The FA’s recent history is just one long club versus country row, as the new chief executive has soon discovered. Simon Tindall wonders if Mark Palios can ever bring peace
One year on from the resignation of Adam Crozier, the new Football Association chief executive, Mark Palios, is ensnared in the same eternal triangle that besets English football – the relationship between the top clubs, the top players and the England team.
Who will replace Sven?
England’s qualification for Euro 2004, in all probability delaying the mooted departure of Sven-Göran Eriksson to Stamford Bridge until next summer at the earliest, reduces the urgency of some particularly troubling questions without diminishing their importance: where are all the great English managers? Or even half-decent ones, especially among those with international playing experience? Was there something in the water at Spain 82, Mexico 86 and Italia 90 that ensured an entire generation would struggle to achieve mediocrity?
Friday 1 Tony Pulis, out of work since leaving Portsmouth two years ago, takes over at Stoke. Steve McLaren resigns as Sven’s assistant, saying: “It was never intended to be long-term and it has dragged on.”
Roger Mitchell has left the Scottish Premier League, his departure mourned by just about nobody. Paul Hutton rushes to join the chorus of disapproval
It must be open season on football administrators. Just a couple of weeks after Adam Crozier took his leave from the FA, Roger Mitchell, chief executive of the Scottish Premier League, is handing in the keys to the company car.
The FA's permanent fixture, David Davies, has been left in charge of the shop again. Philip Cornwall reflects on a career that defies logical explanation
Amid the swirl of crisis at Soho Square, with the departures of Adam Crozier, Frank Pattison and Howard Wilkinson and the (so far false) rumours about Sven-Goran Eriksson, one man still stands. David Davies’s second term as acting chief executive of the Football Association, this time in joint control with Nic Coward, marks him down as a great survivor.