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Newcastle United fans will be delighted to see their side back in the Premier League once again.

Not just because it means they were only out of the top tier for one season after a torrid 2015/16 season. Or even the fact that their top spot finish and promotion was a just reward for the hard work from the players and the rebuilding project under Rafa Benitez.

It’s also great news for the Toon Army and neutrals as well as it means we can finally pick Newcastle players for our Fantasy Premier League sides once again.

In the past we’ve had some cracking players available from the North-East side; from Demba Ba to Hatem Ben Arfa to Yohan Cabaye.

And with Benitez’s side expected to consolidate their promotion and finish near the middle of the table, there’s likely to be a few prospects tucked away this year too.

Here are our three recommendations…

Jamaal Lascelles

Newcastle’s defence may well be a decent source of fantasy points this season.

As a newly-promoted side, the Magpies will want to remain solid at the back to pick up some early points. And as we’ve seen from Benitez’s time at Liverpool, the Spaniard knows how to play defensively.

Jamaal Lascelles holds perhaps the most profitable route into that defence. As club captain and with 41 appearances under his belt he is the most reliable starter, while his aerial prowess should see him earn a few bonus points.

For £4.5m you could do a lot worse.

Matt Ritchie

We can forgive people for feeling a bit apprehensive about picking up Matt Ritchie after his first Premier League season at Bournemouth.

After netting 15 goals in their promotion season, the midfielder was expected to step up for Eddie Howe’s attack-minded side. While his contribution wasn’t bad (four goals and eight assists with 119 total points), fantasy owners were hoping for more of a cutting edge.

With a second bite of the cherry (sorry), a year of top-flight experience under his belt and set-pieces to his name, Ritchie is primed to beat his score from two years ago.

Dwight Gayle

Fantasy managers are generally hesitant to put in a striker from a newly-promoted side, preferring to let them test the water before investing.

Even though Dwight Gayle never established himself as a consistent starter at Crystal Palace however, his record in the Premier League speaks volumes.

Gayle managed 15 goals in 27 starts over three seasons at Selhurst Park, averaging a goal every 161 minutes.

With a side built to supply him and 23 goals last season, the £6.5m man makes for a very tempting with Newcastle’s kind start.

Chelsea manager Antonio Conte wants to bring in a new right-back or right wing-back to provide competition for Victor Moses before the transfer window slams shut at the end of this month, and online bookmakers BetVictor have slashed the odds on them signing Southampton’s Cedric Soares from 4/1 on Wednesday to the 2/1 joint-favourites with Tottenham Hotspur on Thursday.

The Blues boss has been linked with a whole host of potential players to fill that position throughout the course of the summer, but the latest odds suggest he could be closing in on a deal for the Portugal international.

The Telegraph reported on Tuesday that the Premier League holders will pay up to £20m to bring the 25-year-old to Stamford Bridge before August draws to a close, but it remains to be seen whether the south coast outfit would be willing to sell him for that fee or at all, considering their stance on captain Virgil van Dijk this summer.

Cedric has quickly established himself as a key man in the Saints team over the course of the last two seasons, while he was Portugal’s first-choice right-back in the latter stages of their Euro 2016 winning campaign.

Arsenal defender Kieran Gibbs has been heavily linked with a move away from the club this summer after falling down the pecking order, but online bookmakers SkyBET have him at 5/6 to still be with the Gunners when the transfer window slams shut at the end of this month.

The 27-year-old looks to be surplus to requirements at the Emirates following the summer arrival of Sead Kolasinac from Schalke, while Nacho Monreal and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain are also able to play in the left wing-back role in Arsene Wenger’s preferred 3-4-2-1 formation right now.

Gibbs, whose contract runs out next summer, has been linked with the likes of Watford and Newcastle United since the end of last season, but the former cooled their interest in the England international after being unsure on the £16m valuation placed upon his head by the north London outfit, according to the Daily Mail.

The Hornets is still the most likely destination for the full-back if he does leave with BetVictor listing Marco Silva’s men at 2/1 to sign him, while SkyBET have West Bromwich Albion at 7/1 and Stoke City at 10/1.

Gibbs found first-team opportunities hard to come by last season and he was limited to just 22 appearances in all competitions for Arsenal, with only half of those coming in the Premier League, but he could be priced out of securing a move for more regular football.

There’s probably only one player in footballing history who has an entire position named after him.

But given his celebrity and the fact that he is so widely held up as the greatest defensive midfielder of his time, Claude Makelele is still arguably a criminally underrated player.

