All you need to know about this weekend's Premier League action, all in one place.

Jump to: Spurs better without Lloris? | Palace to trip up City? | Fantasy Tips | Game to Watch | Match Predictions

THE WEEKEND'S BIG QUESTIONS

Is United's best hope to keep the score down against Liverpool??

Manchester United's prospects for their game against Liverpool on Sunday weren't looking good even before it became clear that David De Gea and Paul Pogba would not be available. Their squad is thin enough as is without arguably their two best players being out too, so the 75,000 United fans due to show up at Old Trafford will be taking a deep breath before comprehending what is about to unfold.

- ESPN Premier League fantasy: Sign up now!
- VAR in the Premier League: Ultimate guide
- When does the transfer window reopen?

A Liverpool victory would equal the Premier League record for consecutive wins with 18, which will be enough of a kick in the ribs for United fans already, but a big Liverpool victory would be even worse. United might be able to draw some solace in the fact that Jurgen Klopp's side have had some close calls of late, so their luck might run out soon, but at the moment it looks like the best they can hope for will be some respectability in the scoreline.

Will Tottenham be better off without Lloris?

On the face of it, losing your World Cup-winning captain for the remainder of 2019 could be filed under "bad news." But Hugo Lloris was becoming an even bigger problem at a club that are stuffed full of problems at the moment. No longer the super-reliable keeper of times past, you only have to look at the error a millisecond before his horrific elbow injury as proof that the Frenchman is on the way to being a liability, if he isn't one already.

Paulo Gazzaniga will presumably start against Watford, even if they have re-signed Michel Vorm to provide some extra cover. Will he be any worse than Lloris? Will he actually be better, ultimately? At a club where stability has turned into torpor, a forced change might turn out to be a positive.

Could Crystal Palace trip Manchester City up?

We have conclusive proof that Manchester City are fallible this season. The fear before the campaign was that they would once again make the Premier League uncompetitive, and that Liverpool would do well to cling onto their coattails again. After early defeats to Norwich and Wolves, we know that is not the case, so they could really have done with a nice easy game to take out their frustrations, as they did against Watford following that Norwich loss.

Unfortunately for them, they must travel to Crystal Palace, who under Roy Hodgson are in the middle of a slightly implausible run of form that sees them in sixth place, having won 12 of their last 22 games going back to February. It's got "potential tripwire" written all over it, so it will be fascinating to see how City deal with a very tricky trip to South London.

FANTASY TIPS

Kieran Darcy has some tips for the weekend action. Read his full preview here and set your team line-up!

Must-have player: Sergio Aguero, Tier 1 forward

Aguero is tied for the league lead in goals with eight, is the league leader in shots with 30, and Manchester City are the biggest favorites of the weekend, at Crystal Palace.

Worth considering: Jorginho, Tier 3 midfielder

Jorginho is ninth in the league in passes completed, and should rack up a ton of them against Newcastle, who have the lowest possession percentage in the league (32.8) -- plus he's on penalties for Chelsea.

Avoid at all costs: Marcus Rashford, Tier 1 forward

Rashford hasn't scored in his past five games including the Europa League, and didn't take a single shot in Manchester United's 1-0 loss at Newcastle prior to the international break, despite playing the full 90 minutes.

STATS OF THE WEEKEND

Information provided by ESPN Stats & Information Group

- Liverpool's 17-game winning streak in the Premier League is the second longest in English top-flight history, behind only Man City's 18 game run in 2017. The 17 straight wins equals Inter Milan for the 3rd longest winning streak all-time in any of Europe's Top 5 leagues; only Manchester City (18) and Bayern Munich (19) have had longer winning streaks

- Premier League joint-top scorer Sergio Aguero (eight goals) has never scored in six Premier League appearances at Selhurst Park, only at Anfield (seven) has Aguero had more scoreless away matches at a stadium.

MAN TO WATCH

Jurgen Klopp. The last time Liverpool visited Old Trafford with a lead at the top of the Premier League was not so long ago. They were three points clear going into the weekend of this fixture in February last season, but produced a supine performance against a United side whose results were just on the brink of a nosedive, following the initial boost of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's opening few weeks. But in that game Liverpool's only shot on target came in the 33rd minute, and Klopp spent most of the game stalking around his technical area in frustration.

Their passivity that day was infuriating: this time, surely, Klopp will ensure they go for the jugular straight away. Brace yourself for a quick start from Liverpool and that lethal front three.

THE GAME YOU'RE NOT PLANNING TO WATCH -- BUT SHOULD

Aston Villa at Brighton. Before the last round of games, these were two teams in a bit of a rut, both winless in their previous four. But they both got eye-catching victories, Brighton making short work of the beleaguered Tottenham thanks to the extremely sharp-looking Aaron Connolly, and Villa handing out a 5-1 shellacking to Norwich. The hope in both camps will be that those wins will inspire something more tangible, that they will be inspired to go on a longer run of success and climb the table, so it will be interesting to see for whom those wins are a catalyst, rather than a false dawn.

