All six Premier League clubs were in action during a dramatic night of Champions League football on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Arsenal wrapped up the league phase with a perfect record after defeating Kairat Almaty, while fellow London sides Chelsea and Tottenham also booked automatic qualification thanks to wins of their own.
\nLiverpool and Manchester City joined them in the next round after overcoming Qarabag and Galatasaray respectively, but Newcastle fell to PSG and must now navigate the knockout play-offs.<\/p>\n
Attention now turns to the Europa League this evening, with Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest both featuring in a full round of fixtures, live on talkSPORT.<\/p>\n
\u2018He wanted to return home\u2019<\/p>\n
Lucas Paquet\u00e1 is closing in on an official exit from West Ham.
\ntalkSPORT understands talks with Flamengo began on December 23, continued over Christmas, and were finalised yesterday, with the midfielder set to move for \u00a336million.<\/p>\n
West Ham confirmed on Wednesday that Paquet\u00e1 had been given permission to travel to Brazil to complete the transfer. Manager Nuno Espirito Santo has since addressed the situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not official yet, but as a club we\u2019ve allowed him to go and have his medical,\u201d Espirito Santo said. \u201cI think we\u2019ll reach a solution everyone was aware of and comfortable with.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cLucas made it clear he wanted to go back home. We expect the medical to be completed and everything to become official. Let\u2019s wait and see.\u201d<\/p>\n
The West Ham boss continued: \u201cFor me, Lucas is a special player and a special person. He\u2019s a number 10 \u2014 I\u2019ve said that many times. From the club\u2019s point of view, things could have been handled differently, but circumstances are what they are.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wanted to return to Brazil, he had an offer, and now we move forward. We wish him nothing but the best.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
All six Premier League clubs were in action during a dramatic night of Champions League football on Wednesday. Arsenal wrapped up the league phase with a perfect record after defeating Kairat Almaty, while fellow London sides Chelsea and Tottenham also booked automatic qualification thanks to wins of their own. Liverpool and Manchester City joined them …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":58042,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/tottenham-hotspur-manager-thomas-frank-during-the-press-conference.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58165"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58166,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58165\/revisions\/58166"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/58042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}