It's not a good sign – Southgate awaiting further diagnosis on Alexander-Arnold injury

By Sports Desk June 02, 2021

Trent Alexander-Arnold's participation in Euro 2020 appears to be in huge doubt after the England full-back sustained an apparent muscular injury against Austria.

England won 1-0 on Wednesday thanks to Bukayo Saka's first international goal, but a late injury for Alexander-Arnold may have spoiled the night.

Alexander-Arnold was left out of a previous England squad in March, but has made the 26-man cut for Euro 2020, with Gareth Southgate taking four right-backs.

Two of those right-backs – Kyle Walker and Reece James – were unavailable in Middlesbrough following their Champions League final exploits, so the Liverpool star got the nod.

However, in the closing stages, Alexander-Arnold pulled up after making a clearance with his left foot, and appeared to be clutching his thigh as he limped off the pitch, with England's medical staff then having to help him walk around the sidelines to the tunnel.

With England kicking-off their campaign against Croatia on June 13, Alexander-Arnold's prospects do not look good, but Southgate, who also has concerns over the fitness of Jordan Henderson and Harry Maguire, will wait for a full diagnosis before making a decision on whether to replace the 22-year-old.

"We're going to have a look. It's obviously not good to see him come off in the way he did. We'll just have to assess him over the next 24 hours," he told ITV Sport.

"I think thigh, but the medical team are still assessing it really. We just have to see, it's not a good sign to see him have to walk off as he did, but we'll know more in the next 24, 48 hours.

"Let's see how Trent is, and we'll go from there. We don't know the full extent, so the last thing you want is to have to see him come off in the way he did."

Another player to provide something of a scare to England fans might have been Jack Grealish. 

The Aston Villa talisman missed a large chunk of the Premier League run-in due to an injury, but played over an hour before being replaced by debutant Ben White.

Grealish was seen with an ice pack on his right shin as he watched on from the stands, but the 25-year-old insisted he is fit.

"I've had an injury recently so to get 70 minutes under my belt, I'm glad," he explained to ITV Sport.

"It's not shin splints, actually, it's different to that, it's like a bit of stress on my shin, a different type of injury.

"I'm not concerned, I'm still aware of it, need to keep on top of it, do whatever I can to heal it after playing in these games, so that's why the ice was on."

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  • Premier League MD7: Lucky winners and unlucky losers Premier League MD7: Lucky winners and unlucky losers

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    Leicester City, meanwhile, grabbed their first win of the campaign, while Anthony Gordon endured a miserable return to Goodison Park with Newcastle United. In the final fixture of the weekend, Brighton stunned Tottenham, forging a second-half comeback to win 3-2 at the Amex Stadium.

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    Lucky winners: Leicester City

    Leicester finally got their first top-flight win of the season on the board, as they edged out Bournemouth 1-0 thanks to Facundo Buonanotte's excellent run and finish.

    But, it's fair to say it was something of a smash-and-grab for Steve Cooper's team at the King Power Stadium. Leicester had just six shots, with only two of those hitting the target, and they tallied up just 0.79 expected goals (xG).

     

    On the other hand, Bournemouth had 19 attempts, creating five big chances (a tally bettered only by Brentford's eight and West Ham's nine this week) and accumulating 2.16 xG.

    Bournemouth only have themselves to blame for wasteful finishing – they got just two of their efforts on target – but the Cherries can still consider themselves unfortunate.

    Unlucky losers: Newcastle

    Determined to impress against his former club, Gordon fluffed his lines when his big moment arrived as Newcastle drew 0-0 with Everton on Saturday.

    With James Tarkowski having conceded a penalty by recklessly pulling the shirt of Sandro Tonali, Gordon stepped up to the spot, but Jordan Pickford guessed the right way.

    While Everton wanted a penalty of their own in the second half, the Toffees were largely second-best and that is backed up by the metrics. Even discounting Gordon's spot-kick, Newcastle finished with 1.26 xG and 14 shots. The hosts accumulated 0.67 xG and had eight attempts.

    Lucky winners: Man City

    It's not often that the champions are given a run for their money at home, but Fulham did just that.