ONE THING THAT WILL DEFINITELY HAPPEN

While that victory over Manchester United will have filled Geordie hearts with joy, the chances are it was a temporary boost for a Newcastle team that still have all the problems they did a fortnight ago. Their defence remains shaky, which is bad news considering their opponents on Saturday.

Only the top two have scored more goals than Chelsea this season, and in Tammy Abraham they have a striker who has excelled in making shaky defences suffer. This isn't a back-handed way of suggesting Abraham is a flat-track bully -- it's too early for that -- merely that he has been ruthless so far this term. Expect a couple to come against Steve Bruce's side.

THE TEAMS THAT NEED A BIT OF LUCK

Luck is everything in sports. Get acquainted with ESPN's Luck Index as we pick out the team most desperate for good fortune amid a difficult run. Here are the big takeaways from the 2019 edition as explained by Gab Marcotti.

Everton. A few weeks ago, Marco Silva was looking good. A wobbly spell last season had been transformed into something approaching a coherent style of play, and hard-fought wins over Watford and Wolves hinted at better times ahead. How quickly things have changed: Silva's side have now lost their last four in the league, and the most troubling thing is only one of them (to Manchester City) has been excusable. They need to get better, obviously, but if you can't be good, be lucky -- a pinch of fortune might be the thing to get them back on track.

PREDICTIONS

Everton 1-2 West Ham

Leicester 2-0 Burnley

Tottenham 1-0 Watford

Wolves 2-2 Southampton

Aston Villa 3-2 Brighton

Bournemouth 3-1 Norwich City

Chelsea 4-1 Newcastle United

Crystal Palace 2-2 Manchester City

Manchester United 0-3 Liverpool

A couple of years ago, N'Golo Kante might have been the most valuable soccer player in the world.

In August 2015, Leicester City signed the relatively unknown French midfielder from Caen for £5.6 million. The season before his arrival, Leicester finished with 41 points. In Kante's only season with the club, Leicester finished with 81 points, winning the most improbable championship in the history of modern sports.

Then, in July 2016, Chelsea signed the by-now-well-known French midfielder for £32 million. The year before Kante's arrival at Stamford Bridge, the club finished with 50 points, by far the worst tally since Roman Abramovich bought the club back in 2003. In Kante's first season with the team, Chelsea finished with 93 points, winning their fifth Premier League title. Leicester, meanwhile, held onto all of the other key contributors to their championship team, but without Kante, they almost slipped right back down to where they were before he'd arrived, finishing with 44 points.

Ignore any other context and it looks like Kante alone was worth something like 40 points a year. That's obviously not quite true, but it certainly seemed like Kante was one of those rare players who could significantly elevate his team's performance without putting the ball into the back of the net. And in the summer of 2017, a group of researchers from the University of Salford and University College of London published a paper that supported this very idea.

They created a number of models to determine a player's "plus-minus" rating, that is comparing how a team performs when a player is on the field with how it performs when he's not. These models are tricky and imperfect because unlike in basketball, most teams don't spend a significant amount of time with their starters off the field; therefore you get things like Manchester City's Claudio Bravo being the second-highest rated player in the world for the 2016-17 season. However, the results of the research also seemed to verify what everyone at Stamford Bridge and the King Power Stadium was thinking about Kante.

- Marcotti: Soccer has always been bigger than sports
- Ogden: Does England have a traveling fan problem?
- Williams: Arsenal used to be invincible. What happened?

"The paper presents a method for estimating how important each player is to a team's success," Ian McHale, one of the paper's authors, said over email. "For the seasons under consideration, Kante was found to be the player contributing the most to a team's success. And this doesn't just mean Leicester and Chelsea, but a hypothetical team made up of any set of players: Kante would contribute the most."

Except, in the two seasons since then, something has happened that had never happened before ... and it's happened two seasons in a row: The team Kante plays for didn't win the Premier League. In 17-18, Chelsea finished in fifth and last year, they landed third.

"Kante has plummeted down the rankings in the last 12 months, probably because he was played out of position for much of that time," said McHale.

Much of the discussion surrounding Kante over the past year-and-a-half echoes what McHale suggests. Since Chelsea signed Jorginho, a relatively immobile player who needs to sit in front of the defense and constantly have the ball at his feet in order to be effective, Kante has been deployed higher up the field under both Maurizio Sarri and current manager Frank Lampard. This discussion between BBC pundits Alan Shearer and Ian Wright serves as a good summary of the general sentiment:

Jorginho or Kante as Chelsea's holding midfielder...