How, though, can you be underrated if there is an entire position named after you? How can you have changed the entire tactical makeup of the English game, steering the Premier League away from 4-4-2 formations to a new era of three-man midfields, and still be thought of in less glowing terms than you should be?

But Makelele is because he’s known for being the first man to have played the anchor role in midfield, the implication being that all that particular type of defensive midfielder is there for is breaking up the play.

There’s a suggestion that almost anyone with good tackling ability could do the role and that players who excel in it are somehow limited. And in the modern game, over a decade since Makelele came to England to play for Chelsea, the drive for efficiency and the need for players to do more than just one thing on the pitch, there is also a widely held belief that the Makelele role is doomed to extinction.

The theory goes that there is a new breed of defensive midfielder in the mould of N’Golo Kante. One who doesn’t just sit in front of the midfield, but who scurries around, tidying up behind the more attacking central midfielders, but also getting forward when necessary to help out the attack and recycle possession when attacking.

These players are useful in formations other than those with three-man midfields, it is said. They have the stamina and the pace to get back to stop counter attacks, and they can also help out in attack, and so they are perfect in two-man midfields, too. Especially 3-4-3 formations, where three central defenders give a more solid platform behind the midfield, but who also need some sort of protection from the defensive midfielder. The back three takes some of the load off the Kante-type figure, and last season that must have helped the Chelsea midfield greatly.

But whilst there do seem to be great differences between Kante and his ilk and Makelele a decade ago, there are oddly similar prejudices.

For one thing, Makelele is known as a player with a limited passing range, the sort of player who is only there to make up for the defensive shortcomings of others, but who gives nothing else to the team. And whilst this is truly harsh on the Frenchman at the base of Mourinho’s midfield, it might be quite true for others plonked into the role for other teams who adopted the fashion around the same time.

Makelele, though, wasn’t that terrible a footballer. He played for Real Madrid before Chelsea, though not in the same role. His defensive abilities were noted, of course, and helpful to the team, but he was a box-to-box player who gave attacking energy to his team as well as in defence.

The same thing is said, sometimes, of N’Golo Kante. The one biggest criticism you’ll see of the current Chelsea defensive midfielder is that his passing could improve. His ability at scurrying around the midfield, winning possession and giving it on to a teammate is so strong that it means Kante is often seen as just that and nothing more. And that’s probably unfair, too.

And this probably all comes from the fact that we still see defensive capabilities as reductive. That players can’t have qualities which help in both parts of the game. Full-backs these days are often categorised into attacking ones (who are often criticised for their defensive positioning and tackling) and defensive ones (who aren’t seen as sexy enough or skillful enough). The same is largely true of defensive midfielders, whose defensive qualities often overshadow some helpful other attributes.

When Kante came into the Premier League with Leicester City, Claudio Ranieri wanted to play him on the left of a midfield four, or in an attacking midfield role, not as a defensive anchorman. It was his athleticism, pace and stamina which made him seem so suited for that role. In reality, that was better put to use in the midfield, where he seemed to do the job of two men, taking the pressure off Danny Drinkwater.

Interestingly, it was Ranieri who signed Makelele for Chelsea, and declared he would be the ‘new battery’ in his ‘fantastic watch’. He didn’t describe his new signing in terms of stopping the opposition, or reducing him to defensive abilities. He described Makelele as a player who would bring energy to the team, not just stand in front of the back four and make tackles.

And whilst the same thing may well happen all over again with N’Golo Kante, Idrissa Gueye and others whose primary functions aren’t solely attacking or defending in nature, it does give an insight into why Makelele, despite the fact he is so celebrated as to have an entire position named after him, is underrated by most of football. Despite everything, he’s still a far, far better footballer than most people give him credit for – especially when they think they’re praising him.

As reported by The Daily Mail, Arsenal haven’t given up hope of bringing Manchester City star Raheem Sterling to the Emirates this season.

What’s the story?

Having only made two summer signings, Arsenal fans are looking for more from the club in the upcoming January transfer window, hoping to see a team assembled that can finish in the upper reaches of the English Premier League table once again.

One man Arsene Wenger is looking at is England international Raheem Sterling.

That’s according to The Daily Mail, who report the Gunners will return in January with another bid for the 22-year-old after failing to convince City to let him leave as part of a potential Alexis Sanchez move in the opposite direction.

The paper say the attacker is open to a move to London to get regular game time under Wenger.

Will he improve Arsenal?

Sterling moved to Manchester City in 2015 for a reported £49m but hasn’t quite hit the heights at the Etihad that justifies that kind of price tag. He’s also failed to make more than 30 Premier League starts in each of his seasons at the club, highlighting that he isn’t seen as the main man in the Man City starting eleven.

