Joe Green Sports

West Ham United have just experienced their best season of the Premier League era, with 65 points and a 6th-placed finish ahead of London rivals Tottenham and Arsenal securing a place in the Europa League group stages. Fans can now look forward to a first proper European adventure this century, not including qualifier defeats to Palermo and Romanian minnows Astra Giurgiu. But if these supporters were to take a look beneath the surface of this European haze, the cracks already starting to appear in David Moyes' squad are alarming to say the least, hence why they are my early shout to be relegated from the Premier League in the 2021/22 season. It would certainly be a fall from grace to tumble from 6th to the bottom three in the space of 12 months, but West Ham fans must remember that it is securing European football, not the usual bottom-half finish, that is the anomaly, and that a return to battling relegation would not be quite as big a shock as initially perceived. That being said...

Aaron Rodgers is now expected to stay at the Green Bay Packers for the 2021 NFL season, according to NFL Network Insider Ian Rapoport. The quarterback has reportedly told those close to him that he will be staying in Green Bay for at least one more season, while Packers General Manager Brian Gutekunst says he is "hopeful" for a positive outcome. The news looks to signal the beginning of the end of a months-long saga involving Rodgers' future as he looked to move away from Green Bay due to behind-the-scenes tensions. Such tensions were recently brought into the spotlight by the Packers' drafting of quarterback of Jordan Love in the first round of the 2020 NFL Draft, a decision which Rodgers was displeased with as he had been hoping to be provided with more offensive support for the upcoming season in the shape of a wide receiver or tight end. After losing the NFC Championship Game to Tom Brady's Tampa Bay Buccaneers in January, Rodgers voiced his intentions to leav...

After a frantic NFL off-season, at least 10 out of the 32 franchises will be lining up with a different starting quarterback in 2021 to the one that saw out the end of the 2020 campaign. The pressure will be on these new arrivals to hit the ground running as more teams than ever eye up a realistic shot at reaching the Super Bowl, while a number of veterans entering the twilight of their careers could be facing one final shot at glory before either their body or their team gives up on them. As last year's rookies embark on the highly-scrutinised second seasons of their fledgling careers and several others reach the familiar third-year crossroads, there are very few quarterbacks who can approach the upcoming season with little pressure on their shoulders. Here's a look at the quarterbacks with the most to lose, and the most to prove, in 2021.  Firstly, there are those whose teams debated whether or not to get rid over the summer but decided to give them another chance this season...

As registered Barcelona player Philippe Coutinho scored Bayern Munich's 8th goal, Lionel Messi looked despairingly to the heavens, stunned into immobility and silence, a European campaign once again defined by humiliation. On the end of the biggest quarter-final defeat in Champions League history, in a neutral venue over 1000km from his footballing home, in front of nothing but empty seats and the power structure and finances of his boyhood club in tatters, it seemed almost fatal to ask; could this really be Messi's last dance in a Barcelona shirt? A question that would have seemed absurd less than twelve months ago became a shocking reality earlier this week when arguably the best player of all time handed in a transfer request and expressed his desire to find a new club. And yet the traumatic scenes in Lisbon at the hands of eventual champions Bayern may not even be the the final chapter in this nightmarish denouement, as Messi's last appearance as a Barcelona player lo...

On a night where Manchester United could have done with a fairly pedestrian 90 minutes with potentially their two biggest games of the season to come in the next ten days, Ole Gunnar Solksjaer's men were frustrated by a resilient and at times dangerous FC Copenhagen side across an energy-sapping 120 minutes of Europa League football.  Mason Greenwood thought he had given United the lead on the stroke of half-time with a stereotypically clinical finish off the inside of the left post after a half of constant but hardly threatening pressure from the English side, only for VAR to intervene and correctly rule the 18-year-old was a yard offside. Greenwood was to also have a starring role in the next moment of drama in the second half, as his marginally less accurate shot from just inside the box in the 57th minute cannoned off the right post into the path of Marcus Rashford, who did not have to wait for VAR to rule out his tap-in after the linesman raised his flag for offside. T...

After Manchester City won the Premier League at the end of the 2017/18 season with arguably the greatest squad in the competition's history, accumulating a record-breaking 100 points, scoring a record-breaking 106 goals and winning a record-breaking 32 games in the process, they spent a club-record £60m on Leicester City winger Riyad Mahrez. After retaining their title in the 2018/19 season with 98 points and another 32 wins, they spent a club-record £62m on Atletico Madrid midfielder Rodri and £58m on Juventus full-back Joao Cancelo. After finishing a lowly 2nd this time around, deals have already been agreed for Valencia forward Ferran Torres and Bournemouth centre-back Nathan Ake, both believed to be worth around £40m. If it was clear that City were not intent to stand still after winning back-to-back titles, then they seem to be as busy as ever in the transfer market after losing their domestic crown. With this in mind, can newly-crowned champions Liverpool afford another seaso...