Do you agree with @IanWright0's assessment? pic.twitter.com/hRfFVTK4k3

— Premier League (@premierleague) November 26, 2018

However, Sarri claimed he needed a different player profile in his holding midfield role. "In that position, I want a player able to move the ball very fast... N'Golo is very useful for us, but this one is not his best characteristic."

In August, Lampard echoed those thoughts. "This idea that he wins the ball probably as well as anybody in world football doesn't mean that he has to sit in front of the back four and do that. He also has too much in his game to drive forward with the ball, to lead midfield areas and win the ball back high up the pitch. That's what I want to give him the freedom to do."

Even when France won the 2018 World Cup, Didier Deschamps opted to play Paul Pogba, of all people, in the holding role with Kante given the kind of freedom that Lampard talks about: license to win the back higher up the field.

Three separate coaches have envisioned a more aggressive role for Kante. Could they all be wrong?

Last season under Sarri, all of Kante's defensive numbers declined except one. In his sole season at Leicester, he made 5.22 tackles per 90 minutes and 4.65 interceptions, both of which led the Premier League. In his two seasons under Antonio Conte, he averaged 3.67 tackles and 2.45 interceptions and last year, he was down at 2.18 tackles and 1.28 interceptions. In the Leicester and Conte years, he won possession in midfield an average of 4.85 times per 90 minutes, ranking in the top three in all three years. Under Sarri, that number dipped down to 3.26.

What didn't dip, though, was the number of times he won possession in the attacking third. That rose up to 1.02 per 90 after not being above 0.63 in either of the previous three seasons. In fact, only Mohamed Salah and Richarlison won more possessions in the final third than Kante last season. The difference, of course, is that Kante's a midfielder and they're both attackers. So when Kante wins possession that high up the field, there tend to be more players ahead of the ball and therefore more players capable of capitalizing on re-gaining the ball. Why is this important? Because winning possession in the attacking third has also been shown to correlate with, well, winning games.

On top of that, Kante found his way into the penalty area more than he ever has before. He took 73 touches in the box last season after taking 58 touches in the box in the previous three seasons combined.

Winning possession in the attacking third and finding space in the opposition box are two of the most valuable things that a player can do that don't directly involve taking or setting up a shot. Kante may have been playing a new role, but he did more of these things than ever before. He also set or matched career highs in shots, chances created, goals and assists.

However, the value that Kante provided in years past was that he did the defensive work of multiple players and allowed Claudio Ranieri and Conte to often only play two midfielders instead of the customary three you see employed by the best teams in the Premier League. That made room for another attacker: basically another player who could win the ball back in the attacking third and make runs into the box.

The running joke at Leicester was that they "played three in midfield, Drinkwater in the middle with Kante either side." At Chelsea, Eden Hazard said of Kante's omnipresence: "I think I'm playing with twins."

Those teams were at least partially built around Kante's unique skills. His value wasn't necessarily in what he did; it came from everything he allowed his teammates and managers to do. But it's still not clear that one role is better than the other.

In Conte's last season with Chelsea, with Kante in his supposedly more natural role, they won 70 points on a plus-24 goal differential. In Sarri's one season, with Kante playing higher up the field, Chelsea won 72 points on a plus-24 goal differential. In terms of their expected goal differential last season, Chelsea were the clear third-best team behind Manchester City and Liverpool. Kante has only started three Premier League games so far but it seems like we're in for more of the same this season.

Kante hasn't really played enough to define his role within Lampard's preferred system, but early signs suggest that he's going to be used as something of a hybrid; his number of possessions won in midfield is up from last year, but he's already scored two goals. And so, perhaps the truth of the Kante conundrum is that he doesn't have a best position. He's never been a pure holding midfielder. He's never been a box-to-box runner either. He's always been somewhere in between but, in playing either role, he's proven to be indispensable.

Remember the year Leicester won the title? Kante won the third-most possessions in the midfield among all Premier League players. His teammate, Danny Drinkwater, was No. 1.

There will be another important milestone for women's sport on Friday with the start of the first standalone WBBL when local rivals the Sydney Sixers and the Sydney Thunder go head-to-head on primetime television.

It is the fifth instalment of the WBBL and is now in its own window until early December rather than running alongside the men's tournament which begins shortly before Christmas.

Australia has led the way in women's cricket in recent years, but the last few months have been especially significant both on and off the field with an Ashes series win, a world record 18 ODI victories in a row, a new parental leave policy and a commitment from Cricket Australia to match the ICC's increased prize money for next year's T20 World Cup.

ALSO READ: WBBL previews: squad lists and players to watch

Being staged at this time of the year does not give the WBBL the advantage of the school holidays which is when the BBL takes place, but the competition has been built around a series of festival weekends, the first of which is at North Sydney Oval, with the hope of maximising weekend crowds.

Viewing figures and crowd numbers will be watched closely during this year's competition but instant judgement will be resisted and there is a sense that this is another staging post in a longer-term aim.

