Reece James shines for England as Tuchel has two wins in two | Could Todd Boehly split from Chelsea's co-owners?
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Welcome to Back Pages, bringing you everything you need to know about the biggest sports stories, making the headlines in the morning's newspapers. I'm Dave Fulton and joining me are sports broadcaster Henry Winter and The Times' northern football correspondent Martin Hardy. Welcome to you both.

We're going to start with the back page of the Sun. We're going to start with Henry as well because he's still in the press box at Wembley. James and the Giant Peach, I guess the biggest positive of the night, Henry. Rhys James back in the starting line-up for the first time in two and a half years and that was Beckham-esque.

Well, it was. It was a fantastic free kick and a great headline. That's a really good headline, James, on the giant beach of a free kick. And it was, what was it, 27 yards? It was quite clever with England. And they've got, obviously, a new set-piece coach in Anthony Barry, who's worked with Thomas Tuchel, who really likes working with him. And it's obviously something they've worked on.

But they did have a slightly sort of decoy wall to the right with Rodgers and Rashford in it, which was quite clever and distracted the Latvian goalkeeper. But still to execute a skill like that. I mean, this stadium and its previous reincarnations has seen some great free kicks down the years. Gazza and Lampard, Charlie Adam in a playoff final.

But that was almost up there with those three. It was an absolutely fantastic free kick. The strange thing was, there was no celebration. I think everyone else was going crazy in the ground because it was such a good goal. Thomas Tuchel, who's a fairly demonstrative character, he was sort of jumping up and down. But Rhys James, maybe because of all the time it's taken for him to get back and, as you say, start again, he was just sort of reflecting in the moment. But I was expecting him to go full Todd Delly on us. LAUGHTER

Maybe as well, Martin, because it was Latvia, the 140th or thereabouts in the world. It had taken England a little while to break them down. We were obviously expecting the goals to flow. But, yeah, Rhys James, I mean, lovely moment for him after such a long layoff.

Yeah, well, if you saw his interview after the game, he did say he thought the goalkeeper should have saved it and was going to save it, which perhaps curtailed his wild celebrations. And when he watched it in replay, he said, that's actually a better goal than I realised. And it was a wonderful strike. Did we say it was the first goal from an England defender since 1992? A certain Stuart Pearce bent one in from probably about 30 yards. So it feels like his first start in two and a half years at a time when

Kyle Walker's probably not guaranteed a game anymore. Ewan Trippier has retired. From having this plethora of right-backs, we're still not quite sure where we'll see Trent play in this system with Thomas Tuchel.

There's such a fantastic footballer side of Rhys James, powerful, as we can see, strikes the ball well, good going forward. Maresca has said he sees him as a midfielder, but I'm sure Thomas Tuchel sees him as one of the key cornerstones in this New England team. You just have to keep your fingers crossed for him. Such a powerful player that he's over his run of injuries. This can be the start of a great period for him in his England career.

OK, let's just go to the back of the Guardian. Ebreche Eze does it, easy does it. A Palace star caps cruise for Tuchel's England. I mean, it was a cruise, Henry, in the end, but they took a while to get there. Latvia, understandably, kind of low block and tough to break down. What did you make of that kind of between goals one and two and the overall England performance, particularly following on from the Albania win?

Yeah, low block. They were almost on the North Circular. But it's what we expect from these qualification games. I mean, I've been sat through so many of these here and elsewhere with England. It's what happens. Teams come here, they're defending a low block, and it's up to England to break them down. Drew Bellingham sort of tried it, but he wasn't absolutely at his best today. I thought Morgan Rodgers had a decent game. I thought England tried to stretch them more out wide.

with Jarrah Bowen. I thought Marcus Rashford, you know, he got... I thought he actually did OK, certainly better than the other night, responding to Tuchel's comments about him. So, look, these qualification games are never works of art. It's just about the points and, I think, no injuries, which is the most important thing also. Yeah, Martin, just wondering about the kind of...

the barometer of kind of opposition in a way. I mean, you can only beat what's in front of you, but we can't learn too much about Thomas Tuchel's England. With the opposition, I think, in the group, they're something like 30th, 60th, 140th and 170th in the world. They're not stern tests, these World Cup qualifiers.

No, it's very difficult and they can become difficult watchers, Latvia are 140th in the world. I actually thought tonight wasn't too bad. Since he's come in, Tuchel has made this desire to set a tempo and move away. Perhaps his comments were a bit harsh on Gareth Southgate who led England to finals in competition, something most of us hadn't experienced before.

