Sports Poets Society

Mats Torbergsen/ NTB/AFP/Getty Images What’s on your mind? Pep Guardiola has  been more vocal on politics this season. Reading the signs to divine the Spaniard’s future has become a Premier League obsession, writes Rory Smith Rory Smith 8 Feb 2026 - The Observer / Sport More than once, over the course of the last few months, staff members at Manchester City have been summoned to an unexpected all-hands meeting. These gatherings are not entirely unprecedented, but they are rare enough to send flurries of whispers around the club’s training facility across the road from the Etihad Stadium. The speculation as to what they might be about has fallen into two categories. Employees at City have, like everybody else, been waiting for more than a year to discover the outcome of the club’s arbitration with the Premier League over their alleged breaches of financial rules. They are alert to the fact that a verdict could land at any time. As that case has dragged on – and on – some have starte...

Stu Forster/ Getty ImagesFanning the flames:  Hugo Ekitiké has quickly become a favourite at Liverpool. Call it hellhound energy or simple character, it turns a player who’s just doing a job and getting paid into one on a mission. Then you can throw away the data and enjoy watching the human at heart of the story Stats obsessions and graphics can’t replace the most interesting way of understanding footballers 8 Feb 2026 - THE OBSERVER / Sport Paul Hayward As he lacerated Newcastle the other day Liverpool’s Hugo Ekitiké exuded a quality managers search for high and low. With his two goals, intense countenance and pointed goal celebrations, Ekitiké radiated constructive resentment about where he is in Liverpool’s hierarchy of strikers. Above all he paraded competitive spirit – call it hunger – without which teams hoping to win things might as well stay at home. While we’re fixating about whether, when and how managers are going to be sacked, there’s a simple human factor that goes un...