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BBC Radio Newcastle's Sunderland commentator Nick Barnes says a deal to sign Dayann Methalie from Toulouse is "not over" despite reports it had collapsed after concerns were raised over his medical.

The Black Cats had agreed a £25.6m fee to sign the 20-year-old left-back last week.

"It's not a deal that's dead," Barnes told BBC Radio Newcastle.

"It's a deal that they still want to go through. It is obviously taking a little bit longer than they hoped. The player himself is understandably distraught at being flown over here and being impressed with everything to having to go back to France and do an investigation into what has caused this delay.

"The club very much still want to sign him, it's now about going through the process in France and that side of the medical.

"It's very much a deal that they still want to happen. It's not over. It's not a done deal but the process continues."

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Last season: 7th.

This season: 17th.

What Sunderland and Regis le Bris achieved last season was close to miraculous, as they went from pretty much unanimous relegation tips to Europa League qualification.

Can they produce a repeat performance?

I'm not so sure, although keeping Granit Xhaka from the clutches of Chelsea was huge, in what has been a quiet summer so far in terms of incoming transfers.

Brian Brobbey showed what a threat he is with the Netherlands at the World Cup but this campaign may just be a reality check for the Black Cats after the dreamland of last term.

• Read more of Phil's predictions

Chris Collinson
BBC Sport statistician

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Teams in the bottom half of the Premier League in 2025-26 finished with more points than they had in years, meaning that judging them simply by their position in the table is perhaps a little harsh.

Everton may have been underwhelmed with their 13th-place finish but it was the most points a team in that position had finished with since the Toffees themselves in 1999-2000.

The points of the four places below them were all the highest they have been in the Premier League for 23 years and West Ham can consider themselves unlucky to have gone down with the highest points total for an 18th-placed side since 2010-11.

However, competition has come at a cost.

One place where the Premier League has become less competitive - because it has become more fiercely-contested overall - is at the very bottom.

While it is almost expected for one side to be cut adrift long before the end of the season, nowadays two sides are getting left behind.

The average points tally of the second-bottom side in a 38-game season is 31, meaning teams that finish there have usually competed in a relegation battle for most of the season before ultimately falling short.

After the Premier League was reduced to 20 teams in 1995-96, only two 19th-placed sides failed to reach 30 points in the first 21 seasons. But in the past decade, seven of the 10 sides to finish in that position have failed to do so.

In the past two seasons, promoted sides Ipswich and Burnley have both finished there with just 22 points - the fewest ever taken by a second-bottom side.

Relegation battles are now mostly a fight to see who takes the final spot in the bottom three, with the other two accounted for long before the final day - often by promoted sides.

But inspired by the survival of Sunderland and Leeds, promoted trio Coventry City, Ipswich Town and Hull City will all be hoping they have what it takes to match the competitiveness of the Premier League this season.

Read more on the Premier League's competitive numbers

Sunderland could shatter their transfer record by triggering the 60m euros (£51m) release clause for Sporting's Mozambique winger Geny Catamo, 25. (Teamtalk), external

Want more transfer stories? Read Thursday's full gossip column

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This was a surprise as on Tuesday afternoon everything seemed fine with the deal for Dayann Methalie.

The player had flown in a day or so ago for his medical. Then it transpires there is clearly an issue. Reading between the lines it appears to be an issue with a light back injury. He hasn't failed the whole medical but one aspect of the medical that seems to be the problem.

As a consequence he has flown back to France, to his club Toulouse. No doubt they will want to see for themselves. The deal is on hold, not off. You could say it's in the balance.

It's a player they clearly like and want. They thought a deal had been agreed. I imagine what will happen is they will get the diagnosis from the Toulouse point of view, compare it to what they found here and then there will be negotiations about restructuring the deal - so there is less risk Sunderland take on board for the deal.

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Sunderland's £25.7m move for Toulouse and France Under-21 defender Dayann Methalie, 20, is in danger of collapsing after concerns were raised over his medical. (Daily Mail), external

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Fancy testing your football prediction skills? With the new season under way, BBC Sport has just the thing to keep you entertained every week.

After the success of our World Cup Predictor game, we've rebranded it for the club season as Match of the Day Predictor.

It's simple to play - just predict the outcome of the six fixtures we've selected from across domestic and European competitions every week.

And don't worry if you've joined late - players can join at any time, get involved with the latest round and start building a streak.

Once you've submitted your predictions, you'll also be able to see what others think the outcome of the match will be.

