Non QPR football thread
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None of them by sight. And I’m 65. I’d guess one is Billy Wright. And/or Johnny Haynes. Just because they are old timey names.
Come on, I'm only seven years older (tomorrow anyway)! No Billy Wright or Johnny Haynes, and neither of the Haggertys.
Never saw Clough play, but I can imagine that he and Greaves could have been dynamite together.
He says it best
When he says nothing at all
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Raheem Sterling made to feel ‘worthless’, says close source amid player’s arrest
Former England and Chelsea star arrested on M3 on Thursday under suspicion of driving while unfit through drugs
Sammy Gecsoyler and agency
Sat 30 May 2026 16.57 BST
Share
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Raheem Sterling has been made to feel “disposable” after a decade at the top of football, a source close to the former England star has said, after his arrest on suspicion of driving “whilst unfit through drugs”.
The source said the former Man City and Chelsea winger, who is now playing for Feyenoord in the Netherlands, had been suffering from “immeasurable” psychological strain after an “extremely tough couple of years”.
It came after the 31-year-old was arrested on Thursday morning by Hampshire constabulary while driving a Lamborghini on the southbound carriageway of the M3 motorway.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the force said: “Just before 9am on Thursday (28 May), we received reports that a Lamborghini was in collision with barriers on the M3 southbound, close to the Minley Interchange.
“No other vehicles were involved and no injuries were reported.
“The driver, a 31-year-old man from Berkshire, has been arrested on suspicion of driving a vehicle whilst unfit through drugs, driving dangerously, possession of a class C drug and failing to provide a specimen.
“He has been bailed while our inquiries continue.”
Sterling has faced racist abuse throughout his career and has accused the media of helping to “fuel racism” through negative, unfairly critical coverage of black footballers compared with white players. The winger departed Chelsea by mutual consent in January after a performance that was widely deemed as disappointing. Sterling had 18 months left on a deal worth £325,000 a week.
PA Media approached Sterling’s representatives for comment. A source confirmed the arrest and said: “[This] brings into the spotlight modern treatment of players who are no longer ‘fit for purpose’ – disposable.
“How a prolific English international who has steered the England squad to significant heights over the last decade has been made to feel worthless – forgotten about.
“The psychological strain that has put on him is immeasurable. Isolated. The second he touches a ball, being told he’s a flop and he’s finished. Mocked. Heckled.
“He moved to the Netherlands to escape and rediscover his love for the game but the negativity followed. It’s been an extremely tough couple of years for him and this incident encompasses that.”
The source said they also wanted to emphasise Sterling had been arrested “under suspicion”, adding there is no “proof of anything in his system”.
Sterling, of Berkshire, has been bailed while inquiries continue.
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And we provide all this for free, for everyone to read. We do this because we believe in information equality. Greater numbers of people can keep track of the global events shaping our world, understand their impact on people and communities, and become inspired to take meaningful action. Millions can benefit from open access to quality, truthful news, regardless of their ability to pay for it.
Whether you give a little or a lot, your funding will power our reporting for the years to come.
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Former England and Chelsea star arrested on M3 on Thursday under suspicion of driving while unfit through drugs
Sammy Gecsoyler and agency
Sat 30 May 2026 16.57 BST
Share
Prefer the Guardian on Google
Raheem Sterling has been made to feel “disposable” after a decade at the top of football, a source close to the former England star has said, after his arrest on suspicion of driving “whilst unfit through drugs”.
The source said the former Man City and Chelsea winger, who is now playing for Feyenoord in the Netherlands, had been suffering from “immeasurable” psychological strain after an “extremely tough couple of years”.
It came after the 31-year-old was arrested on Thursday morning by Hampshire constabulary while driving a Lamborghini on the southbound carriageway of the M3 motorway.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the force said: “Just before 9am on Thursday (28 May), we received reports that a Lamborghini was in collision with barriers on the M3 southbound, close to the Minley Interchange.
“No other vehicles were involved and no injuries were reported.
“The driver, a 31-year-old man from Berkshire, has been arrested on suspicion of driving a vehicle whilst unfit through drugs, driving dangerously, possession of a class C drug and failing to provide a specimen.
“He has been bailed while our inquiries continue.”
Sterling has faced racist abuse throughout his career and has accused the media of helping to “fuel racism” through negative, unfairly critical coverage of black footballers compared with white players. The winger departed Chelsea by mutual consent in January after a performance that was widely deemed as disappointing. Sterling had 18 months left on a deal worth £325,000 a week.
