Search: ' Dwight Yorke'

The game's uncertain financial climate is causing top flight players to fall further and faster than they once did, leaving Cameron Carter bewildered by the pace of the change

There’s a terrible feeling you get as you get older – the sense that your world and its familiar landscape are being discreetly removed by stage-hands while you’re not watching. John Thaw dies, child-smacking is driven underground, Club biscuits devolve to just one orange flavour; it feels, if you’re being particularly paranoid, that the way is being cleared, little by little, for your own exit. It doesn’t help that, amid the hype of big name transfers in summer, some familiar faces are slipping into retirement or semi-obscurity without so much as a goodbye.

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It's more than a question of semantics down under, writes Matthew Hall

This has been a long hot summer for Australian soccer fans. Sorry – football fans. The wording is important. Australia kicked off 2005 with the Australian Soccer Association changing its name to Football Federation Australia and decreeing that the game will be officially referred to by its proper name rather than soccer.

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Monday 1 How long do you go on waiting for results?” asks Wolves chairman Rick Hayward after sacking Dave Jones with the club 19th in the Championship. Bradford’s Dean Windass has the second yellow card shown to him during a 4-0 defeat at Luton rescinded – he had protested at the referee allegedly taunting him about the score.

Tuesday 2 “There is no need to get dramatic because we are still unbeaten in Europe,” says Arsène as the Gunners are held 1-1 at home by Panathinaikos. Pascal Cygan, now firmly established as the new Frank Sinclair, contributes an own goal for the visitors’ equaliser after the Greeks miss a penalty. Chelsea are through to the Champions League knockout stages, though, after a 1-0 win at CSKA Moscow who also squander a spot-kick. Celtic can still avoid elimination after beating Donetsk 1-0. In the Championship, managerless Wolves are only three points above the relegation zone after a 3-1 defeat at Sunderland and West Ham lose to Cardiff for the first time since 1952, 4-1 at Ninian Park. The top two, Wigan and Ipswich, both win, the latter setting a club record by scoring in their 29th consecutive game, a 5-1 victory over Sheffield United.

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Anti-racism initiatives in football should be applauded, but it's only scratching the surface

The press lounge at a Premiership ground one evening a few years ago. Journalists gathered for a midweek game are looking at a TV screen that is replaying goals from the previous weekend. Dwight Yorke scores against a team supported by one of those watching, who walks up to the screen and says loudly, in mock indignation: “Yorke, you black twat!” In the wake of last month’s friendly in Mad­rid, the journalist in question was one of many who set about suggesting various forms of action that might be taken against Spain for the Bernabéu crowd’s racial abuse of black England players. It is fair to assume, then, that he has long since seen the error of his ways.

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Tuesday 2 Chelsea gazump Man Utd over PSV’s Arjen Robben, who will join them in the summer for £13 million. PSV chairman Harry van Raaij accuses United of cutting their original bid in half: “We were very disappointed over how low they believed they could push us.” The top two in Division One, Norwich and West Brom, draw 0-0 at Carrow Road. Forest, unbeaten in five games under Joe Kinnear, go four points clear of the drop zone after a 1-0 win at Wimbledon. Plymouth stretch their lead in the Second to four points after beating Sheffield Wed 2-0, as Bristol City are held 1-1 at home by Wycombe.

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