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Tottenham Hotspur’s longest-serving player Aaron Lennon looks set to leave White Hart Lane this January, with a number of Premier League suitors eyeing up a potential move for the pacey winger, according to the Daily Star.

Lennon has been a great servant to Tottenham since his £1million switch from Leeds United in June 2005. This season though, Mauricio Pochettino hasn’t utilised Lennon as much as the former England international would have liked. The 27-year-old has only made nine Premier League appearances for the Lilywhites – 17 in total – and he has very much found himself on the fringes of Pochettino’s first-team plans.

Lennon’s lack of game time at Spurs has put a number of Premier League clubs on red alert. Reports in the Daily Star above suggest Hull City, Stoke City and West Bromwich Albion have all been linked with a move for the winger. Tony Pulis has gone on record in the Metro to say his team lacks pace, making Lennon the perfect acquisition for West Brom, but it’s Hull City who look like the frontrunners to secure his signature, as Tigers boss Steve Bruce seeks to bolster his attacking options readying for a relegation scrap.

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Lennon is at the time in his career now where he needs to be playing regular first-team football. He seems to have been around for a very long time, but he’s still only 27 and has a lot to offer in the top flight. The ex-Leeds man hasn’t lost any of his blistering pace, and he’s still more than capable of providing decent service into the box. Any of the previous clubs mentioned would certainly benefit from his services. In his time with Spurs, Lennon has stacked up 267 Premier League appearances for the Lilywhites, and has weighed in with 26 league goals.

Tottenham have recently been heavily linked with a £15m bid for PSV starlet Memphis Depay and it’s a deal Pochettino wants to get done and dusted before the transfer window slams shut next week, while the Mirror have reported Spurs have also enquired about Everton’s Kevin Mirallas in recent weeks – with rumours of Lennon going in the opposite direction. If any of these deals do go through, it would almost certainly spell the end of the diminutive winger’s 10-year tenure at the north London club.

Some of the Tottenham fans are bound to be disappointed to see their longest-serving player leave the club, but no disrespect to Lennon, these are the sort of players Spurs must replace to move on to the next level.

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The pint-sized player’s love affair with Tottenham Hotspur is set to come to an end and while he’s undoubtedly lit up White Hart Lane at times over the years, now is the time for him to move on and prove his abilities elsewhere.

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Liverpool currently sit seven points outside the top four back in seventh place in the league table, but with the club’s domestic form fluctuating so much this season, it seems as if the goalposts have been continually moved by manager Brendan Rodgers to the point that it’s difficult to quite know what the minimum expectations surrounding the team are now this term and whereabouts they hope to finish.

It goes without saying that the side want to finish as highly as possible in the Premier League and being seven points adrift of Tottenham is not an insurmountable lead by any stretch of the imagination, but after Rodgers claimed earlier in the campaign that replicating the eight-placed finish under predecessor Kenny Dalglish would be a ‘magnificent achievement’, the 40-year-old appears to have bought too much into the hype surrounding the side in recent months.

It’s still worth noting that Liverpool haven’t beaten a club inside the top ten in the league all season, which hardly seems conducive to a top four finish and if the shock FA Cup defeat away at Oldham taught us anything, it’s that while the starting XI has been in superb form in recent weeks, that the support cast isn’t quite up to the standard required just yet. Doubts also remain over the club’s ability to deal with physical opposition, while Rodgers has developed a worrying tendency to get his starting eleven wrong in games of importance.

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On November 30th, with the side set to host Southampton at Anfield, they sat closer to the relegation zone than the top four, with four points separating them from Nigel Adkins’ third-bottom team and a 10-point gap from fourth-placed West Bromwich Albion in fourth, but Rodgers sounded optimistic when pushed if the club could still finish in the top four: “It is realistic, absolutely. Teams are taking points off each other. Let’s be honest, it is a big ask, a massive ask, but that has to be our target. We are going to look to try and get as close to that as we possibly can.”

Fast forward to December 14th and perhaps Rodgers’ most ill-judged rhetoric during his time in charge reared its ugly head when he stated at a press conference just before the humiliating 3-1 defeat to a struggling and subsequently woeful Aston Villa side: “We lie four points off the top four. For me the ambition is to grow higher. We are 11 points off second and that can all turn around very quickly. You need to get consistency – and that is what we have at the minute.”

However, in recent weeks he’s sought to play down expectations by labelling a top four finish on the eve of the game away at Arsenal as ‘difficult’ and it seems that nobody quite knows, not least of all the manager himself, quite what the target in the league is for Liverpool this season. Confused yet? You should be.

What is clear, though, is that this is a campaign of transition and expectations have been dampened to such an extent by Rodgers in the summer that a general consensus has been reached by a fanbase willing to be patient with the new man at the helm, that just so long as they finish eighth or higher, then they will be satisfied with the progress that the club are making both on and off the pitch.

