Money goes only so far as there is always an intangible element in the creation of an unforgettable team

The intrigue of the Champions League does not lie in exhibitionistic display of all that money can buy. Perfection cannot have been bought from any catalogue. Some absurdly gifted footballers will be on show in the quarter-finals that start tonight, but the tournament may be enthralling for its proof that the risk of embarrassment and failure cannot always be kept at bay.

At the weekend Bayern Munich were beaten 5-1 by Wolfsburg and slithered to fourth place in the Bundesliga. The losers are extremely affluent, but that was no protection.

It is beyond dispute that clubs of means are at an enduring advantage. One day, even Manchester City might demonstrate that money does have its beneficial uses. The international programme, where cash is of scant help, can look like an excursion into mediocrity. England’s win over Ukraine, for instance, saw two indifferent teams baffling themselves and one another. There are still four Premier League clubs contending for the Champions League, but the number of Englishmen starting the first legs of the quarter-finals may not get into double figures.

With luck those games will be enthralling, but the drama will also emerge from frailties. The contest on our domestic scene has revived precisely because United grew stale. The possibility is intact of Sir Alex Ferguson’s line-up delivering the greatest season in the history of the club, but the fallibility is no longer hidden. On Sunday, they had to raid the memory banks to snatch a win they hardly deserved over Aston Villa.

A staidness, which can only be blamed partly on injuries, had stolen over United, as if they had been released from the obligation to be dashing. When goals began to be conceded against Liverpool and Fulham, there was panic. They still look the best of the Premier League representatives in this week’s quarter-final, but their fallibility is no longer in dispute.

Fans of any of these clubs would not be stumped if asked to identify flaws. Chelsea would certainly benefit from a youthful and dashing forward who would save everyone from worrying about what they should expect from Nicolas Anelka and Didier Drogba. At Liverpool, there continues to be an alarming dependence on Steve Gerrard and Fernnado Torres to ensure there is no lapse into the old stodginess.

Arsenal, against their wishes, have been excused the arduous struggle for the title that has preoccupied them. There had been far too many injuries for Arsène Wenger’s team to do more than hobble through parts of the programme. There is a sheen to the side at the moment, but the Champions League may tell us whether Arsenal have regained enough of the muscle and physical presence that typified them in the days when silverware was expected.

Wenger, at least, has not spent much money. While Rafael Benítez keeps the books in order with some judicious selling, Liverpool and, to a greater extent, Chelsea and United have been ready to pay high prices. It has worked, but there are still mysterious aspects to team building that defy all efforts, and the most advanced technology, to piece together an ideal line-up.

Barcelona, for instance, are rightly feted at the moment, but no one can be sure that Lionel Messi, Samuel Eto’o and the others will go on ensuring that a sometimes indifferent central defence is not the club’s downfall in the Champions League. There is a haphazard element to every football project.

Despite the means available to a handful of clubs who can aspire to sign extraordinary performers from around the globe, many people still think of Brazil’s 1970 World Cup-winners as the finest of all teams. It emerged, however, from utter chaos. Joao Saldanha, for instance, was forced out as coach. His past as a journalist cannot have helped and his reservations about Pele’s eyesight were not crowd-pleasers either.Saldanha had even argued that Tostao and Pele could not function together. With him gone, the pair were to be a glorious combination. They were given their freedom by Saldanha’s successor, Mario Zagallo, who knew that there must be a solution that did not entail discarding genius.

A line-up such as Brazil’s in 1970 will never be built to order, irrespective of budget. There is always an intangible element in the creation of an unforgettable line-up. We should be glad of the chance to see Barcelona and the others in the Champions League, but the mysteries of football greatness cannot be cracked even with the means of billionaire owners.

The Cottagers were superbly organised and stifled Liverpool until they came up with a late winner

The rewards eventually went to Liverpool at Craven Cottage, but there was admiration to be had in Fulham’s latest stubborn performance against one of the elite clubs. The home side, all selfless worth ethic, showed precisely why they have become such respected Premier League opponents.

Roy Hodgson has worked with a regular line-up and has proved what can be achieved with solid, sensible coaching. The team may appear unambitious at times but they have substance, even if they did finally crack, and they understand each other’s strengths. They have a huge work-rate, and benefit from a good, simple shape (4–4–2) and a clear understanding of their distinct roles, particularly when their opponents have the ball.

Liverpool took over the first half and pounded the Fulham goal, yet they only created two chances where the visiting player was freed beyond the last man: first after Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres’s superb inter-passing put the Spaniard away; then when a wonderful Gerrard cross gave Andrea Dossena a clear invitation. Credit must go to Fulham for the way they organised.

