Search: ' Ricky Sbragia'

Cameron Carter digests the latest verbal jousts between Rafa and Alex and co and detects more childish bickering than cunning mind-games

A significant proportion of advertisements these days, particularly the daytime ones, depict attractive, long-suffering women coping with a man who, though apparently the husband, could also be her idiot child. This is so that the female consumers being targeted can laugh knowingly to themselves about how childlike men are before nipping out to spend good money on Buttercup Eyelid Cleanser and dog insurance.

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It is not only the FA Cup that mixes minnows with giants: county cups do so, too. Gavin Willacy champions these wrongly neglected events

Having despatched Northern League Second Division strugglers Prudhoe, Newcastle United face the University of Northumbria in the cup ­quarter-finals. This is not fantasy football, FIFA 08, or Football Manager. It’s the Northumberland Senior Cup, one of the many county cups that feature Premier League giants taking on not only players who are unknown outside of their front doors, but whole teams that few people have even heard of. In the midst of the 21st century sports business world, they are as much of an anachronism as the Boat Race, the ­Varsity Match or cricket festivals.

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Some are wild cards, some club stalwarts. Jon Spurling looks at the life of the acting manager

Newcastle and Sunderland rarely admit to having anything in common, yet the clubs’ recent moves to formalise the positions of Joe Kinnear and Ricky Sbragia represents a rare moment of triumph for caretaker managers. The fact that both clubs hankered after bigger names suggests that neither man’s position is secure, but at least they are likely to emerge with their self respect intact, unlike many hapless interim appointments.

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