Tuesday 1 Chelsea’s 1‑0 Champions League defeat at Real Betis is apparently their worst performance under José: “The first half was too bad to be true.” Liverpool lead the group after a 3‑0 win over Anderlecht, during which the visitors’ Nenad Jestrovic is sent off for racially abusing Momo Sissoko. Rangers can still progress despite a 2‑2 draw in Bratislava against Artmedia. It emerges that a Roy Keane interview for MUTV in which he heavily criticised team‑mates was not broadcast on Sir Alex’s insistence. Luton’s 4‑0 defeat at runaway Championship leaders Sheffield Utd is made worse by the news that plans for a new ground are to be scrapped. Mike Newell is unhappy with his board: “These people have been in charge for 18 months, so why has it taken them 18 months to find out they can’t build a stadium?” Millwall are four points adrift at the foot following a 2‑1 defeat at Burnley. Peter Shirtliff is named Mansfield manager.
Fancy a game anyone? Andrew Hockley tells the tale of one of the most bizarre international fixtures you'll ever encounter
We’ve all seen it happen. A match is organised, there is confusion among the participants as to whether it will actually take place, no one is quite sure when it kicks off and finally the visiting team show up late without enough players to make up a team.
Cameron Carter gets more than an eyeful
Often technology, while improving the quality of one part of our lives, has an adverse effect on another. And so it is with widescreen television, because, while it allows us to see Alan Shearer, Alan Hansen and Gary Lineker’s arm and shoulder in one shot – wider than we’ve ever seen before – it also gives us the unholy spectacle of Shearer’s too-tight trousers in fuller detail than we could ever need. Watching the England v Argentina punditry in widescreen “cinema” mode, I could descry the exact lie of the man’s genitals, right down to the fact that he is clearly not of Orthodox Jewish faith. This detracted from my enjoyment of thousands of Argentina fans looking shell-shocked and, indeed, if I know in advance that Shearer is guesting again in the studio I shall make sure I am watching on the grainy upstairs portable. Also his trousers are shiny grey, like an employee of the Trumpton biscuit factory.
Simon Tyers tells the story of one of this summer's more unique characters
Next June Australia will, more than likely, be officially anointed as 2006’s equivalent of the 1998 Jamaica side, the qualifiers full of unlikely UK-based players that will do in the Republic of Ireland’s absence. All five penalty takers against Uruguay have played in England, as has (and does) keeper Mark Schwarzer. The Boro man’s understudy, Zeljko Kalac, has played here, too, but is a rather more unlikely World Cup player, from the point of view of many in Leicester.
Jon Spurling wonders whether applause is an appropriate replacement for the minutes silence.
Just as views on the responsibility for George Best’s early death are polarised, the same is true of attitudes towards the minute’s applause that was seen at Portsmouth and West Ham to mark his passing. There is a weighty body of evidence that suggests that Best would have approved of such a gesture. On Parkinson last year, he confessed: “I hope I’m remembered for the football and the cheers I brought to grounds, rather than all the front-page nonsense.” A lesser known fact is that he preferred the B-side of Don Fardon’s Belfast Boy – Echoes Of The Cheers – to the song that reached number 32 in the charts and which due to its ubiquitousness over the Old Trafford PA system was an early-Seventies version of Simply The Best.