"Tomorrow night's exciting, it's a great occasion at a great ground but for me it's far more long-term than that," Ellyse Perry, the Sydney Sixers captain, said. "It's this whole season and we've got to be realistic and give it a couple of years, like the Big Bash for the men, I don't think that took off for a couple of years. It's our role to cement in the public psyche that the WBBL is at this time of the year, it's a great product, a unique product and it's worth watching

"This platform gives us an incredible opportunity to build a really competent and exciting competition on its own, hopefully it's a really great family event, people can come down on a Friday night or across the weekend, and enjoy the entertainment and everything that goes with it."

Perry was the leading run-scorer in last year's WBBL with a record 777 runs but her team were pipped to the title by the Brisbane Heat after a finals series that produced thrilling cricket, including the Sixers' stunning run out to earn a Super Over against Melbourne Renegades - a moment that Perry calls "the most amazing play I've seen on a cricket field."

Perry can be expected to be one of the leading lights again, along with Australia team-mate Alyssa Healy who helps form a formidable top-order for the Sixers, while there is a strong collection of overseas names across the eight teams, albeit not including the India players who are unavailable due to touring West Indies which also means T20 stars such as Stafanie Taylor and Hayley Matthews are only around for short windows.

For some of the overseas players, it is another a chance to see first-hand what significant investment in the women's game can achieve.

"A bit jealous, really!" Rachel Priest, the New Zealand wicketkeeper, joked when asked about all the developments in Australia. "They are really, really lucky, the investment in this country is phenomenal. You can see from the performances of their team, they are streets ahead of anyone else at the moment. it's up to other countries to catch up a little bit and probably take a leaf out of their book

"It's as close to international cricket as you'll get, we are really lucky but so are the domestic players. A few of us were talking at training, we can't believe it's been five years, in my career I never thought competitions like this would exist."

The WBBL might be about to highlight a problem. It's not a problem for Cricket Australia, but it could be for the ICC and the rest of the boards around the world.

There is a distinct possibility that WBBL05, a domestic competition, will be the highest standard of women's cricket played around the world at the moment.

CA's investment in the women's game along with a generation of outstanding players has combined to turn women's international cricket into a tour de force for Australia over the last two years. Since the start of 2018 Australia have played 45 internationals and lost just three, including setting a new world record streak of 18 ODI victories and winning the 2018 T20 World Cup in the West Indies.

New Zealand allrounder and the Adelaide Strikers import Sophie Devine believes the collection of players at the WBBL is second to none and the even distribution of Australian talent across the eight teams makes it the gold standard of women's cricket, at least among the domestic leagues.

"I think at the end of the day they've got the best players from around the world playing in it and I think that makes a huge difference," Devine told ESPNcricinfo. "If you want the competition to be the best you've got to have the best and I think that helps the WBBL in terms of the standard of the game. The collection of players that every side has got, not just overseas but domestic and their Australian players, it just makes such a big difference."

However, there are some big names absent this season. The tournament will be without India's stars without India's stars with the new standalone tournament running from late October to mid-December clashing with India's tour of the West Indies.

West Indies captain Stafanie Taylor, who has signed with the Strikers this season after four years at the Sydney Thunder, is only available for the bookends of the tournament due to that tour but will form a formidable trio at the Strikers alongside Devine and Suzie Bates when available.

Nida Dar will create history as the first Pakistan player in the WBBL and Ireland's Kim Garth returns to the tournament, but what continues to standout is the depth available to Australia and there are concerns the gap will continue to grow.

Elyse Villani has fallen out of favour but was one of the leading run scorers in the WBBL last season and will captain the Melbourne Stars this year. Sophie Molineux has likewise been on the fringes of the national side but is one of the competition's best allrounders for the Melbourne Renegades, and nearly stole last year's semi-final from the Sydney Sixers off her own bat.

However, it's not just the talent, it's the professionalism. The fielding, fitness, and athleticism of the WBBL players stands out to Devine as a leading indicator of why the competition stands out.

"Having the professionalism of the women's game over here domestically, you're not just talking about 15 of your top players being contracted but it's 90-odd players here that are full-time athletes," she said. "That helps raise the standard. And I think the biggest difference I've noticed over the last couple of years are in the field, diving, moving, throwing, catching, all those skills have improved massively over here and that just adds to the whole spectacle of it.

"You only have to look at the semis and the final last year to see how much great athleticism was shown by all the teams out there. So those are the things that make cricket great but it also makes it a great product for people to watch."

Erin Burns' diving stop to deny Molineux in the semi-final and Haidee Birkett's stunning outfield catch stand in stark contrast to some of the shoddy fielding and running between the wickets from West Indies during Australia's 6-0 sweep on the recent tour of the Caribbean.

