Search: 'Paul Ince'

Brentford are being destroyed by their own chief executive. Dave Lane profiles the man responsible

At the start of the season the new Brentford chairman, Tony Swaisland, confessed in an interview with Bees fanzine Beesotted that David Webb had forgotten more about football than he will ever know. This football naivety is obviously shared by the rest of the club’s officials, as Webb has proceeded to fool the lot of them by becoming the major shareholder in a club he is now, skilfully, holding to ransom.

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Wednesday 1 In the Champions League Man Utd recover from conceding a goal in the first minute to beat Juventus 3-2 at Old Trafford. "This is a measure of how far we've come," says Alex beaming fit to burst. "If we put another three goals past Peruzzi in Rome next week we will be on our way to the World Cup finals," says Phil Neville, getting carried away. Newcastle come back from two down in Kiev to draw with two late goals, the second a bizarre deflection. Their luck is offset, though, by an injury to Tino Asprilla which will keep him out for at least a month. In the Coke, Sheffield Wed go out to Grimsby on a 4-3 aggregate. "It was another bad night at the office," says David Pleat, who may not be working late for much longer.

Thursday 2 Bad news for bar staff around Manchester – Roy Keane's cruciate injury will keep him out for the rest of the season.

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Football is the most popular sport in the world, so Matthew Foreman wonders why sponsors aren't earning enough out of it

It seems remarkable given the multi-millions sloshing around the Premier League, but in advertising circles they’re saying the world of football sponsorship is in crisis. Some of the game’s sponsors are seeing sales rise but others are wasting millions, naively thinking that football’s trendy status will help them sell any product they fancy. So what’s the secret of a good marketing campaign, and is there a downside to the advertising upsurge?

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Jozef Venglos was expected to bring glory to Villa on the basis that he was continental, but David Wangerin remembers how it never quite worked out for him

Jozef Venglos was manager of the best Villa side I’ve ever seen. For ninety minutes, anyway. That delightful October evening in 1990 when we inexplicably smashed Inter Milan into little pieces and scattered them across our pitch remains the most captivating game of football I’ve witnessed. It still seems inconceivable – trouncing a collection of Europe’s finest with a team captained by Stuart Gray. Surely no run-of-the-mill manager could ever have orchestrated it.

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Injuries can not only end careers, but can also affect a former player's life afterwards. Ashley Shaw looks at the legal action taken by Ian Knight after his livelihood was taken away by a bad tackle

When a player suffered a career ending injury in the Good Old Days the options left open to him were fairly well defined. Almost automatically he would be forced to seek alternative employment – some opened pubs, others ended up cleaning windows, some even went into management. No one in their right mind would even contemplate taking a fellow pro to court – it just wasn’t done and besides there was little money in it.

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