Five factors driving a transfer market frenzy this summer

Over the three days around the Champions League final in Munich, in hotels like the £900-a-night Rosewood, a number of intense meetings were taking place. Security was tight, agents and club representatives were trying to find secluded corners. They were so close to the transfer window that a certain discretion was needed. At least one big deal was struck.

For some in football, the regular season’s games have stopped so the real business begins. A strand of modern fans might feel the same.

They are likely to be very engaged over the next few months, because there is going to be a lot of activity.

This summer window is already unique in how we have an extra mini-window. The imposition of Fifa president Gianni Infantino’s expanded Club World Cup has necessitated a new market spell up until the tournament, which begins on 14 June. While it has already seen Trent Alexander-Arnold go to Real Madrid in a £10m move that is no longer a Bosman, that is expected to be about the height of it. Cristiano Ronaldo is now staying at Al-Nassr, even if many in the game still openly wonder whether a way will be found to get him in Fifa’s new showpiece tournament before it starts.

That seems far-fetched right now. As it is, only minor deals are expected. This is because clubs are still more concerned about getting best value for targets rather than getting them in now. The Club World Cup isn’t that important to them, despite how Infantino speaks about it.

A far greater consideration for value is what the new PSR (profit and sustainability rules) world has done, and that it might be affected by this tournament. Those clubs who go the distance at the Club World Cup are going to win close to $100m (£74m). That might create market waves in the final weeks of the window.

Another potential driving force of the window could be Saudi Pro League transfer escalation, especially since this is the first summer after the country was named host of the 2034 World Cup. They want to start making even more statement signings.

The interest in Bruno Fernandes is a start, one of a number of European stars who could move clubs this summer, along with teammate Marcus Rashford. The big one is currently Florian Wirtz, who is deciding between Liverpool and Bayern Munich, with Real Madrid looking on. It’s where an extra £80m from the Club World Cup could be so influential.

Liverpool are able to consider offering sums of well over £100m because they barely spent last year, meaning they have “a lot of PSR headroom”.

That is going to be one of the phrases of the summer.

Some executives expect an extremely busy window due to “PSR churn”. The view is that the rules force constant rotation and recycling in order to stay within the limits, due to the nature of contracts and amortisation. One consequence is that clubs feel forced into selling players they don’t want to sell, or make transfers that aren’t fully for football reasons. As such, clubs will end up with more mismatched squads.

Even those clubs who are highly supportive of the concept of PSR, or at least significant financial restraint, do not feel the regulations are fit for purpose in that sense.

A classic example might be Morgan Rogers. Aston Villa absolutely wouldn’t want to sell such a burgeoning star, but their high wage bill may force a rethink without Champions League football.

On the other side, Mikel Arteta wants to keep Jakub Kiwior given how he proved himself such a useful squad player towards the end of the season. If he is trying to complete his first XI to win a title, though, that is exactly the kind of player that might have to make way in order to boost spending power.

“PSR churn” is understood to have been one of the reasons that Andrea Berta was appointed sporting director at Arsenal, due to his ample experience of the market. He has worked for Atletico Madrid through windows of wildly different nature, be they years when they had money, years when they didn’t, or years when they had to get creative. That sort of skill has never been needed more.

Other executives are known to relish this challenge. One relatively new owner to the Premier League is said to have become “addicted” to player trading, and loves the back and forth of it.

Arsenal are among a few major clubs that are expected to sign at least four players, along with Liverpool, Manchester City and Manchester United. Newcastle United are more emboldened after qualifying for the Champions League. With Chelsea, you can take high activity as a given.

They are actively trying to get Rogers done now, and you only have to look at how they are swooping for Ipswich Town’s Liam Delap. He had been widely expected to go to Manchester United, who may now need to look elsewhere for a striker. The search for No 9s is another key theme this summer.

There might be an element of musical chairs. While the game does now have more strikers than a few years ago, they are still at a premium. All of Chelsea, Arsenal and United see the position as their main priority. Liverpool may look, too, but they are currently seeking to complete business in other areas first.

The names standing out in all analyses are Delap, Leipzig’s Benjamin Sesko, Sporting’s Viktor Gyokeres and Eintracht Frankfurt’s Hugo Ekitike. Who gets their first choice may dictate the next moves, and all the way down. United, for example, are understood to have gone cooler on Gyokeres since January. They may now have to go back in strong given Delap’s decision, but could face competition from Arsenal… if they don’t press ahead with Sesko.

