With 4,000 miles seperating them and the country's capital, it is safe to say that Spartak Vulkan of Russia are pretty remote. Kevin O'Flynn looks at the the team nearer Japan then any other part of Europe

Find Moscow on your map and head east. Take a breather after 375 miles – Torquay to Middlesbrough – and keep going. After 700 miles you reach Second Division (that is, third-level) Zenit Chelyabinsk. An­other 2,200 miles and you’re in Siberia – Lokomotiv Chita, a mid-table First Division club. Go on past Sib­eria to Kamchatka, the sheep’s tail of a peninsula that hangs down towards Japan in the far east of Rus­sia.

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A goalkeeping blunder can be remebered more by fans then a 40-yard screamer. Cris Freddi takes us through some of the more memorable howlers

Let’s start with goalkeeping errors that decided FA Cup finals, shall we? There are enough for an article of their own. The most famous of all was perpetrated by a Welshman playing against a Welsh team, back in 1927. When Cardiff’s Scottish centre-forward Hugh Ferguson hit an ordinary ground shot from the edge of the area, Arsenal’s Dan Lewis had time to go down on one knee and scoop the ball into his midriff.

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Aberdeen thought they had finally found the businessman with the financial backing to take them back to the glory days, but as Jonathan Northcroft reveals, things have not gone the way the fans expected

Earlier this year, Sir Alex Ferguson had to parade sheepishly down Union Street in the wind, sporting a jaunty feathered hat and more gold chains than a coachload of gangsta rappers. Then he was cuffed on the head with a ceremonial pair of old trousers and forced to mumble something in Latin. Even bringing the European Cup-Winners Cup to Pittodrie was not enough to spare him the ceremony required to become a Freeman of the City of Aberdeen.

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Colin Todd left Bolton in farcical circumstances. Gary Parkinson untangles the story behind his decision to leave

The business equivalent of pride before a fall is the construction of a flash new HQ followed by financial disaster and bankruptcy. Building the Prem­iership-standard Reebok Stadium has brought Bolton Wan­derers into such financial peril that there is a grave danger of never getting near that division again.

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Most Middlesbrough fans would be pleased about the form of a new signing. Not Harry Pearson though

There is an Abbot and Costello routine that runs along the lines: “You should never marry a pretty girl.” “Why not?” “She could leave you.” “An ugly girl could leave you too.” “Yeah, but who cares?” 

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