With Aston Villa having an outside chance of breaking into the top four and the billionaire owners at Man City the four Premier League giants might be starting to panic

It’s rare that more than one of the Big Four has a bad weekend. That all should fail to score on the same day, November 24 – with Fulham and Newcastle’s draws at Liverpool and Chelsea, respectively, treated like cup shocks – was a statistical fluke. Nonetheless the fact that the cartel have looked unexpectedly vulnerable at times this season ought to be a cause for celebration, given that their domestic dominance is sapping the life out of the league. Aston Villa’s goalless home draw with Man Utd – greeted by a curious, cricket-derived headline in the Express, Villa’s Bunnies Find Some Bite – might not seem like a sign of changing times given that it simply ended a run of 14 defeats against the same opponents. But it followed on from a comfortable win at Arsenal the previous week and a widespread sense that, finally, here was a club well placed to break into the elite, at the expense of a team being widely derided as “bottlers”.

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England stars miss a friendly in Berlin as "reserves" beat Germany 2-1 with the club versus country argument raging on

The Brazilian FA were clearly not expecting huge public interest in their friendly with Portugal on November 19, given that it was held in a 20,000‑capacity stadium in Gama, a suburb of the national capital, Brasilia. But despite the low-key nature of the fixture, several of Brazil’s star players flew in from Europe for the match, as did Cristiano Ronaldo, Portugal’s captain for the night in their 6‑2 defeat. By contrast, England’s squad to face Germany in Berlin was significantly weakened by withdrawals.

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The role of chief executive of the Football Association is a notoriously difficult one. So much so the FA have decided to open up applications to the general public

Anyone browsing the job sections in the broadsheet press of late may have noticed an advertisement for the post of chief executive of the Football Association. The current holder of the post, Brian Barwick, leaves officially at the end of the year, although he has had plenty of time to improve his putting technique since the summer, when he was relieved of most of his responsibilities by FA chairman Lord Triesman.

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AC Milan looked to Sweden for inspiration and three players came to help them lift the title, by Luca Ferrato

The long-term significance
Most of the foreign footballers in Italy in the 1930s had come from South America, often from migrant backgrounds that enabled them to be selected for the national team. After the war clubs widened their search for playing talent, notably into eastern Europe and Scandinavia. In 1950-51 Serie A featured nine players from Denmark and 13 from Sweden. Seven of the latter had been gold medallists at the 1948 Olympics, including a trio who went on to play for AC Milan: midfielders Gunnar Gren and Nils Liedholm plus striker Gunnar Nordahl. Often referred to collectively as “Gre-No-Li”, these three were to play key roles in Milan’s title, the club’s first since before the foundation of city rivals Internazionale in 1908. Liedholm and Nordahl had previously played under Milan’s Hungarian coach Lajos Czeizler when he was in charge of their Swedish side, IFK Norrköping.

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Dear WSC
The theme of recent letters regarding the playing of ironic music after games reminds me of when Brentford started playing Suicide is Painless at the end of home defeats a couple of years ago. I can’t remember if it was the original Mandel/Altman version or the Manics’ cover, but the experiment ended as the team set about achieving a humiliating relegation to the bottom division.
Alan Housden

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