Monday 1 On transfer deadline day, Chelsea finally snap up Claude Makelele from Real Madrid for, ooh, £80 million or so. Everton fans might be pleased by the arrival of James McFadden from Motherwell, but possibly less excited by that of Kevin Kilbane and the return on loan of Franny Jeffers. Among other loan deals, Marcus Bent leaves impoverished Ipswich for Leicester and Portsmouth take Jason Roberts from West Brom.
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Stories
An Englishman you’ve never heard of who carries the football hopes of a nation of one billion people? That’s Stephen Constantine, as Dan Brennan explains
If the FA’s decision to make the FIFA Pro Licence a mandatory qualification is set to send managers up and down the country scrabbling for their revision notes, one man who won’t be suffering pre-exam nerves is Stephen Constantine. On paper, at least, Constantine is probably the most qualified British coach around. The FIFA A Licence and Full Badge Licence already feature on a managerial CV that runs to several pages, and he expects the Pro Licence to follow. At 40 he is one of the youngest coaches to sit on the FIFA instructors’ panel and is the only Englishman.
Monday 2 Manchester City get a UEFA Cup place via that silly Fair Play League. Nicky Butt is helping police with their enquiries into an alleged scuffle in a Manchester nightclub. Alan Buckley is the new manager of Rochdale.
Tuesday 3 A Joe Cole free-kick gives England a 2-1 win over Serbia & Montenegro, during which they use 21 players and have four captains. Sven doesn’t see a problem: “Managers think friendlies should be like this and the public like it.” Northern Ireland lose 2-0 in Italy. Luton’s new owners allegedly offer to reinstate Joe Kinnear and Mick Harford, who were sacked last week.
Barney Ronay examines why average players often make good bosses while star names struggle
It is a footballing axiom that great players rarely make great managers. No swag-bag of playing honours, no bulging armoury of international caps can prepare a middle-aged footballing man for the vertiginous leap into management. In fact, the most successful managers in English football currently – Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsène Wenger and Gérard Houllier – all eked out relatively mediocre playing careers.
Gary McAllister has been asked to come up with some ideas to revive Coventry on a zero budget. Neville Hadsley is impressed so far, but not quite won over
When Gary McAllister walked into the job of player-manager at Highfield Road, he came with plenty of baggage from his last stint with the Sky Blues – and acquired a few awkward bits of hand-luggage left behind by his immediate predecessors too. His time as a player had not been an unalloyed success: two mediocre seasons (the rest of the team arguably as much at fault as he); another spent injured – no crime there, but hardly a plus point; and a final season in which, thanks bizarrely to a partnership with Carlton Palmer, he performed so brilliantly that he earned himself a free transfer to Liverpool.