• Sixth seed falls to Ricky Evans in sudden-death leg
• Fifth seed takes first set but loses 3-1 to Scott Williams

Former champion Rob Cross and Dave Chisnall crashed out of the PDC world championship as more seeds were scattered at Alexandra Palace.

Cross, the fifth seed and 2018 champion, lost 3-1 to Scott Williams while Ricky Evans survived a match dart against him to upset Chisnall, the sixth seed, in an epic second-round clash decided by a sudden-death leg.

Christmas Hurdle head-to-head all can savour while the King George is also rich in potential storylines

There have been a few false dawns since Constitution Hill blew away a mismatched field at odds of 1-12 in last year’s Christmas Hurdle at Kempton, but now, at last, National Hunt racing’s reclusive superstar is back, and the best news of all is that this time around, he has some serious opposition too.

Nicky Henderson’s unbeaten former Champion Hurdler will be in a final field of four for this year’s Christmas Hurdle on Thursday, and with Willie Mullins’s Lossiemouth also confirmed as a runner, the King George card can be sold as a genuine double feature, arguably for the first time this century.

• Men’s Test captain to undergo surgery in January
• England’s Test summer begins against Zimbabwe in May

Ben Stokes said he was prepared to go through “blood, sweat and tears” for England after it was announced he will undergo surgery in January and is out of action for at least three months with a torn hamstring.

The men’s Test captain sustained the injury while bowling in the third Test against New Zealand in Hamilton last week and scans have revealed the extent of the damage will keep him on the sidelines until the spring.

Liverpool keep doing Liverpool things. The Premier League is now theirs to lose, and for a manager in his first season in England, that is a remarkable achievement

• Sign up to Soccer with Jonathan Wilson here

Eventually, there comes a point at which the fact that everybody seems to be having an off-day when they play against Liverpool has to be taken as a Liverpool thing rather than a quirk of the calendar. They head into the Christmas programme four points clear of Chelsea at the top of the table with a game in hand having lost only one of 16 games. While this will always in part be the season when Manchester City imploded, it should also be pointed out that Liverpool at the moment are on course for 93 points; only four times has the champion ever won more than that.

Even with Liverpool’s consistency there’s a tendency to look at Sunday’s 6-3 win at Tottenham as a result of the inexcusable openness of Tottenham rather than of their own excellence. And it is true that it’s easier to play Spurs right now, when they’re missing Cristian Romero and Micky van de Ven, when Ange Postecoglou is doubling down even further on doing things his way, than it might have been at certain other points of the season. But at the same time, Spurs tend, relatively at least, to be better against teams who come at them, who give them space behind the defensive line they can attack, and until the game disintegrated into mass silliness in its final quarter, Liverpool gave them a lesson.

This is an extract from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, a weekly look from the Guardian US at the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here. Have a question for Jonathan? Email soccerwithjw@theguardian.com, and he’ll answer the best in a future edition

• Saka sustained hamstring injury at Crystal Palace
• Arteta ‘putting some ideas together’ to replace winger

Mikel Arteta has said he and Arsenal must find a way to cope without Bukayo Saka after confirming the England forward is set to be sidelined for “many weeks” due to the hamstring injury he sustained against Crystal Palace on Saturday.

Saka was pictured leaving Selhurst Park on crutches after he limped off during the first half of his side’s 5-1 victory, with Arteta confirming on Monday that the 23-year-old has torn a hamstring. The Arsenal manager described it as a huge blow and also revealed that back-up Raheem Sterling is likely to be out for several weeks after picking up a knee injury in training.

• Winner in 2015 and 2016 beaten 3-0 by Jeffrey de Graaf
• Joe Cullen storms out of press conference after win

The two-time winner Gary Anderson endured a 54th birthday to forget as he crashed out of the PDC World Darts Championship following a shock second-round defeat by Jeffrey de Graaf.

The Scot, champion in 2015 and 2016, hit just three of his 20 checkout attempts as he was whitewashed 3-0 to fall in his opening match of the tournament for the first time. Anderson was the highest profile casualty on a day of upsets at Alexandra Palace in London following exits for fellow seeded players Ross Smith, Martin Schindler, Dirk van Duijvenbode and Ritchie Edhouse.

Spurs can win spectacularly and are fun but they could have had Arne Slot in 2023 and instead have the same pot of relaunched stasis

Liverpool are serious about this. They’re not in London for souvenirs or sightseeing. They had a game four days earlier, they’ve got another in four days’ time, and so all they really want for Christmas is to get in, get the points and get out. They’d rather do it clean. But they’ll do it dirty if they have to.

Above all, they know exactly what they want. Luis Díaz wants to spin off his man and run from deep, and Ryan Gravenberch wants to plug the gaps and get the ball moving, Dominik Szoboszlai wants you to commit, but not until he’s put you half a step off balance first, and Mo Salah wants to be Mo Salah. They can go short or long, hit you from every angle, hurt you from every bit of the pitch. Nine Liverpool players made a key pass in this game, including the goalkeeper and both full-backs.

The Briton stayed the distance against Oleksandr Usyk but after back-to-back defeats what is left for the 36-year-old to prove?

In the end everyone runs out of road. It was probably necessary for Tyson Fury to say he was robbed in the Kingdom Arena on Saturday night. Boxing demands this level of irrationality. Logical multimillionaires do not willingly schedule a brain-jarring, soul‑shredding half-hour beating from one of the most effective practitioners of controlled violence ever to walk the planet. A basic suspension of reason is required. Without it no one would ever step in the ring.

So Fury will maintain that all three judges were wrong to award a unanimous points decision in Oleksandr Usyk’s favour after 12 thrillingly intense rounds in Riyadh. Last time out Fury said he lost because of the war in Ukraine. This time he said it was because of Christmas. Nobody was robbed here. Fury, the challenger, needed to go out and actively take the heavyweight belts. In the event the champion always seemed to have his head above the water.

• Visitors enjoy successive 3-0 wins at Old Trafford
• ‘I felt it from the first minute, there’s a lot of anxiety’

Ruben Amorim has admitted ­Manchester United’s players were ­nervous on Sunday during their 3-0 defeat by Bournemouth, which left the club 13th and in the bottom half on ­Christmas Day for the first time since 1989.

The defeat was a second in a row by that scoreline at home against Bournemouth, almost exactly a year after the first. United went behind to the seventh goal they have conceded in the past six games at a set play.

The immediate aim of the Friedkin Group is to restore stability to Everton after their takeover on Thursday. In some ways, Sean Dyche has beaten his new employers to it. High-flying Chelsea became the latest team to run into a royal blue wall and out of ideas as they lost valuable ground in the title race.

Enzo Maresca declared himself content with a point at a ground where Chelsea had lost on five of their previous six visits, despite the end of an eight-match winning run in all competitions. The Chelsea head coach has insisted all along that his young side lack the experience and pedigree to sustain a title challenge with Liverpool. His argument gained credence here but Everton, he asserted, provided a valuable learning curve for a team that failed to score in a Premier League game for the first time since the opening day.