Leipzig and Sporting are two of those clubs whose model is built on selling high, and it is something that may have even further influence on the Premier League’s market. Bournemouth willingly want to sell some of their season’s stars, including Antoine Semenyo. That’s now the model, as we’ve seen with Dean Huijsen going to Real Madrid.

Crystal Palace’s Europa League qualification does change things there. They always drive a hard bargain but have developed in a similar way. There is naturally interest in a series of their players, through Marc Guehi, Adam Wharton, Daniel Munoz, Jean-Philippe Mateta and – above all – Eberechi Eze.

A European run will see a few be more willing to give it another season. Eze may not quite have that luxury, since a few clubs have previously demurred to his age. At 26, it’s now or never. Eze seizing the moment in the FA Cup is now making Tottenham Hotspur really consider a move.

Whether they have competition may depend on a number of other factors. This may be another busy summer – but the number of variables is unprecedented.

Man sentenced after first date ended with ‘catastrophic’ police chase

A personal trainer who caused a “catastrophic collision” when he failed to stop for police while on a first date has been sentenced to 14 months’ detention.

Mazyar Azarbonyad, 20, pleaded guilty to dangerous driving over the crash on the A1 west of Newcastle upon Tyne in the early hours of 9 April, which wrecked five police cars and left seven officers needing hospital treatment.

Sentencing him at Newcastle Crown Court on Monday, Judge Tim Gittins said: “It is nothing short of a miracle that no one was more seriously injured or that there were not multiple fatalities.”

One officer suffered soft tissue damage to her knee and nerve damage to her back, requiring her to remain in hospital for three days, and another needed stitches for a cut to his forehead, the court heard.

“It led to regional traffic chaos, misery for many travellers, not to mention the substantial loss of work and study hours for those that were caught up in the aftermath of what you caused,” Judge Gittins said.

The court heard that Azarbonyad, who arrived in the UK after fleeing his home country, Iran, when he was 14, was driving passenger Courtney Redfern home in a BMW X5 when he was seen by a police officer driving over the speed limit and with defective rear lights.

The court heard he had bought the vehicle on finance despite having a provisional driving licence, no insurance, and later admitting to officers he had paid for only three driving lessons previously.

The judge said: “You should have been nowhere near the driving seat of any vehicle that night, let alone one such as a BMW X5, a large and powerful SUV.”

The defendant, who had been stopped for driving without a licence and with no insurance in 2023, initially pulled over for police, but when an officer approached his car on foot, he said “Nah” and made off at speed, according to his passenger.

Penny Hall, defending, said Azarbonyad claimed Ms Redfern told him she had drugs on her and he “panicked”.

Judge Gittins said: “Whether or not you were made aware of the small amount of cannabis in her possession, I am satisfied you made a deliberate decision to make off substantially because of your unlawful driving position.”

Azarbonyad was spotted by police in the area again about 30 minutes later and failed to stop for a second time, nearly losing control on a bend and hitting a kerb as he accelerated onto the A1, where the judge said his speed reached a “hair-raising level” of over 120 mph.

Jolyon Perks, prosecuting, said his passenger told him several times to stop.

He said: “In her opinion, she thought he could have killed someone.”

When police vehicles moved in to contain the BMW, Azarbonyad braked harshly in the middle of the four-lane carriageway, going from 119mph to zero in an emergency stop and causing a multiple-vehicle pile-up, the court heard.

Mr Perks said: “A number of these officers were trapped in vehicles. There were liquids involved, thankfully not petrol. A number of officers were rendered unconscious. It was clearly a very traumatic incident.”

When Azarbonyad was interviewed he described his driving as “shit”, but did not accept he braked harshly and said the police chasing him were travelling too fast, Mr Perks told the court.

In the days that followed his release on bail, he continued to drive to the gym where he worked, before he was arrested at a petrol station.

Ms Hall told the court he had lost his job after police turned up there, but had been offered a job in a hairdresser’s and hoped to return to the fitness industry.

