Theo Walcott has made a unique backward step – making his England Under-21 debut after playing for the senior side. But, asks Csaba Abrahall, what’s the point of the junior team?

Thirty years ago this month, an England team featuring Ray Wilkins, Glenn Hoddle and, um, Steve Sims took on Wales at Molineux in their country’s first Under-21 international. A European Under-23 tournament had taken place in various formats since 1967, but UEFA felt the gap between Under-18 and Under-23 football was too large and opted to fill it by lowering the age limit leading up to the 1978 European Championship.

Read more…

Poor results certainly hurt Iain Dowie at Charlton but, as Tom Green explains, the club’s commitment to a continental-style structure both helped cost him his job and land him the post in the first place

When Charlton recruited Iain Dowie, few people realised that a potentially more significant appointment had already been made. In May, days after Alan Curbishley and his coaching team had departed, Andrew Mills, a former agent, was appointed the club’s first “general manager – football”. Later, when Iain Dowie was appointed “head coach”, it became apparent that after 15 years with Curbishley as manager, Charlton were trying a new structure. There would be a new “four-man football management team”, said Charlton chairman Richard Murray: Dowie, his fellow coaches Les Reed and Mark Robson, and Andrew Mills.

Read more…

Steve Evans put Boston on the football map, but only by organising a tax fraud that almost landed him in jail – and that many fans feel should have cost him his job. Peter Brooksbank reports

Moments after the end of the televised Conference-clinching win at Hayes in 2002, Boston United manager Steve Evans grinned into the Sky cameras, surrounded by champagne-soaked players and disbelieving fans. “Laps of honour are for champions,” he gloated, making reference to Dagenham boss Garry Hill, who had led his players on a premature lap of glory two months earlier. The slogan assumed instant cult status back in Boston, the club even plastering it on T-shirts in the official shop. Four years later, the phrase has a new twist on fans’ message boards: “Laps of honour are for champions, guilty pleas are for cheats.”

Read more…

Mike Newell’s outburst against a female assistant referee attracted more publicity, but Neil Rose and other Luton supporters were more interested by what the manager said about the club’s chairman

While Luton fans may be ambivalent about joining a campaign to ban female officials from men’s football, they would as one take to the streets for a campaign to ban Andy D’Urso.

Read more…

The demands for video replays to help referees grow ever more hysterical (especially when Blackburn or Bolton play). But Barney Ronay has seen more than enough already

In the last month calls for the use of video refereeing technology have become, if not deafening, then at least annoyingly insistent. After Blackburn’s 1-1 draw with Spurs in the Premiership, Mark Hughes demanded the introduction of technology “sooner rather than later”, presumably envisaging a dead-eyed über-ref hunched over his vast bank of screens somewhere in the bowels of Ewood Park. “When huge decisions at the top level have an impact on teams then something has to be done,” Hughes harrumphed, which will no doubt come as a great comfort to whichever top-level teams involved in huge decisions the Blackburn manager has in mind.

Read more…