Brede Hangeland and Aaron Hughes know their strengths and refused to get pulled out to the flanks. The full-backs, John Pantsil and Paul Konchesky, are disciplined and restrained. In front of them there is protection by Simon Davies and Clint Dempsey, who graft with amazing energy to position themselves and prevent the opposition finding space in which they could attack down the wing. With Danny Murphy alongside the strong Dickson Etuhu, Fulham effectively fling down an eight-man barrier. It takes a team with good movement and continual overloading of numbers to create chances, and Liverpool were in exciting form.

Perhaps most admirable of all is that Fulham’s early defensive shape stems from the calm movements by their first line of defence, the two strikers. Bobby Zamora and Andy Johnson immediately retreated whenever Liverpool had the ball at the back (see diagram) and never chased lost causes or made irresponsible runs or reckless early challenges. They dropped off centrally between the opposition centre-backs and full-backs, and didn’t race early to close.

Charge in and they would have run the risk of an opposing full-back advancing down the flank, which would have the effect of pulling Fulham players out of position. But, with their forwards dropping back, Dempsey and Davies know they can sit in front of their full-backs rather than having to pressure an opponent who has forced beyond Zamora or Johnson. There were no holes for Liverpool to exploit, and the home side never lost their shape.

Hodgson has coached an average group of Premier League parts into a solid machine. His next trick has to be to coax extra flair whilst maintaining such defensive resolution. It is a conundrum Roy will juggle. Here they finally succumbed to aggressive Liverpool movement, but there was much to admire from his team in defeat.

Alan Shearer is already taking out insurance on being a false Messiah

Another of those weeks when very little made sense and, once again, the catalyst was Alan Shearer. There he was surrounded by adoring press doing his best to look like a Messiah (albeit a pro-tem Messiah) and in reply to a tame question admitted he had taken the job because a friend had said to him how would he feel if he didn’t take the job and Newcastle managed to stay up.

This was odd. Surely the point of being a Messiah/Hero to the Geordie nation is that you take on the role because you could not live with dodging your destiny and Newcastle being turfed out of the promised land. If your nation, be it Jewish or Geordie, can be saved by a stricken Joe Kinnear or interim Chris Hughton there really is little call for a Messiah. With one answer Shearer had revealed that this whole exercise is all about Shearer and very little to do with Newcastle. He, and his brand, couldn’t live with someone else receiving credit for something he might have done so he graciously/grudgingly agreed to do it for however many hundreds of grand a game. Once again it is all about Shearer. If he succeeds he is hailed; if he fails he can say like so many false Messiahs before him, “if only I had had the time”.

The Shearer brand is based on the Shearer look and it was in evidence as he cased his many friends in the press room just reminding them, if such a reminder were needed, that it would be unwise to stray out of line. He even tried it on the fans, perhaps trying to stare down anyone tempted to put in an early critical call to 606. It is very similar to the look that Alan Sugar employs from his stacked chair as he surveys his boardroom full of nincompoops and it is probable that Shearer used it in his job interview.

Big Al has the brand, the look, the patented goal celebration but he doesn’t have the medals to back it all up. In fact he only has a single medal (1994-1995) for actual achievement and a host of gongs for mythical achievements (Overall Player of the Decade, Outstanding Contribution to the Premier League and the rest). Ruud Gullit was on to something when he told him he was “the most overrated player he had ever seen”, even if it cost him his job. It is also notable that the Geordie that Alex Ferguson regrets not signing most is the rickety and unreliable Gascoigne rather than the creosoted Shearer, and not signing him has never cost him his job.

Shearer’s appointment will automatically improve Match of the Day and thereby allow the BBC to increase its advantage over its only terrestrial competitor as ITV’s coverage continues to be hobbled by an over-reliance on one man. When they have a slot to fill the call goes up “Where’s Andy?” and, having located the tagged Townsend, the cameras are dispatched to do the show right there with Andy and whoever else is around. So it was that Wednesday night’s “reaction” programme featured Andy and drinking buddy Graeme Le Saux and someone who I assume must have been an autograph hunter and had been roped in at the last minute to do a bit of linking under the obviously cod name Matt Smith. How else to explain a discussion on “Being Wayne Rooney” which possessed not a shred of sense and Smith’s perpetual use of the phrase “at international level”. As in “you can’t waste chances at international level” whereas, I suppose, at national level, as the career of Shearer attests you can waste as many as you like and still be judged to have made the “outstanding contribution”.

New manager casts off his pundit’s caution as he sees first hand how tough it will be to keep his struggling team in the top flight

This report is a messiah-free zone, because to ascribe too many miraculous powers to Alan Shearer would only conceal the mediocrity of the side he now has seven games to save from relegation.

They can change the icon but the chaos that brought such a motley band of players to the Tyneside cathedral is still wreaking damage. Half an hour into this 2-0 defeat to Chelsea, Shearer watched Jonás Gutiérrez make a hash of a cross and yelled to his assistant, Iain Dowie: “That’s useless, that is!” Too late, you might cry, has Shearer’s punditry acquired an acerbic edge.

