Dianne Millen looks at Aberdeen's hopes to move to a new stadium and complex as part of Scotland's bid to host the Euro 2008 Championships

Aberdonians of a certain age can remember the glory days. Not the hot Eighties nights un­der Fergie when even the likes of Bayern Mun­ich were sent home from Pittodrie to think again, but further back yet, to the Fifties and Sixties. In those pre-wage inflation days, an ordinary league game against Hibs or Dundee United would see the official 40,000-odd cap­acity swelled by a good few hundred who never touched a turnstile – clinging to the roof of the Main Stand, maybe, or even perched peril­ously on the newly installed, state-of-the-art floodlights.

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Dave Espley looks at Stockport County as Andy Kilner departs and Carlton Palmer gets his first taste of management

In what might seem to an outsider to be one of the least surprising sackings of the season, Stockport County dispensed with the services of Andy Kilner the Monday after a 4-0 home de­feat by Millwall on October 27. What is per­haps surprising, however, is that the County chairman Brendan Elwood was still insisting to all and sundry on the Saturday night that Kil­ner’s job was safe. Granted, chairmen do that as a matter of course and, as we all know, votes of confidence usually precede a sacking as inevitably as night follows day, but in El­wood’s case, he genuinely meant it.

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With the acrimonious industrial dispute over TV money settled, John Harding sifts through the wreckage and concludes the PFA have retained important principles

On the surface this year’s PFA dispute seemed an eerie rerun of the TV cash row of a decade ago, when a similarly rock solid vote gave Gordon Taylor a mandate to secure a deal with the newly formed Prem­ier League. However, this time around it’s been a dar­ker, murkier struggle. In 1991, Taylor was football’s White Knight, who had never put a foot wrong, was the saviour of small clubs, a doughty opponent of Thatch­er and so on. There were no “dirty tricks” and no club chairmen firing off vitriolic broadsides.

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Australia missed out on the World Cup finals yet again. Matthew Hall watched them succumb to mild paranoia – and a better team – in Montevideo

Three strikes and you’re out, and a triple lash from Uruguay in Montevideo was enough to send Aus­tralia crashing out of the World Cup without qualifying for the finals for the seventh time in succession. The first and last time the Socceroos made it to the finals was in 1974. On the past five occasions Australia have been eliminated in sudden death play-offs, ag­ainst Scotland, Israel, Argentina, Iran and now Uru­guay. Con­spiracy theories, administrative blun­ders, plain bad luck and the comeback of Diego Mara­dona have all contributed to past failures.

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Chris Taylor & Craig Ellyard argue for and against the idea of scrapping the League Cup

Yes ~
Paul Scholes is not most people’s idea of a rebellious prima donna, so when the mild-mannered Manc refused to play in a match against Arsenal you knew some­thing was up. This season he’s been played out of position, left on the bench and generally messed ar­ound as his manager attempts to accommodate Ruud van Nistelrooy and Juan Sebastian Veron. All accepted without a murmur. “But for God’s sake,” you can im­agine him telling Sir Alex, “not the bloody League Cup!”

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