However, in his two seasons at the club he has scored 20 goals in all competitions and created 14 assists, a contribution that shows he can be an effective presence in the Gunners’ attack. If Alexis Sanchez does end up leaving the club, they’ll need to add serious quality and Sterling can provide that on the flanks.

With more responsibility and faith from his manager, he could well fully realise the potential he’s shown at City and Liverpool. Still just 22 years of age, has plenty of time to do it at a club like Arsenal.

54 games into his Arsenal career and the jury’s still out on Granit Xhaka. The Switzerland international is clearly a talented player; one of his occasional long-range thunderbolts or cross-field passes is enough evidence of that; but he’s not the kind of player Arsenal fans expected when he moved to north London in summer 2016. More debonair than disciplined, more forward-looking than doggedly last-ditch, his suitability to the deepest role in Arsenal’s two-man midfield remains contentious.

Indeed, Xhaka may look to affect games from the pocket between the engine room and the defence when in possession, but he’s not the tough-tackling, attack anticipating play-breaker Arsenal have craved for so long. The 25-year-old is a technical talent first and a surprisingly creative-minded one for the role he occupies, something highlighted best by this season’s returns of 16 shots and 11 created chances from seven Premier League appearances.

Good contributions from a midfielder in theory, but contrasted worryingly by just six tackles and eight interceptions – indeed, Xhaka’s won the ball on the deck less times than he’s shot at goal for Arsenal in the top flight this season.

And yet, we probably shouldn’t be surprised that Arsene Wenger’s latest solution to the most defensive role in his midfield isn’t a particularly defensive one at all. While the rest of the Premier League has undergone an entire era of an unsung hero deployed in the Makelele role and come out the other side, Wenger has consistently fought against spending big on a defensive midfield specialist since the days of Gilberto Silva.

Instead, there are three sections in Arsenal’s defensive midfielder Venn diagram; bargain solutions like Mathieu Flamini and Mohamed Elneny, players thrust into the anchoring role despite it not being their traditional forte, which we’ll come onto imminently, and an overlap combining both. Take Mikel Arteta, for example; a playmaker and occasional wide man for Rangers and Everton signed at a cost of £10million, but almost exclusively the deepest-lying midfielder during his time at the Emirates Stadium. Throughout his three seasons in the first team, the play-breaking hopes of Arsenal’s engine room rested on a La Masia product hardly revered for defensive or physical prowess.

Even Alex Song, Arsenal’s most physically-equipped option for the position in recent years, was a centre-back who found himself pushed into midfield. Despite those natural defensive instincts, though, the powerful Cameroonian was still regularly accused of vacating his duties by venturing too far forward. His best season for Arsenal, directly leading to a move to Barcelona, wasn’t judged on how well he protected the back four, but how many assists he provided in the Premier League – eleven. Even Andrea Pirlo notched up as many just once during his five seasons at the base of Juventus’ iconic diamond.

Song represents another recurring trend in Wenger’s search for a shortcut solution in defensive midfield – using academy products like Francis Coquelin. In fact, since Gilberto Silva’s exit in 2008, excepting Xhaka, Wenger has spent a grand total of just £15million on regular first-team defensive midfield options. That’s less than he agreed in total fees for Calum Chambers, epitomising the contempt Wenger holds out-and-out defensive midfielders in.

Returning to present day, the good news is that Arsenal’s current system doesn’t require a true defensive midfielder. The physicality and ball-winning ability is provided as much from the three centre-backs behind in the 3-4-2-1 system as the two men in the engine room. It’s naturally more suiting to a midfielder like Xhaka, who is probably better-defined as a box-to-box than an anchorman.

On the other hand, a quick glance around the Premier League shows how important defensive midfielders still are. Victor Wanyama makes Tottenham’s strongest starting XI even when they’re using the 3-4-2-1 setup, Manchester United paid £40million for Nemanja Matic this summer and Chelsea often field two, albeit considerably more dynamic, in N’Golo Kante and Tiemoue Bakayoko. Even Pep Guardiola, easily the most offensive-minded manager in the Premier League, has Fernandinho operating as a midfield sweeper behind Kevin De Bruyne and David Silva.

Arsenal’s options, in contrast, are Xhaka, Coquelin and Elneny – two underwhelming players who wouldn’t get into the squads at any of the other top six clubs and a £30million signing who has consistently shown he lacks the positional discipline to be considered a genuine holding midfielder. And for all the discussion over systems and extra defenders, it’s clear Arsenal still need that kind of player – their most common cause of conceding goals remains the counter-attack, which is exactly what defensive midfielders are on the pitch to stop.

