Bukayo Saka has been Arsenal’s poster boy for the last couple of years, winning our Player Of The Year for two seasons in a row, and winning the hearts of England fans too as he helped his side to the Final of the Euros last year.

Now he has started the World Cup in scintillating fashion, scoring twice in Englands opening game against Iran, until stopped from scoring last night by Arsenal’s very own Matt Turner in the USA goal.

But he has speaking about the love and energy he gets from the fans, and is proud that he can be the inspiration for the next generation of young footballers.

He told Arsenal.com: “The love I’ve had from the England fans has been special and it means everything to me. When you hear your name being sung by the crowd and them cheering you on, it makes you want to give more for them and to do even better for them.

“It’s nice to think that kids are now looking up to me. I hope I can continue to inspire them, be a good role model for them and make them proud and happy. I always try to conduct myself in the best way possible because I know there are children who look up to me and are watching everything that I do.

Arsenal could be one of the busiest clubs in the January transfer window, as they intend to remain at the top of the league table till the end of the campaign.

The Gunners have become one of the in-form clubs in Europe and lead the EPL table by five points.

Manchester City is behind them and Mikel Arteta’s team is doing well despite the pressure from the champions.

In the January transfer window, they expect to add new men to their squad and Express Sports have named four players who could join them.

The report says they are working on deals for Danilo (Palmeiras), Mykhaylo Mudryk (Shakhtar Donetsk), Yeremy Pino (Villarreal) and Evan Ndicka (Eintracht Frankfurt).

Takehiro Tomiyasu has struggled with injuries in the last few seasons, and that is one reason he has not played many games for Arsenal.

A setback he suffered at the beginning of the campaign forced Mikel Arteta to make Ben White his first-choice right-back and the Japanese star has been struggling to start since then.

His country selected him in their squad for the Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup and fielded him off the bench against Germany in their first game.

The defender did well, but it has now been revealed he suffered another injury setback after the game.

A report on Sport Bible reveals the defender missed his country’s training on Thursday because of a thigh problem.

Jude Bellingham is England’s latest midfield star. Could he become the next top Englishman Arsenal sign?

The Borussia Dortmund man plays with a maturity beyond his age and has been a star for his country at the World Cup.

Prior to the competition, he was considered one of the best midfielders in Europe.

The likes of Liverpool and Real Madrid were favourites to sign him, but the competition is likely to increase with his fine performances at the WC.

Goal’s Charles Watts has now told the Gunners he will be the ideal replacement for Granit Xhaka.

Among the most-discussed aspects of Herschel Walker’s campaign for the US Senate seat in Georgia are the allegations he had episodes of violence and threatening to commit violence—allegations he later dismissed as the side effects of a mental illness known as Dissociative Identity Disorder, from which he now claims he is “healed.” 

Walker’s ex-wife Cindy Grossman, for example, said in 2008 that Walker once held a gun to her head and threatened to “blow [her] brains out.” This allegation resurfaced during Walker’s campaign against Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, which will now conclude in a runoff on December 6. Voters have also learned that on a separate occasion, Grossman’s sister claimed in an affidavit that Walker told her he was going to shoot Grossman and her new boyfriend.

Christian Walker, Walker and Grossman’s only son, condemned the trend of athletes inflicting or threatening violence—a trend in which his father has allegedly participated. He called it America’s “pandemic of professional athletes abusing women, children, and animals” in a 2021 tweet.

We have a pandemic of professional athletes abusing women, children, and animals, but their employers would rather gaslight fans into thinking the athletes are victims of a “racist society.”

— Christian Walker (@ChristianWalk1r) November 18, 2021

Things looked scary at first for Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the GOP senator at the top of Donald Trump’s enemies list. After crushing her opponent in the primary, Murkowski found herself behind Trump-backed Kelly Tshibaka for days after  polls closed on November 8th. But by Wednesday night, as the state’s ranked choice voting tabulation concluded, Murkowski soared to a 54–46 win.

Alaska was never going to be a Senate seat that flipped blue—at least not in this election, where the state’s new ranked-choice voting system puts the competition between two Republicans: Kelly Tshibaka (pronounced “Chewbacca,” or pretty close) and incumbent Trump-impeacher Murkowski. Pat Chesbro, a Democrat, trailed far behind with just over 10 percent of first-choice votes. Despite Murkowski’s vaunted independent streak, that’s still about 86 percent of Alaskan voters picking a Republican as their first choice. For now, that puts a hold on the wishes of anyone hoping to see the far north go purple.

