Search: 'Eyal Berkovic'

Teams can pass their way into the Premier League, but Adam Bate thinks that the long ball game is the best tactic to keep them there

It all looks set for an interesting battle at the top of the Championship. While Southampton are heralded for their pleasing football under Nigel Adkins, West Ham continue to power on with the arch-pragmatist Sam Allardyce. The prevailing wisdom is that trying to play football is not practical in the Championship. But history suggests you can pass your way to promotion.

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Graham Forshaw decribes the season which saw champions Fulham accumulate 101 points

The long-term significance
The three promoted clubs all stayed up the following season – the only time this has happened since the Premier League started. Indeed, none of the three has been relegated since. Fulham’s Jean Tigana was the only black manager in the League at the time and the first foreigner to take a team up to the top level – Ossie Ardiles had won promotion through the play-offs with Swindon Town ten years earlier but they were then demoted for financial irregularities.

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Panorama's report into corruption and the impact it is having on the game

Is football full of corrupt people? We have no idea. Or at least we have no proof. But with plenty of agents and managers saying that bungs – that is, bribes – are rife, we do know that the alternative is that the game is full of liars.                  

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Dear WSC
In response to a letter published about the term “mullered” (Letters, WSC 228) and the origins of the word, at the risk of turning WSC into an episode of Balderdash & Piffle, I always felt it appropriate for the term to be linked to fabled West Germany forward Gerd Müller and the team of the early 1970s. Despite being too young to recall “Der Bomber” in his heyday, checking out old videos of him in action (hardly ever leaving the penalty area in a fashion Gary Lineker could only dream of) and a check of his goalscoring feats – 68 goals in only 62 international matches – it seems to tally with my favoured definition of “mullered”, to be comprehensively beaten in a surprising and unimaginative manner. The only other time I have heard of the term “mullered” is in relation to drinking too much alcohol which, sadly, may be linked to the end of Gerd’s career.
Jonathan Paxton, via email

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Eyal Berkovic’s return to Israeli football has not gone well, despite the considerable size of his ego, as Shaul Adar reports 

After playing for five English clubs and Celtic, Eyal Berkovic moved back to Israel this summer with Maccabi Tel Aviv. His season’s statistics make sad reading – nine starts, subbed seven times, coming on as a sub twice, no assists and only one goal. His team scored more goals without him on the field. His only contribution seems to be in coining a new Hebrew idiom: “I went to consult with the crocodiles.”

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