The Archive

Jamie Redknapp's face seems to get everywhere these days. Simon Tyers tunes in to watch his latest role in Football's Next Star, Sky One's follow up to Football Icon

Jamie Redknapp is exactly the sort of screen presence Sky Sports had in mind when the Premier League started. Bearer of a boyish smile, conventionally handsome looks, artfully constant two-day beard growth, wardrobe’s worth of designer suits and familial connections with just the sort of people the image thrives on, his role seems as much advertorial as analyst.

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In a golden age for domestic Dutch football, Feyenoord and Ajax often found the going tougher at home than they did in European competition. Ernst Bouwes looks back on the 1970-71 Eredivisie season

The long-term significance

This season the Dutch league was arguably the best in Europe if not the world, being host to the 1970 European Cup winners Feyenoord and the team who were about to succeed them, Ajax. PSV reached the semi-final of the Cup-Winners Cup and FC Twente the quarter-final of the Fairs Cup. Between 1969 and 1978 these four teams would play in eight European finals and win six.

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Tom Davies reacts to Crystal Palace going into administration and looks at other teams threatened by HM Revenue & Customs

In a season of such widespread financial dysfunction, it’s perhaps surprising that it has taken until January for any professional club to go into administration, the fate that befell Crystal Palace at the end of last month. The administrator was called in by the London-based investment fund Agilo, a “specialist in distressed companies”, to whom chairman Simon Jordan had mortgaged much of the club’s asset base, including player wages, sale income and the basic fixtures and fittings.

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Ian Plenderleith uses websites like YouTube to discover a metaphorical gold mine of bad punditry from around the world

Who is the game’s worst broadcaster? The debate has embraced a wider cast of dubious characters now that we can head to YouTube to hear the gibbering vacuity and perverse analysis of commentators and pundits from around the world. And, thanks to the internet, British viewers were well warned ahead of the arrival on their screens this year of the lead candidate for football’s most nonsensical TV goon, ESPN’s diminutive, smooth-topped Irish export, Tommy Smyth.

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In the first part of a feature on the financial turmoil that has enveloped football, Ashley Shaw looks at the fury caused by the Glazers' attempt to load even more debt on to Manchester United

There have been few more important documents in the history of Manchester United than the bond prospectus published last month. The admission that the Glazers have already taken out £22.9 million in loans and fees, and could suck a further £500m out of the club over the next seven years, means there can no longer be any pretence about the motivation for the 2005 takeover. The age of the football asset-stripper is at hand.

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