She said the defendant, of Sylvia Terrace, Stanley, County Durham, travelled to the UK from Iran with his uncle, but lost him during the journey and had never seen him again.

After time in immigration centres and foster placements, he was granted leave to remain and refugee status, the court heard.

Ms Hall told the court: “Quite frankly, he is terrified at the prospect of going to prison.”

Judge Gittins said the defendant would be disqualified from driving for three years and seven months.

No separate penalty was given for two offences of failing to stop for police and charges of driving without a licence or insurance on multiple dates in April, which Azarbonyad also pleaded guilty to.

Superintendent Billy Mulligan, of Northumbria Police, said four of the seven officers who were injured in the crash remained off work.

He said: “It is sheer luck that Mazyar Azarbonyad did not kill anyone that day with his reckless actions.”

DOGE took over the US Institute of Peace. Now, the inside looks like a zombie movie

In March, operatives with DOGE, erratic billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, seized control of the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), a congressionally funded and quasi-governmental – but fully independent – nonprofit organization, following a dramatic standoff with staffers.

As the DOGE team forced their way into the institute’s gleaming Moshe Safdie-designed concrete-and-glass headquarters at the northwest corner of the National Mall, local police and FBI agents ejected everyone from the building, including institute president George Moose, a career diplomat who served for 30-plus years under Republican and Democratic administrations alike.

The institute was established in 1984 by Republican president Ronald Reagan with a stated mission to advance international stability and promote global conflict resolution. Still, less than a month into Donald Trump’s latest term as president, he issued an executive order taking aim at USIP as “unnecessary.”

DOGE then swiftly fired USIP’s workforce and replaced its board with MAGA loyalists, after which the purported cost-cutting agency locked the doors to $500 million structure and essentially walked away – attracting rats and roaches and letting conditions erode to such a point that the facility will now likely require hundreds of thousands of dollars in repairs, according to USIP chief of security Colin O’Brien.

O’Brien, along with a contract engineer, was the first to thoroughly inspect the institute’s building last month after a federal judge declared DOGE’s takeover illegal, ruling its actions as “null and void.”

O’Brien, a U.S. Army veteran who then worked in law enforcement before joining USIP in August 2023, said what he found was, in a word, “offensive.” The offices that were abandoned for two months looked like a scene from a zombie apocalypse movie, frozen in time, with everything left exactly as it was when the house was cleaned out, according to O’Brien.

And this, he said, was precisely the problem.

“Anyone who manages large commercial buildings understands that maintenance is not something you can just stop doing for two months,” O’Brien told The Independent. “After DOGE took over, they canceled a lot of contracts and critical functions stopped happening.”

Rodents became a problem because DOGE employees neglected to clear out any of the food left on the premises after taking over, O’Brien explained. USIP had a cafe managed by a contractor, with food being stored onsite, he said. Additionally, O’Brien said, USIP personnel had food in refrigerators throughout the building, along with snack items they didn’t have a chance to remove from desks and cabinets before DOGE summarily booted them from the property.

Over the next eight weeks, DOGE wouldn’t let any USIP staff in the building, and didn’t do anything to prevent the moldering food from spoiling further, which quickly attracted vermin.

Roaches were also attracted to the abandoned perishables throughout the space, entering through wastewater and drainage pipes that had dried up from lack of use, O’Brien said.

“There were several water leaks, as well, that contributed to their ability to come into the building,” he added.

Beyond the various infestations, O’Brien recalled that, among other things, ceiling tiles were mysteriously missing throughout the building, water damage was rampant, vehicle barriers had become non-operational, and weeds were growing in the cooling tower on the roof – a potential vector for Legionnaires’ disease. Since the location was left without adequate security, graffiti also appeared on an exterior wall.

“These things can turn into major, $100,000-plus repairs for lack of maintenance,” O’Brien said. “Now we’re in a rush to play catchup.”

However, according to O’Brien, the issues “went beyond maintenance.”

“They ripped the main logo off the wall when you come into the lobby, and while we have most of the parts back, would you be surprised that we’re still missing four letters: U, S, I, and P?” O’Brien said. “That’s not coincidental.”

More than a dozen USIP flags were also removed from their flagpoles and remain unaccounted for, which O’Brien believes were taken, along with the USIP logo remnants, as “war trophies.”

