Arsenal have agreed to sell Gabriel Martinelli to Al Hilal for a club-record £55.7 million, a package that rises past 65 million euros with add-ons, and the medical was booked for this weekend with the intention of announcing before Tuesday's deadline. Nothing has been published by either club at the time of writing, so the deal is agreed rather than done. It is close enough, though, to ask the question that has been sitting under Al Hilal's summer since July: why does a club that has already spent more than 120 million euros on Crysencio Summerville and Ollie Watkins want a third forward?

Stefano Domenicali picked the Zandvoort paddock to settle the question hanging over the second half of this Formula One season. "The calendar is confirmed," the F1 chief executive told the sport's official website at the Dutch Grand Prix. "There are still a few tickets to be sold in Abu Dhabi, and we stay focused on delivering the calendar we promised at the beginning of the year." Qatar races on November 29. Abu Dhabi closes the season on December 6. The finale stays at Yas Marina, where it has lived since 2014.

Cristiano Ronaldo sat on the bench in Riyadh for 62 minutes on Friday night, watching Al Nassr dismantle Al Riyadh without him. He came on at 3-0, took 21 minutes to score career goal number 977, and turned Ayman Yahya's low cutback into an emphatic left-footed finish. The loudest cheer of the weekend belonged to him. The most important detail didn’t.

Dubai Basketball announced on Wednesday that Tristan Thompson, the Canadian centre who won the 2016 NBA championship alongside LeBron James in Cleveland, has joined the club's front office as its global ambassador. The appointment lands at the start of the club's second EuroLeague season, and it says a great deal about where the three-year-old franchise believes its next phase of growth will come from.