The Owen thing was obvious- The clauses existed so if Owen activated them BFS could point at it being the other bloke's fault, not that Owen didn't fancy 60 yard passes on great circle trajectories. Owen stayed and BFS expected to be a hero for keeping him but the Geordies think Newcastle is heaven on earth and of course he'd want to stay regardless of BFS sitting in the Manager's desk for the time being.... Thankfully, Rovers Management have far too much sense than pay Barton £60K a week to spend next season inside.

A South African perspective on Benni. They don't exactly love him but the accusation that Mark Hughes cut a deal comes up again. From what I can see, Pereira is not exactly stable unless I am doing him a disservice and the Bafana Bafan have only recently appointed him. If he's been around for any length of time, he's appointed then dismissed Aaron Mokoena from the captaincy at least once before.

Great stuff Oz- thank's for posting it.

Don't know if anyone else is having the same problem as me but the clip of the goals simply links me through to the Flash download centre which tells me what I know- that I already have the requisite software. Any alternatives?

The Guardian's take on the recent arrests.

Thanks- looks like Platini is not counting CL registrations but perhaps total professional player registrations at CL qualified clubs (over 18). I cannot see how he gets to 95 Brazilians otherwise either. In fact this points to the reserves across Europe being packed with Brazilian and French talent with local youngsters as much frozen out as Brits are in the UK.

This is an eye opener from the Guardian: Platini has long argued for a control on foreigners in the Premier League, and gave one telling statistic to illustrate the problems that England's national team faces. "If you do not have so many players what can you do?" he said. "There are 95 registered Brazilian players in the Champions League, 94 French players and 45 English players. When you have twice as few players as other countries it is difficult." For the record, there are no Brazilian teams playing in the Champions League and four English teams registered 100 players between them. I am surprised the number of English players is as high as 45; are there any English players in the Rangers or Celtic squads?

d'oh. You challenged me whether I had seen the croatian players at their own clubs so I explained that I had accidentally seen quite a lot of Dynamo Zagreb who supply virtually all the Croatia-based Croatian internationals this season. I didn't think I would need to explain that this season I have also seen at least one game each of Arsenal, Manchester City, Portsmouth, AC Milan, Borussia Dortmund, Werder Bremen, Hamburg, Hertha Berlin, Schalke 04, Monaco, Real Bettis, Shakhtar Donetsk and Spartak Moscow where the other Croatian internationals play, but seeing it is you Jason, I have just done so. I am nice that way. I have also seen Croatia in other international matches not against England and seen them live at the National Stadium in Malta.

And all 4 of those with Shearer and Gascoigne would be first on the team sheet of an imaginary Anglo-Croatian team of the '90s. I'd drop Boksic into the hole behind Shearer and Suker and let the mayhem begin!!

In terms of raw talent the Croatians are excellent- they are so confident on the ball. I have seen quite a lot of Dynamo Zagreb because they have drawn German clubs in Eurpoean competition and I get German sports free here. Zagreb's results have been a mixed bunch bit they have given the Bundesliga clubs a hell of a fright in every game and the Croatian internationals have been the outstanding players on the field on either side. The Croatians in the EPL are not doing badly either- Corluka and Krancjar are amongst the stand out players at two clubs going really well- there is a huge EPL tug of war over Modric whilst there is no England defender anywhere nearly as good as Simic of AC Milan This is not a one off as Croatians are alwaus superb ball players- I would argue that Zvonomir Boban was the single most gifted player in Serie A in the '90s. That is not just me saying that, Ray Wilkins used to have commentating orgasms about the things Boban could do. I'll never forget a wildly driven cross ball which Boban chest trapped with immediate total control, the ball dropping gently to his feet- "ahhh, like a slumberland mattress" was the comment.

That's terrible. I hope you are on your way to recovery. And don't do a Steven Reid and rip your cruciate as soon as you recover from your back injury.

Agreed neekoy. Croatia at international level are man for man better than England all over the park. How many times have players really looked brilliant and huge prospects for international level but never find a performance for their country? We have half an England team full of those characters at the moment.

Yes Eddie, man for man Croatia are better than the players England have available at the moment.

Could easily have been a worse draw BUT Anyone saying this is easy is off their trolley. Croatia were comfortably superior to England in both games in the Euro qualifying and that is likely to become a bigger gulf rather than smaller once Eduardo settles in at Arsenal and one or two of their other very promising players get transferred to top sides in top leagues. Ukraine are in transition and probabilities are even between them pulling a great side together as continuing to fall away from the form at the last World Cup. Belarus have Hleb who is capable of beating England on his own in Minsk- Hleb could emerge this season as one of the best players in all Europe. There are one or two other players in the Belarus side who look like they could be exceptionally good as well. Kazakhstan are quite rapidly improving from being whipping boys and the visit to Almaty close to the Chinese border will be no picnic. England didn't exactly thrash Andorra in the recent Euro qualifiers either.

But rover6, Keane's transfer policy is exactly what you have been arguing for and he's pushed a few youngsters through. To be honest, Sunderland have been threatening to get on the wrong end of a scoreline like that Everton one for sometime now.

