The Archive

Tuesday 1 George Weah signs for Man City, saying: “I think this club deserves to get into Europe and that is the aim.” Steve Coppell leaves Crystal Palace to be replaced by another former manager Alan Smith.

Wednesday 2 Intertoto defeats for Bradford, beaten 3-0 at home by St Petersburg, and Villa, who lose 2-1 to Celta Vigo. The Swiss referee, who dismisses two Villa players and one from the visitors, ends the match two minutes early and has to restart. “He was an embarrassment to UEFA,” snarls John Gregory. David Hodgson resigns as Darlington manager after chairman George Reynolds asks the players to take a pay cut.

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Refs, whines and videotape

Was that really the first week of the Premiership season, or was it an “ironic” imitation? All the familiar elements that we have come to take for granted from the shoutiest league in the world were present: refereeing controversy, managers up in arms, foreign players as victims and/or villains, and everything monitored in excruciating slow-motion by Sky.

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Football's new money needs to be managed sensibly to keep the game sustainable, says  Matthew Garrahan

When Alan Sugar spoke of the “prune juice effect” in his address to the Oxford Union in 1997 he was not talking about how his stom­ach felt after seeing Darren Anderton limp off the field for the umpteenth time. Sugar used the term – cogently and correctly – to describe the inability of professional football clubs to manage the huge amounts of money coming into the game.

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His takeover was welcomed, but the bubble has been bursting since.  Anthony Hobbs takes a deeper look at QPR's chairman Chris Wright

Distinguishing FeaturesLooks a bit like a hippy version of Roger DeCourcey (of Nookie Bear fame), or Richard Branson’s unkempt, chubbier brother. Has the facial expression of someone who may have inhaled during the Sixties. Allegedly.

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The annual Inner City World Cup for foreign communities living in London was held earlier this month. Filippo Ricci went along to see if England could make home advantage count

England has just staged a World Cup, though needless to say the hosts didn’t get past the group stage. The competition in question is the Inner City World Cup, a tournament open to London’s foreign communities and held annually since 1994. African teams have dom­inated, Ghana winning two tournaments and Sierra Leone five, including the most recent edition, played on August 12 and 13 in Raynes Park, when Pakistan lost 2-1 in the final.

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