Sports
Man City have a history of overtaking Arsenal; can the Gunners hold their nerve?
When does a Premier League title wobble become cause for the panic button to be pressed? From an Arsenal perspective, it is when Manchester City start to appear in the rearview mirror, and that anxious moment has now arrived for Mikel Arteta and his players.
The Gunners are two points clear of Pep Guardiola’s City at the top of the table, with in-form Aston Villa one point further back in third place following their dramatic 2-1 win against Arsenal on Saturday.
With bottom-club Wolves due to visit the Emirates on Saturday, Arsenal would expect to open a five-point lead over City ahead of their difficult trip to fourth-placed Crystal Palace a day later, but this title race is not about testing the resolve of Guardiola’s team. It is about whether Arsenal can hold their nerve with City breathing down their necks.
Arsenal have plenty of ghosts to exorcise if they are to win their first title since Arsene Wenger’s 2003-04 “Invincibles” became the only team in Premier League history to go through a league campaign without suffering a defeat.
Only Liverpool and Manchester United (both 20) have won more league titles than Arsenal’s 13, but the Gunners have never gone so long between titles as their current wait, which will be 22 years by the end of this season. Arteta has also won just one major trophy — the 2019-20 FA Cup — in six years as Arsenal manager, so the 43-year-old is overdue when it comes to proving he has that crucial quality of being able to successfully guide a team through the stresses and strains of a title race.
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Those silverware droughts for both Arsenal and Arteta will provide psychological hurdles between now and May, but the biggest challenge facing the Gunners is that being posed by City.
When Arsenal sat atop the Premier League with a six-point lead after 12 games last month, it was one of those key pointers toward the likely winners of the title because no team has previously failed to win it after being six points clear at the same stage of the season.
But on the flipside, on the last three occasions in which Arsenal have been at the top after 12 games (albeit with a smaller lead), they have failed to win the title. And guess which team finished at the top on each occasion?
Yes, you’re right: Manchester City.
Since moving six points clear with a 4-1 home win against Tottenham Hotspur on Nov. 23, Arsenal have collected just four points from a possible nine, with a 1-1 draw at Chelsea and the weekend’s loss at Villa coming on either side of a routine 2-0 win against Brentford at the Emirates.
And in typical fashion, despite their frailties and inconsistencies this season, City have capitalized on Arsenal’s mini-wobble by recording three successive wins against Leeds United, Fulham and Sunderland. In the space of three games, City have reduced a seven-point gap to just two. And they are beginning to turn the screw just when Arsenal are hitting an injury crisis with key defenders William Saliba, Gabriel Magalhães and Cristhian Mosquera all ruled out.
To make matters worse for Arsenal, City striker Erling Haaland is running clear in the race for the Premier League’s Golden Boot award, with 15 goals in 15 games, and Guardiola will have money to spend again in January. Furthermore, no other coach possesses the experience of Guardiola when it comes to guiding a team to glory in the second half of the season.
Arteta has assembled Arsenal’s strongest squad since Wenger’s “Invincibles,” and they have been the best and most consistent team in the Premier League this season. They are still the title favorites and deservedly so, but they held the same status in 2022-23 and 2023-24, and each time, City reined them in to finish the season as champions. So why should this season be any different? Are there any clues that point to Arsenal finally going the distance?
Apart from the strength of their squad, which is certainly being tested defensively right now, there is no one stat that says that this will be Arsenal’s year, but there are some concerning ones.
For a start, they have failed to defeat any of their title rivals so far this season, losing at Liverpool and Villa, and being held to draws by City and Chelsea.
They have no player like Haaland in their side who can be relied upon to win tight games. While Haaland is scoring at the rate of a goal a game, no Arsenal player has scored more than four league goals. Four players (Eberechi Eze, Leandro Trossard, Bukayo Saka, Viktor Gyökeres) share their top-scorer spot with four apiece.
And while Arsenal boast the best defensive record in the league, conceding just nine goals, a third of those have been conceded in the past two away games. Injuries on defense are already beginning to have an effect.