But the key phrases he said before his first game was he wants the identity, the clarity and the rhythm. And even in that first half, as Henry said, the block was ridiculously low. There was a desire to move the ball quickly out wide. Marcus Rashford clearly is a player with something to prove to having been ditched by Manchester United and England. And, you know, some of it worked, some of it didn't work, but he's trying to go at players with pace. You looked across the team, Lewis Skelly,

moving into the sixth role to give England an extra player in there, allowing Jude Bellingham to push on. We kind of forget Jude Bellingham is only 21 and I think he's becoming the fulcrum of this team. We've had a lot of battles over who's going to be the number 10 or can push into that number 10 role and it seems to be coming for him. He might have been a little bit lucky not to have been sent off in the second half, having already picked up a yellow and it was a rash challenge, but

Thomas Tuchel himself said he just has to not want to do everything for your older viewers.

You may have a little bit of Brian Robson in them and you're just going to have to pull them back a little bit. But there was plus points tonight. The tempo, the drive, they kept going. The subs came on and made an impact of the game. And you can see it's a new start and these are players trying to impress a new manager and the manager is trying to impress the fans. So at the minute, it's probably an easy period for Thomas, but he is trying to set a little bit of tone with his comments and with that drive that he's putting into the team.

Yeah, I want to get to the subs in just a moment and some of those options that he went for off the bench. But the back of the star, two out of two, Kane ensures New Gaffer keeps his perfect record. Just focusing on Harry Kane for a moment, Henry, his 71st goal tonight.

I mean, he's so critical to England, isn't he? But I just wonder what he, other than getting up the stats and stretching his lead at the top of those goal-scoring charts, what we actually find out about Harry Kane. And isn't there an opportunity to kind of give some of the other centre-forwards a bit of a run-out on occasion? Or do you think Tuchel will wait a few games before he does things like that?

Well, I just think he'll carry on playing Harry Kane. I mean, he's going to be a brave man to tell Harry Kane that he's not starting. We know how important Harry Kane is for...

for England. And this record, when he was talking about it the other day, about whether he's completely appreciated, I'm not sure he is when you actually consider what he's doing. It was like his 71st goal in 105 internationals. I mean, I can remember when Wayne Rooney got to it. He finished with 53, didn't he? And he broke Bobby Charlton's record, which had stood for, what, 44, 45 years? And that was considered a momentous occasion.

And Harry Kane is now eight, well, my maths is terrible, but 18 goals further on from Wayne Rooney. It's remarkable the numbers that he is posting. And maybe now that he's sort of beginning to sort of march through his 30s, that he wants to seize every moment and he wants to play every moment. But I think, look, Harry Kane is going to start every game for England at the World Cup and let's hope it's all the way through to the final. So, yes, he wants to try sort of understudies, but actually what's important is

is Kane building or rebuilding the sort of bonds and the relationships and the understanding with those around him, whether that's Jude Bellingham rightly playing in the 10 role, whether that's when Bakayo Saka comes back from injury on the right, Anthony Gordon on the left, you imagine it'd be England's two starters out wide.

And it's about building that understanding. Also, with respect to Dominic Solanke and other players, there is a bit of a gap between England's number one, number nine, Harry Kane, and the understudies. And I think longer term, obviously, you look at Liam De Lappe doing great guns with Ipswich Town and England under-21s. Maybe that's a longer term thing. But at the moment, it's Kane all the way.

Yeah, I get that. But Martin Henry makes the point, the gap between England's number one centre forward and those who are kind of behind him. The only way surely you close that gap is by giving them some minutes. And I was also curious about the decision to bring on 80 minutes when you're 3-0 up, the likes of Jordan Henderson and Kyle Walker, and you've got Morgan Gibbs-White, who you're not going to learn that much about sitting on the bench after the season he's had.

Well, the one thing we know, it's kind of a... There's one target for Thomas Tuchel and that's to win a trophy. He's not here to experiment. I don't think he's here for the DNA. He's here to create a winning team. He said that, "I want to create a winning team where everything functions well."

