Tuesday 1 Drama to the last in Sheffield United’s FA Cup fifth-round replay with Arsenal, settled by Manuel Almunia making two saves in a shoot-out after a 0‑0 draw. “An average Premiership side would have lost but Sheffield were electric for 120 minutes,” say Arsène. Brentford take a fourth-minute lead against Southampton, but lose 3‑1. Blackburn beat Burnley 2‑1 with a late goal from Morten Gamst Pedersen. Roy Keane is cleared of charges of assault over an incident near his home last year. Jermaine Pennant, however, is jailed for three months for drunk-driving while banned. “We will give him all the help and support he needs to turn his life around,” says Birmingham chief executive Karren Brady – paying him £3,000 a week might seem like help enough.
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Tuesday 1 “I think Arsenal are out of the title race,” says Sir Alex after a Cristiano Ronaldo double spurs Man Utd to a 4-2 Highbury win. Another vindictive encounter starts in the tunnel with Roy Keane and Patrick Vieira squaring up to each other; later Wayne Rooney breaks the UK all-comers record for swear words yelled in under a minute during a disagreement with referee Graham Poll and Mikaël Silvestre is sent off for butting Freddie Ljungberg. Fernando Morientes gets his first goal for fifth-placed Liverpool as they prevent Charlton moving ahead of them by winning 2-1 at The Valley. Middlesbrough are still without a league win in 2005 after a 2-1 defeat at Portsmouth. There’s a dramatic end to West Brom’s match against Palace, with the home side taking a 2-1 lead in injury time only for Aki Riihilahti to equalise; Iain Dowie’s side had played with ten men for 80 minutes following the dismissal of defender Gonzalo Sorondo. Fredi Kanouté is sent off at Bolton, after which Spurs concede two late goals to lose 3-1, their third defeat in a row. Motherwell reach the Scottish League Cup final for the first time in 50 years after a 3-2 extra-time win over Hearts.
Challenging for the title is the exclusive prerogative of a privileged few in most of Europe's leagues. But no one has told AZ Alkmaar, writes Derek Brookman
Out of the 32 million or so eyebrows in the Netherlands, the number raised when AZ Alkmaar visited PSV Eindhoven two games into the Dutch season and lost 5-1 probably didn’t exceed single figures. After all, this was the natural order: big eating small, famous club and previous European Cup winner putting team from cheese-market town with an 8,390 capacity stadium in their place.
The investigation took six years, but Juventus’s doctor has just been convicted of doping players. Matt Barker wonders if the 1990s record books will be rewritten
Having cake-walked qualification for the knockout stages of the Champions League and with the side sitting comfortably in pole position in Serie A, this is shaping up to be a vintage season for Juventus, under new coach Fabio Capello. But the findings and verdict of a recent anti-doping inquest threaten to taint the club’s image. The investigation was prompted by the comments of Zdenek Zeman, a former Roma, Lazio and Napoli coach, now at Lecce. In a 1998 magazine interview, the Czech declared it was “time for Italian football to come out of the pharmacy”, pointing the finger at Juve in particular and talking of a process that had “started with [Gianluca] Vialli and has arrived finally with [Alessandro] Del Piero”.
Lokomotive Leipzig used to play in European finals; now they are dominating the equivalent of a pub league. Julius Bergmann reports on a remarkable renaissance
When at the beginning of October FC Lokomotive Leipzig overcame Eintracht Grossdeuben reserves at the city’s new Central Stadium, it wasn’t just the world record crowd for an 11th division match of 12,421 that made the game special; it was also the simple fact that Lok were playing.