     

    Indeed, Fulham finished with 2.6 xG at the Etihad Stadium, the fourth-highest total across the league this weekend, while they created five big chances.

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    Going forward, City benefited from three excellent finishes - two from Mateo Kovacic and one from Jeremy Doku. Their 1.57 xG came from 20 shots, though they created only one big chance.

  • Late wickets give England hope after difficult start to Pakistan Test Late wickets give England hope after difficult start to Pakistan Test

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  • Women's Champions League: Will the English teams crash the Barcelona, Lyon party? Women's Champions League: Will the English teams crash the Barcelona, Lyon party?

    As we gear up for another edition of the Women's Champions League, the excitement around this iconic club competition is as tantalising as ever.

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    Barcelona are the reigning champions after they beat Lyon in the final back in May.

     

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    The main contenders

    Holders Barcelona will have a fight on their hands to retain their trophy this season, but they also have a strong chance of making more history themselves.

    Barca are striving to become only the second club to win a third consecutive Champions League, and they will also bid to equal Lyon's record of appearing in five straight finals, with the French side having achieved the feat between 2016 and 2020.

    Barca grew into a dominant force under former boss Jonatan Giraldez, who is now coaching Washington Spirit. 

    Former assistant coach to Giraldez, Pere Romeu, will have to see if he can continue the club's quest for trophies, but the bar has been set high by that quadruple last season.

    Teams will be looking for the chink in the Catalans' armour. Defensively, Barca were generally excellent last season, though they did have a slight defensive underperformance, conceding 1.6 goals more than would have been anticipated based on their expected goals against (xGA) figures in the Champions League, albeit when discounting own goals, that underperformance dropped to 0.6.

     

    They also had the meanest defence in the competition when it came to clean sheets, keeping six to help them win nine games. 

    The best sides in front of goal last season were, unsurprisingly, the two teams that reached the final – Barca and Lyon. They netted 36 times each across 11 games apiece.

    Lyon, although under new leadership, are the most successful side in the history of the competition, winning eight titles, and they are difficult to look past as the team to beat.

    Their free-shooting, free-flowing attacking system under former coach Sonia Bompastor saw them produce a whopping 270 attempts on goal last term, an average of 24.5 per game. Barca (237) were second for shots, and shot conversion rate (15.19%), meanwhile.

     

    Lyon's xG was a tournament-leading 35.4, while Barca's 29.11 ranked second – however, Barca greatly overperformed their xG.

    Indeed, their 6.89 xG overperformance was the highest positive differential in last season's competition, proving their finishing was of an exceptionally high standard.

    It will not all be about Barca and Lyon, though. Two other former continental champions, Arsenal and Wolfsburg, are sides who will see themselves as ready to dethrone Barca and taste European glory once more.

    Wolfsburg are six-time finalists and two-time champions, so they should never be discounted. Nor should Bayern Munich, who have won the Frauen-Bundesliga title in the last two seasons.

    Bayern went out in the group stage last season, only winning one of their six games, but they should fare better this time around. 

    And while they are yet to go all the way in Europe, Chelsea and Manchester City could also be forces to be reckoned with.

    English trio to challenge

    Bompastor led Lyon to victory as their captain in 2011 and 2012 and as their head coach in 2021, an incredible feat that nobody else has achieved in the tournament's history.

    She now finds herself in charge of English Champions Chelsea and will be keen to lead her new side to their first Champions League title.

    Chelsea, who reached the semi-finals, had the best shot conversion rate (15.38%) in the 2023-24 tournament, scoring 20 goals from 130 shots.

     

    Bompastor will hope to build on her own success and knowledge of the competition and become the first manager to lead an English side to European success since Arsenal's victory in the 2006-07 season.

    Despite winning everything there is to win domestically under previous boss Emma Hayes, this is a trophy that has evaded the Blues and they are desperate for success. They lost 4-0 in a humiliating final outing versus Barcelona in 2020-21.

    Serial winner Lucy Bronze has been brought into the Chelsea fold by Bompastor, and a huge factor in that transfer was her experience of Champions League success. The ambitious defender will aim to become only the second player, after Conny Pohlers, to win the competition with three different sides, previously lifting the trophy with Lyon and Barcelona.