If you have Drew Bellingham and Saka and Gordon and there is this desire to move the England team up the pitch, I think it becomes less of a problem than you had in the last tournament about whether Harry Kane is not quite as quick as he used to be. He's still significantly higher, better than all the alternatives. His goal right, he's so comfortable at that level and if you are going to win a

If Thomas Tuchel is serious about winning a major trophy, then Harry Kane is going to be the centre forward that does it. I'm sure at some point he will give opportunities to other players, but Thomas Tuchel hasn't got a great deal of time. In 16 months, he'll be gone. Who follows Harry Kane is not his problem. He wants to lead Harry Kane to major success.

and what he will try and do is get the best out of him by creating relationships between him and the forward players that we think can do a lot more than the Medbys have done for the last two years. We're going to focus on Chelsea. The Times says that Chelsea balled in a stadium row up there in the top right-hand corner. Todd Burley has suggested that divisions among Chelsea's owners, Henry, on the future of Stamford Bridge could lead to them splitting. That's from Gary Jacob and Matt Lawton. Just tell us about this.

Well, yeah, I mean, this has been rumbling and running for a while. We know there are divisions or certainly tensions in the boardroom. And when Todd Bowley arrived for the first time, about 30 of us were invited down to Cobham to sort of meet him and talk to him. And one of the most obvious questions put to him is you do realize that rebuilding the stadium is going to be far more complicated.

then rebuilding the squad, which has proven a very expensive and difficult enough operation anyway. There are all sorts of covenants on the pitch, the Chelsea pitch owners. You've got the regulator who's coming in in a month or so. They will obviously have a say if Chelsea are going to move away. All the local residents will be lawyered up.

And they probably don't want sort of three years of sort of chaos going on around them. It's an incredibly complicated deal. I mean, where do they do they move to? You know, whenever you write about Earl's Court, the people on the Earl's Court site who say, well, they're definitely not coming here. There's also an issue if they did try to redevelop Earl's.

uh stanford bridge there is a quirky english bit of london law that you have to keep the sight line from a part of richmond park which has to be able to see uh st paul's in the city and so you can't build above a certain height on stanford bridge because that's where the sight line goes so it's incredibly incredibly complicated

And as you say, if there are tensions anyway, maybe one side is going to have to sell. But this story will run for, I mean, the new Old Trafford will probably be built before Chelsea actually even get a spade in the ground on their new place.

Yeah, I mean, it's an expensive part of London, isn't it? Expensive part of real estate in that southwest corner, Martin. How important is it that Chelsea do, though, develop their stadium? When you look at what's happening elsewhere, we've seen the Emirates, we've seen the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, we've seen Everton, what's happening at Bramley or Dock now. I mean, there's some fantastic stadiums being built. It's important that a club like Chelsea aren't left behind.

That's very true, but Arsenal haven't won the title since they moved. Tottenham, despite making a great deal of money, are having one of their poorest seasons for quite a long time.

there there's this great rush now for everybody to build a brand new stadium and increase revenue streams which may be one of the downsides of psr and the fact that the people are going to who are going to end up funding a lot of uh these increased revenue streams that football clubs are the same people as normal and that's the punter in the stand because new grounds are more expensive the food you get there is more expensive you're expected to give more of your money there

We're a long way away from Manchester United building a new stadium. As Henry said, Chelsea have been going through this discussion for a long time. One of the perhaps the... Sorry, the missing stands of Chelsea is the fact that Stamford Bridge had this huge site many, many years ago and didn't develop it into a capacity beyond 44,000, 40,000, whereas these days everybody seems to want to get to beyond 60,000. The game is going to go more global,

real madrid already 82 000 barcelona are building new standard a new ground um on their former home at the new camp by munich or what 75 000 so you if we are heading towards by the back door this european super league then everybody wants

Bright new stadiums and I'm sure in time Chelsea will possibly get there. Newcastle are at the same time in those discussions and seem to be leaning towards now perhaps moving away from St James' Park. But this whole process takes years and years and years to come to fruition. And as we've seen with the Chelsea one now, it's rumbled on for a long time already.

And, Henry, Martin makes a good point, which is that, you know, Arsenal, since they've moved, haven't had a lot of success. Tottenham haven't had a lot of success since their move. It does suck an awful lot of money out of the football club building a new stadium.

Yeah, but it depends how you define success for some of the owners. It's simply about the money rather than the glory. If you look at Tottenham Hotspur's stadium, I mean, first it's magnificent, it's won an RIBA, Royal Institute of British Architects, I think gold medal for the quality of it. It is a stunning stadium and it's good to watch football in.

and is also used for many events, whether it's concerts and other events. So, you know, it is a money spinner. Ditto with Arsenal. You know, if you're a corporation in London and you want to hold one of your board meetings, Arsenal is a very attractive venue because of its location not far from the city and because of the facilities there. It's not simply about the sort of, you know, the 22 men and women who run around on the pitch.

