Arsenal, Gabriel Jesus and a statement win. Plus: Fulham's bid for Pepi
A bumper night of Premier League action, the transfer window kicking into life and more wild scenes in AFCON
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Hello! Gabriel Jesus belongs to Jesus. Ricardo Pepi might soon belong to Fulham. But New Year’s Eve belongs to you. Stay safe and have fun.
Coming up:
💪 Superb Arsenal pull rank
🇺🇸 Fulham’s £26m Pepi bid
🗑️ Liverpool bin set-piece coach
🗿 Meet the AFCON ‘statue’
Arsenal Going Kaka
Gabriel Jesus’ iconic celebration rounds off huge win
Premier League titles are incredibly hard-earned. Mikel Arteta has been trying for years with Arsenal and gone very close more than once. He heads into 2026 still looking for his first.
Aston Villa were quietly dreaming that same dream, on a streak of eight league wins, but a 4-1 trouncing at the Emirates last night was reality biting hard. For all that there is to admire about Villa, title winners don’t usually come from nowhere (without ignoring Leicester City’s 5000-1 shot). Arsenal are hardened campaigners at the top — and even they haven’t brought it home for two decades.
Arteta has been fretting about mounting injuries and eyeing the transfer market as a result, but Arsenal are durable, and the beauty of absent players is the difference they make on their return. Gabriel was back yesterday and broke the dam after a goalless first half by heading in from a corner. Villa are renowned as dead-ball specialists but it’s uncanny how Arsenal can call on set pieces precisely when they need them.
Gabriel Jesus is in the mix again, too, after so very long out with an anterior cruciate ligament injury. His strike last night was his first in a calendar year, give or take 48 hours, and he was ready for it, unveiling a T-shirt bearing the message “I belong to Jesus”. This was how Kaka celebrated Milan winning the Champions League in 2007 and once again, the title is Arsenal’s to lose. Manchester City won’t let up but Villa, for now, are back in their box.
Man Utd’s draw sums up baffling year
(X/SkySports)
The consistency of Arsenal and City — and, it should be said, Villa before yesterday — is what marks out a Premier League contender. By that token, it’s not difficult to see why Manchester United are so far off the pace.
Under Ruben Amorim, they swing effortlessly from on days to off days, and a 1-1 draw with Wolverhampton Wanderers at Old Trafford was an appropriate way to sign off 2025. Wolves can’t buy a win. For three months, they haven’t been able to buy a point. But here were United to give them a hand.
That said, it was only Jose Sa’s left hand (above) that spared Wolves from a 12th successive loss. I’d jot that down as the save of the season if it weren’t for David Raya last week. Wolves are doomed and no mistake, but at least their goalkeeper isn’t throwing in the towel.
Consistency, or a lack of it, is killing Chelsea too. One win in seven has blown their title chances, and a 2-2 draw with Bournemouth last night has done nothing for them. Enzo Maresca might well scratch his chin.
As for West Ham United, they’re not quite as buried as Wolves but you have to go back to November 8 for their last victory and if a lucky break like Brighton & Hove Albion’s Danny Welbeck fluffing a Panenka penalty yesterday (above) can’t break their torrid run, you honestly wonder if anything will.
News round-up 🗞️
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Crystal Palace didn’t waste time in formalising their interest in Tottenham Hotspur’s Brennan Johnson. A £35million ($47m) fee has been agreed — but other teams are keen, and Johnson is weighing up his options.
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Major League Soccer’s DC United are about to break their transfer record by signing Romania striker Louis Munteanu, 23, from CFR Cluj for an initial sum of $7m. He was once on the books of Fiorentina.
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The world’s oldest professional footballer, Kazuyoshi Miura, is set for his 41st season. Now 58, ‘King Kazu’ has joined Japanese third-division side Fukushima United on loan from Yokohama. God love him.
A fresh-faced Kazuyoshi Miura celebrating his 50th birthday in 2017 (Hiroki Watanabe/Getty Images)
- The Supercopa de Espana — an annual event featuring the winners and runners-up from both La Liga and the Copa del Rey — has been held in Saudi Arabia since 2019-20. Athletic Club are part of it this time and their captain, Inaki Williams, put the cat among the pigeons by describing the decision to host it in the Middle East as “s**t”. He’s not alone in feeling that way.
- Tanzania are into the knockouts at the Africa Cup of Nations for the first time. We’ll not dwell on the fact that the organisers’ official blog mistakenly announced they’d been eliminated. A 1-1 draw with Tunisia was enough to carry them through.