PA Media approached Sterling’s representatives for comment. A source confirmed the arrest and said: “[This] brings into the spotlight modern treatment of players who are no longer ‘fit for purpose’ – disposable.
“How a prolific English international who has steered the England squad to significant heights over the last decade has been made to feel worthless – forgotten about.
“The psychological strain that has put on him is immeasurable. Isolated. The second he touches a ball, being told he’s a flop and he’s finished. Mocked. Heckled.
“He moved to the Netherlands to escape and rediscover his love for the game but the negativity followed. It’s been an extremely tough couple of years for him and this incident encompasses that.”
The source said they also wanted to emphasise Sterling had been arrested “under suspicion”, adding there is no “proof of anything in his system”.
Sterling, of Berkshire, has been bailed while inquiries continue.
Congratulations on being one of our top readers globally – you've read 199 articles in the last year
Article count
on
… we have a small favour to ask. Tens of millions have placed their trust in the Guardian’s fearless journalism since we started publishing more than 200 years ago, turning to us in moments of crisis, uncertainty, solidarity and hope. More than 1.5 million supporters, from 180 countries, now power us financially – keeping us open to all, and fiercely independent. Will you make a difference and support us too?
Unlike many others, the Guardian has no shareholders and no billionaire owner. Just the determination and passion to deliver high-impact global reporting, always free from commercial or political influence. Reporting like this is vital for democracy, for fairness and to demand better from the powerful.
And we provide all this for free, for everyone to read. We do this because we believe in information equality. Greater numbers of people can keep track of the global events shaping our world, understand their impact on people and communities, and become inspired to take meaningful action. Millions can benefit from open access to quality, truthful news, regardless of their ability to pay for it.
Whether you give a little or a lot, your funding will power our reporting for the years to come.
If you can, please support us on a monthly basis. It takes less than a minute to set up, and you can rest assured that you’re making a big impact every single month in support of open, independent journalism. Thank you.
Support NZ$10/monthly
Recommended
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Unlock All-access digital benefits:
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Just a lonely 30-something multimillionaire with no choice but to skin up and take the lambo for a spin up the motorway
Apparently he's going to buy dagenham and Redbridge
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Tony Fernandes: The art of never saying no and never wasting a crisis
Tony Fernandes: The art of never saying no and never wasting a crisis
News / Online
By Yeoh Siew Hoon - WiT | May 28, 2026
Nine years is a long time in aviation. The last time I interviewed Tony Fernandes on a stage in Amsterdam, he had just been named Airline CEO of the Year.
He recounted that moment in 2017 to the audience attending the Trip.com Airline Global Conference in Amsterdam last week. Akbar Al Baker of Qatar Airways had come up before him, declaring he was going to buy British Airways and basically everything else he could get his hands on.
“When I came up, you asked me what I was going to buy and I said, Qatar Air. Then I don’t have to buy anything else.”
Sixty-two years old now—he’ll tell you himself, birthday April 30—a grandfather, the founder of AirAsia and now the CEO of Capital A Group, he remains the original maverick he was when he dared to dream and start up an airline 33 years ago that has transformed the lives of a billion travelers in Asia and beyond.
The big mouth and the epiphany
He still loves telling his origin story, perhaps because he still can’t quite believe it himself—that a music man could change aviation.
The heady days of running Warner Music in Asia—dining with Madonna, jamming with Prince—then Warner became Time Warner and Time Warner merged with AOL in what Fernandes described as the most surreal boardroom experience of his life.
He was sitting in Rockefeller Plaza when Steve Case, AOL’s founder, turned to him and asked where he thought the stock price would be in a year. It was around $80 at the time. Case said: $500.
“I knew that was the end of my career, because my famous mouth opened and I said, please give me some of the drugs you are taking.”
He resigned, flew to London, sat in a bar. And then Stelios Haji-Ioannou appeared on television, talking about EasyJet. He took a bus to Luton Airport and watched people booking flights to Barcelona for nine pounds, Paris for six. Something clicked.
“There’s a very fine line between brilliance and stupidity,” he told the audience. “It’s very narrow. And I said: I can do that.”
He went back to Malaysia, met the Prime Minister and pitched his vision. The PM’s response has become one of his favorite lines: “This is a great idea. You’ll succeed because you’re not from the airline business.”
