Shaul Adar covers the fallout over Eyal Berkovic's controversial autobiography

The furore over the excerpts from Eyal Ber­kovic’s book printed in the Mirror has not come as a surprise to anyone in Israel. Let’s be clear about one thing, however. Berkovic does not say in his autobiography,The Magician, that West Ham are racist. He does claims it is an unprofessional, unpleasant, ill-managed club in which nepotism plays an important role. One chapter is called “Frank Lampard Snr – West Ham’s biggest trouble”. He accuses the club of being xenophobic and says “they can’t stand foreigners” but he takes care not to call any­body a racist. 

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The Euro 2000 play-off draw has pitted the two oldest foes in Football against each other, but does anyone outside of Britain care?

“I would not be Kevin Keegan if I did not get excited about this,” said the England manager in a blinding flash of self-awareness on hearing the Euro 2000 play-off draw. Unfortunately, he is Kev­in Keegan, and his face was splashed all over the papers after England and Scotland came out of the hat together (or what passes for a hat at UEFA headquarters these days).

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Friday 1 Dennis Wise, Frank Lampard, Steve Guppy and Trevor Sinclair are the new names in Little Kev's squad to play Belgium. Paul Ince is recalled in place of David Batty, making sure the squad contains no less than the mandatory three players who have been sent off for England in the past 18 months. Newcastle sign Kevin Gallacher from Blackburn for £700,000. A consortium of Icelandic businessmen has made a bid of £6 million to buy Stoke City, hoping to install the national team coach Gudjon Thordarsson as manager in place of the luckless Gary Megson.

Saturday 2 Strugglers' Saturday sees Steve Staunton scandalously sent off in Villa's dismal 0-0 with Liverpool, a game mystifyingly described as "just balloons on sticks" by John Gregory. Bottom club Sheff Wed go goal-crazy against Wimbledon, winning 5-1 in front of a suitably Wimbledon-sized crowd, 18,077. Sunderland are second after pasting Bradford 4-0 at Valley Parade. Everton are reportedly the target of a £50 million bid from Chris Evans and Terry Venables – possibly both in the top two on any fans' list of undesirable owners. India's Baichung Bhutia makes his debut as a sub for Bury, and gets booked after two minutes. "We will probably get more fans than if we'd signed Ronaldo," Bury manager Neil Warnock had predicted. They get 3,603.

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Wednesday 1 Leicester's Tony Cottee and Andrew Impey are charged with misconduct by the FA after an investigation into how tickets for the 1999 Worthington Cup final ended up on the black market. A further 25 players and officials at Leicester have been charged with failing to assist the inquiry. "It's an absolute farce," says Neil Lennon. "We were given forms and asked to write out who we gave our tickets to but no deadline was given." The average age of the creaking Middlesbrough midfield will be lowered significantly with the return of Juninho, back on loan from Atletico Madrid until the end of the season. The Rep of Ireland beat Yugoslavia 2-1 in a Euro 2000 qualifier.

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Howard Borrell gives us a brief history of Chesterfield

1866 Chesterfield FC founded, making them the fourth oldest league club still in existence. They take their nickname from the town’s twisted church spire constructed from unseasoned timbers.

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