Friday 1 Tony Pulis, out of work since leaving Portsmouth two years ago, takes over at Stoke. Steve McLaren resigns as Sven’s assistant, saying: “It was never intended to be long-term and it has dragged on.”
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Roger Mitchell has left the Scottish Premier League, his departure mourned by just about nobody. Paul Hutton rushes to join the chorus of disapproval
It must be open season on football administrators. Just a couple of weeks after Adam Crozier took his leave from the FA, Roger Mitchell, chief executive of the Scottish Premier League, is handing in the keys to the company car.
The headlines were about English infiltration after trouble at Pittodrie. But the Scottish game would do better to take a long, hard look at itself, says Dianne Millen
Never mind Afghanistan – hold the front page for the Battle of Pittodrie, billed as the biggest Scots skirmish since Culloden. The coins had barely been picked up from pitchside before SPL chief executive Roger Mitchell had fallen back on that old stand-by, blaming the violence on “mindless morons”, a description later repeated by the police, press and both clubs. Idiots there most certainly were at the game, but not all of them were throwing things.
Dear WSC
I am writing in defence of “Super”Chrissy Sutton, who was bracketed along with Collymore and Anelka as a “take the money and run” football pirate by Patrick Brannigan in his musings on the Sol Campbell affair (Letters, WSC 176). Maybe I’m missing something, but as far as I am aware Sutton has played for only four clubs in a ten-year plus career – which seems about an average ratio, I would suggest. At none of them did he make outrageous wage demands, nor has he ever refused to play – in any position, as Norwich fans will remember. Why is he equated with Anelka or Collymore? What’s the problem here? “Super” Chrissy, as us country folk in Norfolk remember him, seems to attract much opprobrium among general football folk, which confuses me. Yet, apart from a dodgy season with Chelsea, he has invariably played well and always with all his heart. Two championship medals and a bag of goals either side of the border would suggest he’s worth the cash. But then, I’m just a simple country lad who knows nowt but tractors.
Jez Booker, via email
While English clubs shrug off the annual doom-laden analysis from financial commentators, Scotland's elite have been assessed as even flakier. Ken Gall reports on some alarming figures
Recent evidence would suggest that the required reading for Scottish Premier League chairmen during the close season would be a well-thumbed Guide to Who’s Cheap and Available Around the Second Divisions of Europe. However, following the publication in April of the remarkable sets of accounts by all SPL clubs, they would be well advised to pick up instead a copy of JK Galbraith’s The Great Crash, in which the eminent Harvard economist describes how speculation, profligacy and unsustainable financial practices led to the Wall Street crash of 1929.