Chelsea v Arsenal, La Liga and Serie A kick off: football countdown – live!

Leicester meanwhile are without Shinji Okazaki and Matty James, while Caglar Soyuncu isn’t in the squad. Jamie Vardy has a “good chance” of starting the game at home to Wolves, according to Claude Puel. Provisional squad: Schmeichel, Ward, Jakupovic, Simpson, Chilwell, Morgan, Evans, Pereira, Maguire, Benkovic, Fuchs, Benalouane, Gray, Maddison, Albrighton, Amartey, Iborra, Silva, Mendy, Ndidi, Ghezzal, Kapustka, King, Choudhury, Iheanacho, Vardy, Diabate.

And here’s Southampton’s provisional squad for tomorrow’s trip to Everton. Mohamed Elyounoussi has a hamstring injury and is unlikely to be risked, but otherwise they have a clean bill of health. Provisional squad: McCarthy, Gunn, Forster, Soares, Stephens, Yoshida, Vestergaard, Hoedt, Bertrand, Bednarek, McQueen, Targett, Hojbjerg, Davis, Romeu, Lemina, Ward-Prowse, Armstrong, Elyounoussi, Redmond, Sims, Gallagher, Long, Gabbiadini, Austin, Ings.

Mark Hughes has reassured Steven Davis and Shane Long that they have a part to play this season, even though they didn’t feature in the opening weekend:

I think players, unfortunately – and it happened in my day – when they are not in the first 11 for the first game of the season all of a sudden they get a little bit anxious and think maybe my future lies elsewhere and agents are telling them they’ve got to move. And that’s not the case with Shane and the likes of Steven Davis. They’re very much part of what we’re going to do this year and I just said to them: ‘At the end of the year, you’ll look back on the season and you’ll find that you’ve played many, many games so bear with me’.

L’Equipe has a reporter on the scene. Apparently training has finally got under way, after a lengthy stand-off.

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Extraordinary goings-on at Bordeaux. First Gus Poyet blasts the board for selling the striker Gaetan Laborde to Montpellier without telling him – “It’s a disgrace what the club has done today. We arrived at the hotel and Laborde was not there. We called him and he was in Montpellier. Nobody told me anything” – then the board sack Poyet for his insolence, and now apparently the players are refusing to train in protest at the decision. Chaos!

True fact: today is Black Cat Appreciation Day. So, any favourite Sunderland goals? Or any other black cat/football intersectional stories?

Transfer news! Liverpool and Cagliari have agreed a £2m fee for Ragnar Klavan, who has a shade under nine and a half hours to agree personal terms and pass a medical if the move is to happen.

And here’s some early Fulham team news for the same game. Tim Ream and Alfie Mawson are injured and Denis Odoi is suspended, but Joe Bryan has recovered from the ankle problem picked up in the defeat by Crystal Palace, and record signing Andre-Frank Zambo Anguissa could make his debut. Fulham’s provisional squad: Fabri, Chambers, Le Marchand, Christie, Bryan, Sessegnon, McDonald, Cairney, Schurrle, Seri, Mitrovic, Rico, Fosu-Mensah, Kebano, Johansen, Cisse, Vietto, Kamara, Zambo Anguissa.

The Press Association will helpfully send me Premier League team news as they get it. Here’s their provisional Spurs squad for the game against Fulham. Victor Wanyama has a knee injury, Erik Lamela and Harry Winks are in training but not fit, and Son Heung-min is at the Asian Games with South Korea, whose crucial Group E match against Malaysia kicks off at 1pm BST today. So Tottenham’s provisional squad looks like this: Lloris, Vorm, Gazzaniga, Trippier, Walker-Peters, Alderweireld, Vertonghen, Rose, Sanchez, Davies, Dier, Dembele, Eriksen, Sissoko, Alli, Lamela, Winks, Moura, Llorente, Kane.

It’s transfer deadline day in Italy, which as we know from England’s experience last week promises all sorts of excitement (and very occasionally also delivers it). So there should be some actual transfers to report on as the day unfolds, but until then there’s the Rumour Mill:

And we start with this somewhat mysterious story about the unexpected disappearance of the referee Bobby Madley, who “has decided to relocate due to a change in his personal circumstances”. It all sounds extremely curious, and with nothing further to report on the reasons behind his decision I can only hope that Madley is happy and well.

So it is Friday, and that means we enter a world of almost-football; we are not yet at that point when talk stops and action starts, but certainly the time for talking is running short. So, we’d better get on with it, then. The week’s last dregs of conversation and conjecture will certainly find a happy home here.

The weekend’s significant action starts tonight, with the Spanish top-flight campaign getting off to a somewhat unspectacular start when Real Valladolid visit Girona, with Real Betis hosting Levante a little later. Barcelona’s campaign starts against Alaves tomorrow, with the Madrid sides joining the fray on Sunday.

In the Championship Swansea take their 100% start to Garry Monk’s Birmingham while tonight’s League Two match pits two of the four teams which after two outings are stuck together in joint 17th place, having played two, lost one, drawn one, scored two and conceded three, in the shape of Notts County and Yeovil.

Before then there will be all sorts of press-conferential action to report, any amount of match-previewage, perhaps a sprinkling of transfer-gossipmongering and a seasoning of injury-updaterment. So welcome, let’s get this show on the road.