Wednesday 1 A David Bellion goal after 18 seconds is enough for Man Utd reserves to beat their counterparts from Arsenal in the Carling Cup. Liverpool also put out a shadow side, but still knock out Spurs on penalties after a 1-1 draw nicked through a Fredi Kanouté handball (“unforgivable” says Martin Jol) four minutes from the end of extra time.X
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Stories
The oldest club in the League have never been in the Premiership and probably never will be, so their last top-flight season is one for Martin Naylor to savour
On hearing the words “Neil” and “Warnock” a decent percentage of football fans would grimace and mutter an obscenity. But the current Sheffield United manager is remembered with fondness by Notts County supporters for the back-to-back play-off wins that took us into the top division for what will surely be the last time in our long history.
Monday 1 How long do you go on waiting for results?” asks Wolves chairman Rick Hayward after sacking Dave Jones with the club 19th in the Championship. Bradford’s Dean Windass has the second yellow card shown to him during a 4-0 defeat at Luton rescinded – he had protested at the referee allegedly taunting him about the score.
Tuesday 2 “There is no need to get dramatic because we are still unbeaten in Europe,” says Arsène as the Gunners are held 1-1 at home by Panathinaikos. Pascal Cygan, now firmly established as the new Frank Sinclair, contributes an own goal for the visitors’ equaliser after the Greeks miss a penalty. Chelsea are through to the Champions League knockout stages, though, after a 1-0 win at CSKA Moscow who also squander a spot-kick. Celtic can still avoid elimination after beating Donetsk 1-0. In the Championship, managerless Wolves are only three points above the relegation zone after a 3-1 defeat at Sunderland and West Ham lose to Cardiff for the first time since 1952, 4-1 at Ninian Park. The top two, Wigan and Ipswich, both win, the latter setting a club record by scoring in their 29th consecutive game, a 5-1 victory over Sheffield United.
Leading your country or captaining Arsenal is not as easy as managing a lower-division team – at least judging from Tony Adams’ turbulent reign at Wycombe, writes Paul Lewis
There was general surprise when Wycombe Wanderers appointed Tony Adams as manager back in November 2003. There was a similar reaction when he walked out, 12 months into his first shot at football management. The ending was a messy affair. Adams had spent the previous weekend mulling over the latest defeat – 1-0 at home to Yeovil, a scoreline that had taken his Football League record with Wycombe to nine wins and 20 draws from 46 games. By Tuesday morning he had made up his mind, deciding the players would hear it first before a 9am training session. The news filtered back to the club offices and to the media. Adams switched off his mobile phone so the club were unable to contact him directly to confirm the reports. At around 1pm he released a press statement through his agent citing “personal reasons” as the cause of his departure, which was confirmed by a later meeting with a clearly furious chairman Ivor Beeks.
As Mark Griffiths reports, the bleak situation at Wrexham is slipping further downhill and threatening to snowball
It is a misplaced notion that all troubled teams find a knight in shining armour and scrape through: Wrexham are in serious danger of oblivion. Set to go into administration on December 3, they aren’t merely, like some other clubs that have taken that step, the victims of financial mismanagement: they have an owner whose interests would appear to be best served by the club disappearing. The situation reported in WSC 212 has worsened considerably. Then it seemed majority shareholder Alex Hamilton hoped to profit from relocating the club and selling the land the Racecourse Ground occupies. It now appears that such activity was merely a smokescreen. Next July Wrexham will have to leave their stadium, home since 1873, having been served notice of eviction by Hamilton. By then their assets might well have all gone: transactions have been taking place without directors’ knowledge; managing director John Reames’s attempt to warn fans of what was going on led to club officials being ordered to rip the offending page out of the programme.