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Celtic lost their first-choice number nine in the January transfer window at the start of the year when they opted to sell Kyogo Furuhashi to Ligue 1 side Rennes.

The Hoops cashed in on the Japan international and went with Adam Idah, Johnny Kenny, and Daizen Maeda as their number nine options, instead of swooping for a replacement in the window.

Brendan Rodgers is seemingly in the market to sign a new number nine ahead of next season, though, as it was recently reported that the club are expected to make a new move for Brondby striker Mathias Kvistgarden.

Why Celtic want to sign Mathias Kvistgaarden

The Denmark youth international is a long-term target for Celtic, who wanted to sign him in January and remain keen ahead of the summer, and that is because he has been in terrific form for his club.

Kvistgaarden scored 23 goals in all competitions for Brondby in the 2024/25 campaign, which included a return of 17 goals in the Danish Superliga, and scored ten goals in 28 matches the previous season.

As you can see in the post from talent scout Jacek Kulig below, which was last month, the 23-year-old attacker has improved year-on-year with his current team.

The Danish marksman is a striker who is on the up and coming off the back of an impressive season, which is why he would be an attractive target for the Scottish giants heading into the summer window.

However, it has also been reported that Brondby are sticking to their valuation of at least £10m for the attacker. This means that the Hoops would have to splash the cash to bring him to Parkhead to bolster their attacking options.

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With this in mind, Celtic could look elsewhere to find more value for money, and they could find it by signing reported target Youssef El Kachati.

Why Celtic should sign Youssef El Kachati

The Daily Mail reported earlier this month that the Scottish Premiership champions are tracking the Telstar forward as a potential free agent signing, as his contract with the Dutch club is due to expire.

El Kachati, who is due to play in the play-off final for Telstar this evening, has scored 23 goals and provided six assists in all competitions for his team this season, matching Kvistgaarden’s return.

The 25-year-old attacker, who played for Morocco at U23 level, has scored 82 goals in 189 matches throughout his career in Dutch football, which shows that he has been a consistent scorer throughout his time at first-team and academy level.

His form in the 2024/25 campaign also suggests that the potential is there for him to be an even better signing than Kvistgaarden if he can translate his form over to Scottish football as a bargain free agent addition.

24/25 season

Kvistgaarden (Superliga)

El Kachati (Eerste Divisie)

Appearances

29

37

Goals

17

19

Big chances missed

17

12

Big chances created

5

6

Assists

5

5

Dribbles completed per game

0.7

1.0

Stats via Sofascore

As you can see in the table above, the Dutch-born forward has a more impressive ‘big chance’ conversion rate, scoring two more goals whilst missing five fewer ‘big chances’.

This suggests that El Kachati, described as a “sensation” by journalist Mounir Boualin, has the potential to deliver more effective performances in front of goal in a Celtic shirt as a finisher.

The Telstar marksman has also added three goals in four play-off matches on top of those 19 goals during the regular season, taking his league tally to 22 in total – five more than Kvistgaarden managed for Brondby.

With this in mind, the potential is there for Celtic to land an even better signing than the Danish attacker, valued at £10m, by swooping for this bargain free agent star who has been incredibly prolific in the Dutch second tier.

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Posts 1 ByDan Emery May 27, 2025

Birmingham City are now ready to offer a £30,000-a-week contract to sign a 23-year-old on a free transfer this summer, according to a recent report.

Birmingham City eye proven Championship defender

The Blues’ stay in League One was short-lived, as expected, as they have been by far the best team in the division. Chris Davies’ side are back in action on Thursday evening, with nothing on the game apart from pride, as Birmingham wrapped up promotion and the League One title a long time ago.

Wagner and Brady already in "talks" to sign EFL star for Birmingham City

They’re not alone, though.

1

By
Charlie Smith

Apr 11, 2025

They have four games left to play in the league, but the focus will likely be turning towards next season and what the club wants to do in the summer transfer window. It’s already been reported by Wales Online that the Blues are interested in a move to sign Harry Darling from Swansea City. The centre-back is out of contract at the end of this campaign, and while he has an offer on the table from the Swans, Birmingham are keen on swooping in and securing a free transfer.