Lest we forget, this is a young squad, with several new signings in key positions which have increasingly come to rely on both Luis Suarez and captain Steven Gerrard in recent months. This is not a fully formed outfit by any means and they are still getting to grips with Rodgers’ methods and style of play, while in terms of depth, they come up short compared to many of their rivals.

In that sense, Rodgers is fortunate to have taken over the club at a time when the supporters are tired of false promises and the quick rate of managerial turnover and are willing to place their faith in a new ‘project’ and ‘philosophy’, craving stability above all else. Nevertheless, Rodgers seems to have a troubling tendency to keep the media on side and in the loop with regards to his thinking and decision-making almost at every turn.

Of course, being media-friendly is all part and parcel of the game these days and having a poor relationship with them can only make your job all the more difficult, as countless managers have found to their cost in the past, but Rodgers seems to want to create news where none really exists. He’s not the first manager to contradict himself within a matter of weeks, but Liverpool fans seem to be straddling that line now between whether to continue to dampen down expectations or dare to dream of something more and a consistent party line above all else is what’s required.

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With a tough run of fixtures in the pipeline, including Arsenal and Manchester City away from home not to mention the tricky test of Zenit St. Petersburg in Russia in the Europa League, now is not the time to be getting carried away by what has been some good form against opposition you’d expect them to do well against.

The challenges ahead are huge and whether they finish sixth, seventh or eighth, splitting hairs in such a fashion really takes away from what the larger objective in mind is, restoring Liverpool to the top four in a matter of seasons, not months and Rodgers would do well to remember that.

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Somerset opener peels off boundaries during century stand with James Rew

ECB Reporters Network supported by Rothesay08-Sep-2025Somerset’s Tom Kohler-Cadmore hit a typically aggressive half-century against his old club as only 42 overs were possible on the opening day of the Rothesay County Championship Division One match with Yorkshire at Taunton.The home side had reached 155 for 3 after losing the toss when a thunder and lightning storm engulfed the Cooper Associates County Ground at shortly after 2pm, Kohler-Cadmore having made 76 and James Rew 54 not out. George Hill claimed two of the wickets.Heavy rain left the outfield saturated. Umpires Rob Bailey and Mark Newell inspected at 4.30pm, but decided conditions were not fit for play to resume.Yorkshire’s decision to field first looked set to reap dividends when Hill struck twice in the opening ten overs of the match. Archie Vaughan edged through to wicketkeeper Jonny Bairstow and departed for 10 with the total on 20. Then Tom Lammonby played down the wrong line to a ball angled into him and saw his off stump sent cartwheeling.That was as good as it got for the visitors in the morning session. Rew overcame a scratchy start, while Kohler-Cadmore was not afraid to advance down the pitch to seam and spin alike in moving to a 55-ball half-century.Twice the former Yorkshire player lofted ex-Somerset offspinner Dom Bess back over his head for six as he and Rew took the total to 114 for 2 off 30 overs at lunch. The shortened afternoon session saw Rew bring up his fifty, off 91 balls, with eight fours.Kohler-Cadmore took one chance too many when advancing to a delivery from Jordan Thompson and edged a sharp shoulder-high catch to Hill at first slip to make 147 for 3. He had faced 110 balls and extended his boundary count to 11 fours and two sixes.Tom Abell made a watchful start and only eight more runs were added before the first crash of thunder sent the players to the pavilion with black clouds closing in.

The team has been stranded in Barbados for the last two days due to Hurricane Beryl

Edited PTI copy02-Jul-2024The Indian team is set to fly home via a charter flight on Tuesday evening after Barbados prime minister Mia Mottley said she expected the airport to become operational in the “next six to 12 hours”, ending the shutdown forced by a category 4 hurricane.The T20 World Cup-winning squad, its support staff, some BCCI officials and the players’ families have been stranded in Barbados for the past two days due to Hurricane Beryl, which hit the island on Sunday evening.”I don’t want to speak in advance of it, but I have literally been in touch with the airport personnel and they’re doing their last checks now and we want to resume normal operations as a matter of urgency,” Mottley told PTI.”There are a number of people who were due to leave last night late or today or tomorrow morning. And we want to make sure that we can facilitate those persons, so I would anticipate that within the next six to 12 hours the airport will be open.”Related

