England

What a week for 23-year-old Manchester United winger Jesse Lingard. The Manchester United youth academy product put in his best performance of the Premier League season on Saturday in United’s 4-1 victory over Leicester City.

Starting the match and playing for 78 minutes, Lingard played a vital part in United’s second goal by registering a classy assist for Juana Mata’s 37th minute goal. 

Juan Mata's goal. Great team goal! pic.twitter.com/1bFu5A6TqK

We know Zlatan likes having good teammates, that's what happens when you win the league pretty much every year of your career.

We did not know how much until we saw the first sentence of this ESPN article:

Mino Raiola has revealed that Zlatan Ibrahimovic jokingly threatened to "break his legs" if he had allowed Paul Pogba to join any other club besides Manchester United.

Liverpool kind-of, sort-of, maybe are starting to look like what Jurgen Klopp wants them to look like.

This should terrify everybody. 

Liverpool played Hull on Saturday, but really "play" is the wrong word, because there was nothing playful about how hard they ran and scrapped and clawed whenever Hull had the ball.

Let's try again: Liverpool worked Hull on Saturday, both in terms of destroying Hull on the scoreboard and working all game, both with and without the ball.

Newcastle United manager Rafa Benitez’s preference for the tactically astute Vernon Anita at right-back has made league minutes tough to come by for DeAndre Yedlin. However, a three-match suspension for Anita opened the door for the 23-year-old American.

Yedlin was preferred to the Spaniard Jesus Gamez on Saturday for Newcastle’s league encounter with Aston Villa. The American seized his opportunity with a man of the match display but was unfortunately subbed off due to an apparent ankle injury in the 73rd minute.

While we rang the Manchester United death knell and witnessed as the club bore the skeletons of their proverbial dead (Wayne Rooney taking a spot on the bench for this match), the Red Devils conspired to play out 20 minutes of sensational football — the likes of which haven’t been seen at Old Trafford since the Alex Ferguson days.

Paul Pogba was imperial. Marcus Rashford continued his blistering start to the season and Wayne Rooney’s demotion was entirely vindicated. The champions were simply outclassed.

Jose Mourinho's fractious relationship with the media came to a head on Wednesday when he labeled those who attacked himself and Manchester United after a three-game losing streak as “football Einsteins”.

Mourinho's barb was certainly tongue in cheek, using the platform of United’s 3-1 victory over Northampton Town to fire back at those who’ve already begun to question his ability to handle the Old Trafford hot seat: 

The decline of Wayne Rooney as a footballing force isn’t confined to this season; his form has been in freefall for at least three years now. While he may be England’s all-time leading scorer, and just three shy of holding the same record for Manchester United, Wayne Rooney is a shadow of the manchild who arrived at Old Trafford back in 2004. 

Potential is defined as the latent qualities or abilities that may be developed and lead to future success or usefulness. 

Kevin De Bruyne is the cover boy of Potential Illustrated, the long-running theoretical magazine that is littered with pages of soccer players that just didn’t make it. 

There are millions of both aimless and worthwhile reasons for why some players just never figure it out. Talent, oddly enough, usually goes hand in hand with prospective failure. 

You are probably familiar with fantasy sports — the competitive, addicting online gaming experience that allows sport fans to interact with other fanatics. A quick synopsis: participants gather and select individual professional players; they then assemble these players to their virtual team, living out their fantasy as head coach of a team of superstars.

Sportsmail, the online sports section of the British tabloid newspaper Daily Mail, has revealed another ‘hippy crack’ storm surrounding Aston Villa and England youth international Jack Grealish. Our feelings concerning this issue can be nicely summarized by this Villa supporters poll: