Kevin Kilbane has claimed that Newcastle United manager Rafael Benitez has a better relationship with fans than David Moyes does at Sunderland.

The Black Cats are in a similar position to where their North-East rivals were last season in that they are on the verge of getting relegated from the Premier League.

In the 2015-16 campaign, Benitez was appointed Magpies boss in March, and even though the club failed to retain their top-flight status, there was confidence that the Spaniard would immediately guide them back.

It seems as though the confidence was well placed as Newcastle have a 10-point cushion in the automatic promotion spots with five games left to play.

In contrast, Sunderland are 10 points from safety in the Premier League with seven matches left on their schedule.

Kilbane believes that Moyes, who had failed spells at Manchester United and Real Sociedad after leaving Everton in 2013, does not carry the same aura as his counterpart.

He told BBC Sport:

“[Moyes] has not really done much to win the fans over with anything he has said, and that is the biggest difference between his situation and Rafael Benitez’s at Newcastle when they went down last year.

“There was a real positivity about Benitez when he was appointed in March 2016 and, at the end of the season, the fans were right behind him, saying the club had to persuade him to stay. They did, and they are reaping the rewards now.

“I don’t think there is anything like the same feeling towards Moyes on Wearside as there was towards Benitez on Tyneside.”

Rangers fans have responded hilariously to reports that link Celtic duo Moussa Dembele and Kieran Tierney with big money moves away from Glasgow.

The Daily Record reported that Arsene Wenger is set to stay at Arsenal and will have a massive £200m transfer kitty to spend on a summer splurge. Two names said to be high on his wish-list are Dembele and Tierney.

Both players have had fantastic seasons in the Hoops, top performers in a side that is currently unbeaten in domestic football and on the road towards a rare treble of trophies.

They both excelled in the UEFA Champions League too and have been consistently linked with English Premier League clubs all season.

Rangers fans are having none of it though, clearly believing that both are overrated and don’t have what it takes to make it at Arsenal.

They took to Twitter to share their thoughts on the rumours…

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As reported by The Evening Times, legendary Celtic goalkeeper Pat Bonner has criticised Scott Brown for the way he conducted himself as captain during Sunday’s game against Ross County.

What’s the story?

In a series of events that’s dominated headlines in Scotland all week, Scott Brown played a pivotal role. When Alex Schalk dived and subsequently won a penalty, the Celtic players were incensed that the decision was given. Minutes later Brown scythed down the scorer of the penalty, Liam Boyce, receiving a red card in the process.

It was a decision the Celtic captain is lucky hasn’t ruled him out of this weekend’s Scottish Cup semi-final. Only delays caused by the Easter holidays prevented the SFA hearing his appeal ahead of the clash, meaning that in lodging an appeal, he can now play at Hampden.

Now a Celtic legend has criticise the captain for reacting to the incident and letting a rush of blood to the head have an impact on his game.

As quoted by The Evening Times, Bonner said:

You cannot have an excuse for what he did. He’s the captain, and it’s just a lack of responsibility. I don’t care what’s happened in the game, he’s the one who should be calming the other players down. I know you’re aggrieved by what’s happened, with the penalty and so on. He should have just kept a calm head.

Certainly it’s a view shared by some Celtic fans, who took to Twitter in the aftermath to criticise the Hoops hero.

However some took the opposite view, believing that the tackle on Liam Boyce wasn’t even a red card.

What’s certain is that Scott Brown is going to play a pivotal role for the Hoops on Sunday and supporters everywhere will be delighted he can lead his team out at the national stadium.

As reported in an exclusive by The Express, Jose Mourinho is planning a significant rebuild of his Manchester United midfield this summer with a move for two stars of French football.

What’s the story?

It’s no secret that Man United are not where they want to be right now. Mourinho was brought into the club with ambitions of league titles and UEFA Champions League nights but they’ve been found wanting on both fronts this season, at risk of not even making the top four.

In order to turn things around, Mourinho will likely have to wheel and deal in the upcoming transfer window.

The Express reckon he has already identified two targets, Paris Saint-Germain’s Blaise Matuidi and Monaco’s Bernardo Silva. Both have been in excellent form this season and that means they have a high price tag on their heads.

The paper say Silva is rated at £50m while Matuidi could cost as much as £30m. Are these the right deals United need to transform their midfield?