On the evidence of some fruity denunciations of his team’s often abject play we could conclude that he will do his best work for Match of the Day in the technical area of the ground he graced as a player. The last of the saviours will fancy his chances of a win a bit more at Stoke on Saturday yet this performance will hardly encourage him to break his pledge to stay for eight games and eight games only.

“It was a very hard task when I arrived and it’s harder now,” he said. “We know we’re in a fight and we’ll give it a fight. I’m still confident, and my players are, that we can avoid the drop.”

Outside the players’ entrance here, there is a bank of steps where the upturned faces of the barcode congregation have gathered over the years to cheer, beg, welcome back, denounce, protest, despair and generally vent their emotions on a club who have toyed mercilessly with their emotions. These scenes have led outsiders to see Newcastle’s following as a kind of cult for whom adoration of the leader is a necessary part of the St James’ Park experience. Shearer, though, is not buying into it.

Kevin Keegan always stepped on to this stage with a faintly moist-eyed, choked up look, but for “Super Al” it was the gunslinger’s entrance in a white shirt and tie and smart grey suit. As the snappers jostled and the bulbs flashed he walked to his vantage point at a stately pace and offered no acknowledgment to the crowd.

High marks are earned for that. The caretaker was being true to his promise not to hog the frame. He has seen too many empty personality cults to make himself another one. He left the field the same way after goals from Frank Lampard and Florent Malouda had left Newcastle three points from safety.

“I’ll try and do everything to deflect the thing away from myself. I think the result might do that, to be honest. Not that that’s a positive. Yeah, I was determined to try and keep it as low-key as possible.”

Inscrutability was always Shearer’s favourite mask and he wore it well except when forgetting that his comments were audible in the press seats. As the game commenced his gaze settled on a jumble of players assembled in different eras and from contrasting managerial philosophies, most of them incompatible.

“Who’s supposed to be picking up John Terry?” he demanded of Dowie after the England captain had carted his special brand of menace into the Newcastle penalty area for a set-piece. These are the unglamorous specifics of the survival trade: proper marking, defensive set-ups and the like. If messianic auras play a role in these areas, it is only to inspire players to perform the jobs they have been assigned on the training ground and in team talks.

Relegation-threatened teams place results against the Big Four clubs in a separate file. These are matches they expect not to win. Which is just as well, because Newcastle have not beaten Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester United or Arsenal in 17 attempts. They have one win from 13 Premier League matches, or six from 31 overall. They have had as many managers (four) as they can claim home victories. This was their 200th Premier League defeat.

There is a pattern there, and Shearer can only hope to change it in the next seven games through sheer force of personality. He can neither buy new players nor sell those who materialised from obscure locations and have no business wearing a Newcastle shirt. He is heavily dependent on Michael Owen, Nicky Butt and Steven Taylor, who was absent yesterday.

According to the local paper, The Journal, “The Alan Shearer effect has created a spending boom in the region,” with the benefits felt in the “leisure, travel and retail sectors”. Five thousand extra ticket inquiries and an 8% rise in hotel bookings were cited as evidence. Hardly Klondike, but around town there was an unmistakable sense that this would be a day for expectant striding towards the ground rather than the usual pessimistic trudge.

By the time the game kicked off, though, the excitement seemed slightly mannered, as if the fans can no longer bring themselves to believe in saints. Not when they have to watch Ryan Taylor and Peter Lovenkrands. Or Obafemi Martins on one of his aimless days, which this undoubtedly was.

The pre-match idea was to urge Argentina’s Gutiérrez further forward and restore Owen to the heart of the team’s attacking play. Owen performed a role similar to Wayne Rooney’s for England, only a lot deeper, but Martins is no Emile Heskey or Peter Crouch. No real centre-forward play, a lack of width and duplication in a central midfield of Butt and Kevin Nolan: this is not a formula likely to have impressed Houdini.

At close of play, football across the north-east was threatening to take a three-club pratfall. A survey commissioned by the Football Association has found that this region produces more England players per head of population than any other. Yet Newcastle and Middlesbrough are in the Premier League’s bottom three, with Sunderland only one place higher. The odds are shortening on the fight to stay out of the third relegation spot descending into a giant derby match between Sunderland and Newcastle.

Home wins against Portsmouth, Boro and Fulham remain conceivable but even then points would be needed from the trips to Stoke, Spurs, Liverpool and Aston Villa on the final day. On his debut day as a manager, Shearer was looking at a team that reflects the endless sackings, U-turns and drift that landed Chris Hughton with the task of managing the side while Joe Kinnear was undergoing heart surgery.

Keegan, Kinnear, Hughton and Shearer. Even at such a capricious club no Newcastle fan could have expected that to be the managerial sequence in 31 Premier League assignments. For the fourth man in there can be no doubt now that this team need demolishing and reconstructing, which will cost money Mike Ashley, the owner, is probably disinclined to part with.