The 25-year-old has performed well for the Welsh side this season, and his experience of Championship football could be the reason why Davies wants to add him to his Birmingham team for the next campaign.

Birmingham plan to offer big contract to Kwame Poku

It is not just Darling that the Blues want to sign on a free transfer; according to Football League World, Birmingham City are preparing to offer £30,000 a week to sign Kwame Poku on a free transfer from Peterborough United.

It was reported earlier this month that the Blues were already in talks with Poku over a move to Birmingham. It was also claimed that, as well as Birmingham, Crystal Palace and Rangers are also interested in the EFL attacker, who has once again had an impressive season.

Football League World now reports that Birmingham are planning to beat Rangers and Palace to the signing of Poku by offering the attacker a £30,000-a-week contract, which is likely a significant increase on his current deal with Peterborough.

Posh did try and secure Poku’s future at the club earlier this season, but the forward turned down what was a record contract offer for Peterborough, and now the League One side expect him to leave for nothing at the end of this campaign.

The 23-year-old has scored 12 goals and recorded eight assists in 26 League One games this season, and that has been achieved in a team that has underperformed and been nowhere near competing for a League One play-off place.

Poku’s potential arrival at Birmingham would see him join the likes of Jay Stansfield, Alfie May, Keshi Anderson, Scott Wright and Lyndon Dykes – there will be a lot of competition in the forward ranks, which is exactly what’s needed to fire upwards instead of looking downwards next term.

Few cricketers have as many subplots to deal with as Bavuma, but you would hardly know it watching the breezy innings South Africa’s captain put together in Gqeberha

Andrew Fidel Fernando05-Dec-2024When you’re Temba Bavuma, an innings is not just an innings, a fifty is not allowed to only be a fifty, every hundred heaves with meaning, and a career playing a bat-and-ball sport has to feel like a tightrope maze over a river teeming with crocs. This is the lot of the trailblazer. And as far as trails go, this is a pretty rough one to blaze. Test batting, in the imagination of many, is among the most cerebral endeavours in sport. And you need not go hunting in especially dark corners of the internet to encounter the vile opinion that pursuits that require brain power are best handled by certain types of people. Bavuma likely falls outside these descriptions.Bavuma didn’t really ask for any of this. Ahead of this match, questioned on how he got through tough times in his first ten years in Test cricket, he focused his answer on his “love for the game”. He’d rolled up to that press conference driving the team mini van himself through the gates of the stadium, like a dad popping down to the hardware store to pick up some new screws in whatever family vehicle was available. No drivers, no security, no hangers on. Why complicate life?Related

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The innings he played the next day was awash in this simplicity. Though South Africa were 44 for 3 when he arrived at the crease in Gqeberha, he himself was clearly judging length beautifully. Fifth ball, he slid back against Prabath Jayasuriya and flicked one effortlessly off his pads for a four through midwicket. Not long after that, he dabbed a shortish, slightly wide ball, perfectly in the gap between slips and gully. A third boundary, riding the bounce of an Asitha Fernando delivery to deposit him through point, came off the 20th ball he faced.Off 30 deliveries, Bavuma was on 27, having just launched Jayasuriya so powerfully over deep midwicket, the ball was briefly lost over the corner wall. This was the over before lunch, so he have hunkered down and done the responsible thing. Not in this innings. Bavuma had been by a distance the best batter in the first Test. In this kind of form, no outside context was required. The bowler had pitched short and runs were on offer. “Those screws are on sale? Yeah, I’ll take them.”Temba Bavuma revealed that this upper cut was fully improvised•Gallo Images/Getty ImagesAt the other end, Ryan Rickelton had laboured to 29 off 74 balls, having flirted with plenty of balls outside off stump, where Bavuma had been more compact in defence.”For Temba to come in at 40-odd for 3 and not counterpunch but just kind of change a bit of momentum our way was very important,” Rickelton, who top scored with 101, said after play. “He’s moving really well, playing the ball really late as well, and hitting it where he wants it to go.”If there is a little surprise in Rickelton’s voice, it is because Bavuma has a reputation. Frequently his innings are weighed down by all sorts of contexts. Not for nothing is Bavuma’s Test match strike rate a shade under 50.”Usually, I think out of the two of us, people expect me to be scoring quickly. And it was nice to have the shoe on the other foot and sit and watch from the other side. He took a lot of pressure off me. He played just really good cricket shots on a wicket that isn’t the easiest to score on. He opened up the game and he wore them down quite a lot.”

