Manchester City are seemingly gunning for the ‘pink pound’ with a new initiative to encourage homosexuals to watch the footy in North Manchester. The club has paid a four-figure sum to join the Diversity Champions scheme, run by gay rights group Stonewall. It is the first professional club to join the scheme, which focuses on [...]

Man U make £10m bid for David Trezeguet? [Sporting Life]Owen Hargreaves: I’m staying at Bayern, boo-hoo [BBC]Spurs set to re-sign Mido. Er, why? [Football365]Charlton close to signing Costa Rican winger Christian Bolanos [Guardian]Arsenal’s shock £17m bid for Carlos Tevez [The Sun]

Premier League footballers are storing stem cells from their newborn babies to use in case of their own career-threatening sports injuries. They are freezing cells taken from the umbilical cord blood of their babies as a possible future cure for cartilage and ligament problems, The Sunday Times reported. Five professional footballers have frozen their children’s [...]

A few titibits to accompany your coffee and croissants: Arsenal & Man Utd keen on Nigel Reo-Coker [Observer]Mark Van Bommel off to Bayern Munich – does this mean Owen Hargreaves is going to Old Trafford? [Football365]Roy Keane formally introduced to Sunderland’s players? [BBC]Swedish police to investigate Henrik Larsson for alleged punch [The Offside]Sports Illustrated’s ‘World [...]

Ben Thatcher has been suspended by Man City and charged by the FA following his disgraceful challenge on Portsmouth’s Pedro Mendes. Thatcher must answer a charge of serious foul play by 12 September. A statement on City’s website said: ‘Ben Thatcher has been suspended from first-team action… This is pending the results of the club’s [...]

The Uefa Cup – does anyone care these days? Yes, if you’re team’s in with a chance of winning it. So for fans of Spurs, Newcastle, Blackburn, West Ham, Hearts, Rangers and Derry, here’s how the first-round draw looks (ties played on 14/28 Sept): Levadia Tallinn (Estonia) v Newcastle UtdMolde FK (Norway) v RangersDerry City [...]

Fifa has said Italy may be thrown out of the qualifying campaign for Euro 2008 if Juventus continue to fight relegation to Serie B for match-fixing in the courts. Juve were relegated to Serie B and docked 17 points for trying to exert influence over referees; now they’re trying to take their appeal to a [...]

Dutch hardman Khalid Boulahrouz has completed his move to Chelsea. He goes by the nickname ‘Cannibal’, which is one of the best nicknames we’ve had in the Premier League for ages. That’s exactly what football needs: more intimidating, WWF-style nicknames. Any more nickname suggestions? Oh, here’s a brief clip of Khalid the Cannibal clattering Ronaldo [...]

Ashley Cole is NOT in Arsenal’s squad for their Premiership opener against Aston Villa, despite claiming he is available to play. Ooh, the plot thickens. Can we assume that this means a deal has been struck with Chelsea? If so, why hasn’t it been announced yet? Arseblog, who usually know what the craic is, seems [...]

Trevor Mitchell has just broken his own Guinness record for ‘world’s fastest haircut’, snipping (ho ho) his previous best by 12 seconds to a barely believable 59 seconds. If you’re wondering what this has to do with football, Mitchell’s victim model was none other than Kevin Keegan. The pair have known each other since Mitchell [...]

Cristiano Ronaldo has had his first run-out since the World Cup. Boo, hiss, he’s behind you etc. Winky played for 72 minutes of Man U’s 4-1 friendly win against Oxford, and scored a couple of tasty goals with curling shots. Apart from a few boos (Man U fans cheered him, natch) from the panto-loving Oxford [...]

Does he indeed? The cheeky sod. It’s a sad sign of the shift in power in football when a top player feels free to go to the national press – The Sun, in this case – and demand his manager makes some new signings. I respect Thierry Henry, but this outburst serves only to undermine [...]

