Football Mag

Eden Hazard reached a major milestone for Chelsea during Sunday’s trip to Fulham after he became only the third player in the club’s history to score and assist 50 Premier League goals. The Belgium international provided the set-up for Jorginho to net the decisive goal in a 2-1 victory at Craven Cottage, clocking up a half-century of assists in the top flight. It means Hazard – who has also found the back of the net on 81 occasions – has had a hand in 131 goals in the Premier League since he joined from Lille in 2012. The 28-year-old has already reached double figures for goals in a single season for the fifth time at Chelsea, needing only four more to equal his personal best of 16 in the league, which he achieved in the 2016-17 campaign. The feat means that he joins a select club in Blues history, with Frank Lampard and Didier Drogba the only other men to have managed such an achievement with the club.

Claudio Ranieri is set to be sacked by Fulham, with the club’s directors and supporters having lost confidence in him. The final straw for the manager came in the relegation battle at Southampton on Wednesday, when the team lost 2-0 and the travelling fans chanted “You don’t know what you’re doing” at him. The vice-chairman, Tony Khan, was at St Mary’s for a result that took Ranieri’s Fulham Premier League record to P16 W3 D3 L10 since he replaced Slavisa Jokanovic in mid-November and left the team 10 points off Premier League safety with 10 games to play. Shadid Khan, the Fulham chairman and Tony’s father, is in the United States but he has been involved in discussions on Thursday regarding Ranieri’s future, along with the club’s other key decision-makers, including the chief executive, Alistair Mackintosh, and the non-executive director Mark Lamping. The writing is on the wall for Ranieri, who had been advertised as a “risk-free” appointment by Shahid Khan. Unhappy Fulham supporte...