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Former Tottenham Hotspur defender Graham Roberts has hit out at Sky Sports pundit Gary Neville for not selecting Dele Alli for the Young Player of the Season award.The broadcaster gathered a handful of their best football pundits toÂselect their winnerÂor the end-of-season award.Thierry Henry, Jamie Carragher, Graeme Souness, Niall Quinn and Alan Smith all selected the 21-year-old Tottenham player, but Neville went for Manchester City’s Leroy Sane.The former Manchester United captain explained his reason byÂtelling Sky Sports:

“It’s between Dele Alli and Leroy Sane, but with Alli we know him and he’s been in the league for a couple of seasons. For Sane to come into the league and make the impact he has, it looks like he’s going to be really special.â€

Roberts, who played for Spurs across a six-year spell in the 1980s, gave his reaction to Neville’s pick on Twitter, and he was not best pleased.

Alli has been in fine form this season, scoring 16 goals and making six others in 30 Premier League appearances.

Sane, who joined City from Schalke last summer for a reported £37m fee, has played less league games (19) than Alli, but he has only netted four times.

David Luiz turns 30 today. A meme-worthy birthday for those accounts that want to make everyone feel painfully old, Luiz’s free-spirited defending is associated with the fresh mind of youth not the grizzled veteran approach of a thirty-something. Leadership has gradually eked into his game, however, as the mistake-prone Brazilian has become something altogether more than the ‘PlayStation defender’ that he was infamously tagged.

He was slapped with a fee as he moved to PSG that not just raised eyebrows but made people go weak at the knees. Last summer, though, Luiz reversed that transfer as he returned to the blue segment of West London in another transfer that had many – including me – doubting Chelsea’s decision.

Links with Kalidou Koulibaly and Leonardo Bonucci never came to fruition and it seemed as though Antonio Conte had been forced to settle for what was left in the market. Luiz was the backup plan, a former player who had been sold at great profit previously and perhaps bought on emotion rather than pragmatism.

The reality was quite different. The Brazilian’s defensive credentials had always been under-rated in England, but even his biggest supporters must have found it tricky to see him as the solution to a Chelsea defence that was creaking with reliance on John Terry and Branislav Ivanovic. Subsequently, Luiz stepped up to the plate with aplomb once Chelsea had begun playing a back three. He was in his element and back where many a Chelsea fan felt he belonged.

Luiz proved countless people wrong and dominated. His role in the first phase of build-up for Chelsea was vital, while the sweeper role enabled his front-foot defending to be limited in risk with great reward.

Chelsea’s back three – despite being reliant on the relentless N’golo Kante in midfield – has needed Luiz. With Cesar Azpilicueta excellent and Gary Cahill much improved on last season, Luiz’s role has, at times, looked easy. That is, though, what the great Brazilian does. He makes football look easy, he is a joy to watch when on top of his game as he reads the opposition better than any other and has the technical ability to play in any position.

Luiz is often the instigator of Chelsea’s now trademark counters. A firmly hit ball through the opposition’s midfield lines quickly sets up Chelsea’s forwards to break at speed. From a defensive liability and a panic signing, the former Benfica man is now the pivotal defensive cog at the Champions Elect.

Although the defence will face questions in the remaining games as Chelsea’s clean sheet failures stretch to a worrying duration, Luiz is the lynchpin of this Chelsea side. They do not have a player capable of playing the ball-playing defender role anything like the Brazilian international has done this season and it is possibly the most important in the side.

N’golo Kante and Eden Hazard will be the headline names if Chelsea secure the title, but Luiz is as vital as anyone. His Team of the Year selection was well deserved, which is something few expected to hear when he arrived last year.

At this time of the year, football comes thick and fast. No European competition? No problem: domestic cups and title races are reaching their dramatic conclusions – and with the next seven days seeing a German Cup semi-final between Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich to go along with a potentially decisive El Clasico, FA Cup semi-finals, pressurised title challenges in France, and the most un-Italian of Serie A weekends, there’s still a lot to look forward to…

Spain

The biggest game of football this weekend was undoubtedly in Spain, but rather than a meeting between two equals battling for supremacy, the final Clasico of the season had taken on a rather all-or-nothing feel.

Three points behind Real Madrid, Barcelona needed a win. If for no other reason than to keep Madrid honest over the final stretch of games.

