Category Sports News

A further five of Saturday’s SPFL fixtures have been postponed, including Greenock Morton v Dunfermline Athletic and Queen’s Park v St Johnstone in the Championship.

Frozen pitches have caused the cancellation of the two second-tier games.

Alloa Athletic v Montrose (frozen pitch) and Peterhead v Hamilton Academical (waterlogged pitch) in League 1 are off and, in League 2, frozen pitches mean Dumbarton v Clyde and East Kilbride v Spartans will also be rearranged.

Annan Athletic’s home game against Elgin City in League 2 was called off after a Friday pitch inspection revealed another frozen surface.

Four Premiership fixtures, two in the Championship and three each in Leagues 1 and 2 are scheduled to be played at 15:00 GMT.

Scottish Championship

Greenock Morton P-P Dunfermline Athletic

Queen’s Park P-P St Johnstone

Scottish League 1

Alloa Athletic P-P Montrose

Peterhead P-P Hamilton Academical

Scottish League 2

Annan Athletic P-P Elgin City

Dumbarton P-P Clyde

Aston Villa are set to sign Chelsea midfielder Oriane Jean-Francois on a permanent deal for £450,000.

The 24-year-old joined Chelsea from Paris St-Germain in 2024 and Villa’s fee is set to be a club record sale for the Blues.

The France midfielder has struggled to get regular game time at Chelsea, while Villa have shown ambition this season, bringing in Arsenal’s Jenna Nighswonger on loan until the end of the season earlier on Saturday.

Villa are eighth in the Women’s Super League with three wins and four draws from their opening 11 matches.

They have an option to make the move permanent for defender Nighswonger.

The 25-year-old, who was was part of the USA squad that won Olympic gold at Paris 2024, has played only 16 minutes in the WSL this season.

“We have been tracking her for some time and are delighted that she has bought into our exciting project,” said Villa director of women’s football Marisa Ewers.

Cardiff City have been placed under a transfer embargo by the EFL for “non-submission of annual accounts”.

The issue has arisen during the January transfer window.

The EFL regulation that applies to Cardiff’s case comes under the governing body’s ‘Profitability and Sustainability’ rules which state accounts must be submitted “no later than 31 December” in any season.

Cardiff City say the embargo is a short administrative delay and they expect the embargo to be lifted by the end of next week.

The Bluebirds added they do not expect it to impact the club’s plans for the transfer window.

England international Georgia Stanway will leave Bayern Munich upon the expiry of her contract at the end of the season.

The 27-year-old moved to Bayern from Manchester City in 2022 and has won three league titles.

During her time in Germany, she has won two European Championships with the Lionesses and has become recognised as one of the best midfielders in the world.

Stanway, who has 87 caps for England, is permitted to sign a pre-contract agreement with another club this month with a view to joining in the summer.

“I am incredibly grateful to Bayern. Thankfully, my time here isn’t over yet,” Stanway said in a club statement on Saturday.

“The decision to leave was incredibly difficult. I definitely didn’t make it lightly. I’ve made friends and memories here that will last a lifetime, and I’ve been able to develop enormously as both a player and a person.

“I will give absolutely everything for Bayern and our sporting success until the very last day – just as I have for the past three and a half years.”

Should Arsenal agree a deal with Stanway, it would be regarded as one of the biggest transfers of the January window.

Arsenal are looking to build a squad capable of winning the Women’s Super League, having lifted the Champions League trophy in May, and are working to secure additions for the summer.

England international Georgia Stanway will leave Bayern Munich upon the expiry of her contract at the end of the season.

The 27-year-old moved to Bayern from Manchester City in 2022 and has won three league titles.

During her time in Germany, she has won two European Championships with the Lionesses and has become recognised as one of the best midfielders in the world.

Stanway, who has 87 caps for England, is permitted to sign a pre-contract agreement with another club this month with a view to joining in the summer.