But Murkowski’s win should still come as a huge relief for Americans who care about preserving democracy—she’s the only surviving Republican senator in this general election who voted to impeach Trump. 

Let’s consider who we almost had: Tshibaka, the Trump and Alaska GOP–endorsed candidate. In her campaign ad, she stands silhouetted against a mountain range, ice floes crashing behind her, looking like the Alaska version of a Gilead housewife as she talks about her parents being temporarily homeless and how she’s the first in her family to get a college degree—both claims that have been debunked by Alaska journalist Dermot Cole. Then we cut to Kelly in what we assume is her home kitchen, where she declares, “I’m a conservative: Pro-life, pro–Second Amendment, and America First.”

Tshibaka’s tried to position herself as a Washington outsider, despite spending nearly 20 years inside the Beltway, working for various federal inspectors general, before her return to Alaska in 2019 (just enough time to establish residency for a Senate run). While she acknowledges that President Biden is, well, president, she also thinks there are still “unanswered questions.” Although Tshibaka was smart enough to scrub her social media before announcing her Senate candidacy, CNN reported that she’d used it to spread baseless conspiracies about voter fraud in the 2020 election. 

For decades, it’s been unthinkable that Alaska could let a Democrat occupy its only seat in the House of Representatives, which had been held by the late GOP Rep. Don Young since 1972. But in the background, as Americans in the lower 48 were captivated by races in Georgia or Arizona, that’s exactly what’s happened: Alaskans voted 55-45 in favor of Democrat Mary Peltola, a former state legislator who just won her first full term over celebrity ex-Gov. Sarah Palin.

Peltola’s had just enough time to drop off her suitcase in Washington after winning the seat in an August special election. Palin was also her main opponent then, and in the months since, Peltola only grew her lead. She was helped in part by ranked-choice voting in its Alaska general-election debut. The system, which transfers votes to second-choice candidates when a voter’s first pick is eliminated, has drawn national attention and sometimes controversy.

Elections are a long affair in the 49th state, where challenges like distance, isolation, and tough weather abound, and mail-in ballots that are postmarked by election day have up until ten days to arrive for counting. The Alaska Division of Elections doesn’t count absentee, mail-in, and questioned ballots—many of which come from rural, predominantly Alaska Native regions—until after election day.

It’s not a system that benefits election-denying extremists like Palin, and Palin is not a good loser.  The ex-governor has been hinting since polls closed that she’ll challenge the results of the race. She was sowing doubt and misinformation about ranked-choice voting as early as August, as I reported at the time: 

“It’s bizarre, it’s convoluted, it’s confusing and it results in voter suppression,” Palin told the CPAC crowd. “It results in a lack of voter enthusiasm because it’s so weird.” None of that is true. Maine has been doing ranked-choice voting since 2016, and several cities and municipalities around the country have also adopted the system. “There isn’t a higher rate of incomplete or spoiled ballots in ranked choice races compared to ballots in elections using plurality voting,” Amy Fried, a professor of political science at the University of Maine, told Mother Jones. “Nor is turnout lower.” Rick Pildes, a constitutional law professor at the New York University School of Law, noted, “There’s no evidence voters have been confused or don’t understand how to rank candidates one, two, three.”

In less than 10 days, two mass shootings in two different cities have taken place in Virginia. On November 13, three students at the University of Virginia were killed after a classmate allegedly gunned them down following a field trip. Then on Tuesday, a suspected gunman opened fire inside a Walmart break room, killing at least six people and injuring four, before allegedly killing himself. 

But does Glenn Youngkin know any of this? 

In several statements responding to the shootings, the state’s Republican governor condemned the acts of violence. He also expressed heartbreak and extended prayers. In one interview with Fox News, Youngkin appeared to blame the scourge of mass shootings on a “mental health crisis,” recycling the familiar Republican talking point.

But as many have pointed out, Youngkin appears to have avoided the words gun and gunman entirely when describing both shootings. In fact, a quick search of his tweets revealed that Youngkin has never referred to the words “gun, guns, or gunman,” at least from his official social media account.

But here’s a collection of what he has said since the November shootings:

The United States will block shipments of raw sugar from a top Dominican producer with close ties to two wealthy Florida businessmen after finding indications of forced labor at its sprawling Caribbean plantation. Sugar from the Central Romana Corp.’s cane fields feeds into the supply chains of major U.S. brands, including Domino and the Hershey Co. 

The ban on all imports from Central Romana went into effect today.