Read more about it here

You can find the predictor in the navigation bar at the top of this page, or click here to play

European youth football expert Alfred Frank says Dayann Methalie has the "most potential" of any player in his position currently on the market after Sunderland agreed a £25.6m deal to sign the French defender from Toulouse.

Frank compares the 20-year-old defender to Paris Saint-Germain's Nuno Mendes, who is considered one of the best in the world at left back.

He explained: "I think the player who Mathalie has been most compared to is Nuno Mendes, so with all dimensions considered in terms of style of play, I think you can imagine what type of style and attributes you're going to find in a player like Mathalie.

"I think the price nowadays for players of his age coming from France especially comes a lot with the potential that there is behind the player and I think in terms of full-back, I think in my opinion he's got the most potential on the market at the moment.

"The high price is if you're going off potential and you also have to take into consideration that due to the French national team's lack of players in his position, he could be a part of Zinedine Zidane's squad this season.

"As soon as he makes that call-up to the France squad, his price will take a big increase. Signing him before he makes that France senior team debut is definitely a good move from my point of view.

"I think Methalie has been mentioned for some time as a serious candidate for the France team. He has been linked with a lot of top clubs in the past and the expectations with the France fans are the highest we have seen with a full-back prospect for a while."

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Chris Collinson
BBC Sport statistician

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Last season, the Premier League was arguably more competitive than it has been for years.

While the 65 points between champions Arsenal and bottom side Wolves was around the average for a 38-game season (63), a real revolution took place in mid-table.

Since the league was reduced to 20 teams in 1995-96, the gap between the top four and the bottom three – between what has often been the Champions League and the Championship – had been increasing as the seasons went by, with the 'bigger' clubs profiting from their European adventures and the extra money they earned by regularly finishing higher in the table.

But last season, the gap between the 'haves' and the 'have-nots' of the Premier League dropped from 44 points in 2024-25 to just 26 points – the smallest distance for 23 years (since 25 points in 2002-03).

The European places were more attainable than they had been for years. Despite taking a point fewer than when they finished seventh the season before, Aston Villa clinched Champions League qualification by finishing two places higher.

While Liverpool took the 'bonus' Champions League place by finishing fifth, their points total of 60 was the lowest by a side finishing there for 19 years and would have put them ninth in 2024-25.

Bournemouth and Sunderland also took full advantage of needing fewer points than normal by qualifying for European competition for the first time ever and for over half a century respectively.

Read more on the Premier League's competitive numbers

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Sunderland boss Regis Le Bris says his side "imposed ourselves well" to come from a goal down and beat Ligue 1 side Stade Rennes 2-1 in their final pre-season friendly at the Stadium of Light on Saturday.

The Black Cats trained 1-0 to a first-half penalty but dominated the second period, turned the game around through goals from Brian Brobbey and Trai Hume.

"It was a good second half performance - in line with our standards," Le Bris.

"Rennes are a good team, as expected. They're good with the ball and good under pressure.

"We made it a bit easy for them in the first half.

"We needed to lift the intensity at half-time and we did just that. We imposed ourselves well in the second half.

"We had to show more aggressiveness and the second half showed what we can do when we play at high pressure.

"The subs made a good impact too - that's a good sign for the season ahead."

Chris Collinson
BBC Sport statistician

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The belief that promoted sides that stayed up in their first season are often relegated in their second is a popular one, with the phrase 'second-season syndrome' regularly thrown about. But is it as common as people think?

Last season Sunderland and Leeds United became the 53rd and 54th promoted sides to survive in the Premier League.

Of the previous 52, only 11 were relegated the following season (21%). The vast majority of promoted teams that stay up do not suffer from second-season syndrome.

However, there is precedent for a promoted side that had a first season as good as Sunderland's to be relegated in their second. In fact, the best promoted side in the 38-game era of the Premier League did just that.

George Burley's Ipswich Town ended the 2000-01 campaign fifth with 66 points - the highest finish and most points any promoted side has achieved in a 38-game season.

But with European football to contend with, they dropped 13 places and took 30 fewer points the next season as they were relegated in 18th place, with Sunderland the beneficiaries as they finished just one place above them.

Overall, four of the previous 20 promoted sides (20%) that finished in the top half in their first season suffered relegation in their second, with the most recent example being Sheffield United five years ago.

Sunderland will be playing in Europe this season for the first time in 53 years, with at least eight games in the Europa League on top of their usual domestic commitments.

