Fulham

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Wigan Athletic have signed Fulham midfielder Luke Harris on a season-long loan deal.

The 21-year-old has previously had loan spells in the EFL with Exeter City, Birmingham City, Oxford United and Wycombe Wanderers.

He is the third player to join the Latics on loan from a Premier League side this week after Reggie Walsh and Charlie Gray signed season-long deals from Chelsea and Manchester City respectively on Wednesday.

Harris, who played under Wigan boss Gary Caldwell during his time with Exeter, could make his debut at home to Leyton Orient on Saturday.

Fulham boss Alvaro Arbeloa has been speaking to the media before Monday's Premier League game against Chelsea at Craven Cottage (kick-off 20:00 BST).

Here are the key lines from his news conference:

• Arbeloa confirmed midfielder Thomas Cairney will be unavailable after surgery on his left knee in the summer, plus Joachim Anderson is out through suspension.

• On transfers: "We can make the squad stronger and more balanced, but I am happy with the way the club is at this moment this summer. We brought in three players, we are still working on it."

• He added about Gonzalo Garcia and Cesar Palacios, who were brought in from Real Madrid: "They are talented players - young players with ambition. They fit with the way we want to play and they know what I expect from them. I'm happy to have them here with me. I think they will both do very well this season."

• On the start to the season: "Football is about what you're going to do to achieve things. The players have a very good attitude. We need to improve for sure - there are many new things, so we need time. We have a difficult month ahead of us, but this month will not define us."

• On facing Xabi Alonso with their history together at Real Madrid and Liverpool: "We analysed Chelsea the way we do every team. I know well because I watched so many of his games of his teams, but we know it won't be easy. They're a very strong squad with top players. They have made good signings. We have to be ready."

• Asked whether they have spoken in the build-up to the game: "A few days ago but we didn't talk about football because our families are coming over to London. We are very good friends. On Monday night we will be down on the touchline, so close, and we will do everything for our club. For 90 minutes we will give everything for our clubs. For 90 minutes we are not friends. We both want to win that game."

• Asked whether he understands the importance of the west London derby: "I know how important that game is for our supporters. It's also very important for everyone at the club and for us, for the players, for me. It's the first game of the season, the first game at Craven Cottage. So we are ready, we are excited and of course we can't wait for the game."

• He added: "It will be so important if we win against Chelsea. The only thing I can think about is our performance, to be ready to play. We are working very, very hard."

• On home advantage for the opener: "Craven Cottage was always a very difficult place to come. You can feel the supporters are very close to the pitch and now I want to feel that special moment as Fulham's head coach. For us, [the fans] will be so important if we want to win games at home. I can't wait for Monday."

• Asked about his predecessor, Marco Silva: "Marco did a very good job and he deserved that recognition because he did very, very, very well and the players were so happy and so comfortable with him. Now is a new time with a new manager, but it has been so easy for me. Everyone at the club has made me feel very welcome so I'm so happy and I enjoyed this time."

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Chris Collinson
BBC Sport statistician

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Fulham were once again a solid mid-table Premier League outfit under manager Marco Silva as they finished between 10th and 13th for the fourth successive season since being promoted in 2022.

They ranked in mid-table for almost every major statistic, with the exception being that only bottom club Wolves and Crystal Palace had a worse shot-conversion rate. But even then, since only five teams created lower-quality chances on average than Fulham, the Cottagers scored just one goal fewer than they should have based on expected goals.

So Silva's successor Alvaro Arbeloa may look to improve the quality of chances Fulham create and he is also likely to do the same with the ones they concede. While their defensive stats were also solid overall, only Chelsea and Manchester City gave up easier chances to score at the back.

Chris Collinson
BBC Sport statistician

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In the Premier League last season, 13 of the 20 teams finished with between 40 and 60 points - the most in an English top-flight campaign since 2003-04 (also 13).

Was the Premier League so competitive in 2025-26 because the quality of the 'lesser' teams got better or the top teams got worse? It is hard to know for sure.

Given how savvy clubs like Brighton, Brentford and Bournemouth are, the vast amounts of money that enable even bottom-half sides to sign the best talent from abroad and the Premier League's current dominance of the Europa League and Conference League, it would seem to be the former.

However, the fact that promoted play-off winners Sunderland were able to finish above 13 teams in their first season back suggests the league was maybe not as strong as we think.

What we do know is that whether because they got worse or their opponents got better, four of the sides that finished in the top seven in 2024-25 - champions Liverpool, Chelsea, Newcastle and Nottingham Forest - took 79 points fewer between them last season.

