Thursday 1 Chelsea go out of the UEFA Cup after a 1-1 draw with Hapoel Tel-Aviv. Claudio Ranieri keeps his sunny side up: “The result went against us but it was a brilliant performance.” Leeds survive a scare in Troyes, where they lose 3-2 but go through 6-5 on aggregate. Ipswich save their best till last again, winning 3-1 in Helsingborg. Stung by rejection, Crystal Palace chairman Simon Jordan refuses to accept Steve Bruce’s attempt to resign as manager: “At no time will Steve be allowed to talk to Birmingham.” Bruce will not, however, be taking charge of Palace’s team at the weekend.

Friday 2 The Bishop of Oxford blesses the pitch at Oxford United’s supposedly unlucky new ground. “There was talk among some players of a sense of evil – they interpreted it as a curse,” says a church spokesman.

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We asked some of our regular contributors if they could remember anything about 2001. Surprisingly, quite a few of them could

Harry Pearson
Best • Seeing different faces in the home dugout at the Riverside. Finally getting a radio that allowed me to listen to Alistair Brownlee’s delirious, deranged commentaries on Century FM. His pronunciation of Marinelli alone is worth the price of the batteries. Oliver Kahn’s expression at the end of the game in Munich.

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Apparent misfits in the Premiership, more than a few imports have gone on to have perplexingly good careers elsewhere. We tracked down three of them, Craig McCracken looking at Marc-Vivien Foé

Marc-Vivien Foé was an early developer. A first team regular for Cameroon’s top club Canon Yaoundé at 17, an international at 18, a World Cup player at 19, he won his first transfer to Europe when he signed a contract shortly after his 20th birthday to join Lens.

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Apparent misfits in the Premiership, more than a few imports have gone on to have perplexingly good careers elsewhere. We tracked down three of them, Gabriele Marcotti looking at Darko Kovacevic

If he hadn’t been run out of town after making just eight starts for Sheffield Wednesday, perhaps Darko Kovacevic might have earned himself a funky nick­name in Yorkshire. Certainly, English fans tend to be a little more imaginative than their Spanish coun­ter­parts (“Golacevic”was the best Real Sociedad sup­porters could come up with). Perhaps he might have entered Sheffield lore as the “Darko Destroyer” – after all, he was Nigel Benn’s contemporary.

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Apparent misfits in the Premiership, more than a few imports have gone on to have perplexingly good careers elsewhere. We tracked down three of them, Ernst Bouwes looking at Jon Dahl Tomasson

In the spring of 1997 his fellow players voted him Talent of the Year in the Dutch league, with Giovanni van Bronckhorst and Arnold Bruggink second and third. A couple of days after accepting the trophy, he scored a hat-trick against Vitesse Arnhem to go top of the goalscorers list, leaving quality players like Luc Nilis, Roy Makaay and Patrick Kluivert (and Gerald Sibon) behind him. While his goals took modest Heer­enveen to their first Dutch Cup final, about 20 clubs  were rumoured to be interested in signing him, with Ajax, Atlético Madrid and Bar­celona the most persistent. A transfer fee of about £2 million seemed a laughably small amount for a 21-year-old who had just made his international debut for Denmark. Yes, we’re talk­ing about Jon Dahl Tomasson.

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