The Archive

Lincoln’s Keith Alexander, back at work after brain surgery, is one of only three black managers in the league. Grahame Lloyd asked him why he thought this was so

Keith Alexander knows he’s very lucky to be alive. Just three months after undergoing major brain surgery following a collapse at his home, the Lincoln City manager was due back in the dugout for the home derby against Boston on February 7. Alexander could hardly have chosen a more volatile atmosphere for his return but, with Lincoln’s next three matches pitching them against neighbours Scunthorpe and Hull as well as promotion rivals Huddersfield, all their games this month are high-profile and high-octane.

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Good enough for the World Cup, but not for the bench of a struggling Premiership side? Jules Brandon  wonders what has gone wrong for Wolves’ star  buy from Nigeria

On the evening of July 7 last year, Wolves called a press conference for the next morning, pro­m­­ising to unveil a new mystery signing. The club had just signed Oleg Luzhny from Arsenal, but there was a sense that this next deal might be bigger and better. If there was a slight air of anti-climax, not to mention baf­flement, when the latest acquisition was revealed as Isaac Okoronkwo, it set the tone nicely.

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Though far from ever-present, agents have been around longer than you might think. John Harding  charts their changing role back to the days when they built whole teams

The term “football agent” first entered the language in the 1890s, as the professional game began to expand. The main purpose of the agent was to place players with clubs. For a time, they did good business: in 1893, Middlesbrough Ironopolis had its playing strength built up from scratch in about three days by one unnamed agent. But clubs soon became suspicious of the ties developing between players and “outsiders”. Control was all-important and, once the maximum wage was instituted in 1900, along with the contractual straitjacket called the retain-and-transfer system, agents faded away. The scout was soon providing clubs with as many players as they needed for a fraction of the cost.

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The number of Australian players in Britain has turned from trickle to flood, fuelled by an army of agents. Neil Forsyth  traces this all back to a very English wheeler-dealer

Ten years ago it was Scandinavians. Every United Kingdom team, it seemed, had one. Cheap, professional and highly adaptable to the British playing style (apart from Tomas Brolin, on all three counts) they stream­ed across the North Sea. It wasn’t a coincidental occurrence, a sudden outbreak of itchy feet. Rather, it was down to the emergence in those countries of an ambitious and inventive breed of a relatively new football phenomenon, the modern agent. Well educated, fluent in English and with a largely untapped resource to market, the fledgling Scandinavian agents found the UK a fertile mar­ket. One, Rune Hauge, brought a novel bus­iness approach to his dealings with then Arsenal manager George Graham, leading to the Scotsman’s sacking.

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MC Harvey may be the only rap star who plays football to a decent standard but there are plenty of players who would love to move the other way, as Phillip Mlynar explains

Taking a hiatus from his role as one of the rappers that make up the So Solid Crew, MC Harvey – or simply “Harvey” to his new team-mates – now spends his Saturdays as left-back for AFC Wimbledon. Debuting in a 3-0 victory at Chipstead, Harvey proved to be a defender with an eye for a goal and struck up a promising understanding with Ryan Gray down the left. He also appears just as pleased with the team’s form as any of his peers who, as is usual in the Combined Counties League, don’t have a sideline in Top of the Pops appearances. “The music thing was always really just a hobby in one respect,” says Harvey who was once on Chelsea’s books. “It was fun, es­pecially when we had top-ten hits and performed at the Brits, but I’ve always loved football first. And now I’m back playing with some old mates and I’m loving it.”

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