The Archive

Friday 1 Dennis Wise, Frank Lampard, Steve Guppy and Trevor Sinclair are the new names in Little Kev's squad to play Belgium. Paul Ince is recalled in place of David Batty, making sure the squad contains no less than the mandatory three players who have been sent off for England in the past 18 months. Newcastle sign Kevin Gallacher from Blackburn for £700,000. A consortium of Icelandic businessmen has made a bid of £6 million to buy Stoke City, hoping to install the national team coach Gudjon Thordarsson as manager in place of the luckless Gary Megson.

Saturday 2 Strugglers' Saturday sees Steve Staunton scandalously sent off in Villa's dismal 0-0 with Liverpool, a game mystifyingly described as "just balloons on sticks" by John Gregory. Bottom club Sheff Wed go goal-crazy against Wimbledon, winning 5-1 in front of a suitably Wimbledon-sized crowd, 18,077. Sunderland are second after pasting Bradford 4-0 at Valley Parade. Everton are reportedly the target of a £50 million bid from Chris Evans and Terry Venables – possibly both in the top two on any fans' list of undesirable owners. India's Baichung Bhutia makes his debut as a sub for Bury, and gets booked after two minutes. "We will probably get more fans than if we'd signed Ronaldo," Bury manager Neil Warnock had predicted. They get 3,603.

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Their was shock when Portugal won the rights to stage Euro 2004, but as Phil Town explains, it won't be an easy ride

Portuguese emotions have been on a veritable roller-coaster ride of late. The plight of its ex-colony East Timor cut the national psyche deep, then the is­land’s resistance leaders visited and the streets of Lis­bon were paved with petals. Spirits plunged again with three days of mourning for the singer and nat­ional institution Amelia Rodrigues, but straight away foot­ball dragged the nation back up by its bootlaces.

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Day ten of the WSC advent calendar and, having had Jesus on the eighth, it’s only fair we focus on his mother Mary today. In 1999 Southampton were desperate to relocate from The Dell into a new, bigger stadium. Tim Springett discussed the problems surrounding the proposed move in issue 154, and considered the option of moving to a gasworks called St Mary’s

The saga of Southampton’s efforts to move to a new ground has now moved into injury time with the ann­oun­cement that building work on a new 32,000 seater stadium to replace The Dell is set to begin in the spring. However, as every Saints fan knows only too well, a lot of things can go wrong in injury time.

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Charlton only moved back into The Valley in the 1990s, so why are they looking at uprooting again? Brian Cowen reports

The campaign by Charlton Athletic fans to bring the club back to The Valley in the late Eighties and early Nineties is rightly regarded as one of the most successful attempts by an organised fan group to bring about substantial change at any club. Outsiders may be astonished to learn, therefore, that less than ten years later, the club may be on the move again.

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Andy Lyons talks to Rachel Anderson about being the only FIFA registered female agent, her clients and taking on the PFA

In the relationship between clubs and players it used to be that clubs held the upper hand. Has the balance now shifted in the players’ favour?
Only for a small minority. The majority of players are still paid slaves.There’s no freedom of movement until they’re 25, they can get fined two weeks’ wages for whatever misdemeanour the clubs decide. Clubs have always had it their way but there is an emerging sense now that clubs, players and agents have to work together. Even if I can’t agree on a contract with a club I still have to be able to do business with them. It’s no good anyone making impossible demands, so if I do a deal for a player it has to be something that the club can afford. Straight away, as soon as a deal is done, that boy has got so much pressure on him. If he doesn’t score the goals or stop them going in, he’s dumped and that doesn’t do me any good, or him. Backing the club into a corner over terms isn’t a very clever thing for an agent to do and the people who do that are here today gone tomorrow. Though when I first started people probably thought I was going to be like that and in fact I probably thought I was too.

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