HONEYXCLUSIVE

Sarri heavily criticised his side’s mental strength after they slipped to a 2-0 Premier League defeat at Arsenal on Saturday, labelling his players “difficult to motivate”. However, Sarri’s tactics are also under the spotlight as he has persisted with playing Hazard in an unfamiliar centre-forward position over the past month. Chelsea look set to remedy their striker problem with the imminent arrival of Gonzalo Higuain on loan, who scored 38 goals in one season under Sarri at Napoli in 2015/16. That should see Hazard return to his favoured role on the left side of a front three, and Sarri wants more from the man voted the second best player at last year’s World Cup. “In this moment, he’s more an individual player than a leader,” said Sarri on Wednesday.

The arrests were first reported by Closer magazine, which said Brown, his bodyguard and a friend were detained after a 24-year-old woman alleged she was raped at the singer’s suite at the Mandarin Oriental hotel on the night of Jan. 15. The woman said she had met the men at a Paris nightclub earlier in the evening, according to the magazine. Neither Brown nor his agents responded to requests for comment. Brown, 29, whose previous legal troubles include assaulting singer Rihanna in 2009, had remained in custody on Tuesday, a judicial source said. Brown pleaded guilty to assaulting then- girlfriend Rihanna in an incident that made headlines around the world when a photo of her bruised face was released.

The court sentenced him to a two-year jail sentence that it immediately reduced to a fine of 365,000 euros, which adds on to another penalty of 3.2 million euros, the sentence read. A court spokesman said he did not know whether this would be added on to the 18.8 million euros that Ronaldo had agreed to pay Spain’s taxman under a deal reached in June with the player’s lawyers. Ronaldo, who last year joined Italian champions Juventus, returned to Madrid for the court appearance which lasted around 40 minutes as the deal was officially presented to the judge.

Though she refused to ever confirm if she was romantically involved with Adekunle Gold, she admitted that they were very close friends. “When I met Adekunle Gold, I just knew him as a graphic artist, popularly referred to as the ‘King of Photoshop’. I didn’t even know he was a singer, but we just became close from there.” But she dispelled rumours that she was dating Falz during an interview with Wazobia Max’s ‘Talk Talk’. “I’m not dating Falz. I was not dating Falz. I never said I was dating Falz”, Simi said.