General rules
Accents
Put them in on French, German, Spanish and Portuguese words where we’re certain they’re right. Leave them off all other languages except in occasional instances when it’s polite, eg with a contributor’s name. Use discretion when the whole article contains accents and they are definitely correct and consistent. Leave them off common English words like cliche and protege. But do put them on words that could otherwise be confusing eg exposé.
Footballers can be overacting show-offs, but very few make a decent play of it when given their chance on screen, says Ashley ClarkThough it is easy to see why those engaged in one performative discipline awash with cash and fan adulation may be eager to try their hand at another, history is littered with examples of footballers turning to acting with distinctly mixed results. In largely well received new thriller Switch, Eric Cantona brings his usual brooding charisma to the role of Damien Forgeat, a detective on the trail of a young woman accused of murder. With the talent, versatility and self-confidence to match his ambition, Cantona has carved out an impressive acting career, beginning with a small role in Shekhar Kapur’s period drama Elizabeth, packing in a host of serious-minded French-language fare and peaking with a sly, perfectly judged turn in Ken Loach’s drama Looking For Eric.
The problem with all-seater stadiums is that you have to stand up, argues Huw Richards It was nice of Arsenal to provide the away fans with padded seats, if somewhat less charitable to retail them at £35 a shot. It was too bad that the only time we were able to sit in them was during half-time. Swansea’s first trip to the Emirates earlier this season epitomised what you might call the all-seater paradox. The theory behind all-seater grounds, compulsory in the top two divisions since 1994, is that they stop people standing. In practice, particularly if you are an away fan, everybody stands.
With Sky now filming matches with up to 24 cameras it seems unthinkable that audiences could miss top-flight football, but games went unrecorded as recently as 1990. Mike Whalley explainsIf anyone ever produces a DVD tribute to former Sheffield Wednesday striker David Hirst, it ought to include clips of his efforts as an emergency goalkeeper against Manchester City on New Year’s Day, 1990. It won’t, though, because no footage exists. Having scored Wednesday’s first in a 2-0 win, Hirst went in goal to replace the injured Kevin Pressman and made impressive saves from Steve Redmond and Colin Hendry.
After 26 years of “failure”, Manchester United’s success in the Premier League era is due to the influence of one man, writes Joyce Woolridge“Guess what, Mum, Manchester United never won the League once between 1967 and 1993. That’s 26 years!” To my numerate nine-year-old, this statistic is mind-boggling. He just cannot conceive how that could have happened. I could have fobbed him off with the platitudinous “no team has an automatic right to win anything, son” spiel by way of explanation. But it is an unfair world and big clubs, with all their advantages, should win big titles. Over that quarter-century of “failure” (in inverted commas in a vain attempt to mollify those supporters of clubs who never win anything and are doubtless chewing the carpet while reading this), Manchester United had the wealth, the players and the opportunities to be League champions but only rarely even came close. The inescapable conclusion is that the difference between then and the subsequent pot-laden decades is simply, as I informed junior, the arrival of Alex Ferguson.