There were scraps galore in another regular weekend of the Barclays. Jules, Jim, Pete and Vish are here with the tale of the tape - let’s get ready to Ramble!

Liverpool edged out Man City in an absolute firecracker, while Nottingham Forest lost an early relegation six-pointer after getting too horny on main. We also check in with Graham Potter’s glow-up, take an angle grinder to yet more goalposts and applaud Blyth Spartans’ bespoke toasting services.

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The strange magic of Britain's master storyteller

The Washington Post reported Saturday that a former executive with Trump Media, which owns Donald Trump’s struggling social media platform, Truth Social, is alleging the company broke federal security laws, and that another executive was ousted for refusing Trump’s demand that he give his shares in the venture to Trump’s wife, Melania. 

Will Wilkerson, who was fired by Trump Media on Thursday, passed along hundreds of documents, photos, and audio files to the Washington Post and to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Post‘s exclusive report details the chaos allegedly taking place at the company. 

The report details how cofounder Andy Litinsky was allegedly fired after refusing a personal demand by Trump, who already owned 90 percent of Trump Media shares, to give his shares to Melania. More broadly, the report portrays a company in disarray, one in which decisions were based not on logic or business savvy, but bitterness and spite. Five months after refusing Trump’s demands, writes tech reporter Drew Harwell… 

Litinsky, who first met Trump in 2004 as a contestant on the TV show “The Apprentice,” was abruptly removed from the company’s board. Wilkerson said he believes it was payback for his refusal to turn over a small fortune to the former president’s wife. Litinsky thought so, too, according to an email Wilkerson and his attorneys shared with The Washington Post and the Securities and Exchange Commission. In that email, Litinsky complained that Trump was “retaliating against me” by threatening to “ ‘blow up the company’ if his demands are not met.

Trump Media did not directly rebut any of Wilkerson’s claims, Harwell noted. Instead, it released a statement essentially accusing the Post of publishing fake news, and saying that…

Kevin De Bruyne has claimed that he isn’t surprised about Arsenal’s early form this season, before likening his style of play to Manchester City’s.

The Gunners have won eight of our opening nine matches of the league term thus far, and could make it nine when they take on Leeds United tomorrow, while a win could well see them build a gap over the Citizens, who face a potential banana-skin against Liverpool at Anfield.

De Bruyne has spoken to Sky Sports ahead of tomorrow’s big clash however, and during that interview he was asked about Mikel Arteta and his uprising at Arsenal.

“Not really, no (if he is surprised with Arsenal’s performances),” De Bruyne said.

“I think I see a lot of similarities with the way that we [City] play and that’s always been his [Arteta] style. When he stopped playing football and had the opportunity to come here it was, for him, a good learning school and obviously we had great years together. I saw an evolution from the beginning of Mikel and after three years when left.

Arsenal have been ruled out of any potential move to try and sign Kylian Mbappe from Paris Saint-Germain, despite rumours of the Frenchman being unhappy at present.

The superstar is currently claimed to be unhappy with his current club and wants to leave, sparking numerous rumours surrounding his potential next club.

While the Gunners have a great record with French players such as Thierry Henry, Robert Pires, Patrick Vieira and others, Ben Jacobs insists that we will not be entertaining a move to try and land him despite his current situation.

“Arsenal are not in the race for Mbappe,” Jacobs told the Football Terrace podcast. “They would not seriously entertain any kind of offer or bid for him, that one is a complete non-starter. And Newcastle, as I mentioned is another possible destination in the sense that PIF want a marquee signing. But there’s absolutely nothing in it at the moment.”

While we could hope to have bigger aspirations in the transfer market next summer with an expected return to the Champions League, I don’t believe anybody is expecting us to to battle for Mbappe.

Arsenal will make the long trip north to Yorkshire to take on Leeds United on Sunday, with the visitors currently unbeaten at home this season.