“I am incredibly grateful to Bayern. Thankfully, my time here isn’t over yet,” Stanway said in a club statement on Saturday.

“The decision to leave was incredibly difficult. I definitely didn’t make it lightly. I’ve made friends and memories here that will last a lifetime, and I’ve been able to develop enormously as both a player and a person.

“I will give absolutely everything for Bayern and our sporting success until the very last day – just as I have for the past three and a half years.”

Should Arsenal agree a deal with Stanway, it would be regarded as one of the biggest transfers of the January window.

Arsenal are looking to build a squad capable of winning the Women’s Super League, having lifted the Champions League trophy in May, and are working to secure additions for the summer.

Oscar Onley still feels “very far away” from winning the Tour de France despite last summer’s historic fourth-placed finish but believes he is capable of making the podium “in the next couple of years”.

The 23-year-old equalled the best result by a Scottish rider, previously achieved by Philippa York (then known as Robert Millar) in 1984.

It’s been a steady progression by Onley since the London-born cyclist joined the Netherlands-based team, Team Picnic–PostNL, in 2023.

His first individual professional win came the following January in an uphill finish on stage five of the 2024 Tour Down Under, ultimately finishing fourth overall.

Onley, though, came into that year’s Tour de France “just trying to go for stage results, which meant there is certain days when I would sit up and take it a bit easier”.

That was with the knowledge that he was not in a position “to be fighting for a top-five finish overall”.

That all changed last year.

“It really feels like it came quite quickly in the last few months before the Tour,” he said.

“Everything started to click into place and so I was starting to gain a lot more confidence in myself as well.”

While he was initially targeting stage wins in his second Tour de France, with the general classification being a secondary aim, it soon became clear that a podium finish was a possibility.

Onley would finish just over a minute behind third-placed Florian Lipowitz of Germany. Denmark’s Jonas Vingegaard was eight minutes in front in second, while winner, Tadej Pogacar of Slovenia, was 12 minutes better off.

“I still feel very far away,” the Scot said as he looked forward to the coming season. “To the front two, there is a big gap from the rest of us, but I definitely feel that, in the next couple of years, a podium finish is definitely possible if things go the right way for me.

It is no surprise Onley is especially dreaming of success in 2027, when the Tour de France will start in Edinburgh.

“It is something I’m really looking forward to,” he said. “I think the UK and Scotland really put on a good show whenever big events come to the country, such as the Commonwealth Games or the road world cycling championships in Glasgow a couple of years ago.

Performance-enhancing drugs in cycling hit the headlines with the banning of Lance Armstrong in 2012 and remains a hot topic despite fewer cases in recent years.

“I can’t speak for other sports, but I know how much we get tested and how much I personally get tested as well throughout the year and throughout the tour,” Onley said.

The Scot has “a lot of trust” in the systems in place trying “to keep the sport clean” and ensure a level playing field.

“I believe the sport’s come a long way in the past 10-15 years,” Onley said. “I also don’t believe it’s completely clean.

“I think it’s quite naive to think it’s clean throughout the whole world, but I think it’s in a better place than it was before I started cycling.

“It’s not much I think about. I can only compete with who I am up against. I am not riding along thinking, ‘this guy might be getting an advantage over me’. It’s not really the thought process I or many other riders have.

Onley was speaking while preparing for the new season in Andorra, where he lives in the mountains between France and Spain.

“There is a big culture of professional cyclists up there and I have a lot of friends who live close by and we can always go out training together or do other things,” he explained.

“It’s quite peaceful and it’s a nice place to come back to in between races.”

Among those fellow cyclists, recently retired Welsh Commonwealth Games gold medallist and 2018 Tour de France winner Geraint Thomas “is someone I always looked up to”.

“The way he can focus on a certain goal every year he’s been professional,” he said. “In the last few years racing beside him has been quite inspiring.”

Brought up in Kelso, Onley also admits that, amid his globetrotting lifestyle, the biggest thing he misses about Scotland is a certain brand of fruit squash.