Since then, Strachan has reportedly moved close to finalising a deal, while O'Leary has ruled himself out, and wisely so. There were two in my class at school.Anyway, the last Ladbrokes betting list I was sent had Hart at 4-5 hot favourite, followed by Neil Warnock at 7-2, Eddie Gray at 4-1, O'Leary at 7-1 and Gordon Strachan at 8-1. That's the Balthazar Fabricius who is a spokesman for Ladbrokes, incidentally, rather than any of the other Balthazar Fabriciuses you might know, it being such a tiresomely common name. All that hope, all that promise, snuffed out in three short years.Prepare yourselves for 'Leeds United: The Opera', with Bryn Terfel as Ridsdale, a tragic, heavy-jowled, seemingly well-meaning figure, who falls victim to his own ambition and watches a mighty edifice imploding around and then behind him.Meanwhile, who is the next man to be introduced as the club's potential saviour? According to Balthazar Fabricius, it will probably be Nottingham Forest's Paul Hart. For three or four years in the late 1970's I travelled to most of Everton's away games, and the reception at Elland Road was always more scarily hostile than anywhere else.

Of course, one should suppress football prejudices formed in one's teens, but somehow one rarely does.That said, the former Eintracht Frankfurt full-back Schadenfreude no longer looms over the precipitous decline of Leeds United Nor does the old Panathinaikos centre-half Hubris. And more disgrace for Leeds.As I have written before, I hold no affection for Leeds United. More bad press for the FA, whose top brass admitted to not knowing that Nicky Butt, too, had been on police bail when playing for England in Istanbul. When the luck turns against you in football, it turns against you toting an AK-47 Take Leeds United - as the receivers very well might. Or Leeds Benighted, as the club should perhaps now be called. Supporters must have been thinking last week that things could hardly get any worse, when inevitably they did: on Thursday, Alan Smith, the one player whose commitment to the Leeds cause is absolute, was ignominiously sent home from the England team hotel in Manchester.Following Smith's arrest that lunchtime by West Yorkshire police investigating a bottle-throwing incident at the end of the Carling Cup-tie with Manchester United, the Football Association, in its less than Solomon-like wisdom, took four hours to decide that it would be unseemly to have in the England camp a man on police bail Smith was duly ordered back across the Pennines.

What makes me sick to the stomach are the constant attacks on referees which gnaw away at the very integrity of the game.Back to the question of deals, understandings or misunderstandings. Why did the FA demonstrate no interest whatsoever in approaching Wenger for the vacant England coach's job when Kevin Keegan abruptly left? He was already in England, unlike Sven Goran Eriksson.Why did Ferguson react so ferociously, if he did not believe a deal had been done between the FA and Manchester United, when the disciplinary commission extended Eric Cantona's suspension into the following (1995-96) season? How had he gained the impression that, provided United suspended Cantona until the season's conclusion, that would be the end of the matter?grahamkelly btinternet . The SFA says he should have exercised his proper right of appeal rather than go to law.The crucial factor for the football authorities is Levein's intention to argue his case in part - when a new date is finally determined - on article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which grants the right of freedom of expression.Nobody surely would dispute the right to speak freely, but football's rulers have to attempt to inject some semblance of respect for the bigger picture. The SFA says that Levein wrote and promised to moderate his comments about match officials in future and this, therefore, was an admission of the accuracy of the comments attributed to him in the press. Nevertheless, more details of Levein's case emerged.Levein contends that the original fine was imposed solely on the basis of his remarks in the press, and not via a proper hearing.

• Within minutes of losing a man France also lost their lead
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• He said that his young teammate had come in for undue stick
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• He's worth his weight in gold then a bit more
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• Jonny showed great character like all the team Woodward said
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• The average rate of breathing for a man is 11 times a minute
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• What one has to look at is an accumulation of evidence
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• How does she feel about the treatment her son has received? Excellent she says
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• Who Murdered Chaucer? is a meaty hugely enjoyable read
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• The officer told him not to persecute himself
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• Look at Brunelleschi painter sculptor engineer and architect
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