“Manufacturers like Central Romana, who fail to abide by our laws, will face consequences as we root out these inhumane practices from U.S. supply chains,” said AnnMarie R. Highsmith, executive assistant commissioner at U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Trade in a press release. 

The company is owned in part by the Florida-based Fanjul Corp., a global sugar and real estate conglomerate. 

The federal investigation found five indications of labor abuse among cane cutters employed and housed by Central Romana: abuse of vulnerability, isolation, withholding of wages, abusive working and living conditions, and excessive overtime. Central Romana’s plantation shipped more than 295 million pounds of raw sugar from the Dominican Republic to the U.S. last year.  

For years, former president Donald Trump has been able to push off a lawsuit filed against him by E. Jean Carroll, a writer and advice columnist who says he raped her in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s. When Carroll decided to come forward—describing the alleged assault in a book excerpt in 2019—Trump had been president for two years, and the statute of limitations to bring criminal charges or a lawsuit against him had long since passed. Carroll sued Trump for defamation instead, arguing that he’d smeared her in statements to reporters in which he denied he knew her, accused her of fabricating her story to sell books, and insulted her appearance—and has spent years tied up in court, fending off interference from the Justice Department and endless bids for delay. 

Now, Carroll and thousands of other sexual assault survivors in New York state are getting a new chance to seek legal accountability against people who harmed them years or decades ago. Under the Adult Survivors Act, New Yorkers who were sexually assaulted as adults but who have run out of time to seek accountability in court will have a one-year “lookback window” to sue their abusers, as well as institutions that were negligent in responding to the assault. While many states have experimented with lookback windows to allow child sexual abuse victim to bring civil claims, the New York law marks only the second time such a grace period has been extended to people who were adults at the time of the assault. (New Jersey was the first.) In a way, the new law is an acknowledgement of the many barriers—ongoing trauma, shame, and fear of retaliation, not to mention ineffective policing—that have prevented survivors from pursuing justice in court. “The fight against sexual assault requires us to recognize the impact of trauma within our justice system,” Gov. Kathy Hochul said when signing the bill.  

Until 2019, survivors of second- and third-degree rape in New York State had just five years to get a prosecutor to file criminal charges against their assailant, and typically, even less time to pursue a civil lawsuit. The statute of limitations was extended that year, but it didn’t apply retroactively, meaning that many survivors never had a chance at a court verdict or settlement. “The Adult Survivors Act is the latest step in the state legislature’s reckoning with outdated and ineffective statute limitations for survivors of sexual violence,” Michael Polenberg, vice president of government affairs at New York City victim-support organization Safe Horizon, in a recent webinar. Survivors will have one year to file their suits. 

In 2019, New York opened a similar look-back window for survivors of childhood sexual abuse. By the time the window closed in 2021, nearly 11,000 lawsuits had been filed under the Child Victims Act, including 3,336 cases involving the Catholic Church. And while many are still ongoing, some have reached settlements: Prince Andrew, an associate of Jeffrey Epstein, settled a Child Victims Act claim by Virginia Giuffre in February, weeks before he would have been required to sit for a deposition about her abuse allegation. While most lawsuits were filed against relatively deep-pocketed institutions that had allegedly covered up or enabled abuse, some survivors filed against individuals: a former a Lutheran pastor, an elementary school teacher, and others. One plaintiff, who won a $25 million jury verdict against a now-80 year old Boy Scout leader, told a Buffalo News reporter in March that the verdict was meaningful not for the money because jury had believed him and validated experiences. “I probably won’t get a penny out of this, but putting a dollar amount on it makes people know how horrendous it was,” he said. 

As the Child Victims Act lookback period came to a close in 2021, survivor advocates undertook a massive effort to pass a similar bill for adult victims. One obstacle: intransigence in the state Assembly, as former Gov. Andrew Cuomo still clung to power amid a torrent of sexual assault and harassment allegations. It took until May 24 of this year—months after Cuomo ceded the governorship—for the act to pass and be signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul. (Cuomo continues to deny the allegations against him. Whether he might face a lawsuit under the new law is still unclear; Charlotte Bennett, a former aide who was one of the first to come forward against the governor, didn’t need it for her lawsuit against Cuomo and his top staffers, since the statute of limitations had not yet expired.)