Set-piece saga
Liverpool sack their specialist coach
Let’s circle back to set-piece specialists. As we noted, Arsenal and Villa are particularly adept at profiting from corners, free kicks and throw-ins. Arsenal have a designated coach in Nicolas Jover. Villa boast one of their own in Austin MacPhee. The levels of productivity speak for themselves.
Liverpool, by comparison, are pretty hopeless at them, as Arne Slot willingly concedes. They’ve scored a mere three goals from dead-ball situations this season and conceded 12. And yesterday, they sacked Aaron Briggs, the man whose job it was to make them function so much more effectively.
Go back five years or so and the set-piece coach was a slightly mystical, intangible member of a club’s backroom team (not that many clubs employed them). They had such a low profile that it felt as if they could sit on the payroll forever without anybody paying attention or really understanding what they were up to.
Jover, MacPhee and others have changed that. Set pieces matter, and the fixation on them is nothing short of an arms race. Liverpool jettisoning Briggs is a warning that those in charge of them should expect to have their homework marked ruthlessly.
Team America?
Ricardo Pepi celebrates scoring against Panama in October 2024 (John Dorton/ISI Photos/USSF/Getty Images)
Fulham’s move for Ricardo Pepi could revive U.S. tradition
Very few clubs anywhere, and certainly outside of MLS, have put more faith in the ranks of United States internationals than Fulham. Clint Dempsey, Brian McBride, Carlos Bocanegra, Tim Ream… the list goes on.
So Fulham bidding £26million for Ricardo Pepi is very on-brand. And if they pull off a deal, it would also be worthwhile business — Pepi (above) has been evolving nicely with PSV in the Netherlands and he’ll be ready to push on. At 22, he is young enough to keep developing and £26m is a lightweight fee by Premier League standards.
Fulham will have to go higher because PSV rejected their opening offer, but sources told The Athletic’s Tom Bogert that they’ll have a go with a second bid, suggesting they’ve got the bit between their teeth.
Should Pepi to Fulham happen, another of Mauricio Pochettino’s USMNT players would earn exposure in the world’s strongest league, the forward would land a new challenge with the World Cup six months out, and Fulham — after a sluggish first half of the season — would get some fresh blood. Win, win, win.
Around TAFC 🔄
- Lionel Messi’s recent visit to India did not go to plan. The chances are, his forthcoming tour of South America with Inter Miami in January and February will pass off with less drama. Denny Alfonso looked into the logistics and the question of whether Messi is likely to feature in all three matches.
- ‘Cannabis, conveyor belts and Christmas trees’. All I’m saying is that the headline alone made me want to read about Real Madrid’s fancy pitch (strictly because of the Christmas trees, you understand.)
- Our staff picked out their favourite pieces published by The Athletic in 2025. I’d like to highlight two: Stuart James on the art of scanning and, if you don’t mind me breaking away from football for a moment, Jacob Whitehead behind the scenes of a Tour de France stage win. Both brilliant.
- You might also like to revisit some of the best guests on The Athletic FC Podcast over the past 12 months, from to . .
Catch a match 📺
Selected games (all 3pm ET/8pm UK time unless stated)
Today:
AFCON (all on beIN Sports, Fubo/Channel 4): Equatorial Guinea vs Algeria (Fubo), Sudan vs Burkina Faso (, both 11am/4pm; both 2pm/7pm.
Tomorrow:
Premier League (all Sky Sports in UK): Crystal Palace vs Fulham, — NBC, Peacock Premium; Liverpool vs Leeds United — USA Network (both 12.30pm/5.30pm); Brentford vs Tottenham Hotspur — NBC, Peacock Premium; Sunderland vs Manchester City — USA Network (both 3pm/8pm).
Championship: Blackburn Rovers vs Wrexham, 7.30am/12.30pm — Paramount+/Sky Sports.
And finally…
WATCH: A DRC supporter stands in tribute to Patrice Lumumba 🇨🇩 for 90 minutes, till the end of the game.#UBCAFCON25 #TotalEnergiesAFCON2025 pic.twitter.com/CZ9xsyIhFI
— UBC UGANDA (@ubctvuganda) December 30, 2025
AFCON has a new and unlikely star: a suited-and-booted DR Congo fan who, as you’ll see in the GIF above, is supporting them by standing statue-like for the entire duration of their matches. Something tells me we’ll be hearing more about him in the days ahead.
With poise like his, he’d be a dab hand at directing the traffic in Marrakech — which, as Simon Hughes has discovered, is struggling to cope with the pressures of AFCON. Morocco is due to host games at the 2030 World Cup, so improvements to infrastructure would not go unappreciated…