It's also the money-spinning element. It's one of the reasons why Everton have moved away from their ancestral home at Goodison Park to this magnificent new stadium, because they'll be able to generate more money from it. So absolutely, I take Martin's point about the stadiums, and that was one of the reasons why they did move to the Emirates, is that they felt that they could push on, and the Invincibles was only a couple of years before, and they haven't really, but financially they'll probably be quite happy with the move.

OK, let's move on to talk about the transfer window then, because The Telegraph has a story here by Sam Wallace, the chief football writer of Martin Clubs, in talks to end transfer window before the season. I can see why this will appeal, but given the congested calendar in the summer, that's going to squeeze business, isn't it? And what do you make of it?

I think it would be a good thing to get the transfer business done before the season starts. However, you have to therefore rely on every other major league coming on board with that, so you're not going to lose players and have a weakened squad and not be able to do anything about it. I think in Sam's story he says this vote requires a super majority of 14 to pass, so we'll see. It seems like it's one that may have been put forward, I think, by the sporting directors rather than the clubs themselves.

There is still this concern about the Saudi pro league coming in and throwing big money around, but they were down to about 119 million in transfers in January. And that excessive spending that they kind of came on board with a year or two ago seems to have cooled a great deal.

It feels like there is a little bit of objection to this inside the Premier League. I personally think it would be a good idea. We could then sit down and say, "Well, we think such and such is going to have a good season because of this, that and the other," rather than two weeks into the season clubs going, "We've made a complete mess of our defence. We need to go and buy three new defenders." And everything starts again and you can have some crazy spending just when the season has already started. Yeah, Henry, where do you stand on this? Or more importantly, I guess, where do the clubs stand on this? Which way do you think this is going to go?

I'm not sure it will necessarily get off the ground. I agree with Martin. I think from a footballing perspective, it makes sense. You know, if you're a head coach or the manager, you won't have this sort of disruption on the eve of the season or going into the season that your star striker is suddenly spirited away to a wealthier club. I think the specter of the Saudi league

is an issue in terms of the timing of it because they stay open for longer. But there is, as Martin alludes to, there is a philosophy, a new philosophy there that they are trying to sort of develop their own and they won't simply go and sort of snap up every sort of John Duran or Karen Benzema the moment that, you know, there's a chance of them coming on the market.

So I think it's, and Sam's brilliant on these pieces in the Telegraph, I think there is clearly a split between maybe the owners and the sporting directors and the football departments. And we know who's going to win that argument. It's going to be the owners. Absolutely. Right, we've got to talk about Newcastle, haven't we, Martin? Your patch, of course, the back of the Guardian. Newcastle perform bus parade U-turn after fan outage.

anger. I guess you're going to be right in the middle of things come Saturday, along with 100,000 fans. How much are you looking forward to it? Tell us where you'll be. I think I can exclusively reveal there are Portaloosa peeing on the town moor as we speak.

The biggest problem on Saturday could be the fact that the feel like temperature is six degrees. There are 20 mile an hour wind gusts and people are allowed to arrive on the time. We're from half past one with the players not getting there for another four and a half hours.

I think some people may have jumped the gun a bit on saying there wasn't going to be a parade. There was lots of discussions to see how it could be done. And today it was confirmed there would be a parade, a small parade from St James' Park to get to the town moor.

season ticket holders had to register an interest first and then it was club members and then it was general public. It's been 70 years since Newcastle have had to parade a domestic trophy so they may be forgiven for forgotten, forgetting rather to what they actually needed to do. But they said, if you bear in mind, there's a lot of parties involved in terms of the council, Northumbria Police, Newcastle United,

lots of different bodies that had to sit down and talk before they could reach this conclusion. I think when he spoke to perhaps the players themselves, they thought there would be a parade that would lead them there and it made sense. Not everybody is going to want to stand on a field in the North East for six and a half hours on a cold day. There is no alcohol to be consumed on the town moor.

And as I said, the players and the manager won't arrive till six o'clock, although we are told there will be reruns of the... We are told there are going to be reruns of the Carabao Cup all day. And to be fair, the amount of times the Castle fans have watched that, they will quite happily go with it one more time. Martin, we have run out of time. Looking forward in six degrees to seeing all those fans celebrating. Many, I'm sure, with their tops off because it's six degrees. Thank you very much, gentlemen, for your time.