City are certainly not perfect and are nowhere near as convincing as some of Guardiola’s greatest teams — the fact that they conceded four goals in a 5-4 win at Fulham last week underscores that reality — but they have the mindset and the proven record of turning it up when the pressure is on in the second half of the season.
Arsenal can hold on to the fact that none of their current title challengers are the complete package this season, and they may end up being the best by virtue of their strengths outweighing their weaknesses. But what they can’t escape is the knowledge that City have repeatedly answered the questions that continue to trouble them. And that could come back to haunt them.
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Transgender golfer Hailey Davidson has sued the LPGA and USGA for its policies that prohibit biological males who underwent male puberty from competing in women’s competition.
The LPGA said in a statement it was aware of the lawsuit and would “let that process play out on the proper forum.”
“The LPGA’s gender policy was developed through a thoughtful, expert-informed process and is grounded in protecting the competitive integrity of elite women’s golf,” the statement said.
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The USGA and LPGA changed gender policies for events in 2025 and beyond, declaring that players must be assigned female at birth or have transitioned to female before going through male puberty to be eligible to compete.
The 33-year-old Davidson didn’t transition until after puberty. Davidson competed in a U.S. Open qualifier and LPGA Qualifying School under a different policy in 2024, falling short in both efforts.
Davidson claimed in the lawsuit that the new policy effectively bans transgender women from competing in USGA women’s events or the LPGA because many states prevent children from taking hormones or blocking puberty.
When the USGA denied Davidson entry into the qualifier, Davidson claimed the Hackensack Golf Club violated the law by saying the USGA controlled all decisions regarding eligibility. Davidson began hormone treatments in Davidson’s early 20s in 2015 and in 2021 underwent gender-affirming surgery, which was required under the LPGA’s previous gender policy.
Davidson also filed a lawsuit against the women’s golf tour NXXT in December after it changed its policies to prevent biological males from competing against females.
NXXT and its attorneys from America First Legal filed its motion to dismiss in February, and believe the suit will be thrown out.
“We are asking the courts to dismiss the claims, and we’re addressing the matter,” NXXT Golf CEO Stuart McKinnon told Fox News Digital.
“This was about simply protecting women’s sports. So the goal was really clarity and competitive integrity, and, as a professional tour, we believe it was our responsibility to define those categories.”
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NXXT was one of the first women’s tours that stepped up to make a policy change. The LPGA then changed its own policy to bring about more restrictions to protect the women’s category in December 2024.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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BOURNEMOUTH, England — Manchester United head coach Michael Carrick branded the decisions of referee Stuart Attwell “baffling” and “astonishing” after his side suffered perceived penalty injustice in a dramatic 2-2 Premier League draw at Bournemouth.
United took the lead in the 61st minute courtesy of a Bruno Fernandes penalty after Bournemouth defender Álex Jiménez tugged on Matheus Cunha‘s shirt in the box.
Minutes later Diallo was brought down by an Adrien Truffert in the area, only for VAR to deem the contact “was not sufficient for a foul.”
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United’s screams for a penalty were waved away. Seconds later, Bournemouth drove the ball down the opposite end and levelled the scores through Ryan Christie.
United went back ahead on 71 minutes when Bournemouth’s James Hill accidentally nodded a Fernandes corner into his own net.
However, the atmosphere among the travelling support turned when Maguire brought down striker Evanilson with a push in the box that resulted in him getting a red card and Bournemouth an equaliser from the penalty spot.
While Bournemouth manager Andoni Iraola said the Diallo collision was “never a penalty,” Carrick said the decisions involving Cunha and Diallo were exactly the same.
“He’s definitely got one of them wrong because he’s given one penalty for us for the same thing that he’s not given one,” Carrick told a news conference.
“There’s a two-arm grab. The Matheus one he gives, the second one on Amad he doesn’t, which I think is almost identical, really. If you have two hands on someone in the box and they go over and they’re in control of the ball, for me it’s two penalties.