While Forest's decline was perhaps expected given their incredible seventh-place finish in 2024-25 and their journey to the Europa League semi-finals last season, the others were far more surprising.

Sunderland and Leeds smashed the recent run of promoted sides struggling to compete by taking 64 more points than the teams they replaced in the top flight.

As a result, this season will be a bit of an upside-down one in that Bournemouth, Brighton and Sunderland have European campaigns to navigate while Chelsea, Tottenham and Newcastle do not.

Will we therefore see a bounce-back to the more 'traditional' order in 2026-27 or are we truly entering a new, fiercely-competitive era of the Premier League?

Read more on the Premier League's competitiveness

Last season: 11th.

This season: 16th.

Fulham are another club under new management after the departure of Marco Silva to Benfica, with Alvaro Arbeloa now in charge after a spell at Real Madrid.

The appointment, as with so many, is a gamble - but Fulham have established themselves in the Premier League, so they will want another season of stability.

Shea Charles showed real touches of class with Southampton so plenty will be expected of him, while Arbeloa has gone with what he knows by signing Gonzalo Garcia and Cesar Palacios from Real Madrid.

Stability will be satisfactory.

• Read more of Phil's predictions

Chris Collinson
BBC Sport statistician

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Teams in the bottom half of the Premier League in 2025-26 finished with more points than they had in years, meaning that judging them simply by their position in the table is perhaps a little harsh.

Everton may have been underwhelmed with their 13th-place finish but it was the most points a team in that position had finished with since the Toffees themselves in 1999-2000.

The points of the four places below them were all the highest they have been in the Premier League for 23 years and West Ham can consider themselves unlucky to have gone down with the highest points total for an 18th-placed side since 2010-11.

However, competition has come at a cost.

One place where the Premier League has become less competitive - because it has become more fiercely-contested overall - is at the very bottom.

While it is almost expected for one side to be cut adrift long before the end of the season, nowadays two sides are getting left behind.

The average points tally of the second-bottom side in a 38-game season is 31, meaning teams that finish there have usually competed in a relegation battle for most of the season before ultimately falling short.

After the Premier League was reduced to 20 teams in 1995-96, only two 19th-placed sides failed to reach 30 points in the first 21 seasons. But in the past decade, seven of the 10 sides to finish in that position have failed to do so.

In the past two seasons, promoted sides Ipswich and Burnley have both finished there with just 22 points - the fewest ever taken by a second-bottom side.

Relegation battles are now mostly a fight to see who takes the final spot in the bottom three, with the other two accounted for long before the final day - often by promoted sides.

But inspired by the survival of Sunderland and Leeds, promoted trio Coventry City, Ipswich Town and Hull City will all be hoping they have what it takes to match the competitiveness of the Premier League this season.

Read more on the Premier League's competitive numbers

Question from Staffs: Any news on a centre back for Fulham? No replacement for Diop is a concern.

Fulham have four central defenders: Calvin Bassey, who was recently lauded by Alvaro Arbeloa, Joachim Andersen and Jorge Cuenca. The trio are joined by Luc de Fougerolles, who spent last season on loan in Belgium.

It is clear they are at least testing the market for a centre-back, having held talks over a move for Rennes defender Abdelhamid Ait-Boudlal.

It speaks towards Fulham are looking at signing one but within their limits and with options to use in their squad if they fail to do so.

Fancy testing your football prediction skills? With the new season under way, BBC Sport has just the thing to keep you entertained every week.

After the success of our World Cup Predictor game, we've rebranded it for the club season as Match of the Day Predictor.

It's simple to play - just predict the outcome of the six fixtures we've selected from across domestic and European competitions every week.

And don't worry if you've joined late - players can join at any time, get involved with the latest round and start building a streak.

Once you've submitted your predictions, you'll also be able to see what others think the outcome of the match will be.

Read more about it here

You can find the predictor in the navigation bar at the top of this page, or click here to play

Chris Collinson
BBC Sport statistician

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Last season, the Premier League was arguably more competitive than it has been for years.

While the 65 points between champions Arsenal and bottom side Wolves was around the average for a 38-game season (63), a real revolution took place in mid-table.

Since the league was reduced to 20 teams in 1995-96, the gap between the top four and the bottom three – between what has often been the Champions League and the Championship – had been increasing as the seasons went by, with the 'bigger' clubs profiting from their European adventures and the extra money they earned by regularly finishing higher in the table.

But last season, the gap between the 'haves' and the 'have-nots' of the Premier League dropped from 44 points in 2024-25 to just 26 points – the smallest distance for 23 years (since 25 points in 2002-03).