The reverberations from the failure to qualify are going to be long and painful if this snippet from the Telegraph this morning is anything to go by: Brian Barwick and the FA buffers are burying their heads as deeply in the Wembley mire as were the feet of England's players on Wednesday if they believe the Euro exit will not harm prospects of hosting the 2018 World Cup. Leapfroggers Russia, gifted a passage to next year's finals, will seize the opportunity to use their presence at the finals in Austria and Switzerland to press their own claim. Indeed, our Russian spies tell us that President Putin was "delighted" to see England stumble and has personally instructed his sports minister Vyacheslava Fetisov to "pull out all the stops" to secure 2018 for Russia. Former ice hockey icon Fetisov has many friends in Fifa, not least Sepp Blatter, and will ensure that Russia's candidature, to be confirmed shortly, will be the most serious challenge to England. It could also be significant that England's demotion to a second-class football power has not evoked much sympathy among the nations gathered in Durban for the 2010 World Cup draw. That "arrogant" reputation, highlited last week by the Croatians, remains hard to erase.

A quicky to say that 1864's analysis and suggested selection looks bob on to me. (That is the serious and heartfelt part of this post) Are you English 1864? Fancy a new job? Only £2.5m a year- can you manage? Now here's the difficult bit. Can you spend hours in the company of Brian Barwick without telling him he's a ****er? Thought that was too tricky - sorry next candidate.

Simple sums. English clubs get the highest pay out from the Champs League because the English pool is the biggest because the British market is by far the most valuable in Europe- hard fact. About 20% of CL revenue is UK derived. So replace that 20% with the pie Croatia brings to the party. The £1 billion figure is a Treasury estimate of the reduction in expenditure within the UK economy because of England's non-participation. Ask G. Brown, not me... Anyway, got a feeling MGP will score against Fulham tomorrow and that it will have a negligible effect on the balances at the Bank for International Settlements...

Seriously, it is long overdue that the Big 4's prima donnas ahould start getting what is their just rewards from the real football public. If Bentley gets booed for being honest then Lampard, Gerard, Bridge, SWP certainly deserve the bird for being complete and utter rubbish when they couldn't even manage a home draw against a team which are odds on to be on the train home after three games in Swizztria next summer. Something the all bow down and bear your whatevers to the Big 4 brigade always forget, there are far more non-Big 4 Premier League supporters than there are Big 4 supporters. Time for the underdog's revenge starting with Rovers sitting in one of the first 4 places of the Prem at Christmas. Incidentally I felt deeply ashamed when an American poster wrote how he now understands that the refs fix games in favour of the big 4 after watching the Derby v Chelsea game. Far from cleaning our act up, English football now stinks as badly as it has ever done.

The magnitude of McClaren's coaching failure can be seen in these heat maps on the BBC web site. - None of Gerard, Cole and Lampard spent any time of significance in either the Croatia box or, for that matter the English box. What was the point of 4-5-1 if the midfield don't arrive when Crouch received the ball? - SWP never got within 12 yards of the by-line on his side of the pitch! The guy clearly has deep faith in his own crossing ability - Lescott was neither a central defender nor covered for whatever Bridge thought he was doing - What did Bridge think he was doing? Perhaps McClaren might know - I unfairly dissed Beckham. His pattern shows he knew what he was doing and did it. Moreover he ran more in his one half on the pitch than anybody else did. So a 34 year old was the legs of the team.

The market for your bank account details I think teaching statistical techniques should be made compulsory. The whole war on terrorism thing is a massive con based on convincing the populous that something such as death by terrorist which has the same likelihood as death by lightening or rattlesnake is worth compensating for by the certainty of a trillion dollar rip-off by the military industrial state (Iraq War and yes I fell for that one too) building something that doesn't actually do the job or a ten billion pounds rip-off by the IT/consultancy (ID cards) building something else that doesn't actually do the job. In fact both rip-offs have and will significantly increase the lack of personal security and risk s to the individual citizen.

An octogenarian World Cup Manager (assuming he takes two campaigns to reach the ultimate goal)?- nice thought for those of us contemplating an active retirement. If true, Government are making a smart move. They are threatening the state funding at grass roots in a direct knife to the throats of the dipsey blazers who are refusing to allow reform of the FA.

Tossack weighs in

England have lost their World Cup Qualifying Group seeding I wonder what sort of a fist England would make of being in a Group with France, Italy and Ukraine like Sctland were?

Agreed Colin- quite a few of my tobacco smoking friends were lead to toibacco dependence through cannabis experimentation. Both are bad things in my book. 4.5m Europeans used cocaine last year. I have never met a working class cocaine user. I have been in top level financing meetings and seen the banker opposite me snorting cocaine whilst effecting a cold though and could name several lawyers who have dabbled in hard drugs. The reality is that these upper strata of society habitual drugs users have their networks and protection which inturn no doubt reaches down into criminal gangs, mafia and the horrid exploitation which flows from that. Drugs prohibition is systematically corrupting society and undermining everything decent people hold dear. There is a touching other worldly naivety in the law and order, ban it, tough sentences brigade. More than a few judges, police officers, customs officials, doctors etc will look back to rebellious pasts and not so rebellious louche here and nows when dealing with drugs offenders.