The New York Islanders agreed to a one-year contract with veteran center Derick Brassard on Wednesday, the team announced.

Terms were not disclosed.

Brassard was traded twice last season, going from the Pittsburgh Penguins to the Florida Panthers early in February and then to the Colorado Avalanche at the trade deadline.

Brassard has been traded four times since July 2016 and three times in a little over a year. He is coming off a five-year, $25 million contract that he signed with the Rangers.

He had 14 goals and nine assists last season, his worst output in a decade.

The 31-year-old's best season came in 2014-15 with the New York Rangers, when he had 60 points.

Brassard has scored 451 points (176 goals, 275 assists) in 786 games in 12 seasons.

The Montreal Impact fired head coach Remi Gard and appointed former Houston Dynamo boss Wilmer Cabrera to take his place, the club announced on Wednesday.

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"Because I have so much respect for Remi as a person and as a professional, it was a very difficult decision to make and it was well thought, but our latest series of failures in the past couple of months and the way the team acts on the field led to that change," said Impact president Kevin Gilmore in a club statement.

"We hope to bring back confidence to this group of players for the last stretch of the season, to get a playoff spot and to perform in the Canadian Championship final. I would like to sincerely thank Remi Garde for his commitment and his professionalism with our club since he joined in November 2017. I wish him only but the best in the future."

Gard, 53, joined the Impact at the start of the 2018 campaign after a brief stint at Aston Villa. He failed to guide the club to the playoffs in his inaugural season and leaves Montreal with the team clinging to the final postseason place in the Eastern Conference, having won just one of their last eight league matches.

Cabrera, 51, was dismissed by the Dynamo last week after two-and-a-half years with the club.

Montreal assistants Wilfried Nancy and Remy Vercoutre have been retained by the club and will serve on Cabrera's staff.

Juan Mata has hit back at the "cowardly" individuals who racially abused Manchester United teammate Paul Pogba on social media after his missed penalty in a 1-1 draw against Wolves on Monday night.

Pogba was sent a series of racist messages on Twitter after his penalty was saved by Rui Patricio to deny United victory at Molineux.

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Harry Maguire and Marcus Rashford were among the players who spoke out in support of Pogba in the aftermath and Mata has added his voice by slamming those responsible.

"It's not something we should be speaking about, because it should have been eradicated a long time ago," Mata said in an exclusive interview with ESPN FC.

"That's one of the things about social media. It's fantastic to connect people if you use it for the right things.

"But it also gives a chance for so many people to let go of their frustrations towards other people and with no problems because there are so many fake accounts. There's no identity. Then you can say whatever you want and you are not punished.

"It's a problem. Unfortunately some people do that and it needs to stop. It's cowardly to do it that way because no one can see you. It's not nice."

The incident marred a mostly positive night for Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's side, who have four points from two games after being handed a difficult start to the campaign with games against Chelsea and Wolves.

The atmosphere is more buoyant than a year ago when United -- then managed by Jose Mourinho -- started with two defeats from their opening three games, including a miserable 3-0 home defeat to Tottenham.

It is the start of Mata's sixth full season at Old Trafford after he agreed to a new contract in the summer.

"I'm very happy to be here and very happy we have started the season," said Mata.

"The [summer preseason] tour [to Australia, China, Singapore and Wales] was a nice few weeks for all of us to be together. We are only starting, but we're happy.

"I would be happier if we had six points. That's what we felt after the Wolves game but the first game was very good against a good side [Chelsea].

"We've got four points, but we're looking forward to getting three more on Saturday [against Crystal Palace].

"Every time that you start a new season there is excitement. We have a manager that everyone knows, he's been around the club for many years and has done great things here.

"We are all very excited about what we can do. Hopefully we can have a great season and keep our fans happy and excited until the end of the season."

"Take back control" has been a pretty loaded phrase in this part of the world ever since its co-option by Dominic Cummings and the Vote Leave campaign that successfully won Britain's EU referendum in 2016.

It is also a highly relevant one to Australia's Ashes campaign, which began so brilliantly at Edgbaston but was stifled somewhat at Lord's, not only by Jofra Archer and the concussion inflicted on Steven Smith, but also the inroads England made on the touring team's clear plan to cut down the flow of runs, build pressure and reap wickets from a home batting lineup always eager to impose themselves.

The Australian blueprint to maintain control over the scoring rates of the hosts, block off the boundaries and prosper through patience has been adhered to so rigorously as to rule out Mitchell Starc from selection so far. The coach Justin Langer's words two days out from the Headingley Test, about not getting caught up into a bouncer war begun by Archer, seemed to strongly indicate that this pattern of selection would continue. "What we're not going to do is get caught up in an emotional battle of who's going to bowl the quickest bouncers," Langer had said. "We're here to win the Test match, not to see how many helmets we can hit."