“Usually, I think out of the two of us, people expect me to be scoring quickly. And it was nice to have the shoe on the other foot and sit and watch from the other side.”Ryan Rickelton on Temba Bavuma’s knock

Bavuma continued to float through the innings, the Gqeberha band piping up through the afternoon to bathe the surrounds in further joy and levity. He passed Rickelton and got to fifty off the 57th delivery he faced, flitting down the track to spin, easing into checked drives, almost as if top-scoring in the last game had untethered a part of him, somehow. Even in that Durban match, batting with the tail after Sri Lanka’s quicks had ripped the top order apart, he still was able to play a shot straight out of childhood fantasy – upper-cutting Lahiru Kumara for six over the slips with both his feet off the ground – a shot he later revealed was completely improvised. Maybe this version of Bavuma has always been there.Three innings into this home season, he has made 70, 113, and now 78 off 109, all outstanding innings, each varying dramatically in texture from the last. With five potential knocks to go, Bavuma now has the chance to write his name across the summer. An opportunity, perhaps, to drive his detractors back further, though they will likely continue to hang that conversion rate around his neck. With Bavuma, there are always these subplots, always things that remain unsaid but widely understood, bubbling beneath the things that are actually said.But perhaps it is best not to peer too far ahead, or look too far sideways. Why complicate life? Maybe it’s best to spend a moment in the spirit of Bavuma’s innings. On day one at St George’s Park, a batter revelled in his own excellent form, and produced the kind of innings so full of fun you couldn’t help but get caught up.

Alan, Miller and Vish reflect on another comprehensive Bazballing in the Mount Maunganui Test

ESPNcricinfo staff21-Feb-2023England continued their striking run of Test form with a crushing 267-run victory in the day-night Test at Mount Maunganui, making it 10 wins out of 11 since Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes took charge of the team’s fortunes. Harry Brook was Player of the Match for the third game running, while James Anderson and Stuart Broad took their wickets tally in Tests together past 1000. On this week’s pod, Alan Gardner was joined by Andrew Miller and, on the line from Wellington, Vithushan Ehantharajah to breakdown another emphatic display of “Bazballing”, marvel at two old-stagers enjoying their part in the revolution, and preview England’s final Test assignment of the winter.

Stats highlights from England’s convincing series win in Sri Lanka

S Rajesh25-Jan-20216 – Consecutive Test wins for England in Sri Lanka, the second-best for them in any country. The streak started in 2012 when they levelled the two-Test series, continued in 2018-19 with a 3-0 sweep, and reached new heights with the two wins in Galle. Only once have they won more successive Tests in a country: in the period between 1889 and 1899, when South Africa started out as a Test-playing nation, England won eight in a row in that country. England’s six in a row here is also the most by a non-Asian team in Asia, going past the five by them in Bangladesh, and the five by Australia in Sri Lanka between 2002 and 2011.ESPNcricinfo Ltd426 – Joe Root’s aggregate in the series. Only once has an England batsman scored more runs in a series in which he played two or fewer matches: in 1932-33 tour to New Zealand, Wally Hammond scored 563 runs in just two innings, including an unbeaten 336 in Auckland.44.4 – Percentage of England’s runs off the bat scored by Root in the series: he made 426 out of the 980 runs scored by all the England batsmen. The percentage of 44.4 is the fifth-highest in the all-time list for any series of two or more Tests. On top is Hammond’s 52.4%, in the series mentioned above.ESPNcricinfo Ltd6 – Instances of England successfully chasing down a fourth-innings target in Sri Lanka. No other non-Asian team has done it even once in Sri Lanka.0 – Tosses that England won in the series. They lost the toss in both Tests and yet ended up winning the matches. What England achieved in successive Tests has been done only once previously by a visiting team in Galle, when Pakistan lost the toss but won the Test in 2000. The other seven wins by overseas teams in Galle have all happened after they won the toss.5 – Tests won by England in Asia after losing the toss in the last 10 years (since January 2011); apart from the two wins in Galle, they also won in Colombo, Mumbai and Kolkata in 2012. During this period, all the other non-Asian teams have won only four Tests in the continent after losing the toss.0 – Instances of fast bowlers taking all 10 wickets in an innings, and spinners doing the same in a team’s other innings of the same Test. In this Galle Test, England’s fast bowlers took all 10 in Sri Lanka’s first innings, while Jack Leach, Dom Bess and Root took all 10 in the second. The closest any team has come to achieving this was Australia against Pakistan at Lord’s in 2010: Australia’s seamers took all 10 in the first innings, while Marcus North (6 for 55) and Steven Smith (3 for 51) took nine in Pakistan’s second innings.25 – Test wins for Root as captain, which is the second-best by any England captain. Only Michael Vaughan, with 26, has more. Vaughan had 26 wins in 51 Tests, compared with Root’s 25 in 46.9 – Defeats for Sri Lanka in their last 12 Tests. They have lost five to England, three to India, and one to New Zealand.

