levels of professionalism must sting and at that point why hang around to be a backup? What are your thoughts? Let me know know via the link above or in the comments below… 9.40am GMT Hannah Hampton was the focus of much of what came out of the first look at Earps’ autobiography but she responded well with a clean sheet in Chelsea’s 2-0 win over London City Lionesses. Afterwards Chelsea head coach Sonia Bompastor defended Hampton and criticised Earps for a lack of respect. “I think Hannah is fine,” Bompastor said. “It’s tough because Hannah is an athlete but also a person and it is never nice to hear these comments. The only thing I want to say about Hannah is that, since I joined Chelsea, she has grown so much. She’s such a professional athlete and also a good person. We have a really good relationship together and I want to show her my support in this situation.” Read Sophie Downey’s full report from Stamford Bridge: Related: Bompastor springs to Hampton’s defence after keeper helps Chelsea win 9.34am GMT The Guardian is serialising Mary Earps autobiography ‘All In’ and after yesterday’s explosive passage about the former England No1’s retirement from international football, here she lifts the lid on when she successfully pushed Nike to change their policy on the sale of women’s replica goalkeeper kits after the 2022 World Cup: The press conference where I’d called out Nike for failing to put on sale replica Lionesses goalkeeper shirts had exploded, triggering headlines and thought pieces and interview requests from news publishers and broadcasters the world over. It had gone far beyond the loyal group of women’s football reporters in the UK, and far beyond sports pages, into outlets covering news, business and women’s issues. There was even a public petition, started by a young girl called Emmy, with more than 130,000 signatures calling on Nike to do better, which was incredibly touching. Nike issued a public response saying it was working towards solutions for future tournaments, and I replied on Instagram with the first thing I’d said about it since the tournament, asking: “Is this your version of an apology/taking accountability/ a powerful statement of intent?” It was picked up on by the papers all over again, another round of stories, and fans were rallying in a battle that was about goalkeeping but, at its heart, was about representation and equality, something women were fighting for in their own lives and arenas every single day. I had been unafraid and unapologetic in using my voice, and I’d backed it up with performances that demanded visibility too. It resonated. Related: Mary Earps: ‘I had used my voice – I took on a global sports giant and won’ 9.09am GMT I’d like to hear from Celtic or Rangers fans ahead of today’s game. I might be wrong here but it feels quite rare that both Old Firm clubs are having a bit of a crisis at the same time. Is that true? And will the result of today’s game change any of that perception? Get in touch via the email in the link above or below the line in the comments. 9.05am GMT Would Celtic gamble on O’Neill if idol brings success against oldest rivals? It feels unwise to be fooled by Martin O’Neill’s self-deprecation. The 73-year-old remains publicly steadfast that his second stint in charge of Celtic will be short term. “I think my remit was that they would be looking for somebody [else] pretty quickly,” he said on Friday. “I don’t think this is a renaissance. I just think this is a fill-in.” Shock is still reverberating around Celtic Park, not so much about Monday’s resignation of Brendan Rodgers but the follow-up savaging of the former manager by the main shareholder, Dermot Desmond. O’Neill is unwilling to speculate upon the ‘what if’. It is undeniable, though, that if he guides Celtic to a League Cup semi-final win against Rangers on Sunday there will be a swell of support for affording him a longer spell in office. “The only people who would be saying that is my two daughters,” said O’Neill. This is incorrect, which he will know only too well. O’Neill masks his intellect well when he chooses to. Read Ewan Murray’s preview of today’s game at Hampden Park here: Related: Would Celtic gamble on O’Neill if idol brings success against oldest rivals? 8.51am GMT The first round of the FA Cup began yesterday… The substitute Regan Linney hit a sensational hat-trick as the National League side Carlisle stunned Reading of League One with a remarkable 3-2 extra-time win in the FA Cup first round. Linney struck twice in second-half added time to force an additional period after Lewis Wing and Mark O’Mahony put the hosts in control before completing his treble – and the comeback – in the 94th minute. Fellow fifth-tier club Gateshead upset the League One high fliers AFC Wimbledon with a 2-0 away victory. Goals either side of half-time from Kain Adom and Fenton John made the difference against the Dons, who sit sixth in the third tier. Full roundup here: Related: FA Cup roundup: Carlisle stun Reading; Gateshead see off AFC Wimbledon 8.37am GMT Elsewhere in the Premier League… Sean Dyche argued football’s lawmakers should consider expanding the reach of the video assistant referee system after Nottingham Forest conceded from a controversial corner for the second successive match. His side came close to winning, but Dyche was left angered after Manchester United scored the opener from a corner awarded by the assistant referee Akil Howson on the far side of the pitch. Ben Fisher saw Nottingham Forest’s 2-2 draw with Manchester United. … The wait goes on and on for Vítor Pereira and Wolves. Not since 26 April – 14 games and 189 days to be precise – have the Portuguese manager and his team tasted victory in the Premier League. That never looked like changing on yet another afternoon this season when nothing seemed to go their way. From the moment Ryan Sessegnon put Fulham ahead in the ninth minute, there was little prospect of them not going on to end their run of four straight defeats – and even less when Emmanuel Agbadou was sent off at the end of the first half. Read the rest of Ed Aarons report from Fulham’s 3-0 win over Wolves. … On the south coast, Daniel Farke’s Leeds team were full of effort but bereft of the class Brighton have collected from across the globe. Farke’s initial plan lacked sufficient sophistication to prosper. They failed to properly unsettle Fabian Hürzeler’s team, who can be a whirl of inconsistency. In