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But this plan, of course, has two sides to it. England were not only better able to find scoring avenues off the likes of Peter Siddle and Nathan Lyon at Lord's (both were taken for more than 3.5 runs per over), they also succeeded in keeping things exceedingly tight when Archer and Jack Leach had the ball. Where Australia's batting at Edgbaston had taken on an air of freedom, at Lord's it was always a slog, even without accounting for the short-pitched stuff from Archer that claimed most of the headlines.

"You look back at that period before the second new ball, Jack Leach bowled 10 overs for 12 runs at the other end to Jofra," England's captain Joe Root said. "It's important that you dovetail well as a bowling group and that you continue to keep applying pressure from one end if you're attacking at the other. I thought we got the balance of that exceptionally well and right last week."

Lyon's inability to put the clamp on England's scoring made for quite a contrast. In fact, in all the 20 Ashes matches he has played, Lyon has never been more expensive than the 3.76 an over he conceded at Lord's when bowling more than 25 overs in a Test. Root, certainly, was happy to see Ben Stokes, Jos Buttler and Jonny Bairstow find their ways into the series.

"The most pleasing thing from my part was seeing Ben, Jos and Jonny sending good time at the crease," Root said. "I feel like they really got themselves into the series in that Test match, and it's a big engine room for us that middle order, they're some high quality players who can go up and down the gears and really change the momentum of a game. To see them starting to hit some form at what seems like a really poignant time in the series is a really impressive thing for us and a huge confidence boost for the whole batting group."

Australia's captain Tim Paine, too, acknowledged the shift. "I think Ben Stokes played a pretty good innings as well, I think you've got to give him credit there," he said. "But Lord's can be a fast scoring ground and so can this one and it just happened to be that the rain pushed the game forward really quickly and almost turned day five into a one-day game, and we know that England are the best in the world at that game, so we thought that really suited them.

"We thought we could have handled things a little bit better, but at the same time we had them 6 for 130 in the first innings and 4 for 60 in the second so we still thought we had some opportunities there to break the game open. But as the game played out, we know when they're in that sort of mood particularly Stokes, Buttler and Bairstow, they're hard for anyone to stop. If we get in that situation again we'll do some things slightly differently."

So what must Australia do to improve on their control of proceedings at Headingley? Precise lines and lengths are a given, but so too is awareness that the ground an allow for quick scoring if bowlers are too attack-minded. Darren Lehmann's wildly successful stint as Yorkshire's overseas professional in the late 1990s and early 2000s was epitomised by how he often turned favourable bowling conditions on their head by going after the opposition, taking advantage of the quick, short square boundaries not a million miles removed from his Adelaide Oval home.

Additionally, the slope across the ground at Lord's has now been replaced by a gradient from the Kirkstall Lane End down to the Rugby Stand End. Plenty of rapid-fire spells have been delivered down that hill, from Bob Willis in 1981 to Jason Gillespie in 1997. A serviceable, accurate and uncomplaining seam and swing merchant pushing up the hill can also enjoy success: Peter Siddle claimed 5 for 21 here on the first day in 2009 when the Australians set the game up by rolling England for just 102.

"We've had a couple of days here now for the bowlers to come in and have a bit of a bowl," Paine said. "Granted it's not on the centre wicket, but out on the wicket block. You get guys playing in different conditions with different run ups and different surfaces all the time, that's part and parcel of being a professional cricketer and whatever lineup we pick, we expect that guys will be able to handle it or adapt to it really quickly."

Most capable and flexible for the Australians is Pat Cummins, who can be expected to turn out for the second of back-to-back Tests as the "ironman" of a bowling attack that is otherwise rested and rotated carefully. There will be times during this Test where Cummins may be asked to do either job, attacking down the hill or pushing tightly up it, and it will be critical that the Austrlaians are able to prevent England's middle order from getting as comfortable as they did at Lord's.

"He's pretty good. No complaints from him so far," Paine said. "I think in the last 12-18 months his body's really matured and he can handle a really big workload and not only do you see a high level of skill from Pat all the time but he's highly competitive as well. So he's a great weapon for us, and someone we certainly need to look after, but at this stage he's handling the workload really well, he's a super professional in the way he prepares himself, the way he looks after his body. So at the moment he's going really well."

As a county, by the way, Yorkshire voted to leave in 2016, though the city of Leeds was a remain hold-out, both by narrow margins. Taking back control has proven more complicated than the slogan suggested: Australia will hope their task at Headingley is a little more straightforward.

If Joe Root required any reminder - and he almost certainly doesn't - over the extent to which Ashes results tend to define careers in English cricket, he will have received it on Tuesday with the news of Mark Robinson's sacking as England's women's coach.

