Ray Bloomfield explains to Andy Lyons how he was the middle man in certain deals and that not all agents are bad guys
The easiest way to describe what I do is that I am a go-between. I watch several matches a week, sometimes as many as ten. If a club is looking for a particular type of player, I have a look around and try to find them.
Andy Lyons talks to Rachel Anderson about being the only FIFA registered female agent, her clients and taking on the PFA
In the relationship between clubs and players it used to be that clubs held the upper hand. Has the balance now shifted in the players’ favour?
Only for a small minority. The majority of players are still paid slaves.There’s no freedom of movement until they’re 25, they can get fined two weeks’ wages for whatever misdemeanour the clubs decide. Clubs have always had it their way but there is an emerging sense now that clubs, players and agents have to work together. Even if I can’t agree on a contract with a club I still have to be able to do business with them. It’s no good anyone making impossible demands, so if I do a deal for a player it has to be something that the club can afford. Straight away, as soon as a deal is done, that boy has got so much pressure on him. If he doesn’t score the goals or stop them going in, he’s dumped and that doesn’t do me any good, or him. Backing the club into a corner over terms isn’t a very clever thing for an agent to do and the people who do that are here today gone tomorrow. Though when I first started people probably thought I was going to be like that and in fact I probably thought I was too.
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.
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.
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.