Tuesday 2 Nine Austrian players refuse to fly to Israel for Saturday’s World Cup qualifier. “It is far too dangerous there,” says one of them, Walter Kogler. Joe Royle says he is suing Man City for a £500,000 pay-off, on the basis that they were still a Premiership club when he was sacked in May, even though they had finished in a relegation spot.
Anthony Hobbs talks QPR – what's gone wrong in recent years, bad signings and mergers
What has been the main reason for the club’s steady decline over the past few seasons?
The then chairman Richard Thompson failed to invest in the squad six or seven years ago, at a time when a moderate outlay might have paid dividends through revenue generators such as UEFA Cup qualification (don’t laugh, we weren’t that far away). His successor, Chris Wright, was much more willing to invest at first. Sadly, he and his managers almost seemed a bit too desperate to buy players and showed all the judgement of the bloke who bought £70,000 worth of Railtrack shares the day before they went belly-up.
Suddenly, all official club websites look alike. It's another triumph for commerce over diversity and independance, says Jan Lotze
In a move which proves that the desire for money will always overrule quality, all 72 Nationwide League clubs, and a handful in the Premiership, have effectively handed over control of their official websites to Premium TV, a subsidiary of the broadcaster NTL. Lured by an initial six-figure fee, and with the promise of further revenue dependent on traffic and the number of “referrals” to an online betting shop, clubs have opted to buy and operate the PTV software for the next five years.
Finally, China have made it to the World Cup finals. They can hardly wait and nor can the Korean tourism industry. Zhang Wenya reports
If England fans think “30 years of hurt” was tough, pity their Chinese counterparts. China have been trying simply to qualify for the World Cup finals since 1957. Nearly 50 years of hurt – and considerable heaps of humiliation – have been the fate of fans in the world’s most populous country. Among a people for whom “face” (and not losing it) is of considerable importance, the procession of defeats in vital qualifying matches has been soul-destroying.
Belarus missed their two best players as Ukraine pipped them for a World Cup play-off spot. Paul Roberts explains why some saw sinister motives at work
"It was treachery and disgraceful,” said the Belarus coach Eduard Malofeyev. He was referring to the performance of his two key midfielders, Oleksandr Khatskevich and Valentsin Belkevich, after his team’s 2-0 home defeat in the crucial World Cup qualifier against Ukraine on September 2. Khatskevich was substituted at half-time and Belkevich on the hour. The two players then refused to travel to Wales for the final qualifier (“still ashamed of themselves” according to Malofeyev) which a demoralised and weakened Belarus lost 1-0. This allowed Ukraine to snatch the group five play-off place at the death, thanks to a controversial late goal by Andriy Shevchenko in Poland.