Worth the cash?

Bernardo Silva could well end up being the next global superstar to come out of Portugal. He’s taken the UEFA Champions League by storm this season, helping Monaco reach the semi-final stage. At just 22 he has the whole world ahead of him. With 9 goals and 10 assists this season, it’s clear he could add a real attacking edge to the United midfield.

Matuidi is of course a player with less flair but could play a very important role for United who haven’t found the perfect blend in the heart of the midfield, when you scratch past the surface anyway. The likes of Paul Pogba and Ander Herrera are fantastic but past that there is little depth going forward. Michael Carrick is ageing and Marouane Fellaini is too inconsistent.

Moves for these players would certainly show ambition and likely be popular with supporters. The question, can Mourinho get the deals done?

West Ham manager Slaven Bilic has confirmed that goalkeeper Adrian will be at London Stadium for another season, having activated an option in his contract to extend his deal another year.

The Spaniard, whose contract was set to run out at the end of this season, has been in and out of the side in the Hammers maiden season in Stratford, with Darren Randolph exchanging duties with the 30-year-old.

“Adrian is out of contract but we have an option, and we activated that option. He is our player and we are happy with him,” Bilic told the London Evening Standard ahead of their final game of the season against Burnley this weekend.

Adrian started the season as first choice, however, a number of mistakes early on lead to Bilic swapping in Irish international Randolph until he made one too many foul-ups and Adrian was back in.

Hammers fans have been calling for improvement in between the sticks, meaning that it is unclear as to whether Adrian’s extension means he will be playing a regular role or not come next season.

Seamus Coleman’s horrific injury earlier in the year whilst on international duty came as not only a huge blow to the Republic of Ireland international, but to current club Everton too.

Coleman suffered a double leg break during a fixture against Wales back in March, and is expected to be on the sidelines for up to six months after successful surgery.

Playing in the full-back’s usually nailed down position during his absence has been youngster Mason Holgate. Naturally a centre-half, Holgate has stepped up to the mark brilliantly and has proven his versatility.

Such have been his impressive displays that the Englishman is tipped to continue to occupy the role in the early stages of next season while Coleman remains out. According to reports from The Guardian however, Southampton full-back Cuco Martina could join the club on a free transfer – potentially ushering Holgate aside.

The 25-cap Curacao international has struggled for game time at St Marys this season due to the good form of Portuguese star Cedric Soares and a move to Everton would almost guarantee that in Coleman’s absence.

So, Everton fans which of the two would you prefer to see in the Toffees starting line-up at the start of next season? Let us know by voting below…

This time last year, Tottenham were gearing up to make their biggest mistakes of the season.

While no one can doubt that Spurs were one of the most exciting of the Premier League’s teams, and that they are currently one of the most exciting young squads in Europe, last summer’s recruitment has proven a case of hits and misses.

On the one hand, Victor Wanyama has proved to be a masterstroke of a signing, especially given his relatively low price tag, but on the other, Vincent Janssen and Moussa Sissoko turned out to be a pair of £50m bench warmers.

It seems that when Spurs pay big, they end up flopping. And if Mauricio Pochettino’s team is to take that extra step and actually win the title this season, you get the feeling that this is a trend that will have to change this summer.

That’s because it will be harder this time. Spurs fans have heard that before, of course. Last summer, the pressure was ratcheted up on everyone after the arrivals of Antonio Conte, Jose Mourinho and Pep Guardiola into the league: each of the top six clubs now had a stellar new manager. And yet that didn’t stop Spurs progressing further and even finishing ahead of all but one of those sides.

But this time, expect fireworks.

Manchester City have already signed one new player for a big money fee. And Bernardo Silva will surely only be the tip of a giant iceberg, with others expected to sign up imminently. Manchester United will surely follow, whilst Liverpool and Chelsea will both need to bolster their squads for Champions League football, having had no European competition to deal with last year.

But all of the buying surely means selling, too. And although big Premier League sides are often reluctant to pick up the leftovers discarded by their rivals after a squad overhaul, sometimes the right player could be among those offloaded; the baby having been thrown out with the bathwater.

That could happen at Manchester United.