He called the situation “uncharted,” and struggles to accurately put into words the mix of emotions he felt upon walking back into the USIP building.

“The closest thing you can compare this to is McCarthyism, and even that pales in comparison to the total destruction that is occurring right now,” O’Brien said.

O’Brien’s colleagues at USIP are “the most incredible group of people, who care about making the world better,” oftentimes at the expense of their own health and personal safety, he continued. While the current administration claims to see USIP’s programs as expendable, the institute in fact grew during Trump’s first turn in office from 2016 to 2020.

To O’Brien, the disconnect is massive.

“[Trump] gets sworn in on January 20, and in his inauguration speech, he said, ‘I’m a peacemaker,’” O’Brien said. “USIP is the only publicly-funded private institution that is dedicated to peace in the developed world. We are unique, with a 40-year legacy of trying to do the right thing and make this world just a little bit better.”

Regardless of political affiliation, the men and women at USIP are still prepared to cooperate with the Trump administration however necessary “in order to leave the world a little bit better than we found it,” according to O’Brien.

“It’s not that we’re against the administration, or against Trump,” he said. “It’s that we’re ready to do this work with whomever.”

On May 19, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ruled that the DOGE seizure of USIP had been unlawful, and ordered Moose and his staff reinstated. In handing down her opinion, Howell said Trump’s “efforts here to take over an organization… represented a gross usurpation of power and a way of conducting government affairs that unnecessarily traumatized the committed leadership and employees of USIP, who deserved better.”

As USIP once again assumes control of its building, Musk left DOGE as his 130-day tenure as a “special government employee” comes to an end. The hastily formed agency managed only a fraction of its promised spending reductions, while crippling a raft of vital government programs and reportedly leading Trump to ask, “Was it all bulls**t?”

The 80-year-old Moose now has a daunting task in reconstituting and relaunching USIP, according to O’Brien, who insisted he “would take a bullet” for his boss “without hesitation.”

“He is that kind of person, a wonderful man, great leader, and something to live up to,” O’Brien said. “Ride or die, I’m standing next to him.”

DOGE officials did not respond to requests for comment.

House prices are dropping across London – but people are still having to leave to buy

Property prices in the UK are on the rise once more – but that’s not the case in all areas of London, with some boroughs showing an annual decrease.

Despite this, many Londoners are still struggling to get on the property ladder in the capital, forcing them to leave the city to buy elsewhere, or remain part of the forever-renters community.

Nationwide data on people who had moved house in the last five years also showed a marginally higher rate of people leaving cities for small towns or rural areas, compared to those coming into cities.

Toby Leek, NAEA Propertymark president, told The Independent: “London remains a highly attractive and aspirational place for many people to move to, and though house price growth is slowing, many aspiring homeowners are struggling to step onto the region’s housing market due to a myriad of factors.

“These include the growing disparity in house prices and wage growth, with the average home across the Greater London area costing around £680,000 and the average wage sitting at around £48,000, meaning buying a home costs over 14 times the average income.

“Also contributing to this struggle that many buyers are facing is the increased stamp duty thresholds from April this year, a shortage of supply triggered by slow rates of development, and higher interest rates than those traditionally used to, making mortgaging a property more difficult.”

Land registry data showing London borough house prices over the last 12 months reveals that while the city-wide trend might remain on the up, there’s a clear divide between central areas and boroughs on the outskirts.

While house prices in areas like Lewisham, Redbridge and Havering are up between 8 and 9 per cent over the past year, more central boroughs such as Greenwich, Camden and Wandsworth are down between 2.4 and 4.5 per cent.

For Islington it’s more than 8 per cent lower, Kensington and Chelsea is 15 per cent down, and Westminster is a full 20.1 per cent below last year.

Sellers are having to accept average discounts of nearly 10 per cent to the asking price, while Coutts bank said 82 per cent of properties in prime London sold for below the asking price between January and March this year, per the Telegraph.

And that isn’t always limited to those traditionally higher-end locations.

“It’s not just wealthy buyers that are reconsidering their options. Mortgage rates may be easing but with stamp duty costs now higher, wage growth starting to slow and living costs still on the climb, affordability remains a challenge for Londoners whose finances are already constrained by sky-high rents,” Alice Haine, personal finance analyst at Bestinvest, told The Independent.

