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Football's coming out?

The death of Justin Fashanu could have been a watershed in football's attitude towards gay players, but instead the sport has reacted with disinterest and denial. There have been no openly homosexual players in British professional football since Fashanu, who hanged himself in a London garage in May, 1998, eight years after he came out.

I don't remember much about Brentford's game at Griffin Park against Torquay United in 1991-92, but I remember Fashanu - Torquay were his last English club - being on the receiving end of plenty of homophobic abuse, just as he was across the country.

Ten reasons to be cheerful about the FA Cup Final

1 It’s the year of the underdog, and to borrow from Ian Holloway, Saturday is woof day. We should be pleased about the snapping of the big clubs’ stranglehold on a competition they take less and less seriously.

2 Cardiff have managed to produce an FA Cup Final song that is not utterly terrible, merely deeply naff.

3 As one of the best groups of supporters in the country, Portsmouth’s loyal and vocal support deserve their day out. Maybe their most famous fan, John Portsmouth Football Club Westwood will get a commemorative tattoo, if there’s any space left on his body.

4 The "I love the Nineties" nostalgia trip that is Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink and Robbie Fowler up front for Cardiff.

Ten reasons to be fearful about the FA Cup Final

1 We’re loving the novelty factor of these participants right now, but if it’s a bad game, people will say: "Well, that’s what happens when the best teams aren’t there."

2 Remember the tedium that was Millwall versus Manchester United, the last time a Premier League club faced a side from a division below? The most one-sided contest since (insert any recent Derby County match here).

3 The novelty and thrill of the trip to Wembley is devalued as both clubs were there for the semi-finals last month.

4 Hasselbaink and Fowler? Potent in 1998, pensionable in 2008, no?

Your handy guide to the last-day drama

Chelsea, Manchester United. Manchester United, Chelsea. Who do you want to win the Barclays Premier League title? Tricky. For many fans, the question is, which club do you dislike least? Luckily, TheGame blog is here to help, ish. Just like your parents always said, if you can't decide, make a list of pros and cons.

Manchester United

Pros: Not Chelsea. Have the country's/continent's/world's/galaxy's best and in-no-way arrogant player, Cristiano Ronaldo. The most attractive team (apart from Arsenal, obviously, but they stopped playing in February). Maybe if they win the Champions League too, Sir Alex Ferguson will retire and give somebody else a go.

Cons: Won it last year so it's somebody else's turn, it's only fair. All that extra prize money going to the Glazers; and we bet Malcolm still won't wear a properly-fitting pair of trousers. Volume of title-celebration merchandise shipped from Megastore via plane to core fanbase in Asia would significantly increase club's carbon footprint. Have Cristiano Ronaldo.

Hoddle v Grant

Think the scepticism about Avram Grant's ability and future is simply generated by doom-mongering journalists who miss the scatterquote Jose Mourino? Have a read of these quotes from Glenn Hoddle, speaking on Sky Sports on Wednesday night during coverage of Chelsea versus Liverpool. Not surprisingly given the kind of player he was, the former Chelsea and England manager would like to see prettier football.

Walk on, with hope in your heart...

Apparently, Thursday was Walk to Work Day in London. Either it was a noble attempt to encourage us to lead healthier lifestyles, or a cunning ruse on the part of Transport for London to ease congestion on the Tube. Of course, the other 364 days of the year in the capital are Sit In Traffic Seething With Barely Contained Road Rage Day.

Saturday, meanwhile, is the start of another ambitious pedestrian plan. It's Walk to Stockport day for four Brentford fans. And no, there aren't engineering works on the West Coast Main Line. Like Martin Allen a couple of years ago, the fans are walking away from Griffin Park... their ambition not to manage a bigger club but to raise thousands of pounds for Bees United, the club's excellent supporter's trust, and a cancer charity, the Paul Levitt Foundation. (A physio with the club's centre of excellence, he was diagnosed with a brain tumour in his thirties.)

MK OK?

MK Dons: still a swear word among many football fans, though it's five years this September since Wimbledon uprooted to Buckinghamshire and four years since they re-branded themselves as the Dons. After their promotion to Coca-Cola League One was secured on Saturday, is it time to accept the club and look to the future instead of the past?

Respect is due

Could less backchat and abuse on the football pitch help cut gun and knife crime among young people? Last week, Gordon Brown urged players to be better role-models and called for them to respect referees, and a leading personal development consultant who has worked with Barclays Premier League teams is convinced that the Prime Minister is right - more discipline on the pitch would lead to less violence on the streets.

"Football can play an enormous role in influencing behaviour in our society," David Elliott, of David Elliott Associates, a leadership, change management and performance enhancement consultancy, said.

Frown Jewell's

Think Paul Jewell's been exasperated after some of Derby's performances lately? He has every reason to be vexed, of course. Especially when you take into account the lack of success he's enjoyed not just this season but last, when he was in charge of the Wigan Athletic side that escaped relegation on the final day.