Devine said the wheels are slowly turning in terms of global investment into the women's game. New Zealand Cricket recently increased the number of central contracts, development deals have been offered and there is a domestic contracts structure albeit at a significantly lower sum than in Australia.

"We've been really fortunate that we've just negotiated a new MOU, with the White Ferns and also some development contracts," Devine said. "So an increase in pay, which is going to help us train more full time, which we've got to do to keep up, not just with Australia but with England, India, South Africa, West Indies. A lot more teams are putting the money and the resources to stay up with the top teams. We're really fortunate for that."

Visibility is another issue. Australian supporters are seeing their heroes, not just on the pitch on free-to-air television, but in places where they have yet to reach in other nations.

"I was in the supermarket the other day and I saw some of the Aussie women's cricket team on [cereal] boxes," Devine said. "Things like that, to me just brings a massive smile to my face to see that there's positive female athletes being represented out there.

"I remember growing up I didn't even know there was a women's cricket team in New Zealand. I was always following the Black Caps and men's teams going around. It wasn't until about the 2000 World Cup that I remember actually watching my first ever women's game down at Lincoln where they obviously won it for New Zealand, their only time so far. I just think to be seen is such a huge thing for young girls growing up to see them and to normalise it as well.

"Particularly cricket, it's so often referred to as a gentleman's game but to see the likes of Ellyse Perry, Meg Lanning, Suzie Bates, there's so many great female athletes out there it's just awesome to see how the visibility is getting better. There's still a long, long way to go but it's certainly a starting point and it's great to see."

Kurtis Patterson's hopes of forcing his way into the selectors' thoughts for the opening Test of the summer have taken another blow after he re-injured his left quad on the first day against Tasmania.

Patterson missed the opening round of Sheffield Shield matches after picking up the original injury playing grade cricket although his absence from the game against Queensland was viewed as precautionary.

He replaced Nick Larkin in the New South Wales side to face Tasmania but limped off before lunch after chasing a ball towards the boundary. He was receiving treatment with the hope he would be able to bat later in the match.

Patterson made a century in his second Test, against Sri Lanka in Canberra, last February but missed the cut for the Ashes after struggling on the Australia A tour.

Of contenders for a middle-order position against Pakistan in Brisbane next month, Mitchell Marsh has already been ruled out after the self-inflicted broken hand from punching the dressing room wall at the WACA.

Meanwhile, Aaron Finch has been left out of Victoria's match against Western Australia a week before the T20I series against Sri Lanka starts following the back spasms he suffered against South Australia.

Finch injured his back while running between the wickets during his half-century on the second day at the Junction Oval and did not field for the remainder of the match. He travelled to Perth but was left out of the XI as a precaution although is expected to play the Marsh Cup game against WA at the WACA on Wednesday ahead of leading Australia in six T20Is in the space of 12 days against Sri Lanka and Pakistan from October 27.

Matt Short replaced Finch in the middle order. Peter Siddle returned for his first game since injuring his hip flexor in the final Ashes Test.

Stumps Tasmania 6 for 258 (Webster 65, Doolan 58, Silk 41, Starc 2-36, Abbott 2-50) v New South Wales

An impressive late spell from Mitchell Starc helped give New South Wales the honours on the opening day against Tasmania in the rearranged fixture at Drummoyne Oval in Sydney.

Starc, who claimed just one wicket in the opening-round match against Queensland, removed Test team-mate Matthew Wade during the afternoon and then found some reverse swing with the old ball, pinning Caleb Jewell lbw with a wicked yorker shortly before stumps.

Worse was to follow for Tasmania whenBeau Webster, who came into the Tasmania side at the expense of George Bailey, was run out for a studious 65 as Sean Abbott came across from his follow through to intercept Tim Paine's nudge to the off side to leave the visitors on 6 for 254.

The match was moved to Drummoyne from the SCG earlier this week and a surface that had only had a few days of preparation did not offer much of anything to any of the bowlers. But New South Wales worked hard to keep the run rate in control and after a wicketless opening session claimed three in each of the next two.

They had made a tough selection call in the morning leaving out Harry Conway despite his career-best figures of 10 for 56 at the Gabba last week, opting for a five-man attack with two spinners, as Nathan Lyon and Steve O'Keefe both played their first matches of the season.

Having gone in with one batsman less, they were then hit with a blow when Kurtis Patterson re-injured his quad chasing a ball to the boundary and it remains to be seen how much of a part he will play over the next three days.

Barely a ball beat the bat during the opening session as Jordan Silk and Alex Doolan lay the foundation before New South Wales started to make inroads after lunch. Abbott produced an excellent six-over spell to remove both openers through catches to first slip.

Wade couldn't take the opportunity of the strong base and friendly batting conditions to bolster his tally ahead of Test selection. Facing Starc, another man who needs to nudge the selectors early season, he attempted to pull a very wide delivery and toe-ended to mid-off for an ugly dismissal.

