Billionaire is taking a ruthless approach at a club which, under the Glazers, became a byword for complacency

In Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s push to revolutionise Manchester United from relic to ruthless winning machine he possesses the vital element missing from the Glazers’ listless ownership: a searing will to do so.

As the controller of football policy and the largest minority shareholder, Ratcliffe has the executive levers to engineer change. The six Glazer siblings, too, have these. Yet in the decade between Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement in May 2013 and Ratcliffe’s advent last Christmas Eve, there was scant intent from the majority shareholders to ensure United were best in class.

• Boxer ready for world heavyweight title fight clash
• Fury more respectful now of Ukranian opponent

“When I look in the mirror I don’t see a quitter,” Tyson Fury says as, having suffered the first defeat of his professional career in a dramatic world heavyweight title fight against Oleksandr Usyk in May, he is about to step back into the fire of their rematch this Saturday night in Riyadh. “I see a man who would do anything to keep going. If I get knocked down nine times, I’ll get up 10. If I didn’t want to do that, I wouldn’t be a boxer, I’d be doing something else, like playing darts. But this is my job.”

Fury and Usyk dug into the reserves of their resilience and the Ukrainian won a split decision. Usyk was losing the bout narrowly when, in a remarkable ninth round, he hurt Fury and looked close to stopping his much bigger opponent. But Fury is a fighter to the core and being rocked repeatedly would never deter him from stepping back into the ring.

Cycling’s finest sprinter says he achieved all he could in the sport, and that he is lucky to retire on his own terms

“Oh mate, for the last couple of years I’ve been broken,” Mark Cavendish says with a throaty chuckle as he considers the state of his body after decades on the bike. Cavendish will turn 40 next May and his extraordinary career finally ended last month when he won his final race in Singapore to follow his record-breaking 35th Tour de France stage victory this summer.

Cavendish is the greatest sprint cyclist the sport has seen and all the blurring wins and moments of history mean there are no regrets even when he feels so battered. “I have to do so much maintenance of my body now,” he says, “and I feel it most when I go running. It gives me a perspective on how many hours I’ve spent crouched over the handlebars while I’m trying to run. That’s when I realise how I’ve been in the same physical position for the best part of 30 years and at the highest level for nearly 20 years.

• Updates from the match at the Gabba in Brisbane
• Any thoughts? Get in touch with an email
• New Zealand v England: third Test, day three – live

108th over: Australia 431-8 (Carey 60, Lyon 0) Akash Deep replaces Bumrah after just a couple of overs, and gets clattered! Carey launches a lofted cover drive way back into the stands! Goodness me.

107th over: Australia 424-8 (Carey 53, Lyon 0) Jadeja keeps going, and gets through a quiet over after a Carey single first ball.

• Updates from day three at Seddon Park (10pm GMT start)
• Scoreboard | Day two report | Day two reaction
• Get in touch: email Jim with your thoughts on the match

Bad news from Hamilton

“It is now raining again and the covers are coming back on…” writes Ali.

All 90,000 world championship tickets sold out in 15 minutes, so it seems a matter of time before money talks

They’re always finding stuff here. Every time the trustees of Alexandra Palace undertake some renovation work on the 151-year-old building, they discover artefacts from the venue’s past: a kind of people’s history in detritus. Usually it’s just rusty coins and ticket stubs. But then there was the time they found perfectly preserved vials of early prototype tetanus vaccine embedded in a wall, a relic from when the place was a first world war hospital. Or a bit of Victorian era graffiti from a disgruntled tradesman, reading: “The wages of sin is death, the wages of a carpenter is worse.”

What will they find of today, decades hence, in the palace’s dusty niches and beneath its rotting floorboards? What will the archivists of the future make of the crumpled nun’s wimple, the faded receipt for a halloumi pitta pocket (only £12.50 at 2024 prices), the multiple small plastic sachets containing traces of mysterious white powdery residue? What stories will they tell of us, here, now?

• Club confirms exit after 13th loss in 16 league games
• Under-21s manager Simon Rusk to take interim charge

Russell Martin has been sacked as Southampton manager after the Premier League’s bottom club’s heavy 5-0 defeat by Tottenham proved the final act of his reign.

Having guided the club’s return to the top division via last season’s Championship playoffs, beating Leeds in the final, Martin has struggled since Southampton’s promotion. He leaves Saints bottom of the Premier League on five points from 16 matches.

Late intervention gave life to a match that had been akin to elite football reimagined by a robot with a hangover

It was deeply fitting Amad Diallo should decide this Manchester derby, mainly because for long periods he seemed to be the only person on the pitch not playing under heavy sedation.

Footballers are often said to have stood out in a game. Diallo stood out here mainly because he actually seemed to like playing football. In the event this expressed itself in four extraordinary minutes during which Diallo played a lone hand in turning 1-0 down into a 2-1 win. Even before that there were long periods during which the slight, speedy, jarringly urgent figure on the right side of Manchester United’s attack appeared to be the only person on the pitch with any kind of hope that life can still go on, like the lone survivor in a George Romero movie, out there haring around a shopping centre dodging zombies.

• Updates from the second day of action in Hamilton
• England are batting after New Zealand’s first innings 347
• Get in touch: email Rob with your thoughts

86th over: New Zealand 318-9 (Santner 53, O’ Rourke 0) This is becoming chess-like. Santner risks a single off the fourth ball this time. O’Rourke drops his wrists and lets Potts drop by.

85th over: New Zealand 317-9 (Santner 52, O’ Rourke 0) Atkinson gets one ball at O’Rourke, who survives a short one which seems to angle awkwardly away off the glove.

• Updates from the match at the Gabba in Brisbane
• Play starts at 9.30am local/10.30am AEDT
• Any thoughts? Get in touch with an email

Khawaja goes! Beautiful bowling by Bumrah who banged it in at 137kph on a fourth-stump line and drew a feathered edge. India have first blood on day two and again the visitors have exposed Khawaja who has got himself into a fatal habit of jumping to meet the rising delivery. That one was full and angled and it caught Australia’s veteran opener indecisive with minimal footwork. He played… and lost.

16th over: Australia 31-0 (Khawaja 21, McSweeney 4) It’s Akash’s birthday but Nathan McSweeney is getting all the gifts. Six dots in this over but not one of them made the batter play. India need wickets and McSweeney, already a formidable astonewaller, isn’t going to chance his hand if he doesn’t have to.