Manchester United: Some more from Marc Skinner on their FA Cup final this weekend. The manager has said it is an “equal playing field” and that his side will not underestimate their task at Wembley.

The Tottenham manager, Robert Vilahamn, said United were favourites against the first-time finalists but Skinner said: “Tottenham deserve to be in the final not having the underdog status – if you get to a final, you deserve to be in a final.

“You’d be a fool to go in super, super confident that you’re going to walk this final, because Tottenham are a very, very good team. On their day can beat anyone in this league.”

Skinner was also asked about Nikita Parris after reports that the forward, whose current deal runs to the summer, turned down a move to the NWSL’s North Carolina Courage.

“I’ve read the reports. What I can promise you is Nikita has always been and always will remain a focused, fantastic player.

“There are lots of speculative information everywhere you look if you want to read them. For me, the way she supports and plays for this team, you can tell she is 100% committed to what’s going on at Manchester United. Having players like Nikita is hugely important for our success going forward.”

Manchester United: Ten Hag was asked if he was worried about his future at the club given Louis van Gaal was sacked after winning the FA Cup final.

“No, I think they have common sense …

“[The board] have seen 32 different back lines, when you lose eight centre-backs, when we see we don’t have a left-back, they know that will have a negative impact.

“We are still fighting, and it’s a huge final. We are still there. It can be a highlight of the season, but we know why we are under-performing. I am a realistic person, I see this, I analyse, and no team will perform with these injuries.”

Fifa defends Club World Cup scheduling

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Manchester United: Erik Ten Hag confirms that Bruno Fernandes, Scott McTominay and Marcus Rashford have all trained before Sunday’s game after their respective spells on the sidelines. Lisandro Martínez has also returned to training but Ten Hag said while the centre-back asked to play this weekend, he won’t be risked just yet.

Mason Mount will not be fit for Arsenal as he has suffered another injury. Ten Hag calls the situation “very unlucky”.

Thanks Barry and hello all! Before we get to Ten Hag, Here is more from Klopp, who believes Liverpool are firmly out of the Premier League race.

Manchester United: With Erik Ten Hag about to undergo his weekly inquisition at the hands of the press, I’ll hand you over to Yara El-Shaboury to keep you posted on what could be another excruciating exercise in soul-searching for the Dutchman ahead of his team’s match against Arsenal on Sunday.

Burnley: Anything less than a win away at Tottenham tomorrow afternoon will result in Burnley’s relegation and even victory will not be enough to keep their survival hopes alive if Nottingham Forest beat Chelsea later in the day. But despite having spent all season in the bottom three of the table, Vincent Kompany says he has genuinely enjoyed his first taste of life as a Premier League manager.

“You really can [enjoy it],” he said. “You enjoy it more when you’ve won at the end of the week but I didn’t sign up as a manager [thinking] I can only have success and if I don’t have success the job is rubbish. I signed up for the full package. I knew this was a part of it and you learn as you go through it and I’ve learned from this team, this experience with this club.

“Even in the most difficult times I love the job, I love working with these players, I love trying to help the club reach its objectives. That’s something that really lives and it doesn’t matter if you’ve lost one game or 15 games, that’s stayed. But I want to win of course.”

Klopp vows to be on his best behaviour

Pochettino: ‘I’m not saying I’m not happy’

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Crystal Palace: Ending the season on a high after four wins in their past five games under their Austrian manager Oliver Glasner, Crystal Palace have announced that Will Hughes, Jeffrey Schlupp and Joel Ward have all extended their contracts with the club. The trio – who have made a combined 672 Palace appearances between them (Hughes 82, Schlupp 230 and Ward 360) – have all extended their deals with the club until the summer of 2025.

“As well as playing a pivotal role on the pitch, Will, Jeff and Joel are natural leaders in the dressing room who embody the Crystal Palace DNA and who help set a culture of the highest standards at the training ground,” said the club CEO Steve Parish. “We are delighted that they will be with us next season to help further our exciting early progress under Oliver Glasner.”

Palace are also in discussions with Nathaniel Clyne and Remi Matthews about extending their stays at the club but have revealed that James Tomkins and Jairo Riedewald will leave when their contracts expire at the end of the season.

Women’s FA Cup final: Manchester United, the heavy favourites, are hoping to win the trophy for the first time on Sunday afternoon and on a personal level, their manager Marc Skinner is hoping it will be a case of third time lucky after two defeats in the final as manager of Birmingham City and in his current role.

“Naturally the experience is something nobody wants to, on a national stage, feel,” he said of his previous final experiences. “It’s part of competitive sport. You grow up and mature but it never gets easier. It is part and parcel of the game though so you learn to deal with the pressures of it.

