Erik ten Hag said it is up to Harry Maguire if he leaves Manchester United this summer after admitting that the dropped captain is unhappy with his situation. Maguire started only eight league games after losing his place following August’s 4-0 thrashing at Brentford and is Ten Hag’s third-choice right-sided centre-back, after Raphael Varane and Victor Lindelof. England manager Gareth Southgate has described Maguire’s situation as “concerning” and suggested it will be hard to continue to pick him if he does not get regular first-team football. Ten Hag said he is keen to keep the £80m defender, who has two years left on his contract, and it will be Maguire’s choice if he moves now. “No one would be happy with this situation,” Ten Hag told the Times. “He is not as well. He trains always on best levels, so with 100 per cent effort. So he handles that situation well and he’s in that manner and in his captaincy he’s important for the squad. Let’s say I’m happy he’s here and when we needed him he did his job. But it’s also a decision he has to make.” Ten Hag also said that David de Gea may be on the bench at times if he stays at Old Trafford. The goalkeeper’s contract expires in the summer and the Dutchman reiterated that both club and player are keen for him to re-sign – but warned he may omit the Spaniard at times. The manager said: “I will not say he’ll always be my No. 1 because in a club like Man United there must be competition in all positions.” Ten Hag insisted he is not satisfied with United’s season, despite finishing third in the Premier League, winning the Carabao Cup and reaching the FA Cup final. He explained at United’s annual awards ceremony: “After the start of the season, and then where we came from – we are happy, we are [going] in the right direction, but satisfied? No, we are not. We have to do better, that’s always the case. We have a foundation, we have a good base but we have to do better. “We want to go higher up, we want to increase our levels and we want to compete for the top two. So we have to demand more and increase our levels.” Marcus Rashford won the Sir Matt Busby award as United’s player of the year after scoring a career-best 30 goals this season. The forward was also named players’ player of the year while Antony won the prize for best goal for his spectacular winner against Barcelona in the Europa League. Read More Gareth Southgate sends Harry Maguire warning over Manchester United ‘situation’ How Erik ten Hag survived stunning lows to lead Manchester United’s unconventional revival Erik ten Hag finally within sight of matching a past Manchester United great... no, not that one Gareth Southgate knows Euro 2024 must go ‘very, very well’ to keep England job Gareth Southgate sends Harry Maguire warning over Manchester United ‘situation’ Football rumours: Spurs aim to keep reported Manchester United target Harry Kane

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Already one of the true legends of the women’s game, Lucy Bronze has been a regular for England since making her debut in 2013 and has played all across the park, although she is best known as a marauding right-back, overlapping Beth Mead in the Euros to often devastating effect. Born into a bilingual Portuguese-English family in Berwick-upon-Tweed, Bronze, now 31, played for Alnwick Town until she turned 12, when FA regulations prevented her from continuing to play for the boys’ team, a matter about which her coach felt so strongly he launched an unsuccessful discrimination case to challenge the rules, reluctant to lose his best player to an outmoded technicality. A multi-talented athlete in secondary school, she played at youth level for Blyth Town and Sunderland, graduating to the latter’s senior squad and winning the FA Women’s Premier League Northern Division in 2008/09 before relocating to the US to enrol at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to play for the Tar Heels, a path future LionessesAlessia Russo and Lotte Wubben-Moy would later follow. Returning to England to complete her sports science degree at Leeds Metropolitan University, playing for the institution’s women’s team while supporting herself by working at Domino’s Pizza, Bronze then commenced her senior career in earnest with Everton in 2010. After two years, she transferred to city rivals Liverpool where she won back-to-back Women’s Super Leagues, before moving to Manchester City in 2014, where she again won the title and the FA Cup in 2016. She then moved on to France to play for all-conquering Lyon in 2017, winning the Champions League, three successive league titles, two domestic cups and finishing second in the running for the 2019 Ballon d’Or before returning to City for further cup success. A final switch to Barcelona alongside long-time teammate Keira Walsh followed last summer and the Catalans duly won the title and Champions League in Bronze’s debut season. A hugely popular and respected member of the England set up with 105 caps to her name and counting, and an Instagram account for her West Highland Terrier Narla, it could all have been so different for Lucy Bronze. As the daughter of a maths teacher, she had reportedly planned to become an accountant had football not worked out. Read More How to watch England vs Haiti: TV channel and start time for Women’s World Cup opener Women’s football world rankings: Who could take No 1 at the World Cup? FIFA Women’s World Cup fixtures and full schedule

The mother of murdered two-year-old James Bulger has condemned “sick” AI-generated clips of her son circulating on social media three decades after his death. An animated version of the dead toddler discussed his abduction and murder by two 10-year-old boys in 1993, in videos shared on TikTok which James’ mother Denise Fergus condemned as “disgusting” in an interview with The Mirror. The social media app said the clips have since been removed for violating its guidelines. James was tortured and killed by Jon Venables and Robert Thompson after they snatched him from a shopping centre in Bootle, Merseyside, on February 12 1993. The pair were jailed for life but released on licence with new identities in 2001. Venables, 40, was sent back to prison in 2010 and 2017, the latter for possessing indecent images of children, and was turned down for parole in 2020. The videos on TikTok showed animated children, including one depicting James, detailing his abduction and murder. James’ body was found on a railway line two days after his abduction and some of the animated clips reportedly showed an avatar by train tracks. A slew of AI-generated likenesses of other missing or murdered children had also been shared on TikTok, according to reports. Others showed Madeleine McCann, who disappeared aged three while on a holiday in Portugal in 2007; 11-year-old Rhys Jones, who was murdered in Liverpool as he walked home from school in 2007, and Peter Connelly, also known as Baby P, who died after months of abuse in 2007. Ms Fergus, 55, told The Mirror the clips were “disgusting” and she is reportedly particularly upset by an avatar which looked like a photo of James and appeared to speak. She told the paper: “It is one thing to tell the story, I have not got a problem with that. “Everyone knows the story of James anyway. “But to actually put a dead child’s face, speaking about what happened to him, is absolutely disgusting. “It is bringing a dead child back to life. “It is wrong. “To use the face and a moving mouth of a child who is no longer here, who has been brutally taken away from us, there are no words. “I think these people must be disturbed. “They have got to be. “It is not just not nice for the parents to see. “I don’t think anyone at all should be able to see stuff like this. “To see his little face moving when he is no longer here, it is disgusting. “It all should be taken down and stopped. “It is not fair on the people who have lost children, or lost anyone. “We are not just saying take James down, we are saying take it all down. “It is beyond sick. “Who can sit there and think of such a thing?” Ms Fergus’ husband Stuart reportedly contacted one produce of the animated videos, who appeared to be in the Philippines, and asked for the videos to be removed. The Mirror reported that the clips were often voiced in American accents, and also had Spanish and French versions. A TikTok spokesperson said: “We want TikTok to be a welcoming place for everyone, and there is no place on our platform for disturbing content of this nature. “Our community guidelines are clear that we do not allow synthetic media that contains the likeness of a young person. “We continue to remove content of this nature as we find it.”