“Homeowners in the capital typically see a larger proportion of their income swallowed up by mortgage payments than their counterparts elsewhere in the country. Plus, with most personal tax thresholds on hold, which results in people paying higher rates of tax as their income increases, it can make sense for people to relocate to cheaper parts of the UK to make life more affordable.

“The pandemic has radically shifted workers’ perception of what a healthy work-life balance is. Rather than commuting across a city every day, people can now head into the office once a week or even once a month. It therefore makes more sense for some to live in a larger property in a quieter, cheaper part of the country than trying to squeeze a family into a one- or two-bedroom flat.

“It seems having a higher disposable income to cover everyday bills with enough spare money to go on holiday once a year and save for the future may now be more important than proximity to the office.”

Regardless of location, Bank of England data showed that the number of mortgages approved by UK lenders for home purchases dropped again in April – a third consecutive drop of net residential mortgage approvals.

With interest rates now not expected to drop below 4 per cent until the end of this year, if at all, buyers and those looking to remortgage alike may be considering taking the plunge, having been holding off until now due to declining rates in 2025.

Flower once nearly extinct found in wild for first time in a century

Conservationists are celebrating the resurgence of the lady’s-slipper orchid, one of Britain’s rarest wildflowers, with the discovery of the first new plant in the wild in almost a century.

The striking flower, which once teetered on the brink of extinction in the English countryside, may one day be restored across its former range, experts have said.

Driven to near-extinction by Victorian plant hunters and habitat loss, the lady’s-slipper orchid was believed to have disappeared from the UK by the early 20th century.

However, the chance discovery of a single plant in the Yorkshire Dales in 1930 led to round-the-clock protection by volunteers.

This discovery spurred efforts to propagate and reintroduce the orchids to their former habitats.

Two years ago, Yorkshire Wildlife Trust secured a grant from Natural England’s species recovery programme to ramp up the work protecting the habitat, rearing many new orchids and reintroducing plants into a suitable habitat.

In 2024, monitoring uncovered the first “new” lady’s-slipper orchid in nearly 100 years at one of the reintroduction sites, which meant planted-out orchids had managed to produce seeds that had germinated into new plants.

Jono Leadley, managing the project on behalf of Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, said the discovery of the new plant in the wild was a “truly thrilling moment”.

“To see a healthy population of lady’s-slipper orchids back in their native area that are now reproducing themselves gives us real hope for the future,” he said.

“This first sign of success is a result of decades of dedication and commitment shown by many volunteers and the staff of the various organisations involved,” he added.

Efforts to boost the population of lady’s-slipper orchids, whose last-known wild location remained a closely-guarded secret, began in the 1990s, with a plea for help that resulted in a small number of privately-owned, wild-sourced orchids being offered as part of a captive breeding programme.

Plants were reintroduced to locations in the north of England – which were also kept secret to avoid the ongoing threat of theft.

The project since 2023 has been led by Yorkshire Wildlife Trust and supported by partners Natural England, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, the National Trust, Plantlife and the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland (BSBI).

Orchids were propagated by Kew, which has worked for many years on saving the species, using techniques that meant many more seedlings sprouted than in the wild, with young plants then nurtured by a network of volunteer orchid specialists managed by the National Trust.

Suitable wild sites were identified by Plantlife and Yorkshire Wildlife Trusts, with young orchids planted out with expert help from BSBI, who also closely monitored and assessed each site.

Reintroductions were carried out at three new sites in Yorkshire and several hundred new orchids were produced to be planted out in future years.

In June 2024, an orchid which had grown naturally at one of the reintroduction sites was discovered, marking a major success of the programme, conservationists said.

Kevin Walker, of BSBI, said: “The discovery of this naturally regenerating seedling represents a significant turning point for one of our rarest and most threatened plants, and is testament to the dedication of hundreds of volunteers and enthusiasts who have carefully nurtured it back into the wild.

“It provides evidence that this beautiful plant can, with a bit of help from us, re-establish itself across its former range.”

Yorkshire Wildlife Trust said people who wanted to see a lady’s-slipper orchid could do so by visiting Kilnsey Park near Grassington in the Yorkshire Dales in late May and early June.

Will Nigel Farage’s ‘Doge’ project achieve anything useful?