Regularly dubbed one of the nation's best managers, there cannot be many with a worse record over the past eighteen months. Jewell's statistics in charge of Wigan and Derby for his past fifty fixtures in all competitions? Won 5, Drawn 13, Lost 32. Ouch.

Leeds by example

A trip to the Leeds United website brings an intriguing prospect: below the banner and just above the first news story are advertising links offering "Best credit card", "poor credit loans" and, most interestingly, "Clear debts". Call me crazy but if I were seeking financial advice, I don't think the Leeds website would be my first port of call, or even my thirtieth.

It would seem something of a smack in the face to the unfortunate Leeds support that every time they log on to the site they are reminded indirectly of their club's fiscal failures. "Clear debts"? Dammit, if only Peter Ridsdale had logged on to leedsunited.com and clicked that link five years ago, maybe Leeds wouldn't be in Coca-Cola League One.

Ramming home the disadvantage

As we all know, the last time Derby County picked up a league win was so long ago that Freddie Ljungberg had hair. Well, it was September 17 (1-0 over Newcastle United).

The Rams have been bottom since October 28 and something tells us they will still be bottom on May 11 when the season ends. The question is, after their brave but predictably futile effort against Manchester United on Saturday, will Derby be crowned the doyens of dire - the worst Premier League team of them all?

What Derby must beat is the record low of 15 points set in 2005-06 by Sunderland, whose tally of three wins is also a Premier League all-time worst mark.

Is it time to give moments of remembrance the silent treatment?

What an irony: football stadiums are quieter than ever these days, except when we want them to be. Last night’s minute’s silence at Wembley to remember the Munich disaster was cut short by the referee, Felix Brych, after just 27 seconds, because some of the crowd failed to observe it.

Oliver Kay explains the rationale in The Times this morning: "The FA had thought long and hard about whether to hold such a tribute in memory of the eight Manchester United players and 15 other victims of the tragedy and, in the event, it was cut short after shouts from a very small but audible minority of spectators. It had been described over the public-address system as a ‘period of silence’, but the match programme clearly stated that it was intended to last the full minute."

We could talk about whether the FA was right to capitulate, as Alyson Rudd does in her powerful article, but there is a more important and wider issue. When it is treated with such disdain, does the tradition of silent remembrance at stadiums have a future?

And is the real reason for the rise of the minute’s applause that clubs want to hide the embarrassment of the vocal minority? Was there so much discussion and fretting about the Munich minute before the game that the publicity encouraged a few fools to act disrespectfully just to go against the grain?

Is football such a morally bankrupt environment that in some minds, hatred of Manchester United outweighs the pathos of young lives cut tragically short? Modern society manages to be both brutally unsympathetic yet increasingly sentimental. Since there seem to be more silences and periods of applause than in decades past, is the convention losing its currency?

Or should we be realistic: in a crowd of over 85,000, perhaps only a few dozen caused trouble, and much of the noise was people “shushing” the original perpetrators.

Is it time to give moments of remembrance the silent treatment? What do you think?

Opinion Polls & Market Research

Window winners and losers

So who are the big winners and losers now that the transfer window has slammed shut? Have some clubs sealed their fates by making dodgy signings - or no signings at all? Have others secured themselves a brighter finish come May? Here's a run-down of each club's performance in the January sales.

Green doesn't fit for Cap

Does Robert Green have severe halitosis? Is he an axe murderer on the quiet? It's hard to see why else he has been overlooked by Fabio Capello, who has just named his 30-man England squad. Green, not good enough: we've already found something that Capello and Steve McClaren agree on.

Yet Green played well against Liverpool last night, just as he has all season. Matthew Upson, the centre back, is rewarded for West Ham United's solidity with a call-up, but not the man with the gloves behind him. David James - old but good. Scott Carson - young but potentially good. Chris Kirkland? Does Capello seriously think Kirkland is better than Green? It's far from a cast-iron indicator of a goalkeeper's ability, but Wigan Athletic have conceded twice as many goals as West Ham this season. That must count for something.

The PlayTheGame England squad

Relax, Fabio. We know you need to familiarise yourself with the best English players, but there's no need to spend your days groundhopping in the cold because PlayTheGame has done the hard work for you.

We've used mountains of data from our innovative fantasy game to come up with a real-life best England squad and XI based on player performance in the league this season. And unlike certain former England gaffers, we don't favour the big clubs because we judge player effectiveness in relation to their team's performance.

It's not good news for David Beckham - he's not in our game, so he's not in our squad (fantasy about to emulate reality, there?) But PlayTheGame wholeheartedly endorses the growing international buzz around Dave Kitson, and thinks that Steve McClaren was wrong to spurn the glovework of David James and Robert Green. The data also reckons Joleon Lescott deserves another chance. Ready, Fabio? Here's England's finest, and remember, the stats don't lie...