Thanks to the success so far – a Champions League title, yet another semi-final appearance, and in the driving seat for only their second league title in eight years – it feels like Zinedine Zidane has been in charge of Real Madrid for quite some time. In reality, this was his very first Bernabeu Clasico in charge of the home side.

It was to become only the second home league defeat that Zidane has ever suffered as a manager. And it came with the very last kick of the ball.

After an even game, it looked like Real Madrid would come away with a point – a result good enough to allow them a hand on the trophy – after James Rodriguez equalised for 10-man Madrid with only five minutes to go, bailing out Sergio Ramos, who had stupidly lunged at an already battered and bloodied Lionel Messi with two feet, seeing red when his side were in desperate need of an equaliser.

In the end, though, it was Messi who had the last laugh. The very last kick fell to perhaps the world’s very best footballer in the sort of scene that even Hollywood would find overly soppy. Perfectly set for his left foot, Messi perfectly found the corner of the net. And celebrated perfectly for the digital age. Well, you can allow him the extravagance for his 500th Barcelona goal. In fact, it seems like he breaks a record every time he steps foot on a football pitch.

Real Madrid’s defeat might mean that the league now has a real title race, but it also means that they are no longer La Liga’s form team. That crown belongs to city rivals and fellow Champions League semi-finalists Atletico. Antoine Griezmann’s 100th La Liga goal saw them beat Espanyol on Saturday, and perhaps Real are in danger not only of losing their grip on the title, but also crashing out of the Champions League in the semis if they hit a run of poor form over the next few weeks.

With Sergio Ramos’ red card, they could be missing him as well as the injured pair of Pepe and Raphael Varane for the next few games. If ever there was a time to avoid a wobble, it’d be now.

France

If there’s still a whiff of a title race in Spain, there’s definitely a heated race in France.

It was a weekend where Paris Saint-Germain played on a Saturday evening before Monaco faced a crunch test away to Lyon. It was the quintessential end of season pressure weekend.

And after a routine 2-0 victory for the Champions over Montpellier, it was all down to Monaco on Sunday night. Could they live with the pressure.

Perhaps with all eyes on Madrid for El Classico, that may have helped dampen the media pressure in the build-up to the game, but when you looked at Monaco’s fixtures in the run-in, the game away to Lyon seemed like the toughest of the lot. And yet, just before half time, goals from Radamel Falcao and – yes, that man again – Kylian Mbappe looked to have sealed victory.

The youngster, in fact, is being trailed by Chelsea with a view to a summer move, according to French media outlet RMC Sport, and it’s easy to see why. Just when his team were under immense pressure to perform, he came up with the goods, and with one of the best goals to minutes ratio in Europe so far this season, it does look like he could be the sort of man to score at exactly the right time for the title-chasing side who don’t look like they can rely on Diego Costa and Michy Batshuayi at the moment.

Even if it may well be too soon for a move away from Monaco, perhaps the money from the Premier League may be too good to turn down. And given the performances match the hype even when the pressure is on, it’s not hard to see why he’s so coveted.

It wasn’t until the second half that another youngster, Lucas Tousart, halved Monaco’s lead that Lyon woke up. And headers from Mouctar Diakhaby and Tousart again really could – perhaps should – have levelled the game up. Leonardo Jardim’s young side rode their luck, but they stay top of Ligue 1 on goal difference, and still have a game in hand over PSG, whom they play in the French Cup semi-final this weekend.

With a Champions League semi-final against Juventus on the horizon, the game don’t get much easier for Monaco, but they seem to be handling the pressure and coming up with the goods.

Italy

Roma are away to bottom club Pescara on Monday night, where they will come up against their old coach Zdenek Zeman, and probably pick up three points.

You’d imagine, though, that even reducing the gap between themselves and Juventus won’t be enough to stop Max Allegri’s side from winning yet another title, despite their other commitments – not even the fixture pile-up seems to be able to stop the Old Lady these days. They could well have won an historic treble by the first week of June.

A 4-0 victory over Genoa this weekend was the perfect way to back up a triumphant return from the Camp Nou. And one goal in particular, from Leonardo Bonucci, was the icing on the cake.

Germany

After losing to Real Madrid in the Champions League quarter final, it was back to the domestic grindstone for Bayern Munich, whose season really appears to boil down completely to Wednesday night’s German Cup semi-final with Borussia Dortmund.

