The Archive

In his home town of Burton Mark Rowe discovers the FA's latest "white elephant"

My home town of Burton upon Trent has few claims to fame. It once had two teams in the League. I was at junior school with the younger sister of Garry Stanley, who played for Chelsea. Last season Burton Albion took Manchester United to an FA Cup third-round replay. You can still see the commemorative scarves at the Pirelli Stadium, no doubt complying with all intellectual property laws, half in United ­colours, half in Burton’s yellow and black.

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Panorama caught a few people making embarrassing statements, but David Stubbs wonders if the producers should have done better and if they were looking at the right targets

The way the BBC flagged up Alex Millar’s exposé of bungs in football like an overexcited linesman may have been an attempt to reflate the reputation of the beleaguered Panorama, or because they had struck serious dirt. The lack of advance tapes heightened the air of expectation. It was enough, evidently, to unnerve Harry Redknapp, who protested that he was an astonishing “one million per cent” clean as a whistle and any attempt to suggest otherwise would incur his legal wrath. In the event, all they had on Harry was footage of him putting up a jowly stonewall as he was offered a free trip to the 2006 World Cup to view some players. “Sounds fantastic,” he remarked, non-incriminatingly. What could he possibly have been worried about?

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Friday 1 David Moyes is to sue the Daily Mail over claims that Wayne Rooney said he was “forced out” of Everton by the manager. Bristol City’s Bradley Orr and Scott Brooker and a former team-mate, David Partridge, now at Leyton Orient, are jailed over a nightclub brawl last October.

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Steve McClaren's agent claimed that English football is the most corrupt in Europe, but from abroad it's all a matter of perception, as Gabriele Marcotti of Corriere dello Sport explains

“Who the fuck is Charles Collymore?” That’s what a well known European agent, one who has done dozens of deals in the English game, said to me shortly after 10pm on the night of the BBC’s Panorama documentary. His take, echoed by others, is that, if proved, the latest round of “bung revelations” are destined to fry a whole bunch of smaller fish, while allowing the major players to escape unscathed.

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Leaving Africa can be a culture shock – especially when you think living in Poland or on the Mediterranean are much the same, as Jonathan Wilson reports

Remember Julius Aghahowa? Lightning fast, multiple somersaults whenever he scores, linked with Arsenal? After a series of explosive substitute appearances at the African Nations Cup in 2000, he was Nigeria’s great striking hope at the 2002 World Cup, but essentially football has passed him by. In six years he has gone from teenage prodigy to a 24-year-old yesterday’s man.

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