He bought AirAsia for 25 cents. Remortgaged his house. Started with two planes and 254 terrified staff—terrified, he noted, because they’d seen him on music shows and couldn’t quite reconcile that with the man now owning their airline.
Twenty-five years later, AirAsia has carried nearly a billion people.
The hardest decade: Extending AirAsia’s brand and culture
I asked him which was the hardest of the three decades, from start to now. The scrappy underdog years, fighting off Malaysia Airlines and Singapore Airlines as they dropped fares to try and kill him? The explosive growth years? Or now?
He didn’t hesitate. “This decade. Definitely this decade.”
Starting an airline with two planes and 200 staff, he said, is actually easier than restarting one with 300 aircraft and 21,000 people. COVID cost AirAsia $10 billion in revenue. Unlike many of their competitors—Singapore Airlines received S$12 billion in government support, he stressed—they got nothing. They had to do it entirely themselves.
Unlike others who went into crisis management, he got into company building. “My cabin crew were delivering food. My pilots were taxi drivers.”
And in the middle of all that chaos, he built five new companies.
The engineering arm—Asia Digital Engineering—is now, by his account, the fastest in the world at doing a C-check. Air France is sending planes to them. Teleport, the cargo airline they built by literally pulling seats out of grounded aircraft, has become the number one cargo carrier in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Their in-house travel platform, Move, is a small online travel agency (OTA)—“very tiny, very small, not a threat to Trip,” he said, smiling. Their food brand, Santan, is now moving into 500 grab-and-go locations. And they’ve built a branding company—AirAsia Next—licensing the AirAsia culture and name into other industries. A major hotel group is about to launch an AirAsia hotel. A multinational hospital group is opening an AirAsia hospital in Malaysia in the next six months.
“Low-cost model?” I offered.
He played along: “Halfway through your operation, there’ll be a small ancillary charge.”
Jokes aside, Fernandes said that AirAsia is no longer an airline. It is a philosophy. A way of treating people, of running a flat, union-free, opportunity-rich organization where someone who started carrying bags can end up a CEO or a captain.
Betting big in the hard times: Belief in travel and Asia
And if you’ve been following the news, you’d also have read the news that AirAsia has just ordered 150 aircraft from Airbus and De Havilland with Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney presiding at the signing ceremony.
How do you make such a big bet in a time of crisis when the Middle East crisis has sent the airline industry and the world into shock, amid fuel supply shortages and rising fuel prices?
“I’m a little bit contrarian,” he said. “A crisis is a great time to build market share when everyone else is thinking, what are we going to do?”
He got a great price. He knows this region. And he knows one thing above all else: Travel is sticky. In a recession, people cut other things before they cut travel. And in Southeast Asia, unlike Europe, you cannot take a train from Beijing to Kuala Lumpur. You cannot drive. The plane is the only option, and the low-cost model is what opened it up.
“Low-cost carriers have done an amazing job in our part of the world,” he said. “I started it and then every other animal was named an airline. Tigers, lions, loads of birds. Even one named after an insect—Firefly.”
On AI, partnerships and what comes next
He is a huge believer in artificial intelligence (AI), particularly in operations.
AirAsia has been working with it for some time, using it to optimize fuel burn based on aircraft age, route, altitude and load. The result: four percent fuel savings. Across a fleet the size of AirAsia’s, that is considerable.
On the customer side, he’s more measured. “A little rigid. Not quite there yet.”
But he believes it will eventually remove friction from the travel experience in ways that will transform the industry—echoing what KP Ho, chairman of Banyan Group said to me recently, that AI will be the next great unlocking force in Southeast Asia travel, just as low-cost aviation was the last one.
On partnerships, he was direct. Low-cost carriers have historically kept to themselves. He thinks that’s wrong. AirAsia has been building alliances: Wizz Air, Pegasus, ajet, easyJet. The goal is to stitch together the low-cost world so a passenger can move seamlessly across continents without defaulting to a legacy carrier or paying a premium.
Live and let die: Never take no for an answer
He closed, as he always does, with a story. During the Bali bombings, when every other airline was pulling flights, he went to his team and said: we do not cancel. These people need us at their worst moment as much as they needed us at their best. He gave away 5,000 free seats. “I knew Malaysians,” he said. “If you give a free seat, they’ll risk their lives. We don’t care about the bomb. We’re going to Bali. They went. They had a great time. They came back and told half a million people.”