the first half Brighton hit creative heights then descended to customary flat spots. “There’s no sugar-coating,” said Farke. “They created far more.” “We lost a bit of control but in the second half got it back,” said Hürzeler, delighted his team had kept a Premier League opponent from scoring for the first time this season. “It’s really about getting consistency into our results.” John Brewin was at the Amex to see Diego Gómez score twice in Brighton’s 3-0 win over Leeds. … Jean-Philippe Mateta’s eighth goal of the season set Crystal Palace on course for a return to winning ways in the Premier League. Mateta’s opener on the half-hour was added to by an own goal from the Brentford captain, Nathan Collins, early in the second half as the Eagles backed up their win at Liverpool in the Carabao Cup on Wednesday with their first victory in four league games. Updated at 8.38am GMT 8.31am GMT Gyökeres and Rice on target as Arsenal sweep Burnley aside Arsenal set pieces bring such a degree of organised chaos and unconventional thinking they could be nominated for the Turner Prize. Instead they are just making them favourites for the Premier League crown after extending their lead at the top. The Gunners have reached such a level of expertise, they even scored from a Burnley long throw. Headers from Viktor Gyökeres and Declan Rice were the difference on a straightforward afternoon in Lancashire for Arsenal. The hosts failed to have a shot on target as Arsenal secured a seventh win in a row without conceding in all competitions, a statistic that will strike fear into the heart of their rivals. “It’s a really tough place to come, they’d lost once in 18 months [at Turf Moor] against Liverpool in the last kick of the game by a penalty,” Mikel Arteta said. “We started the game exceptionally well. I think the first half is one of the best that we’ve played; scored two goals, generated another two or three big chances and conceded nothing.” “Set piece again, olé olé,” was the chant ringing out from the away end after a tough start against a high-energy Burnley side. Rice swung the corner to the back post from where Gabriel Magalhães knocked the ball back to the centre of the goal and Gyökeres, who would have to go off injured at half-time, nodded in from a yard for Arsenal’s 12th set-piece goal in the Premier League this season. Read Will Unwin’s full report from Turf Moor here: Related: Viktor Gyökeres and Declan Rice on target as Arsenal sweep Burnley aside 8.26am GMT Tottenham’s confused mess of a team exposed by Chelsea’s crash tackle king Sitting through this tightly stitched but still oddly shapeless game of football, you kept thinking: what does this remind me of? The trapped energy, the collisions. The sense of something always but never really happening. Oh yes. Watching the full 90 minutes of Chelsea’s narrow but still comfortable 1-0 defeat of Tottenham was like staring at one of those hypnotic drunken city centre brawls that appear on social media from time to time, where nothing ever really seems to start or stop, where the whole thing is just a kind of tortured flailing, but one that must also be pored over endlessly in the comments. A man in a red hoodie is doing air kung fu kicks. Haymakers are being thrown at no one in particular. Someone falls through a fire door. Yellow-jacketed man tries to break it up, wanders off, comes back waving a bin lid. It is undeniably mesmerising. Energy of some kind is definitely being expended. But you can’t help thinking if only someone could actually land a blow, just one, they could put the whole thing to bed pretty quickly. It was fitting it should be Moisés Caicedo who provided that moment of incision at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Not just because he was the best player on the pitch, but because this was also a game that might have been designed just to showcase his own extreme skillset, the king of broken play, the Maradona of the crash tackle. It was also fitting the goal was made by counterpressing, the only effective creative element on the pitch. And fitting in a poor Spurs performance that it should be Xavi Simons who made the vital mistake. Simons is a good passer, but was basically chased, harried and generally beaten up during his time on the pitch. There are games, styles, formations that will suit the very specific talents of Simons. Spurs offered none of those things here. Read Barney Ronay’s analysis of the action at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium here: Related: Tottenham’s confused mess of a team exposed by Chelsea’s crash tackle king | Barney Ronay 8.21am GMT Slot hails ‘special’ Salah for reaching 250 goal club milestone as Liverpool beat Villa Liverpool managed to ease the pressure on head coach Arne Slot by returning to what they know, mostly the side that waltzed to the title last season, and beat Aston Villa at Anfield. Mohamed Salah scored his 250th Liverpool goal in the 2-0 win. Afterwards Slot hailed his “unbelievable” forward, who had opened the scoring in a deserved defeat of Unai Emery’s in-form team after a calamitous error by the World Cup-winning goalkeeper Emiliano Martínez. Salah’s strike capped a vastly improved performance from the Egypt international. “It’s huge,” Slot said of Salah’s latest Liverpool milestone. “It is almost unbelievable if you score 250 goals, let alone 250 goals for one club. You don’t see that much in football any more. Apart from the goal he had a very good performance. When we had to play long, we mainly played to him and he held the ball and the team could come to him. What I liked was that he also helped the team defensively as well. After the first goal he was helping Virgil [van Dijk] around the halfway line. I liked his performance tonight. For him to score is not special but 250 is special.” Read Andy Hunter’s match report from Anfield here: Related: Salah and Gravenberch secure welcome win for Liverpool against Aston Villa Updated at 8.26am GMT 8.15am GMT Preamble Good morning Guardian readers and welcome to the latest edition of Matchday live! We’ve got two Premier Leaugue fixtures to loook ahead to this afternoon, as well as the second Old Firm derby this season – a Scottish League Cup semi-final no less – and, before all of that, four matches in the WSL. Yesterday was a bit of a monster in the English top-flight, so before we get stuck into today’s games let’s take a look back at yesterday’s headlines…