Having impressively seized control of 10 county councils in the recent elections, Reform UK are delivering on their promise to undertake Elon Musk/Doge-style reviews of the operations of the various local authorities under their command. The first to get the treatment is Kent County Council. Some doubt whether such a comic-opera version of the American exercise is really serious, or if it’s just a stunt…

Well, it was an election pledge, and ostensibly it could save some money that would otherwise be wasted, and make some services more efficient. Nothing wrong with that.

It’s fair to say that some are quite successful businesspeople, and some, apparently, are IT experts; but, unlike the US Doge brigade, the British team actually includes the new leader and deputy leader of the council, Linden Kemkaran and Brian Collins.

It is also fair to say that none of the Reform UK Doge team are able to rival the expertise, let alone vast wealth, of Elon Musk (or, perhaps, the skills of the small group that the world’s richest man brought to DC).

Nor does the slightly pretentious letter signed by Kemkaran, Nigel Farage and Reform chair Zia Yusuf possess the gravitas of an executive order signed by the president of the United States of America. It contains a good deal of Trumpian menace, but the fact is that Kemkaran is in no stronger a position than anyone would be in a comparable role in local government. So a lot of the Reform/Doge activity, including the “We mean business” pics, is “performative”, as they say.

The full list is:

We shall see how high-powered they are, and also how easily bored.

Yes, to the extent that any council leader can task their officers with finding efficiency savings, and/or hire consultants to do the same. Plus councils are regularly and independently audited in any case, by law. It’s pretty unnecessary, and American Doge was, arguably, an embarrassing flop.

It’s difficult to believe there won’t be any at all, but then again it all depends on what’s meant by “waste”. Was almost the entire USAID budget consumed by waste, fraud and abuse, or did the vast majority of it save lives and serve US foreign policy? In the smaller context of a local authority area, will a flower bed enlivening the town hall, however economical its maintenance, count as essential or a frippery? What about a mother-and-toddler group? Or the green waste collections? Or, in somewhere like Lincolnshire, flood defences?

These are, in reality, just routine political choices, and the whole panoply of a British Doge is unnecessary for them to be made.

It’s also not too cheesy to suggest that waste, fraud and abuse are simple facts of human life; that they exist, sadly, in private enterprise; and that even Musk and Trump have blown a few dollars here and there rather unwisely.

Most former refuse collectors, ex-leisure-centre staff and retired planners didn’t earn enough for anyone to be that envious of their pension, but in any case, they are protected and their payments are contractual. The Doge team could certainly chop future pension entitlements not yet earned by staff, but that wouldn’t yield much in the way of immediate savings.

They could also freeze or reduce council salaries, and change future pension rules, but with the risk of industrial action and/or not being able to recruit people. The six-figure salaries of senior professionals could also be reduced, but that carries the danger of not being able to find capable replacements, and amateurs are legally only allowed to do so much.

Lots. As anyone with any exposure to local government knows, most of its expenditure is mandated under law – on housing, adult and child social care, and special educational needs. So this is where the major savings could be made.

One way would be for contracts with, say, a care home provider to be renegotiated, with no loss of amenity for the residents in terms of their supervision, timely referrals for medical attention, cleanliness, recreation or standard of meals. Or, more crudely, a Doge-style functionary could just chop the value of the contract in half, without much interest in the horrific consequences for those in the homes, or for the children needing special help with their development.

Like the Militant-run Liverpool City Council in the 1980s, political posturing and playing with people’s jobs and lives could cause real suffering for purely political mischief. In extremis, a local council run by Reform UK that breaches its statutory obligations under the Local Government Act 1972 and other legislation could find itself subject to legal action brought by the secretary of state, Angela Rayner (which they’d no doubt welcome for theatrical purposes).

Misery and mayhem, most likely. Yes, they will surely find some minor extravagance, misrepresent valuable programmes, and hype up whatever money they save, playing down any diminution in the services provided. Very much like the real Musk Doge show, in fact.

If they do save more substantial sums – enough, say, to cut residents’ council tax – then it will probably be at the expense of some highly vulnerable people, and their obligations under the law. The same goes for any attempts to ignore the strictures of the Equality Act 2010, or unlawful action against asylum-seekers, or interference in operational matters in the police force. It could get very messy.