The credit in the bank of two Ashes hundreds will probably be enough for Wade to retain his spot - not least because there are form and injury issues with some of the contenders - but he will want a substantial score over the next week or so.

At 3 for 146 in conditions offering very little for the bowlers, New South Wales were handily placed and they could have made another incision after tea when Steven Smith spilled Ben McDermott at slip off Lyon on 24. That miss only cost 14 runs, however, with McDermott falling to a horrid top edge as he aimed to swing Lyon over the leg side.

South Africa have suffered heavy defeats in the Visakhapatnam and Pune Tests and have come to Ranchi with the three-match series already lost. As much as dead rubbers are no longer a thing in the World Test Championship, with 40 points up for grabs for the winner of the third Test, it can't be easy for a team in South Africa's position to try to play with the expected level of intensity, and to continue to enjoy their cricket.

This is where perspective comes in. Faf du Plessis, who has been on two losing tours of India, hopes his players can see their current situation with a bit of context, and continue to put in the work they always do with the knowledge that ups and downs are part of the sport.

Teams come to India and lose far more than they win, and du Plessis pointed to the 2015-16 South Africa side that came here with a squad full of experience, and a record of 15 successive unbeaten series away from home over nine years, and still lost 3-0.

"It is tough. It is tough when you're losing," he said. "For us, we're very, very competitive people, so it does take a dent out of your confidence, but international sport is supposed to be hard, and the guys who've stayed at the top for a long time will tell you that it comes with ups and it comes with downs, personally and from a team point of view.

"So it's important for us to understand that we have to fight our way out of these last two losses. We can't expect things just to happen. They won't happen, because India is a very powerful team at the moment. As I said, their record at home is amazing. So is ours - I mean our record at home is just as good. So for us, it's just about trying to keep doing the things well, keep practising hard, keep doing the processes as well as you can, and then hopefully it's just a matter of time and you start winning again.

"We came here last time with a very strong team as well, very experienced international team that did very well overseas, the best record abroad, and we still found it challenging. There's an obvious reason that people who come to India find it tough to beat them at home. So it's not all doom and gloom for me in that aspect. It's about trying to improve as players. There're a lot of young guys in the team, and they need to make sure that whatever they get out of this experience, when they come back in three or four years' time, they're better and stronger for it."

On Thursday, two days out from the start of the Test match, South Africa's batsmen roughed up the practice pitches with their spikes before facing the spinners. Du Plessis said it was about being ready for sharp turn as and when it did arrive, and predicted that the Ranchi pitch might offer more help to the spinners than the ones in Visakhapatnam and Pune did.

"Yeah, for me it's about over-preparing," du Plessis said. "I want to try and make it as tough as possible in the nets, so that when I come to the middle, and if it does spin, then at least I've tried and prepared for it as best as possible. For me, it's just about trying to put myself in a position where I feel like I'm prepared.

"Whatever happens after that happens after that, but I think it's really important that you prepare as best as you can, and make it as tough as possible. I think the wicket will spin. I looked at the pitch and it's a different colour. It's obviously that dark, dry hardness to the surface, so I think reverse swing and spin will play a factor in this Test match."

As prepared as du Plessis might be, he knows South Africa need more runs from him. He's made two half-centuries in this series and looked mostly in control in the middle, but the big scores haven't come yet.

"I think as a player, all you want to do is grow," he said. "My last series here, when I batted in Test cricket, I found it very challenging. I think I've shown a lot of improvement coming here the second time around, being quite comfortable out there in the middle even though we've been under pressure as a batting unit all the time. Looking good, feeling good, batting well, and then it's just a case of me making sure that I can convert fifties into hundreds.

"That's not necessarily just in India, that's what any good players around the world would make sure they want to change that. There's a lot of good players that get a lot of fifties and there's a lot of chat about you - Joe Root getting fifties [and not converting them] and stuff like that. So for all of us, it's just about converting. I'm not different from any one of those players.

"Probably will [send] somebody else to the toss tomorrow, I'll give you that, because my record so far hasn't been great, and then, yeah, if we put big runs on the board in the first innings, that's where we need to start" Faf du Plessis

"When I get to fifty, I want to get a hundred. The fact that I've done it [scored a fifty] twice already this series, there's no reason for me not to go on and get a big one, so that's the challenge that I have for myself because I understand that 60s are not going to win Test matches for us. I need to bat big, like the Indian team has done. They've scored big runs."

One of the major challenges for South Africa on their recent tours of Asia has been winning tosses - they've lost their last nine tosses here, going back to July 2015. Du Plessis suggested he might send someone else out for the toss to try and change his team's luck.

"We've felt that we've done it [compete] in stages, more probably in the first Test, so hoping that we can start with the toss tomorrow," he said. "Probably will [send] somebody else to the toss tomorrow, I'll give you that, because my record so far hasn't been great, and then, yeah, if we put big runs on the board in the first innings, that's where we need to start.