TV's FA Cup coverage is a turn-off

You only have to look at the advertising campaigns and sepia-tinted opening credits to know that the BBC and Sky love to milk that old cliche, the "romance" of the FA Cup. If I'm not mistaken, that romance springs from lower-league, ideally non-league, clubs upsetting the natural order, whether by giantkillings or upsetting the pyramid simply by earning the right to face one of the big boys.

So how does that tally with the games the broadcasters choose for live coverage? On Wednesday, as Havant and Waterlooville beat Swansea City 4-2 to set up a trip to Anfield, BBC viewers were being bored by Manchester City 1 West Ham United 0 (and the clubs meet again in the league on Sunday in a game live on Sky).

Hi, it's Steve here. Are you busy next Saturday?

A media release arrives: "Voice broadcasting leader Relay Station announces that Steve Bruce, manager of Wigan Athletic, will call 10,000 season ticket holders this week on their mobiles and landlines and ask them to be sure to attend the home FA Cup clash with Chelsea FC on 26th January 2008."

Well, there was me thinking that maybe management isn't so hard after all, what with Bruce having so much time on his hands. Calling 10,000 people? It'll take ages. Remember that 1990s BT advert with Kenny Dalglish where he calls up the Newcastle crowd one by one and thanks them for their support? It's really happening!

Bye British

As Fabio Capello starts figuring out which games to watch in order to scout potential England candidates and Chelsea target Nicolas Anelka, we were wondering how many foreign players the leading clubs sign compared to the number of British players they buy.

Predictably enough...

Weekend in numbers

6: The number of “shocks” — lower-league teams beating higher-level sides.

8: The minimum number of top-flight teams out of the FA Cup after the third round.

30: Successive lower-league opponents beaten by Arsenal in the FA Cup and League Cup.

14: Lower-league teams who held the lead in the 21 ties against higher-division teams.

13: Successive victories that Manchester United have achieved over Aston Villa.

Dummy and dumber? The best goal celebrations

Carlos Tevez joined the pantheon of great goal celebrations yesterday when the Manchester United forward scored against Birmingham and stuck a pink dummy into his mouth in tribute to his daughter. He joins a rich tradition of scorers who believe that the entertainment should carry on even after the ball is in the back of the net. Here are ten of the best goal celebrations.

Bebeto, 1994 World Cup finals - Brazil were workmanlike in this tournament except when it came to the forward's "baby-rocking" effort in tribute to his new-born son, Mattheus. Perhaps inspired many other sickly-sentimental family-orientated celebrations, such as the Tevez dummy, Raul and Frank Lampard kissing their wedding rings, Luis Garcia's thumb-sucking and Francesco Totti pretending to give birth to the ball.

Fabrizio Ravanelli, passim - Back when top-quality foreign players were a novelty in England, the Italian star arrived in Middlesbrough and it was not long before he was running around with his shirt over his head. The celebration became so prevalent, Fifa banned it.

Weekend in numbers

4 - Dimitar Berbatov is the 17th Premier League player to hit four or more in a game
Source: Opta

77 - Goals in Tottenham’s 20 league games this season
Source: Times research

2 - Headed goals by Reading - they now have nine, most in the top-flight
Source: Opta

5 - Times Derby have not held on to a lead this term
Source: soccerbase.com

3 - Penalties missed, none scored; four went in on Boxing Day
Source: soccerbase.com

Time to inject some truth?

You know the shocking thing about drugs in football? There aren't any. Today, America is digesting the findings of the Mitchell Report on doping in baseball, which blasts players and management for accepting a culture of widespread steroid use for more than a decade. Two star pitchers, Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte, are among many accused of taking performance-enhancing substances in the report.

Yet football, apparently, is clear. Maybe our managers and agents take bungs, but our players don't take drugs, do they? Only a handful of players have tested positive over the years, and then it's usually for recreational substances more likely to make them play worse - Adrian Mutu, Mark Bosnich, Diego Maradona. Jaap Stam and Edgar Davids both tested positive for nandrolone, an anabolic steroid, in 2001.

Fulham's Cottage industry

Poor Lawrie Sanchez. Not only does the Fulham manager have a team that thinks games only last for eighty minutes, his club struggle to attract enough supporters to their tiny stadium.

Fulham's average attendance may be around 22,500, just 2,000 below capacity, but how many of those are really Fulham fans? This, remember, is the club that pioneered the Neutral Zone, which sounds like something out of Star Trek but is actually an area behind one of the goals in the corner where people with no allegiance can come and watch a game and sit in dispassionate silence next to the away supporters.

Cop out

So, goodbye to the gloomiest man in football, Steve Coppell - the man for whom the forecast is always cloudy.

