Book reviews

After an uninspiring three years in charge many Ipswich fans won't lose too much sleep over the departure of Joe Royle. Csaba Abrahall reports

“You can stick your Joe Royle up your arse,” was the advice many in the Portman Road crowd offered the Ipswich board when it became clear that the former Oldham, Everton and Manchester City boss was to be the man to replace George Burley as Town’s manager. Three-and-a-half years after that unheeded protest, apparently after a routine meeting with David Sheepshanks revealed irreconcilable differences, Royle has unexpectedly departed. Few are disappointed.

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Harry Pearson watched his club, Middlesbrough, lose their biggest ever game. But some in Eindhoven just wanted one team to lose quickly – and with tears

I am sitting in the media centre at the Philips Stadion, Eindhoven. It is 22.10 local time and the place is deserted except for me, a couple of Cockney picture editors and the Dutch waiter. High up in a corner above the door a big TV screen is showing pictures of the game that is going on 50 yards away. Middlesbrough are trailing 1-0 to Sevilla. A free-kick from Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink flies a few inches over the bar. The picture editor sitting next to me groans. “Jesus,” he says, “We don’t want extra time. Be a bloody nightmare.” He glances across at the Dutch waiter.

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The Swedes were proud of Sven and they may be again. But, as Marcus Christenson explains, the fake sheikh has put one love affair on hold – till England win the World Cup

There was a time when Sven-Göran Eriksson could do no wrong in the eyes of the Swedes. His achievements made them immensely proud. Svennis, as they prefer to call him, was proof that a quiet, timid man from Värmland could conquer the football world with traditional Swedish values such as democracy, humility and hard work.

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After promotion back to the Football League, Ashley Shaw finds renewed optimism in a corner of the north-west

Few small clubs can match the fame of Accrington Stanley. Synonymous with a lost era, Stanley’s premature and unnecessary exit from the Football League in 1962 lent the club a certain romance, especially as, only a few years before, they had been riding high, attracting gates of more than 10,000 to Peel Park.

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Portugal's most successful export is certainly admired at home for his achievements and wealth – but his compatriots don't exactly like José Mourinho, reports Phil Town

In the last two years, José Mourinho has been to Portuguese football what Manderley was to the heroine in Daphne du Maurier’s novel Rebecca and Hitchcock’s film: absent but omnipresent. At his old club FC Porto, various coaches have tried and failed to measure up to the historic yardstick set by Mourinho during his spell there, whether in material terms (back-to-back championships, a Portuguese Cup, a UEFA Cup and a Champions League title in two seasons) or in terms of style. Coach Co Adriaanse has just won the championship with Porto, but the team was widely seen as barely the best of a poor bunch vying for the title. And, however honourable the man might be, his appeal factor struggles to rise above the dishwater-dull when held up against Mourinho’s charisma, still hovering ghost-like above the Estádio do Dragão.

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