“There was an interview with Gary Neville and Eddie Howe and they talk about how managers have to be bullet-proof but we’re also human. I think it would be unnatural for me not to feel, and to not be devastated by a loss. But I’ve always known that losses make you stronger and the strength you need to succeed on the long-run is understanding how to deal with failure.

“That first final [with Birmingham City] I never watched back because it hurt at that moment. You learn to deal with your emotions when you feel that. And that’s important because I’m human.”

Aston Villa: Following Aston Villa’s exit from the Europa Conference League last night, their Scottish midfielder reflected on his side’s emphatic defeat at the hands of Olympiakos over two legs of the semi-final. Injuries have hit the Villa squad hard over a long season and Youri Tielemans, Morgan Rogers, Alex Moreno, Jacob Ramsey, Nicolo Zaniolo, Emiliano Buendia, Tyrone Mings and Boubacar Kamara were all unavailable for last night’s game.

“It possibly has [caught up with us],” he said after the game. “The manager drills into us that is a no-excuse environment but listen, you want everyone available, you want your best players there. When you are in the trenches, [you want] someone you can turn to in order to change the game or do something different.

“We went into this competition as favourites and we handled that throughout the competition. I think it has been a big learning curve for us. It’s not been a smooth journey, we got to the semi-final and were down to the bare bones a wee bit. However, those of us that were out there across the two legs lost to the better team and the scoreline shows that.”

Howe hopeful of keeping Guimaraes and Isak

Liverpool: Jurgen Klopp takes his troops to Villa Park on Monday night and has been bigging up the efforts of his opposite number the day after Aston Villa were knocked out of the Europa Conference League, while simultaneously taking what sounded suspiciously like a little pop at Arsenal. Or Paris Saint-Germain. Or perhaps Spartak Moscow.

“Incredible job,” he said. “Unai Emery is one of the best we have in the business, 100 percent. Wherever he is, success. Sometimes the clubs were not ready to wait for it, maybe. If you look back maybe these clubs would have made different decisions.

“I’ve known him for so long. I think when I met him for the first time he was managing in Moscow, if I’m right. That’s really long ago. He always had a clear idea. It was really tricky for us when we faced him with Villarreal. Always organised the team extremely well.

“The job he is doing is absolutely exceptional and we know how important it is for a club to qualify for the Champions League and how difficult it is for a club to qualify for the Champions League. He probably, very likely, will do that – it’s absolutely exceptional.”

Marinakis has ‘big dreams’ for Nottingham Forest

Chelsea: Reece James has not played for Chelsea since mid-December but is back in full training five months after undergoing surgery for a serious hamstring injury. The defender could feature in Chelsea’s final three games of the season and may be harbouring hopes of making it into Gareth Southgate’s squad for the Euros despite having played just eight times in the Premier League this season.

“The most important thing is Reece is going to be there for us,” said Mauricio POchettino ahead of Chelsea’s trip to Nottingham Forest tomorrow. “Then because we have an amazing relationship and of course he is an amazing player. It is not easy when you come back from a long-term injury. The most important thing is he can be available and be part of the squad. It is important to finish [the season] with good feelings.”

Despite a nightmarish season, Chelsea are hoping to end their campaign on a high and go into tomorrow’s game on the back of successive wins over Tottenham and West Ham. The irony of having James and several other players returning to full fitness just as the season concludes has not been lost on Pochettino.

“I’m disappointed, as I think to increase the level and improve everyday we need to asses why we need to do better and improve. I think it’s a good challenge for next season. We need to increase the availability of the players. This is the last week of the season and nearly all the players will be fit and available – it’s a good time. It’s good to see the future and be more optimistic.”

Liverpool: With his team five points off the pace with just two games to go and entirely reliant on both Arsenal and Manchester City doing a Devon Loch on the run-in too keep their title hopes alive, Jurgen Klopp is asked if he thinks Liverpool are definitely out of the race to win the Premier League.

“It’s not now number one every morning on the priority list to tell the boys ‘By the way we still have a chance’,” he says. “We can see the table, we can all read the situation. Do we expect [Manchester City] to lose three games? City have to lose three games – difficult to see that. But you never know. Arsenal have to lose two games – difficult. Both play before us, if they both lose let’s talk about it. We have the chance to go above 80 points again. Like everything in life you should never take things like this for granted.”

Newcastle United: Eddie Howe’s side are very much in the hunt for a place in Europe next season and given Tottenham’s recent run of awful results, may well feel a top five finish is within their grasp. They host Brighton tomorrow and Eddie Howe has been speaking ahead of the game.