Ben Austin was struck while facing throwdowns in Tuesday and died on Thursday morning

AAP and ESPNcricinfo staff30-Oct-2025A 17-year-old club cricketer in Melbourne has died after being struck on the neck by a ball at training on Tuesday.Ben Austin was taken to hospital in critical condition after the incident at Ferntree Gully in Melbourne’s outer east where he had been facing balls in the nets, thrown by a sidearm, or ‘wanger’, ahead of a T20 match. He was wearing a helmet but it did not include a stem guard.He was placed on life support at Monash Children’s Hospital but died on Thursday morningIn a statement Jace Austin, Ben’s father, said: “We are utterly devastated by the passing of our beautiful Ben, who died earlier on Thursday morning.”For Tracey and I, Ben was an adored son, deeply loved brother to Cooper and Zach and a shining light in the lives of our family and friends.”This tragedy has taken Ben from us, but we find some comfort that he was doing something he did for so many summers – going down to the nets with mates to play cricket. He loved cricket and it was one of the joys of his life.”We would also like to support his team-mate who was bowling in the nets – this accident has impacted two young men and our thoughts are with he and his family as well.”Cricket Australia and Cricket Victoria are providing assistance to the family and those impacted by the tragedy.”The tragic circumstances of Ben and Ferntree Gully are…going to be felt across the country,” CA chair Mike Baird told reporters in Melbourne. “Cricket is a sport that brings people together, communities together. It’s also one that feels very deeply an incident such as we’ve seen.”[It’s] hard to put words on it. What we want to say is that we are doing everything we can to support the family, the club, and all those impacted by this tragic news. Clearly, there are things that we have to learn from this, but right now, we are concerned about the family and trying to support them in every way.”Nick Cummins, the Cricket Victoria chief executive, said: “We’re absolutely devastated on behalf of the family, on behalf of the Ferntree Gully Cricket Club, and more broadly, the Victorian cricket community.”We are doing everything we can to support not just the family of young Ben, but also those at the club, and Ben played for a number of clubs, to ensure that they have the counselling and the support, not just today, but well into the future, as this is something that will stay with our community for some time.”

The New York Yankees are set to get Marcus Stroman back from the injured list in the coming days, as the veteran pitcher made his first rehab appearance on Wednesday.

When he returns, it remains to be seen whether the team will use him out of the bullpen or reinsert him into the starting rotation. Previously, Stroman had expressed that he didn't want to be used as a relief pitcher, making clear he preferred to be used as a starter. It seems he's had a change of heart in that regard since initially declaring he wasn't willing to come out of the bullpen back in February.

"I'm open to anything," Stroman told reporters after Wednesday's start for Double A Somerset, via Brendan Kuty of .

The right-hander pitched 3 1/3 innings in the first appearance of his minor league rehab assignment. He recorded four strikeouts, two walks and surrendered one earned run and one hit. He last pitched in MLB on April 11, when he lasted just 2/3 of an inning and surrendered five runs against the San Francisco Giants. He was placed on the 15-day IL with knee inflammation the following day.

Stroman has made three starts this year and owns an unsightly 11.57 ERA. He has seven strikeouts in 9 1/3 innings on the mound. The 34-year-old said that he and the team haven't discussed what his role will be with the Yankees when he returns, but he made clear he's open to whatever the team asks of him.