Search: ' Port Vale'

Four years ago this month, Sunderland were second in the Premiership – and as Harry Pearson writes, some fans are still struggling to come to terms with the spectacular collapse since

It’s probably the fact that it is 70 or so years since one of the region’s teams could justifiably lay claim to being the best in the country that leads football fans in the north-east of England to spend their lives permanently teetering on the brink of exasperation. It doesn’t take much to tip them over the edge. Santa hats may predominate at the Sunderland Stadium of Light, but the mood is as much restive as festive. When yet another pass is pinged out of midfield and across the touchline a bloke sitting in the row behind me in the East Stand groans loudly: “I’ve paid £23 for a bucket of shite,” he says. The big scoreboard above the North Stand shows that six minutes and 28 seconds have been played.

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Nottingham Forest have lost another manager and are playing their worst football of most fans’ lifetimes. Al Needham looks around frantically for signs of hope

When Joe Kinnear accused the supporters of Nottingham Forest of living in a time warp last month after resigning as manager, it was hard to deny that he had a point. After all, fans in pubs, factories and offices across the city have done little else this season than casting their minds back and trying to remember a Forest team as uniformly lamentable as the current one. The relegation teams of 1993, ’97 or ’99? The Matt Gillies-Dave Mackay-Allan Brown era of the early 70s, when Forest trod water in the old Second Division?

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Arsenal’s move for Emmanuel Eboué of Beveren is just the latest example of a strange import-export trade in African footballers, as John Chapman explains

The thermometer is stuck on 4°C. There’s a cold wind blowing around Antwerp’s Bosuil stadium. Around 6,000 fans have braved the elements to see the locals, languishing in Belgium’s second div­ision, take on mighty Beveren, who qualified for this season’s UEFA Cup through being runners-up in the 2004 Belgian Cup. In theory, it’s a Flemish derby. In practice, it’s a visible sign of globalisation’s impact on football.

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He may have failed to make a career in his native north London, but the Arsenal reject is riding high in the land of his forefathers, writes Gavin Willacy

Like many a mid-ranking European club who hope to snatch a UEFA Cup place come spring, Turkey’s Denizlispor have pinned their hopes on a combination of local talent and a handful of obscure foreigners, including a Slovakian defender, Czech, Finnish and South African midfielders, and a German striker – none of whom you will have heard of. And only the most ardent Arsenal fans will remember the English guy playing up front. After all, Omer Riza played only once for Arsenal – a few minutes as a sub for a second-string Gunners side in a League Cup win at Derby six years ago. Among his team-mates that night were current internationals Freddie Ljungberg, Alex Man­ninger and Matthew Upson, while a very young Ashley Cole was left on the bench.

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Shogo Hagiwara tells us how Michael Owen has helped Real Madrid in the Japanese market

In Japan, A-list celebrities from overseas often endorse products – from canned coffee to cheap shampoo – that they would never purchase in their lives. Footballers are no exception. David Beckham is, of course, as ubiquitous here as everywhere else in the world.

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