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The Indian contingent is expected to leave Bridgetown at 6pm local time and land in Delhi on Wednesday at 7.45pm IST, according to a source. The players will be later felicitated by prime minister Narendra Modi but the schedule of that event has not yet been finalised.The window for the Indian team to leave Bridgetown is a narrow one as Mottley revealed “we have another hurricane coming on Wednesday”.Five of the players – Rinku Singh, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shivam Dube, Khaleel Ahmed and Sanju Samson – were originally slated to travel to Zimbabwe for the upcoming five-match T20I series. But, Samson, Dube and Jaiswal will now travel to India with the rest of the T20 World Cup-winning side before leaving for Harare. The rest of the squad for the series left India earlier on Tuesday.Life-threatening winds and storms lashed Barbados and nearby islands on Monday. The country, with a population of close to 300,000, has been in lockdown since Sunday evening.”[We have] been working to ensure that everyone is safe in Barbados, Barbadians and all of the visitors, of course, who came for the cricket World Cup,” Mottley said. “We were very blessed that the storm did not come on land. The hurricane was 80 miles south of us, which limited the level of damage on shore. But as you can see, infrastructure and coastal assets have been badly damaged.”It could have been a lot worse, but now is the time to do the recovery and the clean-up.”

The fast bowler says the Brisbane pitch is “a little bit too firm” for the pink ball

Andrew McGlashan25-Jan-2024Mitchell Starc acknowledged that it was “humbling” to pass 350 wickets as a summer of landmarks continued for Australia’s Test attack, but he will only really sit back and reflect on personal achievements when he hangs up his boots.After Nathan Lyon’s 500th Test wicket along with Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood crossing 250 this season, it was Starc’s turn to tick off another landmark on the opening day at the Gabba. When he had Alick Athanaze caught behind, he became the fifth Australia bowler to 350 Test wickets. He finished the day with 4 for 68 and is now four wickets away from overtaking Dennis Lillee’s tally (355), which would make him the country’s second-most prolific quick behind Glenn McGrath (563).”Numbers are nice, [it’s] something else to reflect on when I’m all done. Still got some wickets to take,” Starc said. “Nice to have an impact today, go past that one…Gaz [Lyon] was saying there’s another 150 to go.Related

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“They are all nice things to tick off and very humbling [to close in on Lillee] but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there. Need 20 wickets to win and we’ll all reflect on [the landmarks] when we are finished, sitting around with a beer at a golf course somewhere. At the moment we are just enjoying our cricket as a group of players.”Early in the season, during the opening Test against Pakistan in Perth, Starc made some mid-match adjustments and said he had been searching for “that perfect feeling” throughout the summer. He was pleased with his rhythm and the pace he was able to generate on the opening day in Brisbane.Three of Starc’s inroads came in the first session when Australia made good use of the new ball to leave West Indies 64 for 5. But life became tougher for the bowlers after that as the pink ball softened and it wasn’t until the second new ball that Starc struck again to remove Kavem Hodge.Starc’s record with the pink ball is outstanding – he now has 65 wickets at 18.09 from 12 day-night Tests – and he has come to believe that the key to the format is the pitch and its impact on the ball. This Brisbane surface, he said, was a little on the firm side to be ideal, which meant the ball became soft within the first hour, whereas Adelaide, which traditionally hosts the day-night encounter in Australia, has a more forgiving pitch.”It comes down to the wicket, which I think Adelaide has got right,” he said. “Because of the ball, we know it goes softer at certain stages depending on the wicket, think there’s a certain cushion to what they make at Adelaide, which is why it’s been such a good pink-ball Test in Adelaide.”Think this wicket is pretty similar to the game we played Pakistan [in 2016-17]. In that game [the ball] went soft pretty early, there were a lot of dead patches where it was hard to score and wasn’t much in the wicket for the bowlers. Pakistan were about 450 chasing 490. Feels a bit like a similar wicket where it’s a little bit too firm. Think it would be a fantastic red-ball wicket, but probably too firm for the pink ball.”

Buttler, McCoy and Bosch were also part of Rajasthan Royals in IPL 2022

ESPNcricinfo staff12-Aug-2022In a continuing sign of T20 franchise owners gravitating towards players they already know and trust, Paarl Royals snapped up the South African duo of David Miller and uncapped allrounder Corbin Bosch, England’s new white-ball captain Jos Buttler and West Indies fast bowler Obed McCoy. All four have worked for these owners before – in the IPL with Rajasthan Royals – and will continue to do so now in the upcoming CSA T20 LeagueAccording to tournament rules, a team can sign a maximum of one capped South African, three overseas players and an uncapped player ahead of the players auction. So far, the Durban franchise – owned by the same group that manages Lucknow Super Giants and comprising the same core of players who helped take LSG to the knockout stages of IPL 2022 – and MI Cape Town have announced their picks.Buttler bossed this year’s IPL for the Royals, scoring a whopping 863 runs, an average of 57.53 and a strike rate of 149.05. He hit four centuries and smashed 45 sixes and was also the leading run-getter of the competition.