“It will be interesting to see which one they acknowledge is wrong: the one we got or the one we didn’t get.
“It’s a huge moment. They don’t give it, they go down the other end and score and then it becomes all of a sudden, ‘oh, it needs to be a bigger penalty to overturn,’ just because they scored, when actually it’s a penalty and it should be a penalty if you’ve already given one.
“It’s baffling really to make sense of that. And because they score, the game flips a little bit and changes.
“We defended with the 10 men after all that very well. But the penalty one is just astonishing, I have to say. One of them must be wrong.”
Man United captain Bruno Fernandes also expressed his frustrations, adding that he believes “small” players do not get the decisions they deserve from referees.
“Not getting a penalty and then we get a penalty against where it’s the same situation as Amad — one is one, one is not,” he told Sky Sports.
“I know it’s difficult for the referee to give two penalties to the same team in one game, but I don’t understand why VAR doesn’t get involved in that situation or with Harry [Maguire] because either one is a penalty and so is the other, or none of them are.
“Amad is getting to a point where he’s going to shoot, and he gets pushed — you can see that something puts him completely out of balance. It’s frustrating for the small players because they always say the small players are soft, and when it’s the bigger players, they end up giving the fouls.
“I think the other situation is a penalty, but I also think the one on Amad is a penalty and that could’ve changed the game.”
United remain in third place after the Premier League and will hope that Liverpool, Aston Villa and Chelsea also drop points this weekend as they fight to finish in the top five to qualify for next season’s Champions League.
PA contributed to this report.
Sports
American Conference Commissioner Tim Pernetti thanks Trump for Army-Navy game executive order
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American Conference Commissioner Tim Pernetti praised President Donald Trump after Trump signed an executive order to protect the exclusive broadcasting window for the annual Army-Navy football game.
Pernetti expressed the conference’s “deep gratitude” for the order.
“The American Conference is deeply grateful to President Trump for his strong leadership in issuing the historic executive order to preserve America’s Game,” Pernetti said in a statement.
“This is a meaningful step that protects a cherished national tradition and reinforces what makes the Army-Navy Game so special to our country.
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President Donald Trump holds up a signed executive order during the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy presentation with the Navy Midshipmen football team in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., March 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
“The Army-Navy Game represents far more than football. It honors our service academies, highlights the character and commitment of our future leaders and brings Americans together around values that matter deeply, including service and sacrifice.
“This executive order is a positive step for the sport, for our service academies and for the enduring legacy of America’s Game. We are proud to be a part of the team working to protect it.”
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President Donald Trump is escorted onto the field to take part in the ceremonial coin toss before the start of a game between Army and Navy at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore Dec. 13, 2025. (Stephanie Scarbrough/AP Photo)
Trump signed the order Friday as he presented the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy to the Navy football team in the East Room of the White House. The order directs the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Department of Commerce to coordinate with relevant parties, including the NCAA, the College Football Playoff (CFP) and broadcast partners, to secure an exclusive broadcast window for the standalone game.
The executive order came amid growing concerns that an expanding College Football Playoff calendar could encroach on the game’s traditional date, which since 2009 has been played exclusively on the second Saturday in December.
The classic rivalry, first played in 1890, has been played annually since 1930 and typically draws 7 million to 8 million viewers, making it one of the highest-rated regular-season games in college football. The current television agreement with CBS Sports runs through 2038.
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President Donald Trump tosses a coin before a game between the Army and Navy in Baltimore Dec. 13, 2025. (Alex Wroblewski/AFP via Getty Images)
Trump, who has attended multiple Army-Navy games as president, framed the move in January as an act of patriotism, writing on social media, “Under my Administration, the second Saturday in December belongs to Army-Navy, and ONLY Army-Navy!”
As the postseason structure of college football continues to evolve, this executive order signals a significant commitment by the administration to maintain the standalone grandeur of a matchup defined by the phrase “sing second.”
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