Thursday 1 Ottmar Hitzfeld turns down the job of German national coach. Bradford survive: their administrators are in talks with “interested parties”. MK Dons, meanwhile, prepare for their headlong dive through, uh, League One by coming out of administration. James Milner is set to join Newcastle while his ex-team-mate Mark Viduka completes a medical at Boro (peevishness may not show up in the tests).
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Sunday 1 Arsenal are back on top after a stormy 2-1 win over Man City. Nicolas Anelka scores the latter’s goal in the 90th minute but is sent off before the restart for a bundle in the goalmouth. Surprisingly, his sparring partner Ashley Cole is only booked. Chelsea just about stay in touch, needing a late winner from Glen Johnson to beat Blackburn 3-2. Sir Alex, meanwhile, faces a decision: to climb down in his court case or finally file papers with the judge in Dublin…
In the face of claims that this is the dullest season in years, Stephen Wagg contends that the true heart of football is beating strongly and not represented by the “big three”
Lately there has been quite a lot of talk to the effect that the Premier League, as currently constituted, is “boring” and “not value for money”. Paul Wilson of the Observer caught the mood when his article led the paper’s Sport section beneath the headline Yawn… It’s the worst ever Premiership. I wondered if I was the only one to find Wilson’s article unpleasant. I talked to people and found, predictably enough, that I was not. But Wilson, sounding closer to the saloon-bar traditions of Daily Mail or Daily Express sports commentary than to the more measured style of the broadsheets, was on a roll. The following Sunday, buoyed apparently by a bulging postbag of supportive correspondence, he declared: “We all agree. The Prem is boring.” This, I feel, is a dismal argument. But it’s been a long time coming: it seems grimly inevitable now that people would begin to make this kind of judgment ten years into the life of the Premier League.
This is the time of year when the newspapers are filled with hopes for the coming year, with pleas for respect for referees, less diving and world peace. All very laudable but, really, we can’t be doing with any of it. There is only one thing we’ll ask for – that this year’s FA Cup isn’t won by one of the top three, or Liverpool. We’re even prepared to tolerate one of the curses of the modern age, tracking camera shots of whooping fans in jester hats and curly wigs, provided they are celebrating a victory for an underdog.
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.