Three decades on, from a man who bought an airline for 25 cents, built it into the fourth-largest in Asia, survived a pandemic without a cent of government support and somehow had time to claim credit for the MAGA hat, he concluded with this message. “Dare to dream. Believe the unbelievable. And when someone tells you no, you just say no right back. You never take no for an answer.”
I asked him, given his music background, what song best encapsulates AirAsia’s story. He paused. You could see him running through a mental playlist.
“Live and Let Die,” he said.
This story originally appeared on WiT.
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Tony Fernandes: The art of never saying no and never wasting a crisis
Tony Fernandes: The art of never saying no and never wasting a crisis
News / Online
By Yeoh Siew Hoon - WiT | May 28, 2026
Nine years is a long time in aviation. The last time I interviewed Tony Fernandes on a stage in Amsterdam, he had just been named Airline CEO of the Year.
He recounted that moment in 2017 to the audience attending the Trip.com Airline Global Conference in Amsterdam last week. Akbar Al Baker of Qatar Airways had come up before him, declaring he was going to buy British Airways and basically everything else he could get his hands on.
“When I came up, you asked me what I was going to buy and I said, Qatar Air. Then I don’t have to buy anything else.”
Sixty-two years old now—he’ll tell you himself, birthday April 30—a grandfather, the founder of AirAsia and now the CEO of Capital A Group, he remains the original maverick he was when he dared to dream and start up an airline 33 years ago that has transformed the lives of a billion travelers in Asia and beyond.
The big mouth and the epiphany
He still loves telling his origin story, perhaps because he still can’t quite believe it himself—that a music man could change aviation.
The heady days of running Warner Music in Asia—dining with Madonna, jamming with Prince—then Warner became Time Warner and Time Warner merged with AOL in what Fernandes described as the most surreal boardroom experience of his life.
He was sitting in Rockefeller Plaza when Steve Case, AOL’s founder, turned to him and asked where he thought the stock price would be in a year. It was around $80 at the time. Case said: $500.
“I knew that was the end of my career, because my famous mouth opened and I said, please give me some of the drugs you are taking.”
He resigned, flew to London, sat in a bar. And then Stelios Haji-Ioannou appeared on television, talking about EasyJet. He took a bus to Luton Airport and watched people booking flights to Barcelona for nine pounds, Paris for six. Something clicked.
“There’s a very fine line between brilliance and stupidity,” he told the audience. “It’s very narrow. And I said: I can do that.”
He went back to Malaysia, met the Prime Minister and pitched his vision. The PM’s response has become one of his favorite lines: “This is a great idea. You’ll succeed because you’re not from the airline business.”
He bought AirAsia for 25 cents. Remortgaged his house. Started with two planes and 254 terrified staff—terrified, he noted, because they’d seen him on music shows and couldn’t quite reconcile that with the man now owning their airline.
Twenty-five years later, AirAsia has carried nearly a billion people.
The hardest decade: Extending AirAsia’s brand and culture
I asked him which was the hardest of the three decades, from start to now. The scrappy underdog years, fighting off Malaysia Airlines and Singapore Airlines as they dropped fares to try and kill him? The explosive growth years? Or now?
He didn’t hesitate. “This decade. Definitely this decade.”
Starting an airline with two planes and 200 staff, he said, is actually easier than restarting one with 300 aircraft and 21,000 people. COVID cost AirAsia $10 billion in revenue. Unlike many of their competitors—Singapore Airlines received S$12 billion in government support, he stressed—they got nothing. They had to do it entirely themselves.
Unlike others who went into crisis management, he got into company building. “My cabin crew were delivering food. My pilots were taxi drivers.”
And in the middle of all that chaos, he built five new companies.
The engineering arm—Asia Digital Engineering—is now, by his account, the fastest in the world at doing a C-check. Air France is sending planes to them. Teleport, the cargo airline they built by literally pulling seats out of grounded aircraft, has become the number one cargo carrier in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Their in-house travel platform, Move, is a small online travel agency (OTA)—“very tiny, very small, not a threat to Trip,” he said, smiling. Their food brand, Santan, is now moving into 500 grab-and-go locations. And they’ve built a branding company—AirAsia Next—licensing the AirAsia culture and name into other industries. A major hotel group is about to launch an AirAsia hotel. A multinational hospital group is opening an AirAsia hospital in Malaysia in the next six months.
“Low-cost model?” I offered.
