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When the price isn't right

A recent edition of Sky’s Football League Review turned momentarily into a version of The Price is Right. Studio guest Steve Claridge was shown footage of two young English players with Championship clubs and asked how much money they might reasonably be sold for in the transfer window. Claridge, brow furrowed in the manner of a contestant weighing up the true value of a rice cooker or teak shelving unit, gravely suggested that one might go for £5-6 million, the other for £2-3m.

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The problem of Paris Saint-Germain’s notoriously far-right supporters exploded when a policeman opened fire after a racist mob confronted fans of Hapoel Tel-Aviv. Nicolas Hourcade reports

Thursday November 23, 11pm, the Porte de Saint‑Cloud area of Paris, near the Parc des Princes. Paris Saint-Germain have just been humiliated 4-2 in the UEFA Cup by an average Hapoel Tel-Aviv team. The hardest PSG fans are running at opposing supporters. According to the initial results of the investigation, one of the Hapoel fans was being chased by a group of Parisians when a 32-year-old black man, only identified as a plain-clothes policeman, intervened. He tried to break up the group with tear gas. But in the face of their aggression he retreated, fell down, took out his gun and fired, killing one of his assailants and seriously injuring another. He sought refuge in a McDonald’s, which was then attacked by PSG fans screaming racist abuse until the police broke up the crowd.

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It may have been minus ten in August, but things are warming up at Millmoor. Slowly, the South Yorkshire club are adjusting to life without a managerial legend. Is the same true for the visitors? Pete Green investigates

It is a bore to draw parallels between football and love affairs. Too many tiresome blogs talk about the magic having gone, the need to rekindle the spark, and flirtations with other clubs. But if every cliche hides a kernel of truth then maybe this one tells us something about management, because the longer a manager has been in charge, the longer it seems to take the club to get over it once the record collection is divided up.

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Poor results certainly hurt Iain Dowie at Charlton but, as Tom Green explains, the club’s commitment to a continental-style structure both helped cost him his job and land him the post in the first place

When Charlton recruited Iain Dowie, few people realised that a potentially more significant appointment had already been made. In May, days after Alan Curbishley and his coaching team had departed, Andrew Mills, a former agent, was appointed the club’s first “general manager – football”. Later, when Iain Dowie was appointed “head coach”, it became apparent that after 15 years with Curbishley as manager, Charlton were trying a new structure. There would be a new “four-man football management team”, said Charlton chairman Richard Murray: Dowie, his fellow coaches Les Reed and Mark Robson, and Andrew Mills.

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Steve Evans put Boston on the football map, but only by organising a tax fraud that almost landed him in jail – and that many fans feel should have cost him his job. Peter Brooksbank reports

Moments after the end of the televised Conference-clinching win at Hayes in 2002, Boston United manager Steve Evans grinned into the Sky cameras, surrounded by champagne-soaked players and disbelieving fans. “Laps of honour are for champions,” he gloated, making reference to Dagenham boss Garry Hill, who had led his players on a premature lap of glory two months earlier. The slogan assumed instant cult status back in Boston, the club even plastering it on T-shirts in the official shop. Four years later, the phrase has a new twist on fans’ message boards: “Laps of honour are for champions, guilty pleas are for cheats.”

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