In fairness, it’s hard to criticise Arsenal defensively right now. They’ve kept four straight clean sheets in the Premier League, the most notable against a direct divisional rival in Chelsea who boast an abundance of attacking quality. But as we’ve already seen this term in the 4-0 demolition at Anfield when Xhaka’s lack of positional awareness was a contributing factor, the absence of a top-class, genuine defensive midfielder will cost the Gunners dearly throughout 2017/18.

Former Manchester United assistant manager Mike Phelan has claimed that Jose Mourinho has brought the fear factor back to the club.

United struggled in the immediate aftermath of Sir Alex Ferguson’s departure, with David Moyes and Louis van Gaal both losing their positions at the club.

Mourinho led the Red Devils to three trophies in his first season in charge, however, and a fine start to the 2017-18 campaign has seen the 20-time English champions win six of their first seven Premier League matches.

United will travel to Liverpool this weekend knowing that three points would hand them their best ever start to a Premier League campaign.

Phelan, who spent 14 years at United as part of their coaching staff, has claimed that Mourinho has made the Red Devils a team to be feared once again.

Phelan told Sky Sports:

“I think they are getting that (fear) back slowly because now at Old Trafford there is an atmosphere, there is an expectation and the players are reacting really well to it.

“You have to build that reputation that fear and I think it was lost a little bit in the time Sir Alex had left.

“In the off-season, he’s gone about his business really, really well. I think he’s come back fresh and he’s added to the squad and I think they are looking at a squad now that can really go the distance.”

In addition to making an unbeaten start to the 2017-18 Premier League campaign, United have also won both of their Champions League group matches this season.

Mourinho’s side will continue their European campaign with a trip to Benfica on Wednesday night.

Safe to say, West Ham have endured a rather rocky start to the season.

Slaven Bilic’s side have recovered somewhat after losing all three of their opening Premier League fixtures and conceding ten goals, but they’re still just two points away from the relegation zone with just seven claimed from seven games.

The Irons face a difficult trip to Burnley this weekend; in contrast, Sean Dyche’s side have unexpectedly risen to sixth place in the table and lost just once so far this season – taking four points from their three fixtures at Turf Moor.

Since the start of last season, injuries have been a constant issue for the Hammers with a cohort of talent usually stuck on the sidelines. But co-chairman David Gold has revealed on Twitter that Bilic boasts a relatively clean bill of health going into Saturday’s game, the only absences being Domingos Quina and James Collins.

While that’s obviously a positive, some West Ham fans believe that means there can be no excuses if the Irons don’t put in a strong performance this weekend. Here’s a look at how West Ham fans reacted to the update on Twitter…

Whenever a football manager loses his job, attention turns to who will replace him.

Everton announced via their Twitter page on Monday afternoon that Ronald Koeman has left the club.

The news is not hugely shocking given that the team had picked up just two wins in nine Premier League games.

Majority shareholder Farhad Moshiri provided Koeman with funds in the summer and the club ended up spending more than £100m on new signings, but that level of ambition has not been matched on the pitch.

Now that the Dutchman, who took over at Goodison Park just last year, has vacated the position, speculation is rife over who will be his successor.

One man that has sprung to the minds of Everton fans – for good or bad – is David Moyes.

The Scotsman spent 11 years at the helm of the Merseyside outfit, but since leaving in 2013, the 54-year-old has had poor spells elsewhere.

Moyes failed at Manchester United when he took over from Sir Alex Ferguson, lasting just 11 months at Old Trafford.

The former defender had hoped for better at Real Sociedad and Sunderland, but failed to stay longer than a year at either.

Currently, Moyes is out of work, which has led some fans to suggest that he could become a candidate for Everton.

Judging by the reaction on Twitter, handfuls of the Toffees following would like the Scotsman to return, while others loathe the idea.

According to the Daily Mail, Leeds United have made a bid for Polish teenager Kamil Jozwiak. However, it is believed that the offer has been rejected by the youngster’s current club, Lech Poznan.

19-year-old Jozwiak has been one of the most promising young players in Poland for a number of months now and has recently broken into the first team set-up at Poznan.

The tricky winger is out of contract with his Polish club at the end of the current season and Leeds have reportedly offered £180,000 to secure his services in January.

However, Lech Poznan’s president has rebuffed the offer and would rather his star youngster see out his contract with the Ekstraklasa club.

With Leeds struggling with form of late, fans were hoping for some serious investment in January to solidifiy a promotion push. However, they are clearly dissapointed in the lack of ambition that a transfer of this calibre shows and made their feelings clear on Twitter…