Throughout his first season in charge, Jose Mourinho has appeared to decide that Anthony Martial is unworthy of a place in his starting XI. The young Frenchman burst onto the scene to become one of the few bright spots of the Louis van Gaal reign, but since the Portuguese coach has arrived, Martial has been sidelined. Despite the transfer fee United paid for him recently, it’s starting to look like he could be a name on the exit list.

It would be wrong to suggest that money is no object for Tottenham this summer, and as a result simply suggesting that they should go out and sign Martial is probably somewhat fanciful, certainly given that the club will want to sign other players, too. But you get the feeling that with so much interest around players like Kyle Walker and Eric Dier – players few would consider amongst the most indispensable in the Spurs setup – there certainly will be an opportunity to raise extra funds in this transfer window.

And then there’s the inescapable fact that Martial would provide exactly what Pochettino should be looking for this summer.

Martial adds pace, directness and the ability to beat players as well as being able to finish. And whilst Harry Kane brings the final attribute, few of Spurs’ attackers can boast anything like this skill set. Indeed, it’s probably one of the reasons why Spurs didn’t win the league this season.

The ability to break down stubborn defences is a quality Pochettino’s side lacked this season, especially early on. In order to do that, you usually need a plan B, offering something different. In the second half of the season, the form of Son Heung-Min helped solve this problem to a certain extent, taking some of the creative pressure off Christian Eriksen and Dele Alli. They are players who play in front of the opposition defence, looking for runners up ahead. What Son provided at times – and what Moussa Sissoko never provided – was an option to be found either between the lines or on the end of through balls. That’s something that Martial can provide perfectly next season.

More importantly, though, the French international seems to fit very well into the Pochettino type of young, exciting players who can be moulded by the manager to play in a certain way. With Harry Kane now established as the Premier League’s best goalscorer (two golden boots in a row surely puts him in that category), it’s also time to look at his qualities, too. And aside from finishing, the one that stands out is his link-up play, bringing others into the attack. With Martial playing off him, and maybe coming in from a wide position, Spurs could have – theoretically – the perfect partnership.

There doesn’t seem to be any suggestion that Spurs might look to sign the Manchester United attacker this window – not yet, anyway – and there hasn’t been too much chatter since The Independent linked the two parties together back in February. But that doesn’t mean Martial wouldn’t be a top signing for the north London club.

Last summer, Pochettino put his money on the table to sign Moussa Sissoko and Vincent Janssen in deals that didn’t work out in the end. This summer, he shouldn’t be discouraged from trying again, and if Anthony Martial is a possible signing, Spurs should do everything they can to get a man who can add something different to their attack. And if they do, a league title doesn’t look out of the question on the basis of this season’s performance.

If you believed everything you read in the papers, you’d be holding a fairly hefty number of conflicting views all at the same time. If you’re a Manchester City fan, though, there are so many reports and so many different figures flying around that, like oil in water, it’s become impossible to separate the fact from the fiction.

A virtually unprecedented sum could be spent this summer by a club who broke records last summer, too. And if City have the money, the last thing you’d expect them to do is hide it under the mattress.

But the very first City signing of the summer looks like it could be the most interesting one. Just where will Bernardo Silva play? Is he a long-term David Silva replacement? If so, he could find himself on the bench more often than not for a year or two. Is he a wide player? If that’s his role, where does that leave Leroy Sane and Raheem Sterling, themselves young players – if very different in style – brought in for big fees? Is he simply a luxury player bought because City intend to stockpile young talent, buying him so no one else can?

Each of those theories, and probably many others too, have been advanced on Twitter this week but probably don’t quite get into the mind of Pep Guardiola, a man who usually has a very specific plan for his new recruits.

First off, it’s impossible to predict a Guardiola ‘starting XI’ for next season. He’s about as likely to name an unchanged side as Manchester United are to entertain an Old Trafford crowd. The greatest likelihood is that City have bought a player who will slot into a squad rotation system with everyone else, playing mostly in the games where the manager has identified his strengths as useful against the qualities of the opposition. Given such a situation, it looks quite foolish to ask the question “will he start?”

But, despite that, there could be a wider Guardiola tactical trend that Silva the younger fits into. Over the final weeks of the Premier League season, Guardiola has tried to fit both Sergio Aguero and Gabriel Jesus into the same starting XI.