"I'm looking very shortly at having some time off," the Reading manager said. "I am probably due a break. I can't enjoy management. I work all week to win a game. If we win I have an unbeatable high for 20 minutes, but then it's thinking about the next game. If we are beaten, it's a bottomless pit. It goes through my mind when I get beat, do I need this?"

When a manager says something along these lines, he's already finished. Because the answer is usually: yes, they do "need this", even when they're struggling. Managers aren't allowed to be partially committed, or waver, or try to make the job anything less than a 24/7 commitment. That's the unwritten rule of the job, all or nothing, no regrets, no doubts. Sure, it's inhumane, unreasonable and mentally and physically destructive, but no one's forcing you to do it. Unless you are driven by a compulsion, an addiction, that seems to be wearing off in Coppell's case.

Clubs who fire don't often go higher

What price a Derby County win on Saturday? True, they've only taken three points once this season, but they're away to hapless Sunderland and they've just parted company with their manager, Billy Davies. As all football fans (and chairmen) know, when you get rid of a manager, results improve. It's one of the most entrenched truisms in football.

Sadly, in the short term at least, it's a load of rubbish. Including Davies, twenty-one managers have departed from League clubs this season, for whatever reason. The record of those twenty teams (Derby haven't played again yet) in the next game after a managerial departure:

Played 20, Won 5, Drawn 5, Lost 10.

A record as sparkling as mud on a Sunday League pitch in February. Of course, each club's individual circumstances - opposition, caretaker or permanent replacement, league position - vary hugely. But as a general rule, there's enough evidence here to suggest that whatever odds the bookies are giving on a Derby win on Saturday aren't generous enough. The full list is below:

Bill paid off

Silly Billy. Shouldn't have got Derby County promoted beyond their means and ability, should you? If Derby had lost to West Brom in the play-offs last season, Billy Davies would still have been feted for his achievement in getting Derby that far, and would probably be sitting pretty near the top of the Coca-Cola Championship at the moment and being mentioned when jobs with small Barclays Premier League clubs such as Birmingham City and Wigan Athletic come up.

Instead, he's out of work today with Derby bottom of the pile with just six points from fourteen games - though they're only four points from safety.

Bloke in a taxi - up the M1?

Anyone who's a fan of Ian Holloway - and there are a lot of us out there - will be hoping that the rumours that he is about to quit Plymouth Argyle for Leicester City are false. How could we take our bizarre hero seriously any more if he departs from Devon just a few days after saying this at a press conference, in response to a story that he was disillusioned with Argyle's Scrooge-inspired transfer budget:

"Ask anybody who knows me how I feel about Plymouth Argyle and they will tell you the truth. If you need me to say it again, I'm in love with the place. It's absolutely magnificent. Ask my players who I'm trying to talk into staying here how Ian Holloway feels about Plymouth Argyle. I think they will tell you the truth. It's all poppycock, if I'm allowed to use that word. It's absolutely pathetic. But the media is a very powerful thing and, unfortunately, a rumour can become a bigger rumour."

Websfleet

Of course, the Ebbsfleet United official website is still down today, overwhelmed by demand. All that attention - just as the board hoped when they got into bed with myfootballclub.co.uk.

Should be interesting when Ebbsfleet travel to Oxford United on Saturday. Will there be tension in the away end as the hardcore, those who followed the club way back in the mists of time (May) when it was known as Gravesend and Northfleet, mingle uneasily with their new internet overlords who've gone to watch their team (and probably a Conference game) for the first time?

The mockery of the poor Ebbsfleet faithful has already begun - see this spoof post. It is a spoof, right?

Democracy: who needs it?

Tales of the expected

Sometimes football is so predictable it's, well, unpredictable. Like Wigan Athletic firing Chris Hutchings. They were joking about it on Saturday, pre-game, on the radio. "Hutchings will be nervous today, he was sacked as Bradford manager in 2000 after twelve league games!"

And lo, the joke did become fact as history repeated itself. "I know Chris Hutchings and I know how good he is," Dave Whelan, the chairman, said in the summer when Hutchings was appointed. So good that Whelan was only prepared to give his man twelve games. Of course, under Paul Jewell last season, Wigan were near the relegation zone for most of the campaign and went on a nine-game losing streak in December and January. Whelan's finger was strangely distanced from his trigger finger then.

Taking the old Roed to hell?

Roy Keane and Adrian Boothroyd were astonishing triumphs in the Coca-Cola Championship but it hasn't convinced chairmen to value youth above experience. There's been a spate of playing safe in boardrooms this season, going for familiar faces even if they've not been especially successful. Though quite how safe Gary Megson at Bolton and Glenn Roeder at Norwich will prove to be is another matter.

