Is Terry Venables really any good as a coach? Leeds' new manager is the subject of this month's Head to Head
Yes ~
I met Terry Venables once. He’d brought out a rather bizarre board game called The Manager and was trying to sell it as a TV programme. I was hired to answer the quiz questions on it in front of some BBC bigwigs. They didn’t take it up and I had to spend the morning with Eric Hall, so it wasn’t a successful day.
Monday 1 Airdrie United acquire the rights to Clydebank’s name and seem set to replace them in the Scottish Second Division. “If this takeover goes ahead, a franchise system for Scottish football will have been validated,” says a spokesman for the Clydebank supporters group, who had been hoping to take control of the club themselves. Mick Wadsworth, who left Oldham during last season, is Huddersfield’s new manager.
He helped keep Luton up and won Euro 92 with Denmark, but then some even more unlikely things started happening. Neil Rose takes a sympathetic view
You know what you are getting with Scandinavian imports, by and large. They like British football and settle in quickly, sharing our admiration of work rate and commitment. And they speak the lingo, even adopting local accents in an amusing way. But then there is Lars Elstrup, who played merry hell with this stereotype by chucking in the game and embracing anarcho-Buddhism. Elstrup’s fire burnt briefly but, for Luton Town fans, brightly.
In the latest of our series on local rivalries, David Harrison attempts to convince the sceptics that Watford v Luton is as bitter and passionate as they come
Yeah, OK. It’s not exactly The Old Firm, but believe me, it all gets pretty agitated around these parts. It’s a rivalry with no name, which frustrates the hell out of the headline-besotted press. To such a degree that they tried dubbing it, pathetically, “The M1 Derby”. Just like Arsenal v Leeds then.
Apparent misfits in the Premiership, more than a few imports have gone on to have perplexingly good careers elsewhere. We tracked down three of them, Gabriele Marcotti looking at Darko Kovacevic
If he hadn’t been run out of town after making just eight starts for Sheffield Wednesday, perhaps Darko Kovacevic might have earned himself a funky nickname in Yorkshire. Certainly, English fans tend to be a little more imaginative than their Spanish counterparts (“Golacevic”was the best Real Sociedad supporters could come up with). Perhaps he might have entered Sheffield lore as the “Darko Destroyer” – after all, he was Nigel Benn’s contemporary.