The European places were more attainable than they had been for years. Despite taking a point fewer than when they finished seventh the season before, Aston Villa clinched Champions League qualification by finishing two places higher.

While Liverpool took the 'bonus' Champions League place by finishing fifth, their points total of 60 was the lowest by a side finishing there for 19 years and would have put them ninth in 2024-25.

Bournemouth and Sunderland also took full advantage of needing fewer points than normal by qualifying for European competition for the first time ever and for over half a century respectively.

Read more on the Premier League's competitive numbers

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Fulham beat Bundesliga side Stuttgart 1-0 at Craven Cottage in their final game of pre-season on Saturday.

Timothy Castagne's looped second half header from an Alex Iwobi's corner proved to be the only goal of the game.

It is common practice these days for transfer fees to have performance-based add-ons. The theory is the selling club gains more if the player goes on to be extremely successful, while the buying club is to some extent protected financially if the transfer doesn't work out.

In some cases, the total value of add-ons is significant - Real Madrid could end up paying an extra £30m to Borussia Dortmund for Jude Bellingham depending on how successful he is over the course of his career in the Spanish capital, for example.

In others, like the potential £1.7m worth of add-ons Brighton's £29.78m signing of Greece Under-21 forward Charalampos Kostoulas, are less significant.

Clubs sometimes say add-ons are 'easily achievable' or 'difficult'.

Easier-to-achieve add-ons can include things like making a basic number of appearances, or scoring a certain amount of goals. Add-ons can also be attached to a team's success rather than the individual player's - a club may agree to an add-on requiring an extra payment if they qualify for Europe, for example.

Others can be more ambitious - tied to extreme levels of individual or collective success, like winning the Champions League or the Ballon d'Or.

An example of the difficulty add-ons can present when discussing valuations would be the claims made in the Portuguese media in 2022 that the first additional payment in Darwin Nunez's £64m-plus-add-ons move from Benfica to Liverpool was triggered by the Uruguayan making just 10 appearances.

Then Liverpool boss Arne Slot rejected speculation he had not started Nunez in some games because it would trigger an additional payment.

Whether Liverpool paid more for Nunez, or club captain Virgil van Dijk - for whom they paid a flat fee of £75m to Southampton in 2017 - cannot be determined without knowing exactly what add-ons were included in the Nunez deal, then figuring out which conditions he has and has not met.

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Former Bristol City and Fulham defender Joe Bryan has announced his retirement from football.

The 32-year-old left-back made 464 career appearances for six clubs, including 44 in the Premier League for Fulham, and scored two of his 32 goals in the 2020 Championship play-off final.

He was released by Millwall in the summer and has opted to hang up his boots.

"Whilst not the perfect ending everyone hopes for, I am at peace with the decision to retire and move into a new phase of my life," Bryan wrote on social media, external.

Bryan emerged from the academy at his hometown club Bristol City, spent loan spells at Bath City and Plymouth Argyle, and went on to play 230 times for the Robins in both the Championship and League One.

He helped City reach the semi-finals of the League Cup in 2017-18, scoring against Crystal Palace and Manchester United.

In August 2018, Bryan was close to joining fellow Championship side Aston Villa but instead chose to join Fulham in the Premier League.

He stayed with them for five years, through two relegations from the top flight, and played 119 times.

After a loan spell in France with Nice, Bryan joined Millwall in 2023 and played 81 times for them in the Championship.

Adam Blackmore
BBC Radio Solent sports editor

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BBC Radio Solent's Adam Blackmore has covered Shea Charles abundantly as a commentator and reporter...

Shea Charles is a professional, focused, and polite young man. He has an unassuming nature and is a great advert for modern academy players.

On the pitch he has developed a lot in the last two years; his loan spell at Sheffield Wednesday in 2024-25 was the making of him.

He went from being a boy with the weight of expectation on his shoulders to a man who'd grown through the need to play a big role in a struggling team, starting 42 league games for the Owls.

When he came back to Saints you could see that confidence in how he carried himself and in his new-found determination to get on the ball and make things happen. He has a huge amount of natural ability, cruises around the pitch, and also a very handy knack of timing his runs into the box to score important goals, highlighted by his late strike that dumped Arsenal out of the FA Cup and the remarkable fourth goal in Southampton's incredible 4-3 comeback win at Leicester last season.

Andy Gray
BBC Sport NI Journalist

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"Shea has been so, so impressive during my time working with him. I have never seen anyone better on the ball than this kid."