The last thirtysomething to be appointed to a permanent League job was Paul Ince at MK Dons in the summer. He's just turned 40. Before Ince it was Lee Richardson (38) at Chesterfield last March. Since Richardson, 21 clubs have appointed new gaffers. So that's one man out of 21 who hadn't blown out the candles on his 40th birthday cake before taking charge. Are there no more Keanes and Boothroyds out there, or are the tyros simply not being given a chance?

No gridiron gridlock

A media scrum at Chelsea's training ground today, though not because journalists were scrambling to get a chat with Avram Grant. As Grant gave his usual Friday briefing in the Cobham ground's main building, the New York Giants were practising 400 metres away in front of a sizeable American media presence. They're borrowing Chelsea's base ahead of Sunday's NFL game at Wembley.

Sizeable is also a fair description of many of the players - their height and bulk make John Terry look like Shaun Wright-Phillips. As they boarded four buses (squad plus entourage numbers around 100 people. Everything's bigger in US sports) the Giants players laughed and joked. Not that you would have been laughing and joking as you drove slowly home through south-west London this afternoon.

Thuram hits the roads

A press release arrives in the inbox with an unexpectedly weighty headline. "Lilian Thuram: France must back UN road safety call". The France defender is apparently supporting the Make Roads Safe campaign. "Road crashes are now the number one killer of young people under 25," the ancient Barcelona stopper said. "I hope the French government will support the proposal for a UN conference on road safety."

The release adds: "Thuram has joined FC Barcelona team mate Samuel Eto'o in speaking out on behalf of the Make Roads Safe campaign as the drive to sign up supporters for a global petition to the UN hits the streets of Paris."

Now, very worthy cause and Thuram is one of the smartest, most socially-aware and all-round admirable sportsmen around. But let's face it: footballers promoting safer, more careful driving? That group of environment-destroying 4x4 drivers who collect speeding bans as easily as yellow cards? Even Dietmar Hamann is at it.

It's like Britney Spears becoming the spokesperson for responsible parenting. Perhaps Thuram should get his own profession in order before turning his attention to the rest of us.

Mark Clattered

Latest official to be placed in the stocks after a terrible performance is Mark Clattenburg, the man who almost caused David Moyes to spontaneously combust at the Merseyside derby on Saturday. Moyes's red laser eyes were burning with even more intensity than usual after Clattenburg's blunders.

While probably coincidental, the sequence when Clattenburg gave Liverpool a penalty, got out a yellow card, exchanged words with Steven Gerrard then produced a red for Tony Hibbert looked bad, not least since Gerrard's autobiography praises Clattenburg as one of the best referees in England. Wonder if Clattenburg's read it.

The feeling's mutual

"Bolton Wanderers Football Club, Sammy Lee and Frank McParland have agreed to part company by mutual consent," the statement said.

I wouldn't want to attract the attention of Bolton's lawyers by questioning the veracity of that statement, but isn't it about time that the phrase "mutual consent" went the way of the tackle from behind and Ron Atkinson and was excised from the game? We heard it when Jose Mourinho left Chelsea; in fact, it's trotted out almost every time a manager leaves a club. At the end of the regime, it's become as worn a cliche as "at the end of the day".

These managers are hopelessly addicted to football, they are workaholics, they fear being out of the game. They spend their days trying to convince young men that they are winners, that they should never give up or give in, that determination conquers all. How likely is it that they are going to agree with their chairman that they should leave their jobs with less than a quarter of the season gone? When anything remains possible?

Gaffers who made gaffes

Yep, we're well and truly into the season now. Notts County have just sacked their manager, Steve Thompson, after a poor but not terrible eleven points from eleven games. Yesterday, Lincoln City canned John Schofield, who took them to the play-offs last season.

Out of twelve in total this season, that's seven managerial departures already in October - with five of those gaffers rubbing their sore backsides having been kicked out by ruthless chairmen. You just know there will be another dozen to leave between now and May.

Small is not beautiful. Goodbye, Luxembourg

Azerbaijan, five points. Malta, five points. Estonia, four. Liechtenstein, four. Luxembourg, three. Andorra, nil. Faroe Islands, nil. San Marino, nil.

Imagine that lot read out in the lugubrious tones of James Alexander Gordon on Five Live. Pretty depressing. Eight countries who, at this late stage of Euro 2008 qualifying, have a total of 21 points. Two less than England, whose 3-0 win over Estonia on Saturday was a glorified training-ground exercise - only without the glory. Nil points? This is football, not the Eurovision Song Contest. Has the time come for Uefa to exclude little, rubbish nations from playing with the big boys?

Slammin' Sammy

Sammy Lee's biggest achievement of the season so far? Not being the first Barclays Premier League manager to leave his club.

He may be following Jose Mourinho out of the door soon, though. Reports of dressing-room unrest coupled with that familar partner, bad results, must be giving the Bolton Wanderers board some fairly rancid food for thought.

The Cup Draw runneth over

See the Uefa Cup group stage draw below, in all its beautiful clarity.