They are the 10th promoted side in Premier League history to qualify for Europe and just the fifth to do so through their league position, with the others qualifying via cup competitions or fair play.

Despite their squads arguably being the least-prepared to handle the extra fixtures, five of the previous nine teams achieved another top-half finish and just two were relegated - Ipswich in the early 2000s and Hull City in the mid-2010s.

Sunderland will be hoping to follow the example of the most recent promoted side to qualify for Europe - Wolves in 2019.

Despite playing 17 games as they reached the Europa League quarter-finals in 2019-20, they still had enough in the tank to finish seventh in the league again.

There are definitely the ingredients for Sunderland to have a difficult second season, but given how well-run they have been in their recent rise from League One to Europe, many fans will have faith they will continue to thrive.

Read the full article here

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BBC Radio Newcastle's Sunderland commentator Nick Barnes says there is "no anxiety" from Regis le Bris and those around him, despite the lack of signings so far this summer.

Thomas Meunier, on a free, remains the only incoming thus far in the window, but Barnes believes the club will still land their transfer targets.

"There's general frustration all round with trying to get players out and trying to get players in," he said.

"The general mood of Sunderland fans at the moment is there's a slight anxiety over the fact that there's still no new faces after the arrival of Meunier.

"Le Bris has said that they are working hard behind the scenes and we're hearing the players they are linked with and the knockbacks they're getting from some and the fees some clubs want.

"I'll reiterate again, Le Bris was very relaxed after Lens on Saturday and says they will get these players in and he's happy to start the season with the squad that he's got.

"He's repeatedly said, even from the end of last season, that the team that starts will probably be much the same that beat Chelsea on the last day of the season.

"I'm still fairly confident they will get these players in by the end of the window and and then Regis will have the squad he wants to to work, with the numbers that he wants to work with, because he's been very clear about having a core squad of 20.

"There's this frustration, there's anxiety, from fans but there are still three weeks of the window to go.

"Reading the the body language of Regis and those around him, there's no anxiety from their perspective.

"Le Bris, ideally of course, would have wanted these new players in already but they're not rushing. I think it's totally different to last summer where it was an influx of players straight away."

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Leo Hjelde's exit to Belgian Pro League side KV Mechelen has sparked the conversation at BBC Radio Newcastle around his cult hero status.

The Norwegian centre-back featured 19 times for Sunderland in the Championship in 2024-25 on their way up to the Premier League, before going on loan to Sheffield United last season.

While the 22-year-old missed out on playing in the top flight, football commentator Nick Barnes believes Sunderland fans can agree that without his contributions towards the end of their promotion campaign, they may never have made it back up in the first place.

Barnes said: "Someone posted on social media: 'No Leo Hjelde, no Dan Ballard goal, no Ballard goal, no Tommy Watson winner, no Watson winner, no promotion, no promotion, no Granit Xhaka, no Xhaka, no Europa League so therefore, no Hjelde - no Europa League'.

"So you can see how that can be fashioned into cult status for Hjelde because, not only did he come on as a substitute a minute before Ballard scored that goal at the Stadium of Light to get to the play-off final, he came on a minute before Tommy Watson scored the winner at Wembley as well.

"So he has engineered himself into a sort of niche, if you like, within Sunderland's history for being that bit-part player at the end of both those two play-off games."

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Chris Collinson
BBC Sport statistician

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Why - outside newly promoted teams Hull City, Coventry and Ipswich - are Sunderland once again among the bookmakers' favourites for the drop?

While results and where you finish in the table are ultimately all that matter, Sunderland's underlying statistics from last season suggest repeating their success might not be so simple.

Expected goals (xG) tells us how well teams do the basics of creating lots of good chances and limiting their opponents to few low-quality ones, based on how hundreds of teams before them have scored or conceded from those opportunities.

Only relegated Burnley and Wolves had a lower xG difference than Regis le Bris' side last season, while West Ham - with the fourth-worst overall xG - were also relegated.

While Aston Villa and Sunderland made a mockery of xG by finishing much higher in the table, the majority of sides finished mostly in line with their underlying numbers, showing those two overachievers were more the exception that proves the rule.

Only Manchester City and Villa overperformed their xG numbers by more than the Black Cats, who scored three more goals and conceded six fewer than expected given the number and quality of shots taken.

So taking the season as a whole, it seems that Sunderland's performances weren't as impressive as their results. But one event significantly affected part of the Black Cats' season: the Africa Cup of Nations.