Indeed, it was such a dull weekend for the champions – surely also champions-elect at this point – that the even managed to labour to a 2-2 draw over relegation-threatened Mainz. They remain eight points ahead of RB Leipzig, though, who couldn’t cut the gap to five points after only drawing with Schalke on Sunday, and you get the feeling they won’t get many more chances to catch Carlo Ancelotti’s side before the end of the season.

Elsewhere, Borussia Dortmund were also coming off the back of a disappointing Champions League exit, though perhaps the circumstances of their first-leg defeat to Monaco made their defeat made their efforts seem that little bit more gallant and less galling.

Dortmund will hope their 3-2 victory over Borussia Monchengladbach this weekend is a premonition for what’s to cup in the German Cup over the next few weeks: if Thomas Tuchel’s side beat Bayern Munich on Wednesday, they could well be facing Gladbach in the final in May.

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A season of high drama in the English Championship has concluded and Nottingham Forest are safe from relegation to League One. The same cannot be said for Blackburn Rovers who have gone down into the English third tier.

Rovers went into the final day having to better Nottingham Forest’s scoreline, with the two clubs level on points but Forest ahead on goal difference.

A thumping 3-0 win for Mark Warburton’s men over Ipswich Town meant that there was just too much needed to be done to rescue the situation. With Birmingham City also getting the result they required, it’s Rovers who lose out.

Forest fans are of course relieved and delighted in equal measure and they’re enjoying a good old fashioned gloat over their relegation rivals right now.

It’s never pretty seeing teams go down, especially on the last day, but when it’s you or them, tribalism takes over!

Supporters took to Twitter to share their thoughts on beating Rovers in the relegation race…

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Three points at West Brom tonight is all Chelsea boss Antonio Conte needs to seal the Premier League title in his first season as a manager in English football.

The Italian, who arrived in west London after guiding his country to the quarter-finals of the European Championships in France last summer, has performed the almost unthinkable with a side who finished tenth last season and dominated the League since before Christmas.

After closest rivals Tottenham choked at West Ham a week ago today, victory at The Hawthorns and the title will be heading to Stamford Bridge for the second time in three seasons.

With that in mind, you may think the PFA Player of the Year would be the first name on the team-sheet for such an important game. However, having missed the win over Middlesbrough with a thigh stain, N’Golo Kante is only named amongst the substitutes with Cesc Fabregas and Nemanja Matic taking the two midfielder berths in Conte’s famous 3-4-3.

Blues fans were quick to comment on the change, and it seems they’re split down the middle, with some thinking Conte should have taken the risk:

Others, on the other hand, are delighted to see Fabregas in the starting XI:

According to The Guardian and just about everybody else, Manchester United have cooled their interest in long-mooted transfer target Antoine Griezmann.

It has been claimed by a wealth of sources, including Sky Sports, that the Red Devils have switched their priorities away from the Atletico Madrid attacker and towards finding a more conventional centre-forward amid doubts over Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s ability to overcome an injury.

Jose Mourinho has rarely ventured far from his preferred template of a tall and powerful lone front-man throughout his illustrious career and although Griezmann is undoubtedly a talented goal-scorer, he’s certainly not of that mould – and usually needs a centre-forward playing in front of or alongside him to provide that physical presence.

Which begs the question of where United will aim their financial firepower next. They’ve been linked with a variety of strikers throughout the season but perhaps most notably Everton’s 56-cap Belgium international Romelu Lukaku and Torino’s Andrea Belotti – whose contract includes a €100million (£87.06million) release clause.

So United fans, who do you want your club to sign most this summer? Let us know by voting below…

Liverpool supporters seem convinced that Mohamed Salah is on his way to Anfield after he posted a cryptic tweet.

The Guardian recently reported that the Merseyside outfit are willing to part with £35m for Salah, who currently plies his trade in Roma.

The 24-year-old Egyptian is already familiar with the Premier League having spent three-and-a-half years on Chelsea’s books, but it was not a memorable spell for the attacker.

Salah made just 13 Premier League appearances and spent most of his time with the Blues on loan at Fiorentina and Roma.

Since making his move to the Stadio Olimpico permanent in the summer of last year, the attacker has scored 19 goals in 41 appearances in all competitions.

As it stands, Liverpool’s interest in the Egyptian is just speculation, but the club’s supporters believe that the man himself has dropped a hint on social media.