The doctor strides through Greenwich Village at rush hour on a December afternoon as if leaning into the wind. He is tall, lean, young—34—with longish wavy dark hair, charcoal eyebrows, a Roman nose. Carrying a raincoat and backpack, he appears vigilant. If violence were to erupt, he would be more likely to sprint towards a car crash or gunshots than away, in order to render first aid. Deferential and polite, a fellow who cherished and was cherished by his mother, who led the funeral prayers at her town mosque and hated to place great distance between himself and her final resting place by leaving Syria for America. Salim (a family name he is using to protect his privacy) refrains from bringing up his personal history unless asked.

Few Americans ask.

If someone does ask, he gives them time to reconsider and wander off, perhaps under the pretense of seeking a coffee refill. He understands that, for most Americans, the complexity and the preposterous cruelty of the narrative will feel overwhelming.

While a medical student, Salim served as a paramedic treating commonplace cases like heat stroke and ankle sprains until, in 2011, the country exploded with demonstrations and state repression. In time, he made it to the US and began a public health graduate program. Now a doctoral candidate, he focuses on health systems and population health in conflict and post-conflict settings.

On this early evening in mid-December, Salim has accepted an invitation to a small holiday party on a tree-lined street near Union Square. His host, Arien Mack, is the Alfred J. & Monette C. Marrow Professor of Psychology Emeritus at The New School, which is down the block and where she has taught since 1970. Barely five feet tall, she’s described by many as “formidable” and for the last half-century has had an up-close view of the tribulations and griefs of imperiled intellectuals. She has invited Salim and a dozen other endangered scholars to her home this evening in her capacity as founding director of the New University in Exile Consortium. It’s to be their first in-person gathering since the onset of Covid. Mack launched the Consortium in 2018 as an in-person and virtual meeting place for members of the intelligentsia peeling away from repressive countries. All her guests tonight fled their homelands to avoid imprisonment, assassination, or (in Salim’s case) orders to join the perpetrators.

What does the future look like for Qatar, football, and the people we’ve spoken to?

Kate finds out more about the precarious situation of the LGBTQ+ community in the country and speaks to the only publicly gay Qatari. After officials were in a standoff with Danish broadcasters this week, Kate also explores Qatar's media environment and asks whether this World Cup will – really – be a wake-up call for the football community. Once the spotlight moves on, there are simply no guarantees.

***You can listen back to Episode 1 and 2 - released on the 8th and 15th of November - right here on the Football Ramble feed now.***

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England have a super coach boom, boom boom! On this final edition of Lions Watch, Marcus and Luke are on hand to predict how far England – and their super coach – will go at the World Cup and discuss what would constitute success for Gareth Southgate's gang.

We also hear your expectations for the Three Lions in Qatar and round-up the latest news coming out of the England camp!

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**We’re bringing you daily episodes of the Ramble and On The Continent throughout the tournament! Subscribe now to never miss a moment.**

Two more sleeps until the World Cup! And you know what that means: a curtain-raising gig from Robbie Williams in an authoritarian state! 

Jules, Luke, Vish and Pete get stuck into England’s prospects, what Jogi Löw’s doing in that tent with time on his hands, and just how much meat Argentina have brought with them. Expect lots of frankly outrageous takes because, well, no one can @ us on Twitter anymore.

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On the pitch, this might be the best World Cup for a generation. But off the pitch, it couldn’t be worse.

Dotun and Andy are joined by Miguel Delaney to discuss these two ‘parallel’ World Cups. They explore the state of play for Europe’s elite and wonder whether the Cristiano Ronaldo sideshow will derail Portugal’s hopes. We also discuss how Qatar’s entrenched relationship with European football – and France especially – has led us to this point, as both France’s president and the captain of their national team call on fans to focus on the football.

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Pete's Film Club will return this World Cup - exclusive to Patreon subscribers! Sign up for our Patreon for exclusive live events, ad-free Rambles, full video episodes and loads more: patreon.com/footballramble.

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The World Cup has a funny habit of throwing up the most surprising heroes who write themselves into folklore, stay with us for decades – and then, inexplicably, go on to do absolutely nothing else!

Marcus, Jim and Vish celebrate some of the very best nations and players who have been there once and called it quits. From the man who scored five goals in a single World Cup game, to the South Korean star who became better known for presenting the TV show ‘Four Wheeled Restaurant’ – it’s all right here. This one’s for you, Toto Schillaci.

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What does this World Cup mean for Qatar? Kate goes inside the Qatar club game and finds signs of a very deliberate footballing project.

But are Qatar’s intentions going to survive their first contact with reality? We examine the tournament infrastructure for fans across Doha – from an unfinished fan park, to FIFA's luxury 'tent city' and desolate stadium surroundings – and find out that the World Cup is splitting Qatari society down the middle.