It was in 2021 that the Northern Ireland youth coach Gerard Lyttle said he had never seen a youngster as comfortable on the ball as Shea Charles.

Back then, the teenager was still playing at centre-back and had yet to make a senior appearance for club or country, but he was standing out to his coaches.

Five years later, midfielder Charles has become the most expensive Northern Ireland player in history after he completed a £30m transfer from Southampton to Premier League side Fulham.

From when he joined Manchester City's academy as a seven-year-old, Charles' potential was clear and he quickly progressed through the ranks.

His breakout year came in the 2021-22 season, when he helped City win the Premier League 2 title as an 18-year-old playing alongside the likes of Cole Palmer, Morgan Rogers and Nico O'Reilly.

He was handed a first Northern Ireland call-up for June's Nations League window in 2022, and he made his international debut as a late substitute against Greece before he had even made a senior appearance at club level.

It helped that Charles was learning from some of the best in the world. At Manchester City he had been training with the likes of Rodri and Fernandinho and was finally handed a Premier League chance in May 2023, by which stage he had six international caps under his belt.

• Read more on Charles' rise

While learning from the best players in the world was beneficial, it did not offer a natural path of progression to the first team at Etihad Stadium.

So, a month after making his City debut, Charles signed a four-year contract with Southampton and subsequently made 32 appearances as Saints won promotion back to the Premier League.

Instead of contributing in his club's top-flight return, his development continued with a loan spell at Sheffield Wednesday, where he became a fan favourite and drew links to Arsenal.

With Southampton back in the Championship after their relegation, Charles returned to St Mary's last season.

He contributed some big moments and chipped in with his biggest return in front of goal with six strikes in the campaign. While Southampton missed out on the Premier League, O'Neill was adamant that Charles has what it takes to play in the top flight. It was a matter of when, not if.

"Shea can play in the Premier League, there's no doubt about that," said Charles' international boss before June's friendlies with Guinea and France.

With 35 international caps under his belt and a host of clutch moments to his name at the age of 22, Charles could be one of the surprises of the season as he aims to have a breakout Premier League campaign at Craven Cottage.

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"I hope to really kickstart my Premier League career here," says Fulham's newest signing Shea Charles.

The versatile midfielder has left Championship club Southampton and penned a five-year contract at Craven Cottage, with a club option for a further year.

Charles made 38 appearances in all competitions last season, scoring six goals and registering two assists, as Tonda Eckert's side narrowly missed out on Premier League promotion.

"I am buzzing to finally get it over the line," Charles told FFCtv, external. "The club has got a really good foundation from the bottom to the top.

"It is a great club with a really good vision, the manager explained that to me. It is a massive privilege to be here.

"I hope to really kickstart my Premier League career here, at such a good club as well. It is perfect for me and hopefully perfect for the fans as well."

Director of Football Operations Tony Khan added: "I am thrilled to welcome Shea Charles to Fulham! He is an exciting young player.

"He has quickly gained important experience in both domestic competitions and at international level, as the youngest ever captain of Northern Ireland.

"This is an excellent opportunity for him to join Fulham and continue his development under Alvaro Arbeloa's leadership."

The transfer makes Manchester City academy graduate Charles the most expensive Northern Irish footballer of all time.

Image source, Getty Images

We asked for your views on Southampton midfielder Shea Charles, who Fulham have agreed a deal worth up to £30m for.

Here are some of your comments:

Tom: Heard incredibly positive things from Sheffield Wednesday fans about the season he spent on loan there. Excited about this one, and I'm glad to see us doing our business early, and on players under 30!

Alexander: He is a great signing - a proven player originated from Manchester City. He is a great replacement for Sasa Lukic and if he proves well this season his value would be even greater than what Fulham spent.

Laurence: Exciting times. Good new manager and a crop of good new players coming in and coming through. New senior squad players are noticeably at the younger end of the spectrum. It is a welcome investment in the future and bringing down the average age of what was becoming an elderly squad.

Maurice: Replacing Lukic is quite a hard act to follow but I hear he is much more attacking, creative, young and energetic. He should be a good addition. Quite pricey for a Championship player, though. Presumably Alvaro Arbeloa rates him highly, and he will fit into his new system. Best of luck!

Matthew: We have gone from a safe approach under Marco Silva, with an aging roster just a couple of years ago, to a youth movement under Arbeloa now. This will either be feast or famine at Craven Cottage.

CJ: I think it is a great deal for our club. Charles is a brilliant player, a clinical finisher, and a hard-worker. Knowing that other clubs were interested and we got him is a great feeling. I think he could be the signing of the season for Arbeloa. The start of an era.