If only getting to that point wasn't so torturous. There must be an entire floor of Uefa's Swiss HQ where scientists and mathematicians ("boffins", if you will) sit around figuring out ways to make the draw more complicated.

The various rules dicating who could and could not play who took a good five minutes to explain, though I had gone into a bureaucratic waffle-induced coma around the point where one of the suits said that there were special rules for Scandinavian countries and, er, Croatia and Serbia, for the games that would take place in winter. Probably that's in the Uefa Cup Draw Rulebook as article 44 subsection 2, Ruling For Countries With Rubbish Groundsmen.

No Brucie bonus

Steve Bruce is the third-longest serving manager with the same club in the Barclays Premier League. (No prizes for guessing who are first and second). This December, it will be six years since the man with the nose that can smell round corners pitched up at St Andrew's. He's done a fantastic job, of course, though he seems to think it will come to an end if the interminable Carson Yeung takeover ever comes to fruition. The deadline for that to be done is Christmas, so it might not be a happy sixth anniversary for Bruce.

"It doesn't look good. Mr Sullivan [the director] said the vibes coming back from the Chinese consortium are negative. I know where I stand, that's for sure," Bruce said. With eight points from nine games, that's where. Not impressive, but given the mediocre nature of the players at his disposal, not terrible either.

Basic instincts

Back from Romania, where it was reassuring to be reminded that football fans act in the same way wherever they are. It's like fans are conditioned, programmed from birth perhaps, to cheer, chant and chastise like actors declaiming well-rehearsed lines. Not just in reaction to what's on the pitch. No matter if the camera is from BBC, Sky or - in this case - Romanian Sports TV, previewing Steaua Bucharest v Arsenal, fans' first instinct on finding a lens shoved under their eyeballs is the grunted chant. "ARS EH NUL, ARS EH NUL, ARS EH NUL!"

Foreign TV takes special delight in finding English supporters living up to stereotype - ie, getting rowdily drunk in replica shirts. Romanian TV was no exception. There was one interview with a sober fan who'd just arrived at Bucharest Airport that was a little different, though. The fan was asked who would win; Arsenal, he said. The better team, in great form. "You Vill Show No Mercy!" the interviewer, sounding not a little Transylvanian, said.  "Oh yeah, you can't show any mercy, can ya?" the Londoner replied.

Help the Aged Footballers

Yes, it's raising money for charity, but yet another old-timers' kick-about is hardly what the world needs. But that's the PFA's big plan as it marks its centenary with "The Match of The Century" at Eastlands on December 2. Match of the Century, or a chance to tarnish the memories of your heroes as the likes of Gianfranco Zola and Alan Shearer lumber about the pitch looking slow, fat and useless? (No jokes about Shearer in the latter years of his career, please.)

What with Sky's Premier League All Stars, The Match, Masters Series and numerous others, there's been a rash of games like this in recent years, aiming to slake our growing thirst for nostalgia and celebrity by marrying them with another national obsession, football.

Up the creek without a parachute

As if Norwich City's results on the pitch weren't bad enough... their finances for the past year have just been announced and it's a bit of a contrast with life at Arsenal, who announced record turnover of £200 million yesterday.

Profits fell at Carrow Road from £2.4 million to £100,000. Well, they're still making a profit, so not bad, right? But the accounts include an £8.4 million parachute payment, which they won't get next year. And they've already cut the wage bill by £1.6 million.

Who needs Mourinho?

English football did. It's tempting to write something saying that we're best-off shot of this preening, posturing, hectoring and self-regarding man, but it doesn't ring true, does it? Not so much a breath of fresh air as a dragon breathing fire, Jose Mourinho was good for the Premier League and great for Chelsea. He was brilliant theatre, and simply brilliant.

His incendiary style, and the internal tensions at Stamford Bridge, meant that Mourinho was never going to possess the longevity of a Wenger or Ferguson, but to leave like this? So early in the season, with a game against Manchester United just a couple of days away? The Champions League had become crucial to Mourinho's future, but who didn't think that his fate would be sealed in the aftermath of a dramatic Champions League final or semi-final, when he would be sacked after another near-miss or walk away in triumph as a champion of Europe once more? Certainly we didn't imagine it all ending with a whimper: after a tame 1-1 draw with little Rosenborg at a half-empty Stamford Bridge.

Unsafe keeping in China

Sepp Blatter was rightly ridiculed for suggesting female footballers should wear smaller shorts, but he was half right.

What does women's football need, and crave, most? Credibility and acceptance. But for every great strike from the likes of Kelly Smith and every clever piece of individual skill from her fellow forwards at the women's World Cup, there is a moment of defending that is so comical it deserves a Perrier award (or whatever they're called these days). When the BBC come to do a highlights montage at the end of the tournament, they will have to set the footage to the theme from the Benny Hill Show. In China over the past week, the Argentina defence has probably set women's football back a decade.