The Whites have been a mixed bag this term, but have continued to play with a high intensity regardless of the challenge in front of them, and they have enjoyed some fine wins this term, including an impressive 3-0 win over Chelsea.

We go into the game as strong favourites however after winning eight of our opening nine in the division, but the boss is not taking anything for granted as he praises our opponents style of play.

“With Jesse and the teams that they have already played, it is very clear what he wants to do – be a really intense team, a really dynamic team and a really good team when there are spaces to attack,” Arteta told Arsenal Media in his pre-match conference.

“There’s some similarities [to Bielsa’s team] but every coach has his own book, but what Jesse has done over the time he has been there is really impressive.”

Arsenal has had joy shopping for talent in Brazil recently and they could return for a new man there.

The South American nation has blessed the Gunners with the likes of Gabriel Martinelli, Gabriel Jesus and Gabriel Magalhaes.

The trio are regulars in Mikel Arteta’s squad now and they are one of the reasons the team is at the top of the league table.

Marquinhos joined in the summer and has done well when he plays for the Gunners.

They could have another countryman as a teammate soon as Arsenal explores the Brazilian market once again.

Former Arsenal man Ray Parlour wants the club to show they have learnt from losing key players in the past by getting the likes of Gabriel Martinelli, Bukayo Saka and William Saliba on new deals.

These youngsters have established themselves in the current Arsenal first team, and they are one of the reasons the club is at the top of the Premier League table.

In the past, the Gunners have lost key players because they delayed offering them new deals or offer them less than another suitor is willing to.

A famous case is when they lost Ashley Cole to Chelsea because the Blues offered him more money.

Saka, Martinelli and Saliba are being watched by the best clubs around the world, and they will pounce to sign them if we don’t act fast.

This story was originally published by YaleE360 and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

It was perhaps the most spectacular failed tree planting project ever. Certainly the fastest. On March 8, 2012, teams of village volunteers in Camarines Sur province on the Filipino island of Luzon sunk over a million mangrove seedlings into coastal mud in just an hour of frenzied activity. The governor declared it a resounding success for his continuing efforts to green the province. At a hasty ceremony on dry land, an official adjudicator from Guinness World Records declared that nobody had ever planted so many trees in such a short time and handed the governor a certificate proclaiming the world record. Plenty of headlines followed.

“The survivors only managed to cling on because they were sheltered behind a sandbank at the mouth of a river. Everything else disappeared.”

But look today at the coastline where most of the trees were planted. There is no sign of the mangroves that, after a decade of growth, should be close to maturity. An on-the-ground study published in 2020 by British mangrove restoration researcher Dominic Wodehouse, then of Bangor University in Wales, found that fewer than 2 percent of them had survived. The other 98 percent had died or were washed away.

“I walked, boated, and swam through this entire site. The survivors only managed to cling on because they were sheltered behind a sandbank at the mouth of a river. Everything else disappeared,” one mangrove rehabilitation expert wrote in a letter to the Guinness inspectors this year, which he shared with Yale Environment 360 on the condition of anonymity. The outcome was “entirely predictable,” he wrote. The muddy planting sites were washed by storms and waves and were otherwise “ecologically unsuited to mangrove establishment, because they are too waterlogged and there is no oxygen for them to breathe.”

“It was a complete disaster,” agrees Jim Enright, former Asia coordinator of the US-based nonprofit Mangrove Action Project. “But no one that we know of from Guinness or the record-planting proponents have carried out follow-up monitoring.” Guinness has not responded to requests for comment.

Gabriel Martinelli has around 18 months left on his current Arsenal contract and this should worry some of the club’s fans.

Since he broke into the team as a relatively unknown player, the attacker has grown in leaps and bounds playing with the senior side.

Unai Emery handed him his debut, but Mikel Arteta has also found him very useful to his team too.

This means he has remained in the Gunners’ first team for the time the Spaniard has been boss.

Martinelli keeps getting better, and he is one of the masterminds of Arsenal’s brilliant season so far.