They were without six players - twice as many as any other side - during the tournament in December and January. While the club's performances had already declined after a strong start, they suffered even more when their squad was stretched.

But once all those players returned, Sunderland's underlying numbers improved throughout the rest of the season and they ended the campaign playing like a mid-table side.

With no Afcon this season, the Black Cats may not suffer such a drop in performance. If they continue the 2026-27 season as they finished the last then relegation should be only a remote possibility.

It is common practice these days for transfer fees to have performance-based add-ons. The theory is the selling club gains more if the player goes on to be extremely successful, while the buying club is to some extent protected financially if the transfer doesn't work out.

In some cases, the total value of add-ons is significant - Real Madrid could end up paying an extra £30m to Borussia Dortmund for Jude Bellingham depending on how successful he is over the course of his career in the Spanish capital, for example.

In others, like the potential £1.7m worth of add-ons Brighton's £29.78m signing of Greece Under-21 forward Charalampos Kostoulas, are less significant.

Clubs sometimes say add-ons are 'easily achievable' or 'difficult'.

Easier-to-achieve add-ons can include things like making a basic number of appearances, or scoring a certain amount of goals. Add-ons can also be attached to a team's success rather than the individual player's - a club may agree to an add-on requiring an extra payment if they qualify for Europe, for example.

Others can be more ambitious - tied to extreme levels of individual or collective success, like winning the Champions League or the Ballon d'Or.

An example of the difficulty add-ons can present when discussing valuations would be the claims made in the Portuguese media in 2022 that the first additional payment in Darwin Nunez's £64m-plus-add-ons move from Benfica to Liverpool was triggered by the Uruguayan making just 10 appearances.

Then Liverpool boss Arne Slot rejected speculation he had not started Nunez in some games because it would trigger an additional payment.

Whether Liverpool paid more for Nunez, or club captain Virgil van Dijk - for whom they paid a flat fee of £75m to Southampton in 2017 - cannot be determined without knowing exactly what add-ons were included in the Nunez deal, then figuring out which conditions he has and has not met.

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"I don't think Sunderland will be anywhere near the relegation zone," says sports journalist Ian Murtagh, despite Regis le Bris' side "entering the unknown" after securing European football.

The Black Cats have gone from the third tier of English football to the Premier League, and now the Europa League, in just four years.

"Sunderland are entering the unknown in the sense that they won't just be playing 40 to 42 games this season, they will be playing over 50 games," Murtagh explained. "But it is lazy punditry to talk about second season syndrome.

"People are casting their minds back to when Ipswich Town qualified for Europe and then were relegated from the top-flight.

"But, if you look across Premier League history, only four or five sides have been relegated in their second season - and I don't think Sunderland will be anywhere near the relegation zone.

"Let's not forget the most important transfer of the summer in the north east is a non-transfer - Granit Xhaka is staying. How many Newcastle fans are sat there wishing that situation was true for them with Bruno Guimaraes?

"I do think Sunderland's hierarchy were considering cashing in on one of their prized assets, like Noah Sadiki or Robin Roefs, back in May. But I think they made a decision to stick with what they've got in the subsequent weeks.

"This side can improve. Yes they need to bring in reinforcements, but I actually think they will spend quite big by the end of this window."

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Sunderland centre-back Leo Hjelde has joined Belgian Pro League side KV Mechelen on a three-year contract, with a club option for a further year.

The 22-year-old, who joined the Black Cats from Leeds United on a four-and-a-half-year deal in January 2024, only made 30 first-team appearances for the club.

Hjelde spent the second half of last season on loan with Championship side Sheffield United, however he only featured eight times for Chris Wilder's side.

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Sunderland's director of football Florent Ghisolfi believes it is "the right moment" for goalkeeper Anthony Patterson "to start a new chapter in his career" after a 16-year stay at the Stadium of Light.

The 26-year-old, who joined the club's academy set-up as a 10-year-old in 2010, has penned a four-year deal with Championship club Wrexham.

Patterson made 253 appearances and kept 69 clean sheets for the Black Cats across all age groups, while also spending time out on loan with Notts County and Millwall.

"He has a special connection with Sunderland," Ghisolfi said. "He joined the academy at the age of 10, came through every stage of the club, and played an important role in some very special moments in our recent history.

"He has always represented Sunderland with professionalism and humility - and everyone at the club should be proud of his journey.

"This is the right moment for him to start a new chapter in his career. We thank him sincerely for everything he has given to Sunderland and we wish him every success at Wrexham.

"He will always have a special place here."