Category Sports News

Former Manchester United sporting director Dan Ashworth is set to be unveiled as the Football Association’s head of elite men’s and women’s development.

Ashworth left Manchester United in December having spent just five months at Old Trafford, after Ineos hired him from Newcastle United.

The 54-year-old was previously at the FA between 2012 and 2018 – in charge of England’s elite men’s and women’s teams as well as FA education and coaching.

Part of Ashworth’s new role will be to oversee the development of homegrown coaches.

Only two current permanent Premier League managers are English, and FA chief executive Mark Bullingham recently confirmed that changes are being made to address the issue.

As first reported by the Telegraph, John McDermott, the FA’s men’s technical director, is to remain in his position.

The FA has declined to comment.

In February, it was established through United’s accounts that hiring and firing Ashworth cost £4.1m, but the club have not said if there would be any reduction in that figure if he returned to the FA.

In an interview with BBC Sport earlier this year, Manchester United co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe called hiring Ashworth “an error on our part”.

It was also revealed in February that Ashworth was working with Warwickshire County Cricket Club, advising on performance strategy.

The winners of the 2024-25 Championship play-off final are set to receive a minimum of £220m in extra income.

Their counterparts in League One will be about £12m better off, while the club victorious in the League Two final will receive more than £2m in additional income.

Sheffield United, who will face Sunderland or Coventry City in the Championship final on Saturday, 24 May, currently receive parachute payments, which would stop if they were promoted.

But whoever returns to the top flight – joining Leeds and Burnley – will secure a share of the new domestic television deal, which is worth £6.7bn across four seasons.

They will also receive centralised commercial fees, facility fees and merit payments and be entitled to possible parachute payments – if they are relegated back to the Championship.

We have not factored in multiple seasons in the Premier League in our calculations.

Premier League clubs are set to earn an average of £83.75m per season in revenue from the new television deal, which covers the next four years.

Clubs will earn slightly more per season than they have in recent years; the last deal – £5bn over three years – meant average earnings were £83.33m.

Clubs relegated from the Premier League receive parachute payments for up to three seasons.

In the first season after they are relegated, they receive about 55% of the broadcast revenue they would have earned were they in the Premier League. That drops to 45% in year two and 20% in the third season.

Should a relegated club be promoted within the three seasons, the payments stop.

As Sheffield United are among the clubs receiving parachute payments, should they win the play-offs, the jump in revenue for them will be lower than it would be for Sunderland, or Coventry.

Leeds received £49m in parachute payments for the 20223-24 season following their relegation from the Championship in the previous season.

While not as lucrative as the Championship final, there is still good money up for grabs from winning promotion out of League One and League Two.

For the 2024-25 season, clubs in the Championship received about £11m – a significant jump from a figure in the region of £2m per season for playing in League One.

The £11m is made up of a ‘basic award’ and solidarity payments from the Premier League.

In League Two, the corresponding figure is in the region of £1.5m per season.

Clubs who are relegated from the Championship, League One and League Two also receive parachute payments – but on a much smaller scale.

Relegated clubs from the Championship receive 11.1% of the basic award payment to Championship clubs for one season.

Clubs who drop out of League One receive 12.6% of the basic payment to League One clubs for a season.

For clubs relegated from League Two, they receive 100% of the basic award payment for a season and 50% for the next season, unless they have returned in their first season.

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Ruan Ackermann, Freddie Clarke, Chris Harris, Zach Mercer, Albert Tuisue and Mayco Vivas are among 19 players who will be leaving Gloucester at the end of this season.

Back row Ackermann and lock Clarke have both surpassed 150 appearances for the Cherry and Whites, with Scotland and British and Irish Lions centre Harris scoring 26 tries in 106 matches so far.

Fijian back row Tuisue has started six out of 17 matches this season and has been at Gloucester since 2022, along with Argentina loose-head prop Vivas.

Number eight Mercer, who signed in 2023 with the hope of returning to the England set-up, had his season ended by a knee injury in November and has been linked with a return to a French club.

Centre Louis Hillman-Cooper, prop Alfie Petch and hooker Morgan Nelson will also be leaving.

Versatile Argentina back Santiago Carreras had already confirmed his move to Bath for 2025-26, fly-half Gareth Anscombe has signed for French Top 14 side Bayonne, scrum-half Charlie Chapman will move to Premiership rivals Exeter and winger Christian Wade is switching codes to rugby league to join Wigan Warriors.

Tour de France winner and five-time Olympic champion Sir Bradley Wiggins says he became a cocaine addict in the years after his career.

The 45-year-old Briton told the Observer about the extent of the addiction he developed after his retirement from cycling in 2016, and explained how his family members feared for him.

“There were times my son thought I was going to be found dead in the morning,” said Wiggins.

“I was a functioning addict. People wouldn’t realise – I was high most of the time for many years.”

Wiggins won Olympic gold medals on the track at the Athens, Beijing and Rio de Janeiro Games, and also won the road time trial at London 2012, two weeks after becoming the first British rider to win the Tour de France.

Since his retirement, Wiggins has spoken about his father’s jealousy and being groomed by a coach as a child, while he was also declared bankrupt in June 2024.

Wiggins revealed how disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong, who has reportedly offered to pay for Wiggins’ therapy, has helped him during his recovery.

He said the American, who was stripped of seven Tour de France titles for using performance-enhancing drugs, had “worried about me for a long time” and that Armstrong speaks to Wiggins’ son Ben – also a professional cyclist – “a lot” about his father.

Speaking about his cocaine addiction, which he quit a year ago, Wiggins added: “I realised I had a huge problem. I had to stop. I’m lucky to be here.

“I already had a lot of self-hatred, but I was amplifying it. It was a form of self-harm and self-sabotage. It was not the person I wanted to be. I realised I was hurting a lot of people around me.

“There’s no middle ground for me. I can’t just have a glass of wine – if I have a glass of wine, then I’m buying drugs. My proclivity to addiction was easing the pain that I lived with.”

Wiggins also spoke to Cycling Weekly about how the ‘Jiffy-bag’ scandal still affected him.

Two investigations – by the UK Anti-Doping Agency (Ukad) and the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) select committee – failed to prove what was in a medical package for Wiggins that was delivered to Team Sky’s then doctor at a race in 2011.

However, the report by MPs on the DCMS committee said Wiggins and Team Sky “crossed an ethical line” by using drugs allowed under anti-doping rules to enhance performance, instead of for medical reasons.

“I would love to know one way or another what actually happened,” Wiggins told Cycling Weekly.

“The amount of times I then got asked ‘what was in the package?’ But I had absolutely no idea.”