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Harry Pearson ponders whether there really is a collective football sensibility in the north-east and concludes that there probably isn’t

A dozen or so years ago I was sitting on a plane at Brussels airport. Our departure had been slightly delayed to allow passengers from a connecting flight to join us. Eventually they arrived and marched down the aisle to the rear of ­standard class, an elderly couple trailing the scent of sun tan oil and eau de cologne. Nothing unusual in that except that on closer inspection the pair turned out to be Newcastle United chairman Sir John Hall and his wife, Lady May.

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Cameron Carter digests the latest verbal jousts between Rafa and Alex and co and detects more childish bickering than cunning mind-games

A significant proportion of advertisements these days, particularly the daytime ones, depict attractive, long-suffering women coping with a man who, though apparently the husband, could also be her idiot child. This is so that the female consumers being targeted can laugh knowingly to themselves about how childlike men are before nipping out to spend good money on Buttercup Eyelid Cleanser and dog insurance.

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The world of Twitter is gaining more followers by the day, with clubs now producing their own official pages. Ian Plenderleith tries to work out what all the fuss is about

People who have never looked at Twitter (twitter.com) tend to ask: “What is Twitter actually supposed to be?” They used to ask the same things about email and blogs, but then at least a feasible, semi-coherent explanation could be given to even the technologically inept. Once you’ve been inside the super-inane world of Twitter, however, a response is much more challenging, because the point still eludes you. It’s perhaps best described as mankind’s best attempt to waste millions of hours since the invention of prayer.

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With Middlesbrough struggling to survive the drop Steve Wilson asks why the chances of Hope Powell succeeding are so slim

As Middlesbrough’s steady slide towards relegation fast approaches a vertical drop into the Championship, questions are inevitably resurfacing over the wisdom of employing Gareth Southgate as the club’s manager in his first job in the dugout.

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Bolton chairman Phil Gartside is in favour of a new division consisting of teams outside the upper echelons of the Premiership. Unfortunately for him it appears he may be one of very few, as Roger Titford explains

Property developers and farmers with a couple of well-situated fields never give up looking for planning permission. Every so often they come back with yet another application. Footballing conservationists will feel the same way about the idea floated by Phil Gartside, the Bolton chairman, that Rangers and Celtic should be invited to join a newly formed 18-club Premier League Two in 2014-15. At the same time the Premier League would be reduced from 20 to 18 clubs. The scheme was unveiled in the Sunday Mirror on April 19 as the Beginning Of The Next Revolution although in an accompanying piece, columnist Michael Calvin decried it as a “morally bankrupt plan to take the money and run”. There was a similar response throughout almost all of the press coverage – “Gartside’s ideas are barmy and destructive,” said Mick Dennis in the Express – with the Guardian’s Lawrence Donegan one of the few to suggest that the idea should be taken seriously: “The truth is that the Old Firm would bring a great deal to English football, the most significant aspect of which would be a following that exceeds all but one or two of the current Premier League teams.”

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