He played along: “Halfway through your operation, there’ll be a small ancillary charge.”
Jokes aside, Fernandes said that AirAsia is no longer an airline. It is a philosophy. A way of treating people, of running a flat, union-free, opportunity-rich organization where someone who started carrying bags can end up a CEO or a captain.
Betting big in the hard times: Belief in travel and Asia
And if you’ve been following the news, you’d also have read the news that AirAsia has just ordered 150 aircraft from Airbus and De Havilland with Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney presiding at the signing ceremony.
How do you make such a big bet in a time of crisis when the Middle East crisis has sent the airline industry and the world into shock, amid fuel supply shortages and rising fuel prices?
“I’m a little bit contrarian,” he said. “A crisis is a great time to build market share when everyone else is thinking, what are we going to do?”
He got a great price. He knows this region. And he knows one thing above all else: Travel is sticky. In a recession, people cut other things before they cut travel. And in Southeast Asia, unlike Europe, you cannot take a train from Beijing to Kuala Lumpur. You cannot drive. The plane is the only option, and the low-cost model is what opened it up.
“Low-cost carriers have done an amazing job in our part of the world,” he said. “I started it and then every other animal was named an airline. Tigers, lions, loads of birds. Even one named after an insect—Firefly.”
On AI, partnerships and what comes next
He is a huge believer in artificial intelligence (AI), particularly in operations.
AirAsia has been working with it for some time, using it to optimize fuel burn based on aircraft age, route, altitude and load. The result: four percent fuel savings. Across a fleet the size of AirAsia’s, that is considerable.
On the customer side, he’s more measured. “A little rigid. Not quite there yet.”
But he believes it will eventually remove friction from the travel experience in ways that will transform the industry—echoing what KP Ho, chairman of Banyan Group said to me recently, that AI will be the next great unlocking force in Southeast Asia travel, just as low-cost aviation was the last one.
On partnerships, he was direct. Low-cost carriers have historically kept to themselves. He thinks that’s wrong. AirAsia has been building alliances: Wizz Air, Pegasus, ajet, easyJet. The goal is to stitch together the low-cost world so a passenger can move seamlessly across continents without defaulting to a legacy carrier or paying a premium.
Live and let die: Never take no for an answer
He closed, as he always does, with a story. During the Bali bombings, when every other airline was pulling flights, he went to his team and said: we do not cancel. These people need us at their worst moment as much as they needed us at their best. He gave away 5,000 free seats. “I knew Malaysians,” he said. “If you give a free seat, they’ll risk their lives. We don’t care about the bomb. We’re going to Bali. They went. They had a great time. They came back and told half a million people.”
Three decades on, from a man who bought an airline for 25 cents, built it into the fourth-largest in Asia, survived a pandemic without a cent of government support and somehow had time to claim credit for the MAGA hat, he concluded with this message. “Dare to dream. Believe the unbelievable. And when someone tells you no, you just say no right back. You never take no for an answer.”
I asked him, given his music background, what song best encapsulates AirAsia’s story. He paused. You could see him running through a mental playlist.
“Live and Let Die,” he said.
This story originally appeared on WiT.
AirAsia
Artificial Intelligence
Airline
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I thought KSI had bought a share in D&R, all these multi millionaires falling over themselves to buy a mickey mouse non league team? Sounds fishy...
Due to an injury to someone Scotland have called up Tyler Fletcher, Darren’s son, to the World Cup Squad.
Tyler has a grand total of 17 minutes of first team experience for Manchester United, 16 of which came in the meaningless last game of the season.
According to the BBC this is a testament to Tyler’s dedication, professionalism etc and nothing at all to do with Scotland’s desperation. Surely there must be someone Scottish with a bit more on the clock?
Tyler has a grand total of 17 minutes of first team experience for Manchester United, 16 of which came in the meaningless last game of the season.
According to the BBC this is a testament to Tyler’s dedication, professionalism etc and nothing at all to do with Scotland’s desperation. Surely there must be someone Scottish with a bit more on the clock?
This is a squad containing Lyndon Dykes so they’re about three injuries from Susan Boyle getting on the plane.
Billy Gilmour (plays for Napoli alongside McTominay) got injured in the friendly yesterday.
Doubt the boy will play at all in the USA...so no different than when England took Theo Walcott few years ago
Yeah. Sven admitted that was a big mistake afterwards. And he had Jermaine Defoe as an alternative….