The hardest word

So, Jose, you want an apology from Peter Kirkup after the referee's assistant ruled out a Salomon Kalou "goal" against Blackburn yesterday. Is this because of your rivalry with Rafael Benitez, who got one when Rob Styles wrongly gave a penalty against Liverpool a couple of weeks back in their game with - yes - Chelsea?

Public humiliation for officials who make innocent mistakes? What, is Anne Robinson running the Premier League now? Should we have a phone vote on Match of the Day each week to "evict" the most-blundersome official?

McClaren and Psycho turn off the pressure cooker

Relief – for England fans and for Steve McClaren after last night’s result. But if the head coach is anything like his under-21s counterpart, Stuart Pearce, the feeling won’t last long.

“In the industry we’re in, the only luxury you ever get is probably that hour of relief after a result,” Pearce said this week. “That’s the only time you afford yourself that luxury of maybe just relaxing, having a cup of coffee and switching off. All of a sudden you’re looking at the next one, then the next one… that’s the nature of the industry we’re in, the nature of football management, you never get to bask in the glory like you probably can if you’re a player or even a supporter, for any length of time.”

Pearce doing it for kids and country

The shirt is the same, the national anthem no different and the ability to lose heart-rending penalty shoot-outs is equal - but there's a fraction of the focus on England under 21s when you compare them with the seniors. There are only four journalists out here in Sofia to follow the kids as they take on Bulgaria tonight. The team hotel and training ground is not besieged by reporters or fans. Players are more mellow and less defensive than they are in the full side. Of course, they're younger, so less cynical, less famous. Still conscious that they haven't made it yet, but excited because they know they're close.

This vibe exists for good reason, of course - the signs are that their qualifying campaign for Euro 2009 will be a lot easier than the one for Euro 2008 that continues against Russia tomorrow. It began with a comfortable 3-0 win over Montenegro in Podgorica on Friday and carries on after today with four more fixtures before the end of November. Portugal - them again - and Ireland are the other teams in Group 3.

The death of 3pm?

Just one Barclays Premier League game kicks off at 3pm on Saturday October 6, as Bill's post below points out.

The end of footballing civilisation as we know it? Hardly. That day, 33 Football League matches get going at good, old-fashioned 3pm. As a similar number do every week. Fed up of the top-flight ripping you off and selling you out? As the bank advert has it: there is another way.

Well hello, lino!

Suddenly, straying offside doesn't seem so bad. Surrounding the assistant referee: not such a crime.

Ana Paula Oliveira, a 29-year-old lineswoman in Brazil, has not been picked to officiate at a professional game since she posed nude for Playboy in July. I'll leave the Google search to you, but it's fair to say she would be better at attracting the referee's attention (or any man's) than, say, Darren Cann and Dave Babski.

Doing it for the kids

The Johnstone's Paint Trophy's near-irrelevance in the great scheme of things means the Football League can experiment like mad scientists, with little fear that their creation will turn into a Frankenstein's Monster of a competition and destroy all they hold dear.

So it is that three games this week kick off at 7pm and another four at 7.15. It's an effort to make games more attractive to families, by ensuring that late finishes are avoided, and little Timmy and Rebecca will be tucked up in bed by 10pm. There's no extra time this season: drawn matches go straight to penalties after 90 minutes.

Unhappy anniversary for Bolton

It was one of those neat coincidences football throws up now and again. Bolton Wanderers' first game at the Reebok Stadium was against Everton; the fixture on the stadium's tenth anniversary was Everton again. Though on Saturday, Bolton lost; in 1997, it was a goalless draw (23,131 turned up to watch the likes of Nathan Blake, Neville Southall, Dave Watson, Slaven Billic, Peter Beardsley - playing for Bolton - and Gary Speed, who was in Everton's team that day and Bolton's on Saturday.

In the past ten years, few new stadiums have come close to rivalling the Reebok. The design is a triumph of imagination with respect for tradition. Futuristic, yet old-fashioned: four distinct stands, yet it's an arena; four floodlight pylons, but they're space-age; named after a corporate sponsor, but a local company; in an out-of-town car-friendly shopping mall, but with a train station adjacent.

Going through the window

Was it really a whole year that we stayed up past midnight, excitedly unable to sleep like kids on Christmas Eve, waiting for Ashley Cole's transfer to Chelsea to be confirmed?

Transfer deadline day: guaranteed entertainment and not a ball in sight. No, just club officials, agents, and wheelbarrows full of cash. The whole transfer window thing is a restraint of trade, ill-conceived, pointless, failed. If it was designed to encourage clubs to spend more responsibly - well, how sensible does £450 million spent by Barclays Premier League sides this summer seem to you? It'll be over the £500 million barrier by tonight no doubt - the TV deal makes this a seller's market.