Portsmouth boss Harry Redknapp wants to bring veteran keeper David James to Fratton Park. Pompey’s current first-choice keeper Dean Kiely isn’t happy about this. In fact, he’s very pissed off. Kiely told the Portsmouth News: ‘I think it would be a little bit of a travesty, certainly on the back of what I did last [...]

David Beckham has revealed Sir Alex Ferguson has spoken just five words to him since leaving Man Utd in 2003 and that the Scot called him a ‘fucking liar’ as their crumbling relationship culminated in a transfer to Real Madrid. The five words? ‘How are things over there [Madrid]?’ Fergie said this to Becks as [...]

According to Sports Illustrated‘s website, in the wake of the World Cup ‘many Americans are searching for a world superclub to support’. SI writer Grant Wahl suggests that their choice ‘may as well be talent-laden Chelsea’. God help us. Wahl himself chose to support Chelsea in 1998: one of the reasons he gives for this [...]

If you’ve not heard the news, Martin O’Neill is 99% certain to be Aston Villa‘s new manager. Frankly, what have they done to deserve him? They’re getting an ‘Aston Martin’ (headline writers rejoice!) when I picture the hapless Midlands club more as a burnt-out Austin Allegro. Many Villa fans cling to the notion of their [...]

A German mayor has accused a boy’s soccer team of giving Nazi salutes to German opponents during a friendly tournament in Sweden. The mayor of Steglitz-Zehlendorf, near Berlin, has penned a letter of complaint to the tournament organisers in Blekinge. Youngsters from Norwegian and Swedish football teams are alleged to have greeted the arrival of [...]

Jose Mourinho has accused William Gallas of disrespecting both him and Chelsea by staying away from their U.S training camp: ‘It’s not only me that is upset – we’re all upset,’ Don Vito Mourinho said. ‘Everybody is upset because we had a strong family and a strong group and this has shown a lack of [...]

OUT Man Utd’s attempts to politely ditch Ruud Van Nistelrooy before the season begins have finally paid off. Van Nistelrooy will be unveiled by Real Madrid today after United agreed an £11.5million deal – several million less than the £15m they wanted. Thank God that’s over, it was boring me to tears. IN The man [...]

I can hardly get my head around the prospect of earning £100,000 in seven days. Frank Lampard gets that much just for hoofing the ball way over the bar ten times a match. Who said life was fair? Anyway, Chelsea have told Lampard that they won’t be offering him a new, improved contract – in [...]

Arsene Wenger‘s childish feud with Sir Alex Ferguson scaled new heights of pettiness  – it emerged recently that the Arsenal manager refused to appear in a tribute programme to the Man Utd boss. Fergie celebrates 20 years in charge of the club in November 2006, and MUTV are putting together a tribute programme to the [...]

Ruud Van Nistelhorse returned to training with Manchester United on Monday, but it still looks likely that he’ll start the season playing for either Real Madrid, who’ve made an improved, £10.3m bid for the Dutch thoroughbred, or Bayern Munich, who are still understandably keen on pairing RVN with new signing Lukas Podolski.

Hamburg SV plans to open a club cemetary, 50 feet from its stadium’s main entrance. The Bundesliga club’s deputy chairman, Christian Reichert, said: ‘For a large number of people, it’s important to be close to the club after their lives are over,’ he said. "The cemetery will have the look of a small, open stadium.’ [...]

‘I would have gone almost anywhere just to get away from David Moyes. If no-one had come in I would have joined Newcastle,’ Wayne Rooney ‘wrote’ in My Story So Far, his autobiography serialised in The Daily Mail. Rooney continues: ‘To me he appeared overbearing; just wanting to control people. I suppose being young and [...]

Sunderland chairman Niall Quinn wanted a dynamic manager to join him on his magic carpet ride – and he has. That manager’s name is… er, Niall Quinn! I always thought player-managers were a bad idea, but a hybrid manager-chairman is a worse prospect. For example, if the club goes through a lean spell, what happens [...]