Search: ' Portsmouth'

Do English coaches deserve more credit? Not if Mathias Svensson is to be believed, as Marcus Christenson reports

Sven-Göran Eriksson has been in charge of England for four and a half years – and yet no consensus seems to have developed on whether the Football Association was right to appoint the Swede as its first foreign manager. So the debate rages on. This summer Bristol Rovers manager Ian Atkins, having just completed the FA’s UEFA Pro Licence course, claimed that English coaches and managers get “the best training in the world” and added: “I think people are over-critical of English coaches and that is wrong.”

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Wednesday 1 Chelsea, Ashley Cole and Jose Mourinho are found guilty of meeting in a hotel for immoral purposes and face fines totalling £600,000, with Chelsea also receiving a suspended three-point deduction; all will appeal. “The public don’t expect players to move just at the drop of a wallet,” warns David Dein. Darren Bent joins Charlton for £3 million.

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The murder of Davor Suker’s business partner last month has thrown the spotlight on a web of intensive wheeler-dealing within the game, as Jules Brandon explains

Davor Suker, once of Real Madrid, Arsenal and West Ham, has made front page news in his native Croatia recently but not for footballing reasons. In the early morning of June 11, Suker’s business partner, Dino Pokrovac, 43, who represented more than a dozen Croatian players, was shot several times at the entrance to his apartment in the affluent Zagreb suburb of Sigecica. Evidence at the scene suggested that the murder had been meticulously planned and the general belief is that it must have been football-related. A wallet that Pokrovac always carried with him, said to contain the names and addresses of his many debtors, was stolen. According to police reports, the debtors owed the deceased various amounts up to several hundred thousand euros. Suker, who flew in from London to be questioned for three hours the day after the murder, is among 20 people to have been interviewed so far.

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The Dinamo Moscow striker was so eager to come to England after early success for Russia that his career has all but ground to a halt, writes Dan Brennan

From England’s north-west to its south coast, the considerable frame and increasingly weary visage of Dmitri Bulykin were familiar sights at training grounds in January. In fact, one in five top-flight clubs have had the pleasure of his company – a decent record if ground-hopping is your game, but not if you’re a Premiership wannabe with a dislike of hotel rooms.

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Sympathy for Ashley Cole has been hard to find in his battle for the right to talk to Chelsea behind Arsenal's back. But, as  Neil Rose points out, the rule cole is battling costs less well paid players dear and he might yet win on principle in the courts

To most people, the Ashley Cole affair, with meetings in posh hotels and squabbles over whether an extra £5,000 a week really was promised, seem far away from everyday life. It was Shaka Hislop’s evidence to the disciplinary commission that brought it down to earth. He was called by Cole’s lawyers to show the unfairness of Premier League rule K5, which prevents a contracted player making an approach to another club without the consent of his employer and under which Cole was fined. Near the end of his career at 36, Hislop did not know at the time whether his contract, expiring on 29 June, would be renewed by Portsmouth.

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