“They’re a good team,” he said of tomorrow’s visitors to St James’ Park. “Roberto [de Zerbi] has done a great job, also Graham [Potter] before him. Roberto has his way of working, it’s detailed and thorough. They stick to their method and they’ve become very strong at it. We didn’t get it quite right at the Amex. We hope for a better delivery tomorrow.”

Kieran Trippier has been out for over two months with injury but could feature tomorrow, but the game against Brighton has come too soon for Joelinton and Miguel Almiron, who have also spent time on the sidelines but are back in full training.

“Kieran is getting closer, he has trained this week,” said Howe. “It was the first time with the group. He trained well, it has been a good week for him. I will make a decision today whether he will be involved tomorrow. [Joelinton and Almiron] have trained well. We have been able to get some good work into their bodies. They are still building their robustness if you like. You need the load behind you to stay fit. They are doing well.”

Not for the first time in recent weeks, Bayer Leverkusen left it exceptionally late to keep their astonishing unbeaten run of this season going. Xabi Alonso’s newly crowned Bundesliga champions have not lost a single game in any competition since putting eight without reply past FC Teutonia 05 Ottensen in the German Cup in August, but were on the verge of defeat in their Europa League semi-final second leg against Roma last night. Luckily for them, Josip Stanisic popped up with an with an equaliser in the seventh minute of added time to make it 2-2 on the night and 4-2 to the German side on aggregate.

Leverkusen have now played 49 games without losing and have broken a record previously held by Benfica, who went unbeaten between December 1963 and February 1965. Alonso’s side have four games left this season – two in the Bundesliga, the Europa League final against Atalanta and the German DFB Cup final against second tier side Kaiserslautern on 25 May.

Women’s FA Cup final: Manchester United manager Marc Skinner has been speaking ahead of Sunday’s decider against Tottenham Hotspur and took time to reflect on last year’s final, in which his side were beaten by Chelsea.

“Experience in a final is good,” he said. “It’s new when you haven’t done it before. I know Tottenham have players that have experienced finals so they won’t be overawed but it can be something that absorbed you and it can affect the way you want to play.

“We have to make sure that we play the way we want to because we’ve been there and done it. It has to be a business for us. We need to make it business-like but enjoy the moment. We’ve got to Wembley. We’re playing against a team that will be buoyed by that. You get an energy when it’s your first final. But I think there are ways that you can counter-act that and we have to try to do that.

“This is an equal playing field going into it but we cannot and we will not underestimate them. Whatever tag people add to it, we know the job we have got to do.”

Everton: While the club’s future ownership remains shrouded in uncertainty Sean Dyche’s side will play their final home game of the season tomorrow, safe in the knowledge that they will be playing top flight football next season. Having survived no end of tribulations in the current campaign, the highlight of which was a win over Liverpool that ended the title hopes of their Merseyside rivals, the club’s players are likely to get a warm reception before, during and particularly after their game against Sheffield United, when they will do a lap of appreciation in front of the Goodison Park faithful.

“We want to reward all of us really: the players, the staff and the fans for what ends up being a positive season, after some very tricky times,” said Sean Dyche. “We want to give a performance; we want to win. You just have to focus on the players and remind them of the pride and consistency we have in our values as a group to go and perform.

“Afterwards, it’ll be the first time in a number of years we can have a walk around in a fashion that is rewarding for the players and the fans. I think that’s a nice sign-off. It’s been a really strange season for many reasons, yet we end up with a positive feel to it. Certainly I do but I think the players do and I think the fans do.”

Aston Villa: Speaking after his side’s defeat in Athens last night, Unai EMery outlined his short and longterm plans for his team, who will book their place in next season’s Champions League if they beat Liverpool on Monday night.

“Firstly get back to Birmingham,” he said. “Then rest and focus on the match against Liverpool. We are motivated and excited for it. We are disappointed but only one team can win, so for us to continue with the frustration doesn’t make sense.

“And we have to try and finish the season doing an amazing season, particularly if we manage to achieve the last objective. Even without [Champions League] football we are in Europe in the Europa League.

“We will go over what we have done in the last two legs against Olympiakos and try to learn and take positives from it, take the information from it. Take the experience. Recover, reset and move on.”

Europa Conference League: Ayoub El Kaabi scored his fourth and fifth goals of the tie to earn Olympiakos a 6-2 aggregate win and end Aston Villa’s hopes of winning European silverware since 1982. Ben Fisher reports from the Karaiskakis Stadium in Athens …

Friday football blog