Supporting from the heart

Footballers suffering heart problems is understandably the most scorching of hot topics, but did you know that heart attacks among the crowd at football games are on the rise? It's something being investigated by health and football authorities in the UK at the moment.

Possible reasons for the increase include worsening general health (well, with all those snack bars at modern grounds it is easier to buy pies, crisps and chocolate than ever before) and excessive stress levels. Are fans literally dying to support their team? Do some take it all too seriously, and pay the heaviest price for the tension, excitement and passion that hold so much of the game's appeal?

Probably...

The daftest sending-off, ever?

Saturday, the Blue Square Premier. Torquay United lead Rushden & Diamonds 3-1. The referee, David Phillips, awards an 88th-minute penalty to Rushden. Curtis Woodhouse steps up and scores. But the official rules that a Rushden player was encroaching and orders a re-take. Woodhouse runs up again and steps over the ball, as if dummying. He turns round to look at the referee, who gives him a yellow card for unsportsmanlike conduct. It's Woodhouse's second booking, so he's off. One of his team-mates eventually takes the spot-kick and scores, for real, but Rushden lose 3-2.

Robinson's squashed

I met Paul Robinson for an interview last week. On a warm day in the calm atmosphere of a hotel's garden, he radiated self-assurance when quizzed about that night in Zagreb, and was unruffled by Tottenham's poor start to the season.

He made all the right noises - took a long hard look at himself after the Croatia bobble, working to improve every aspect of his game, confident in his own ability. So how to explain what happened last night?

Be careful what you wish for

Yossi Benayoun's agent says his client will "think about moving to a medium-sized team" if Rafael Benitez, the Liverpool manager, doesn't start playing him.

It's true that in the early stages of the season, Benitez has spent more time cultivating his face-fuzz than integrating his new Israel midfield player, but with only two league games gone, this must be close to setting a record for impatience. Don't worry, Yossi, maybe West Ham - that "medium-sized team" you left all of six weeks ago - will have you back.

Jol's seat over-heats

"Book now for the managerial merry-go-round."

"But it's August!"

"Starting early this year."

Martin Jol's position as head coach of Tottenham Hotspur is said to be untenable, which is a little strange following a 4-0 win - and two defeats in which most of his first-choice defence was missing. And a little strange after the board had enough confidence to let him spend £40 million in the summer. And a little strange since Tottenham have finished fifth in the past two seasons.

Crock shock

Have you known a start to the season like it? All across the Barclays Premier League, footballers are limping, hobbling, writhing, clutching crutches. Injuries - the plague has finally spread out from Newcastle United and infected the rest of the division.

This is why managers witter on about big squads and resting and rotation (despite modern players being sissies. After all, in the 1920s, footballers would spend twelve hours in a coalmine or factory before training, then walk ten miles home, enjoy a supper of ale, bread and lard and still be able to play three games a week on mudbath pitches in hobnail boots. If their metatarsals broke they would just click them back into place.)

Buyer beware

Why does it take so long to conclude transfers these days? Why must they always be sagas? There are ends to wars that are negotiated more quickly.

Mido's move from Spurs to (probably) Middlesbrough is taking forever. The man's a reserve-teamer that Spurs don't want. Carlos Tevez to Old Trafford - with all the legal processes and debate you'd think United were attempting to build a Megastore with multi-storey car park on green belt land, not buy a striker. Gabriel Heinze - on and off, and on, and on. Thierry Henry to Barcelona - that took years. Such a quick player, such a slow deal. Kieron Dyer - we've been waiting for weeks. Even Wes Hoolahan, of Blackpool, is the subject of a saga. By the time it's resolved, he'll probably be eligible to join Saga.

Carlisle win the sack race

It's been an interesting start to the season for Carlisle United.

Friday: break transfer record.

Saturday: draw 1-1 with Walsall.

Monday: sack manager.

The Mido touch

All credit to Steve Bruce.

What a dangerous sentence that is. Give the man the Birmingham City gold credit card and he shops till he (or his team, probably) drops.

Leeds missing the points

Perhaps it's the caffeine from all that Coke they must drink, but the Football League adopts a more and more hardcore stance each year towards cheeky urchins who bend its rules, such as Leeds United.

(Compare and contrast with the soft-centred Premier League, of course. With the new TV deal, merely fining West Ham over Tevez was a bit like telling someone they were banned from drinking alcohol, then running them a bath filled with champagne.)

The Money Game

Oh dear. Just when Richard Scudamore thought it was safe to stand down the lawyers, the Premier League might be facing more legal action. From Burnley.

Their chairman, Barry Kilby, thinks it is unfair that relegated clubs receive a parachute payment. "I will be campaigning this autumn for us to bring this to court," he said. "It's a good, strong case. I honestly feel that it's an illegal subsidy from the Premier League that distorts our competition so badly."