    City, meanwhile, are appearing in the group stages for the first time since the competition's format was changed in 2021 and Gareth Taylor and his team will be keen to show Europe's best why they have pushed Chelsea all the way in the WSL in recent seasons. 

    Last season's star players

    Kadidiatou Diani was the leading scorer in last season's Champions League, netting eight goals, and she will be as dangerous as ever in Lyon's attacking line.

    Those goals came from 4.77 xG — that 3.23 overperformance was higher than any other player in the competition. She was not only the highest goalscorer, but her finishes were a level above what would have been anticipated based on the quality of chances she had.

    Ada Hegerberg is the all-time leading scorer in the competition with 64 goals. However, she underperformed her tournament-leading 7.33 xG by 2.33 last campaign, so there's scope for improvement for the 29-year-old.

     

    Despite the xG underperformance, she still tallied up an impressive five goals to finish tied for fifth in the charts, along with Caroline Hansen, Tabitha Chawinga, Marie-Yasmine Alidou and Sam Kerr.

    Lyon's Selma Bacha created the most chances in last season's competition (35), registering 4.12 expected assists (xA), though she only provided two assists in total.

    Barcelona's Hansen (33) was second-highest for chances created, but led the way for xA (4.66) and assists (five), level with her team-mate Aitana Bonmati and just ahead of Bronze and Roma playmaker Manuela Giugliano (both four). 

     

    Between the sticks, St. Polten's Carina Schluter was the busiest goalkeeper, making 43 saves, though Chelsea's Zecira Musovic boasted the best save percentage (81.82%) of any shot-stopper to play at least 90 minutes.

    Jennifer Falk, of BK Hacken, was the best-performing goalkeeper when it came to goals prevented, however, conceding 10, which is 3.85 fewer than would have been anticipated based on the quality of shots she faced, according to Opta's expected goals on target (xGoT) model.

    The groups

    Four groups of four teams will battle it out to reach the knockout stages. There are some top ties to look forward to before we get to the last eight, and undoubtedly there will be some surprises along the way.

    Group A boasts two former champions with 10 titles between them in Lyon and Wolfsburg. The two sides have met in finals of the tournament on four occasions, with Lyon victorious in three of those instances.

    But Wolfsburg, who thrashed Fiorentina in qualifying, have lost some huge names over the summer. Germany midfielder Lena Oberdorf, Poland forward Ewa Pajor and Netherlands defender Dominique Janssen all exited ahead of the new campaign.

    Pajor has made a fantastic start to life at Barcelona, scoring six goals already, and generating the highest xG of any player in the top five leagues so far in 2024-25 (6.56).

    Roma will join the two giants from Germany and France. Their best finish in the tournament saw them progress to the last eight on their competition debut in 2022-23. 

    The group's final side, Galatasaray, battled hard through the qualifying rounds and stamped their mark on the competition by knocking out three-time quarter-finalists Slavia to become the first Turkish team to reach the group stage.

    Group B has served up a familiar matchup with Chelsea and Real Madrid being drawn together for a third consecutive year.

    Dutch Champions Twente will bring an attacking brand of football to the tournament and should not be underestimated. They scored 20 goals to qualify for the group stages. Debutants Celtic, meanwhile, will also look to make their mark.

    Group C could be considered the group of death, with former champions Arsenal, Bayern and surprise package Juventus, who caused the biggest upset of the qualifying rounds, going head-to-head.

    The Bianconere became the first team to knock out Paris Saint-Germain before the quarter-finals since Tyreso in 2013-14, ending the dreams of English number one Mary Earps after her big move from Manchester United.

    Group D will host the most exciting fixture of the group stages as holders Barca take on Man City in the opening game. The teams have met previously in a quarter-final in 2020-21, with Barca going on to win the tournament that year.

    St. Polten have qualified for the fourth time in five seasons, and Hammarby have shown they are not scared of the bigger sides by knocking out one of last year's quarter-finalists Benfica in the qualifying rounds. 

    The tournament promises to be exciting, with some intriguing storylines to follow from top to bottom.

    Will Barcelona win a third straight crown, can Lyon extend their record number of titles, or is it time for an English champion for the first time since 2007? We can't wait to find out. 

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