Bukayo Saka has agreed a new five-year contract at Arsenal that will run until the summer of 2031 and, according to The Guardian, lift his weekly pay to roughly £300,000. That figure would make him the club’s highest earner and place him among the best-paid players in the Premier League.

Saka was thought to be on £200,000 per week under his previous deal, which was due to expire in 2027, meaning the reported increase represents around 50 percent.

The Guardian’s reporting also identified Kai Havertz as Arsenal’s previous top earner, on about £280,000 per week. Saka, still only 24 and a homegrown player, has emerged as a clear leader at the club and regularly wears the captain’s armband when Martin Ødegaard is unavailable.

Club contract planning appears to continue beyond Saka. Ødegaard is set to be one of the next in line for fresh terms as his deal expires in 2028, while Declan Rice has been billed as the extension priority. Rice is described in reports as an all-action midfielder, “arguably the club’s most important and best player, transforming the complexion of the team with his inclusion.” Those same reports contrast the drop-off between Saka and Noni Madueke, or Ødegaard and Eberechi Eze, with the more marked difference when Rice is not on the pitch.

Saka will not eclipse Arsenal’s highest-paid player ever. Mesut Özil reportedly had six months remaining on a deal worth about £350,000 per week when he left the club in January 2021.

On the wider Premier League stage, Saka’s reported wage still sits below the division’s top earners. The Telegraph reported Mohamed Salah’s extension would see him earn up to £480,000 per week with bonuses and a base rate near £400,000 per week. The Guardian reported Erling Haaland’s nine-and-a-half-year deal as worth around £500,000 per week. Even among English players Saka is not the highest earner: Jack Grealish is reported to earn a similar £300,000 per week at Manchester City and Raheem Sterling about £325,000 per week, per The Times. The draft report notes that neither Grealish nor Sterling have been capped for England by Thomas Tuchel and are yet to play a single minute of Premier League football for their paymasters this season.

Manchester United are set to welcome Bryan Mbeumo back for next Saturday’s derby at Old Trafford after Cameroon’s 2–0 quarterfinal defeat to Morocco in the Africa Cup of Nations.

The setback for Cameroon means United regain the services of their summer signing. Mbeumo has not featured since the 4–4 draw with Bournemouth in mid-December yet still leads the squad for goals, xG, shots on target and touches in the penalty area. He also serves as one of the team’s chief creators and routinely hauls the gravity of the squad forward with his repeated surges upfield.

United have shuttled through interim solutions while Mbeumo has been away. Darren Fletcher was an emergency interim option, but the club could have another caretaker in place by the time the forward returns. Ole Gunnar Solskjær and Michael Carrick are the two leading contenders and both will surely be grateful to have Mbeumo back available.

The Red Devils managed just one win in their first five games without their top scorer, failing to beat three sides currently slumped among the Premier League’s bottom five. Patrick Dorgu was asked into a more attacking role and scored his first goal for the club while also providing two assists. Matheus Cunha doubled his season tally with strikes against Aston Villa and Leeds United, but neither result produced victories.

Brighton & Hove Albion boss Fabian Hürzeler was succinct in his assessment of the £65 million ($87.2 million) move from Brentford: “Money well invested.”

United will not be at full strength in other respects. Noussair Mazraoui, who played the full 90 minutes of Morocco’s 2–0 win over Cameroon, will be unavailable until the trip to Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium on Sunday, Jan. 25. Morocco denied Cameroon a single shot on target in that game, although Mbeumo did have a strong penalty appeal waved away.

Amad Diallo remains involved in the tournament as the third and final Manchester United player at AFCON. Only Morocco’s Real Madrid forward Brahim Díaz has outscored Ivory Coast’s versatile wideman this winter, and Díaz will face Mohamed Salah’s Egypt in Saturday’s last quarterfinal with the chance to extend his three-goal tally.

Roy Keane launched a pointed criticism of Manchester United’s leadership this week, arguing that the continued presence of former figures has hampered successive managers. The former club captain singled out Sir Alex Ferguson and David Gill as lingering influences and suggested their roles on the club board remain a problem.

“You see who’s making the decisions at Manchester United ,” Keane tailed off during a rant on Sky Sports this week, “you still have Ferguson and David Gill hanging on like a bad smell.” Ferguson and Gill remain non-executive directors and regular figures at Old Trafford, a reality Keane said affects those appointed after Ferguson left the dugout.

The club’s history was used as context. United hold a joint-record 20 top-flight titles but only three managers are responsible for those successes. Ernest Mangnall led in the first decade of the 20th century, Sir Matt Busby oversaw the club’s peak across the 1950s and 1960s, and Ferguson later dominated for decades. Busby, like Ferguson, did not fully relinquish influence when stepping away. After appointing Wilf McGuinness as his successor in 1969, Busby kept the title of manager while McGuinness was designated “chief coach.”

“Not everyone, sadly, would play for Wilf,” United’s David Sadler would later reflect. “The side as a whole did not give 100% effort for him. It was as simple as that.” Busby returned for an ultimately doomed second spell, a fate Ferguson has so far avoided.

Keane also directed his ire at the club’s recent recruitment and decision-making, criticising minority co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe and director Jason Wilcox for their roles during Ruben Amorim’s “disastrous 14-month reign.” “What happens in these job interviews? I’m intrigued,” Keane asked, his beady eyes dancing around the Sky Sports studio. “Why do they keep giving certain people a job? What happens in the interview that they sit there and go, and 12, 14 months later, ‘he’s not the guy for us.’

“Almost forget the CV,” he added. “You need something on your CV, of course, that you’ve won a trophy or managed a long time. But you’ve got to look somebody in the eye and go, ‘Are you the man to get us places?’” Keane dismissed the idea of Darren Fletcher as the permanent manager and expressed a preference for Eddie Howe.