It did not matter that, just two years ago, Robinson oversaw his side's World Cup success. And it did not matter that, in all likelihood, no coach in history could have led his England side to victory over that Australian side in the recently-concluded women's Ashes series; there was simply a chasm of quality between them.

What mattered was that England lost the Ashes and that they lost it by some distance. All the promise of recent times was forgotten.

Root's England side could soon be in a similar position. Put simply, having won none (and lost six) of the previous eight Tests between the sides, they have to win two and lose none of the remaining three Tests if they are to reclaim the Ashes. And if they fail to do so, it will be Root's second successive series loss following the defeat in the Caribbean. Perhaps more importantly, it would be Root's second successive Ashes series loss as captain and England's first at home since 2001.

It may be that Trevor Bayliss' impending departure - his contract ends in September - buys Root some time. Bayliss could be, in effect, the sacrificial offering required should Australia retain the Ashes. But the stain on Root's captaincy record would be lasting. As Robinson discovered, you can go from tomorrow's man to yesterday's in the blink of an eye.

There are two significant areas for optimism for England and for Root. The first is that, in Leeds, Australia will be without Steve Smith. He is, quite clearly, the best batsman involved in the series so his absence is a serious blow for Australia and a huge opportunity for England.

The second is that, in Jofra Archer, England have a special asset: a genuinely fast bowler with the skill, body, action and ambition to suggest he should have a long and successful career. Young people don't come with guarantees, but Archer really does appear to have the world at his feet.

Archer is a lottery win of a cricketer. He offers masses and changes much. But English cricket would be deluding themselves if they took much credit for him. That's not to decry Sussex's contribution. The club made Archer feel valued and have, no doubt, aided his development. But the fact is he arrived in the UK as an outrageously talented young man who had developed through the Barbadian cricket scene. His availability to England is an enormous slice of good fortune that should not be allowed to hide the faults - the broken fast bowlers, the absence of top-order batsmen, the paucity of spinners - in the English game.

For the reality of Root's reign as captain - 30 Tests and counting - is that England have made almost no progress. They remain dangerous, certainly, and victory in Sri Lanka was an admirable achievement. But the search for an opening batsman to replace Andrew Strauss - let along Alastair Cook - goes on; the search for a No. 3 or No. 4 to replace Jonathan Trott goes on.

And while Jonny Bairstow and Jos Buttler have enjoyed fine moments, their scores of late hardly offer the return their promise suggests we should expect. Put simply, it seems reasonable to expect a side blessed with the likes of Root, Buttler, Anderson, Ben Stokes et al. to be placed higher than No. 4 (and it may be No. 5 if they lose this series) in the Test rankings.

Let's be clear: this is not entirely Root's fault. He is not responsible for the lop-sided county schedule, the embrace of all things white-ball or the absence of the basic red-ball skills - the patience, the denial, the technical ability - that used to proliferate in the county game.

But he does have to take some responsibility. He is England captain. This is his team. If he is unhappy with any aspect of the preparation, selection, coaching or ethos, it is within his remit to change it. And the fact is that, on his watch, the batting order might as well be picked out of a hat and his side are persisting with an opening batsman who everyone knows would be better suited to the middle order.

For while England ended their Caribbean tour with the coach insisting they had learned valuable lessons - notably that the spine of the team, from No. 4 to No. 8, was a strength that should not be tinkered with - they have done almost nothing but tinker ever since. The No. 8 has gone, the No. 4 is a No. 3, the No. 6 is a No. 5 and the No. 7 might well be at No. 6. The England management insist it's not chaos, but it's starting to look as if it might be.

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Furthermore, Root has been one of those advocating the "positive" mindset that all too often veers into recklessness - remember him saying "you don't win games by batting long periods of time" in the Caribbean? - and increasingly appears to be a cover for a lack of defensive technique.

Most of all, Eoin Morgan's shadow is starting to loom over Root. For while Morgan seized a failing team and, with a combination of vision, bravery, consistency and unwavering determination, moulded them into world champions, Root has taken charge of an exciting group of cricketers and allowed them to drift. They should be two years better; most of them are simply two years older.

That lack of progress applies to Root as much as anyone. He hasn't made a first-innings century as captain since August 2017 in just his fifth game at the helm. Since then, he has only made one - the second-innings century in Kandy - in a live rubber. England cannot afford such decline in the returns of their best batsman. If the evidence suggests the captaincy is compromising his run-scoring ability - and it is starting to do so - England may have to consider the possibility of a change.

All of which makes this a vital game for Root's England. He remains the natural leader of this side and a man with many positive qualities. And alternatives aren't especially obvious. But as Robinson's demise has reminded us, Ashes results tend to bookend the careers of captains and coaches. England really do need a victory in Leeds.