"We get runs in the first innings, and then anything from there is possible. So hopefully, that'll be how it'll unfold over the next couple of days, where we can put some runs on. The pitch looks a little bit drier, a little bit crustier, so first-innings runs are going to be vital, and then anything is possible in the second innings."

NEW YORK -- The complete implosion of the New York Yankees, a 103-win team that spent Game 4 of the American League Championship Series looking like a 103-loss team, ended Friday at 12:28 a.m. local time. Remaining at Yankee Stadium were maybe 5,000 fans. They stayed to boo.

Over the previous 3½ hours, they had watched the Yankees bungle balls in the field and squander opportunities at the plate and serve up home run balls on the mound. They saw CC Sabathia, the heart of the Yankees team, walk off the field with a shoulder injury likely to end his career. They witnessed an excellent team demoralized by a better one. The Houston Astros had left the savages in the box famished. The ALCS wasn't over following the Houston's 8-3 victory that gave the Astros a three-games-to-one lead in the best-of-seven series, but it felt like it.

"We played poorly tonight. There's no other way to explain it," Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. "And we need to flush this immediately because -- we talked about it as a team: We need to get over this in a hurry and come put our best foot forward tomorrow. And now, stranger things have certainly happened, a lot stranger."

Not this strange. The Astros have Justin Verlander lined up to pitch Game 5 on full rest. If the Yankees win, they need to go into Houston, with a taxed relief crew, and win a battle of the bullpens in Game 6. Should that happen, they'll have to beat Gerrit Cole, and the Astros haven't lost a game started by Cole since July 12, a span of 16 starts.

After winning Game 1 in Houston, the Yankees have married nonexistent clutch hitting with mediocre pitching, and in Game 4, they added to it butchery in the field. First baseman DJ LeMahieu committed a pair of errors. So did second baseman Gleyber Torres. Never before in the postseason had the right side of an infield committed four errors in a game. The last time the Yankees managed that many miscues in a playoff game was in 1976. It wasn't ugly. It was unsightly.

"It was a tough night," LeMahieu said. "And then that happened."

"That" was Sabathia walking off the field almost certainly for the final time. He had planned on retiring following the season. Boone brought him in to clean up an eighth-inning mess left by Adam Ottavino, one of the Yankees' best relievers during the regular season and an energy-sucking black hole this October. On his 20th pitch of the night, Sabathia grimaced and wiggled his left shoulder, which had thrown 56,375 pitches in the regular season and 2,287 more in the playoffs. He tested it once more and knew he couldn't continue, a cliché come to life -- literally leaving it all on the field.

The stragglers from a crowd announced at 49,067 gave Sabathia a worthy ovation, saluting his Hall of Fame career. And then they returned to jeering a Yankees team thoroughly outclassed by the Astros all night. Houston walloped a pair of three-run home runs: George Springer in the third inning, off starter Masahiro Tanaka, and Carlos Correa in the sixth, off reliever Chad Green. The Astros' baserunning was nonpareil, their fielding superior and their pitching sufficient. Even after their starter, Zack Greinke, battled uncharacteristic bouts of wildness, reliever Ryan Pressly struck out Torres and Edwin Encarnacion with runners on second and third to wriggle out of a fifth-inning jam.

From the sixth inning on, the Yankees truly fell apart. LeMahieu booted a spinning nubber off Alex Bregman's bat to start the inning, and Bregman scored on Correa's home run. LeMahieu and Torres kicked balls in back-to-back, eighth-inning at-bats. Torres, charging a ball in hopes of nailing the speedy Altuve in the ninth, overran it.

The Yankees' night was like a nightmarish baseball remix of the Twelve Days of Christmas: five hits a-flailing, four errors a-making, three runs a-scoring, two guys not fielding and a season ceasing to be.

"We can't sit around here and mope about this game or the past couple games," Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge said, and that sentiment was echoed by his teammates, who talked about short memories and resilience and all the standard tropes of teams that aren't winning. Which made sense: After a performance like Game 4, nobody in his right mind wants to bother remembering it.

Thing is, as thoroughly as the Yankees asserted themselves and dominated the Minnesota Twins in the division series -- and have owned them in recent playoff matchups -- the Astros are on the verge of similarly vexing New York. The Yankees blew a 3-2 lead in the ALCS two years ago before the Astros went on to win the World Series. New York lost the wild-card game to Houston two years prior to that. Houston is doing everything the Yankees aren't, chiefly hitting with runners in scoring position. The Yankees have gone 0-for-13 in such situations during Games 3 and 4. The Astros whacked three hits -- including both home runs -- in Game 4 alone.

