Search: 'UEFA'

Simon Tyers discovers the new weapons that Sky's Andy Gray has added to his artillery

As seasons change and Alan Shearer’s hair recedes at a rate unseen since Ray Wilkins, we can at least rest safe in the knowledge that from year to year some things never change. David Beckham will make a fleeting visit to his coaching school and be interviewed on every single TV outlet, the Football Focus panel will attempt to grapple with a big concept underpinning a major news story and completely fail, and Sky will have a big conceptual technological idea that only they think works.

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Friday 1 David Moyes is to sue the Daily Mail over claims that Wayne Rooney said he was “forced out” of Everton by the manager. Bristol City’s Bradley Orr and Scott Brooker and a former team-mate, David Partridge, now at Leyton Orient, are jailed over a nightclub brawl last October.

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Six points separated the top five come the end of the season as the blue side of Manchester rejoiced.  Ed Upright reports

The long-term significance
This was the peak of the post-1966 boom – overall attendances were up by well over a million and 15 top division-clubs saw increases. Manchester United and Coventry set all‑time average records, as did Liverpool, who none the less trailed United and Everton in the attendance standings.

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Dear WSC
Being a non-League fan, with a major Premiership side playing their reserve-team football at our stadium, I have long since believed reserves to be almost totally unnecessary at the top level (Nothing In Reserve, WSC 235). A Chelsea v Arsenal game in February 2004 stuck out in particular. The 4,500 crowd probably hoped for the odd household name among a foundation of emerging talent. The players that actually performed would have struggled to get into a non-League team (one of them has signed for my side, Aldershot, this season). The game lacked any quality at all and the players never showed anything that might suggest either José Mourinho or Arsène Wenger might have been presented with an unexpected selection headache. With Chelsea releasing more players this summer, most of whom never got close to the first team (Dean Furman, Joe Keenan, Dean Smith, Jack Watkins, James Younghusband, Lenny Pidgeley, Filipe Morasis and Danny Hollands) again it appears that their reserve team offers nothing for José – and why should it? They have limitless resources, so why should they take a risk with untried youth? The players that are rated are sent on loan to gain “valuable first-team experience” at other clubs. Other clubs also use the loan system heavily, at their reserve teams’ expense: Arsenal and Manchester United have sent five players on loan, Liverpool four, with several others released. Fulham and Everton have also both released many young and up-and-coming players. Bizarrely, other Premiership clubs take loan players at the expense of their reserves – look at Watford giving experience to Ben Foster, Charlton to Scott Carson, Everton to Tim Howard, Wigan to Chris Kirkland and that’s just keepers. Top-level reserve football doesn’t need the Premiership to kill it, the clubs are doing that quite well enough. The days of players being discovered in the reserves are long gone; top managers know what players they have in reserve and that’s why they are there.
Andrew Hailstone, via email

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The latest split in the former Yugoslavia was the result of a vote rather than conflict, mercifully, with football playing its part in urging people to vote for independence, as Djordje Nikolic explains

Soon UEFA will have a 53rd member, Montenegro. The entity officially known as the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro lasted only three years; from 1992 to 2003 the two republics had formed what was left of Yugoslavia. In May the voters in Montenegro decided, narrowly, for independence. In the next few months they will become the sixth separate country created from what was Yugoslavia. Given the closeness of the referendum, it’s even possible that football influenced the outcome.

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