Transfer to whom pre ANC 1864????

Looks like Capello will be unveiled this afternoon as the new England boss. Hope David Bentley and Steven Warnock are brushing up on their Italian!

Talking to a colleague today who told me a little boy turned up at school with a new soft toy called Jesus. The Priest immediately renamed it Aloysius!

The numbers are daft but do you think Capello is going to be earning next to nothing? The FA even contrived to pay McClaren "only" £2.5m a year. Capello is a disciplinarian by all accounts which given the nature of modern football will create its own bullets for the FA. How can he enforce discipline in a national team context?, by not picking otherwise favoured players- not much else by way of sanctions. Mourinho brought risks but he is young enough to have a massive stake in not failing, he is close enough to the current English game to have a very detailed knowlege of all the players and has a very clear view of where to take the FA and England set-up. The FA has bungled another chance to give themselves and the national team direction.

Mourinho has just ruled himself out of the running for the England job. Another great what might have been screwed by the lumbering FA. I an sure talking to John Tossack was more important than talking to Mourinho. I wonder how Brian Barwick's Italian is for talking to Cappelo or Lippi?

In contrast to Bevington, everybody reading the papers today knows the next England manager is Jose Mourinho. Mourinho has played the press like a violin and the momentum he is building for his candidacy is blowing all the other contenders out of contention with a force that the Soho Square ditherers are incapable of resisting. Even to the extent that Shearer is being killed on the not fit to manage Newcastle angle (which he isn't- his appointment at St James' would be good news for clubs like the Rovers for whom an Allardyce-organised Newcastle when his technical changes work through will be a big threat). The other non-British candidates are being made to look like distant pygmies whilst Martin O'Neill's bashfulness is simply being steam rollered. Mourinho manifesto, or everything for everyone who has a stakeholding in the England manager decision. Funny thing is, he'll probably do what he says he will.

Young people develop physically at different rates. What is lost sight of is in many ways the development/growth process continues to around 21 even though height gain stops earlier. The fact somebody was wow at 17/18 is sadly meaningless. What is increasingly happening is that players are breaking through later as their muscle memory training, techniques and above all strength and stamina necessary at Prem level are finally being attained in the early 20s. Even absolutely exceptional teenage talents like Walcott are being nursed into Premiership football. Putting it into perspective, Brett Emerton is commonly accepted to be the fittest (in sporting terms) Australian athlete in the world today. Given that Australia is so sports mad and has so many naturally gifted sports people across so many sports I find this an astonishing fact. Yet on the park playing for Rovers he is definitely not a stand out specimen for physical ability or prowess. They are all within fractions of a per cent of each other. Drop down to Academy level and you are talking of very very good footballers but they could well be 10% or 20% short of what is needed at Premiership level. Quite apart from whether they have the brain and aptitude to make the leap, they might physically not be blessed with enough base material to be developed into a Premiership footballer. I think this is the case for Donnelly and any number of other highly promising youngsters who slump off the radar when the adult game is being played. Finally, yes there is subjectivity involved in selecting players and I think there are problems around Gary Bowyer at the Rovers Academy although I have no first hand knowledge. But, the Rovers will not be spending £2m+ per year at the Academy without having those youngsters highly scientifically monitored from health, fitness, diet through to Prozone and everything else. Those scientifically derived statistics are probably blocking the advance off youngsters into the Prem first 16 at Rovers as much as at any other club because the kids simply don't come within an acceptable per centage of the senior pros in terms of giving them a go at the top level.

and he fails to qualify on three out of the four criteria

A younger than 30 year old goal every other game man for £8m to £10m on £40K a week? This is my list of potential candidates Rovers should pursue:

There seem to be more concerted rumours on the Chelsea pages that: Bendtner is moving from Arsenal for £12m, and Lulinha is moving from Corinthians fir £8m, and a Ronaldinho deal has been done The Benni story appears to be of the journalistic 2 + 2 variety whereas there are alleged quotes linking Kenyon and Arnesen to each of the above. There is also the 16 year old new Zlatan for £300K.

Being totally objective Newcastle got the result they deserved on Saturday and tonight could easily have lost as well. That said, Saturday and tonight were two cracking matches and the barcodes were extremely effective in disrupting the Arsenal slick passing game. I don't think it is a given (ho ho) that Brum, Wigan and Fulham will be pushovers for the mags- new management and all that.

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.