"We did a lot of things right, and we have a team offense," Astros manager AJ Hinch said. "We have a lot of big names. We have a lot of guys that have some star appeal. We do have guys any given day that can bust out and have that big monster night. Our team is at our best when everybody is doing something, and we put a lot of pressure on the opponent every day."

The Yankees caved against the lineup in Game 4, and whether it was plating only one run in the first inning when Greinke walked three batters or blowing another bases-loaded chance in the fifth, the game's run-scoringest offense during the regular season turtled when faced with what amounted to a must-win game. Because, as Boone said, now it will take something strange for an Acela World Series to become a reality. And baseball, as unpredictable a game as it might be, doesn't often see its fanfic come to life.

The anger in those 5,000 or so who were there to hear "New York, New York" play at the end of a long October night was palpable. It would be one thing for the Astros to beat the Yankees; it was entirely different to see the Yankees beat themselves. This wasn't the team that had run roughshod through the AL East. It was some fun-house-mirror version, sloppy and impotent and vulnerable. It was the sort that can't afford to show up again, because if it does, 2019 will register as another failure for the game's ultimate championship-or-bust franchise.

WAYNE CITY, Ill. – Tyler Thomas was bidding to become the first repeat champion of the Jason Leffler Memorial Thursday night at Wayne County Speedway, but Tyler Courtney refused to be denied.

Courtney stole the win in the 40-lap feature at the eighth-mile dirt bullring with some late-race heroics, trading sliders with Thomas – the defending race winner – in the closing laps before pulling away down the stretch.

After a defining turn-one slider, Courtney used momentum off the high side of the third turn to take the lead with three laps left and then pulled away to a .972-second victory in the end.

Thursday night’s score marked Courtney’s eighth NOS Energy Drink USAC National Midget Series win of the season and his second in a row. He becomes the sixth different winner in six editions of the event.

“That was good, hard racing tonight,” noted Courtney in victory lane. “Tyler has always raced me pretty well. He won this race last year, so he knows how to get this done. But Rizzy (Tyler Ransbottom, crew chief) has been working his tail off to get this midget where we need to get it. And now, I think we’ve got this NOS Energy Drink/Spike-Stanton SR-11 going in the right direction.”

Though Courtney came on strong down the stretch, it was Thomas who controlled the pace for most of the night, starting from the pole after earning the most passing points through heat races and qualifiers and jetting out to a big lead early despite two attempts at the initial start for a jump by Thomas.

From there, though, the BT Machine No. 91t was untouchable through the first half of the event, rolling away from its pursuers and knifing through traffic effortlessly before a red-flag period with 16 to go after Zeb Wise, Gio Scelzi and Thomas Meseraull all tangled at the exit of the fourth corner.

Wise getting on his side necessitated the stoppage, but all three were able to rejoin and continue.

On the restart, third-running Jesse Colwell got too high in turns one and two and dropped out of podium contention, all while Thomas got away with the lapped cars of Andrew Layser and Holley Hollan as a buffer between himself and second place.

Jason McDougal used the chaos of Colwell’s issue to briefly lay claim to the runner-up spot, but Courtney stormed back by in a hurry with 13 to go and set his sights on Thomas out front.

Thomas, good as he was early, was hindered in the final quarter by a charging Layser, who successfully unlapped himself inside of 10 to go and left Thomas to suddenly deal with a closing Courtney.

As the laps wound down, Thomas’ leading margin slimmed and slimmed, with Courtney’s NOS Energy Drink-sponsored No. 7bc right on Thomas’ back nerf bar with five to go before ducking low to challenge the next time around.

“The end was awesome,” noted Courtney. “I knew we had to be getting close on laps, because we went on a long green flag run there, but man, I didn’t really know if I needed to go to the bottom or not because Andrew (Layser) was holding his own there on the bottom. I knew I had been around the top the whole race, so it was kind of hard to get away from it, but he kept coming back to me a little bit.”

Once Courtney successfully dispatched Thomas for the lead, the Oklahoma native could only watch as his dreams of becoming the first repeat – and back-to-back – Leffler Memorial winner faded into the night.

He ended up a heartbreaking second, one position short of where he hoped to be entering the night.

“I’m just a little disappointed in myself for being too cautious,” lamented Thomas. “Those last five laps, I tried not to mess up and everything, and Tyler was right there and did a great job of capitalizing on what I couldn’t do.

“It was a great night, though. Anytime you can be on the podium with USAC is always a good night,” Thomas added. “We’ll take second here and we’ll try and get a win at Haubstadt.”

Jason McDougal crossed third, marking a rare occurrence where all three podium starters finished in the top-three positions, with KSE Hard Charger Logan Seavey coming from 20th to finish fourth.

Justin Grant completed the top five, ahead of Chris Windom, Brady Bacon, Daryn Pittman, Sam Johnson and Tucker Klaasmeyer.

To view complete race results, advance to the next page.