Salah tweeted a black and white image of himself looking thoughtful and added the ‘eyes’ emoji as his caption.

Despite Salah not really giving anything away, Liverpool fans believe that the deal is on.

A rare tweet from Eden Hazard sparked a response from Chelsea fans, many of whom urged the playmaker to stay at the club.

There are no immediate concerns that the Belgium international will depart Stamford Bridge, but he has been linked to Real Madrid.

A report from Spanish media outlet Diario Gol has claimed that the Champions League winners may turn to Hazard if they lose Cristiano Ronaldo this summer.

It is believed that Madrid boss Zinedine Zidane also wants to bring in Monaco forward Kylian Mbappe and Bayern Munich defender David Alaba, as well as Hazard.

Currently, the Chelsea man is out of action as he nurses a fractured ankle, which is expected to keep him on the sidelines for the start of the season.

The 26-year-old was recently quoted by The Guardian as saying that he would “consider” an offer from the Spanish giants, but that he is satisfied with life at Chelsea.

Hazard took to social media this week, not to discuss his future, but to provide an update on his injury recovery.

Some fans used this post as an opportunity to urge the midfielder to stay at Chelsea.

As reported by The Daily Mirror, bitter rivals Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur are set to do battle off the pitch for Charlton star Ezri Konsa.

What’s the story?

Premier League clubs are always on the hunt for the next big English talent to bolster their squads and it’s often a heated battle to get in on such talent early in their careers.

Ezri Konsa only has one season under his belt in at senior level but that isn’t stopping two of England’s biggest clubs showing interest.

The Mirror reckon that both Arsenal and Spurs are interested in the versatile 19-year old and are set to duke it out for his signature, which is potentially great news for Charlton who will be looking at the financial bonus of such a transfer war.

How good is he?

It’s very hard to comment on Konsa’s potential after just one season at senior level in League One, but Charlton’s record in the youth department is pretty strong. In recent years Jonjo Shelvey, Carl Jenkinson, Diego Poyet and Joe Gomez have all emerged from the academy set-up at The Valley and gone on to join Premier League clubs.

Likewise, 18-year-old Ademola Lookman was one of the Football League’s most talked-about players before joining Everton in January for a hefty fee.

Konsa is an England U20s teammate of Lookman’s and made the squad for their recent World Cup triumph, playing in the semi-final against Italy.

With 39 appearances under his belt for Charlton, he isn’t quite ready for first team football at either Spurs or Arsenal but with England youth caps and an impressive season, it’s clear to see why they’d be keen on signing him early. If either manage to land a deal for him then it could be great in the long-term with loans to lower league clubs likely in the meantime.

According to reports in the Daily Mail, Newcastle United are one of four Premier League clubs targeting a move for £10m-rated Hull City midfielder Sam Clucas this summer.

What’s the word, then?

Well, the Magpies, Leicester City, West Bromwich Albion and Burnley have all enquired about the  26-year-old’s availability following the Tigers’ relegation from the Premier League last season, according to the Daily Mail.

The report adds that the Championship outfit would be willing to accept a fee of between £8m-£10m for the midfielder, who is on a shortlist of potential targets for Toon manager Rafa Benitez.

How did he do last season?

Despite the relegation back to the Championship after just one difficult season in the top flight, Clucas was one of Hull’s stand-out performers throughout the campaign and he won the Club’s Player of the Season award.

The 26-year-old scored three goals and provided one assist in 37 Premier League appearances last season, and he featured in number of different positions including central midfield, defensive midfield, left midfield and even at left back.

He showed his effectiveness in the middle of the park by making 73 clearances and 52 interceptions in the league last term, while he showed his ability on the ball by successfully completing 29 of the 40 take-ons he attempted.

Would he be a good signing for Newcastle?

He certainly could be.

The Daily Mail suggests that England manager Gareth Southgate was so impressed with the 26-year-old that he sent scouts to watch him on a number of occasions last season with a view to receiving a call up to the Three Lions’ squad.

Benitez certainly needs more depth in the middle of the park and if he can get a player with recent Premier League experience – like Clucas – for £10m or less, it would be a bit of a no-brainer deal considering some of the price tags being bandied about this summer.

What’s the verdict, then?

Well, the fact that Clucas was so impressive last season is the reason four Premier League clubs are interested in him this summer, and his potential and price tag mean that Newcastle must try and win the race for his signature this summer.

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