This season at Monaco, Silva has been most effective when cutting in from wide areas, playing mostly on the right-hand side of midfield in Monaco’s fluid 4-4-2 system. The fact he’s so comfortable at cutting inside from the right has allowed Djibril Sidibe to overlap from the right wing-back position to devastating effect, and it’s that sort of movement that Guardiola could be looking for.

The lineup below will look odd for a number of reasons. For one thing, it features players who may not be at City when the transfer window closes, but for the sake of creating a lineup, I’ve added in Benjamin Mendy and Kyle Walker as both players have been linked with the club in the last few weeks. Another oddity is the formation, but the point isn’t that Guardiola should play with a 4-4-2 diamond next season – the point is that it’s a flexible formation to start with; a formation that will change during the game.

I also have no interest in the defence, here – beyond the formation the players line up in. For that reason, I’ve put little thought into personnel. It could, instead, include any number of defenders City have been linked with or even Nicolas Otamendi or Aleksandar Kolarov for all we know. The point isn’t the players, it’s the system.

And for City next season, this could be the system that allows Guardiola to keep the three in midfield, width from full-back, and front three system that he enjoys playing, whilst still allowing Jesus and Aguero something approaching central striking roles.

It’s about showing that Bernardo Silva – for all his magic talent with the ball at his feet – can be used as a foil to get two world class strikers on the pitch. It won’t happen in every game (few things do in a Guardiola team) and is an experimental idea.

But it does show that Bernardo Silva might just be a player who unlocks the big question that City have seemed to grapple with since January – can Gabriel Jesus and Sergio Aguero play together?

Former Arsenal player Nigel Winterburn is hopeful that manager Arsene Wenger can convince Alexis Sanchez to stay at the club once Alexandre Lacazette signs.

It has been widely reported that the Lyon striker is closing in on a move to the Emirates, which could cost the Gunners a club-record £52m.

Sky Sports claimed on Tuesday that Lacazette has already completed a medical at the club’s training ground, and will pen a five-year contract.

The news will be great for Arsenal fans, but there is still an uncertainty over the future of star man Sanchez.

The Chile international has not signed a new contract with the Gunners, and numerous clubs, including Manchester City and Chelsea, have been linked to his signature.

Arsenal run the risk of losing the 28-year-old for nothing when his contract expires at the end of next summer, but Winterburn is hopeful that Wenger can work his magic.

He told Sky Sports:

“I hope the Lacazette deal leaves [Sanchez] at the club. He can play on the left, up front or in the hole. Arsenal cannot afford to bring in Lacazette then two weeks later Sanchez leaves. I am hoping Wenger can persuade him to stay for another season, see what happens with the team then sign a new contract.”

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According to reports in the Southern Daily Echo, Southampton captain Virgil van Dijk has not handed in a transfer request and the club remain confident that they will keep hold of him.

What’s the word, then?

Well, the Dutchman has been heavily linked with a move to Liverpool and other top Premier League clubs this summer, and the Reds were forced to issue a statement last month apologising to south coast outfit after they were accused of tapping the centre-back up.

That hasn’t stopped murmurings but the Southern Daily Echo says that despite suggestions that the 26-year-old is so keen on a move to Anfield that he has spoken to the Saints hierarchy to force a move, it isn’t the case that he has asked to leave St Mary’s.

The report says that if Van Dijk did submit a written transfer request he would forgo his right to compensation for the remaining five years on his contract.

The Southern Daily Echo adds that as things stand Southampton are confident that they can keep their in demand skipper for at least another season as they don’t believe his value will drop in the next 12 months.

How good was Van Dijk last season?

The Dutchman has quickly established himself as one of the best centre-halves in the Premier League over the course of the last two seasons and despite missing the final five months of the previous campaign through injury, he produced some eye-catching performances and statistics.

In 21 top flight outings the 26-year-old won 98 aerial duels, while he showed how comfortable he is on the ball by successfully completing all of the eight take-ons that he attempted and having a passing accuracy of 84%.

Van Dijk also made 140 clearances and 56 interceptions in those appearances last season.

Is this the end of the saga?

Probably not considering the window doesn’t close for another six weeks.

Even though Liverpool have issued the statement saying that they would end their interest in the 26-year-old, stories have continued and the player has yet to say one way or another what he wants publicly.

While it seems highly unlikely that he is keen on a move to Liverpool, Southampton will hope that they can convince him to stay for one more season – especially after he signed a new six-year deal in 2016.