Our third and final episode of the series is out on Sunday November 20th.

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The Premier League has packed up for Christmas! Marcus, Vish, Pete and Andy are here to pore over all the weekend’s final fizzles.

Arsenal are officially Top at Daylight Savings™, joined at the King’s table by Newcastle United and a few Spurs lads. Elsewhere, Cristiano Ronaldo’s taken another humble step down the path to redemption and we plot a daring heist to get Ivan Toney to Qatar.

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Last month, I published an investigation showing that Nevada Republican secretary of state candidate Jim Marchant was deceiving voters by wildly misrepresenting his business history. After the story came out, Marchant told fellow election denier Steve Bannon, “Mother Jones did some sort of colonoscopy on me and they came up with everything.” He contested nothing.

“Everything,” in this case, included a former employee who said he “would not want Jim to be secretary of a preschool,” overwhelming evidence that Marchant’s most prominent company quickly imploded, and previously unpublished divorce records that revealed that his career ended in financial ruin. Marchant was betting that it wouldn’t matter—having a R next to his name would be enough in 2022. He was wrong.

Marchant narrowly lost his race for secretary of state to Democrat Cisco Aguilar, a lawyer and former aide to the late Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid. Marchant was one of the most extreme candidates running for statewide office this year. He claimed that all Nevada elections since 2006 had been rigged and that the winners had been “installed by the deep-state cabal.” Nevertheless, he nearly found himself in charge of all elections in the state. (Marchant didn’t answer when I called him on Friday evening to see if he was conceding.)

The origin story for Marchant’s campaign would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. In 2020, Marchant lost his race for Congress by more than 16,000 votes. Instead of accepting defeat, he claimed that he and Donald Trump had been victims of voter fraud. The day after the election, he checked himself into the Venetian so that he could work with Trump’s team to try to overturn the results of both contests.

His lawsuit to try to force Clark County, which is home to Las Vegas, to hold a new election was quickly thrown out. But while on the Strip, he’s said he received a visit from Wayne Willott, a fringe QAnon influencer who goes by the alias Juan O. Savin. Willott told Marchant to run for secretary of state in 2022 so that he could control Nevada elections. He also pushed Marchant to build a coalition of like-minded candidates in other states. Marchant followed Willott’s advice. 

For months leading up to Election Day, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada was widely perceived as one of the most—if not the most—vulnerable Democratic incumbents and her seat as one of the best pick-up opportunities for Republicans to take control of the upper chamber of Congress. The contested and costly race between Cortez Masto and GOP challenger Adam Laxalt, which was critical in determining the balance of power in the split Senate, remained a toss-up until pretty much the last minute. But with a slim margin of votes—half a percentage point—the majority of voters in the swing state of Nevada have decided to keep the first-ever Latina senator and reject an election denialist. Her victory secured 50 seats in the Senate for the Democrats, with only the Georgia run-off remaining to determine the final breakdown. 

A Nevada native and two-term attorney general, Cortez Masto was first elected to the Senate in 2016 following a tight race to fill the seat of her mentor, the late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who built the Democratic machine in the state and picked her as his successor. Throughout her campaign this election cycle, Cortez Masto repeatedly called out her Trump loyalist opponent for peddling the Big Lie that the 2020 presidential elections were stolen and leading efforts in the state to overturn the results. She also made abortion rights a central tenet of her candidacy, vowing to block any attempts to pass a nationwide ban and decrying Laxalt for saying he would support a referendum to ban abortions after 13 weeks of pregnancy. Laxalt, who Trump called a “MAGA all the way” candidate, has described the US Supreme Court reversal of Roe v. Wade as a “historic victory.” 

“There’s a stark difference between the two of us,” Cortez Masto told MSNBC. “To me this is about a race for Nevadans, fighting for Nevadans…It’s clear my opponent is about his own political agenda which is very extreme and is in opposition to even what Nevadans want.” The victorious Democratic senator also emphasized her background as the granddaughter of an immigrant from Chihuahua, Mexico, and her local roots, reminding voters that improving their lives is personal to her. Her ads often emphasize her efforts to secure relief for small businesses hit hard by the pandemic. “It’s about Nevadans that I know. It’s about my family. My mother still lives in this community, grocery shops…I hear it, I see it when I go fill up my gas tank.” 

I grew up hearing our family stories from my cousins and tias around my grandparents' dinner table – everything I am is thanks to them.

I'll never forget where I come from – it's what drives me to fight for our families every day. pic.twitter.com/MMeWFDiDqp