But for now Shearer can only be part priest, part hard man and part schemer as he seeks to eke out the 11-plus points Newcastle need to endure in the highest tier.

“The players don’t want to hear harsh things about themselves, they want to hear good things about themselves and the football club,” he said. Seven games to correct the seven deadly sins of chaotic ownership over many years.

Cristiano Ronaldo wants to join Real Madrid but Sir Alex Ferguson will not give him up easily

It is not difficult to imagine the reaction of the average Manchester United fan upon learning that moves are under way to clinch Cristiano Ronaldo the transfer to Real Madrid he has talked of being his “dream”.

It will be a shake of the head, maybe a roll of the eyes. There will be indignation, too, about the clandestine nature of the negotiations and what it says about the business of football. Nobody, though, should be particularly shocked.

Ronaldo has scored 18 times for Sir Alex Ferguson’s team this season, two ahead of Wayne Rooney, five more than Dimitar Berbatov and six from Carlos Tevez. In the last year alone, the world footballer of the year has won enough trophies to fill a skip. Yet you do not have to be a body-language expert to realise there have been times when he has regarded the five-year contract he signed in 2007 with as much affection as a burglar thinks of the electronic tag around his ankle.

Ever since he was denied the chance to join Real last summer, Ronaldo’s demeanour has too often been of a man who seems to suspect the football world is conspiring to do him down. In the worst moments, such as at Fulham two weekends ago, it has seemed like he has fallen so far out of love with the game that pulling on that red jersey has become a chore rather an a privilege – especially when there is a nice white one waiting for him in Spain.

By now, we all know the disdain with which Ferguson has come to regard Real. Their public obsession with Ronaldo has been endangering his blood vessels for longer than he would care to remember and he would probably rather chew on broken glass than do business with the club he derides as “that mob.”

What is not so clear is whether he and his chief executive, David Gill, will have the energy or desire to repel Madrid’s advances with the same vigour and determination that they showed when this tortuous chain of events started to accelerate at almost exactly the same stage of last season.

It brings us to the question that hung over Old Trafford for virtually all of last summer and, once again, it is this: is there any great point keeping a player against his will?

On the last occasion, Ferguson and Gill put up a show of strength that culminated in Ronaldo returning to Manchester to face, for a few months, the silent treatment from the Old Trafford crowd. This time United’s intentions are less clear. If Madrid are willing to pay £75m can the Glazer family turn it down?

Ferguson’s concern, of course, is the balance of his team rather than the club’s accounts and, on that count, do not expect him to give up on Ronaldo too easily. Not when it is the case that, with the possible exception of Fernando Torres, Ronaldo’s position as the most penetrative front player in the Premier League is indisputable.

Yes, it can be terribly tiresome watching him go through that repertoire of trying to get opponents in trouble, eyeballing match officials, exaggerating falls and, in the case of the Fulham game, irritating the referee to the point that it conceivably contributed to Rooney’s red card. But Ferguson is entitled to think it is a price worth paying when he considers Ronaldo’s end-product. As Tevez said this week: “His performances are almost from a different planet. The only other player on the same level as him today is Lionel Messi.”

The issue is this: how can United replace him? The answer is that they probably cannot. Bringing in Nani, for example, would be like asking a painter and decorator to become a landscape artist. There is the January recruit, Zoran Tosic, but the 20-year-old Serb has not shown too much of the wow factor in his two substitute appearances to date.

The 17-year-old Adem Ljajic, who arrived from Partizan Belgrade in the same £16m deal, is not expected to challenge for a first-team place for a year or two. Ferguson has a strong interest in Antonio Valencia of Wigan Athletic although, again, it would be difficult to imagine the Ecuadorian having anything like the same impact as Ronaldo.

That is why the majority of United supporters will hope that Ferguson can work some magic on his player and persuade him, for a second time, to change his mind. Others, undoubtedly, will argue Ronaldo should be allowed to leave if his heart and mind is elsewhere. What nobody can deny is that Old Trafford will not be anything like as daunting for opposition teams.

Here are the matches, moments and Moroccan strikers around Europe that we’ll be keeping a close eye on

WOLFSBURG v BAYERN MUNICH (Bundesliga, Saturday 2.30pm)

You don’t need to be high on Scampi Fries to get excited about the outstanding Bundesliga title race. One point separates the top four with nine games to go, and second and third – Bayern Munich and Wolfsburg – have identical records, even down to goals scored (53) and conceded (31). All of which adds greater intrigue to an already compelling contest: Wolfsburg, who were ninth during the winter break, have won seven in a row, while Bayern cut the gap to the leaders, Hertha Berlin, to one point last weekend. Wolfsburg have taken more points at home than any other side this season; Bayern Munich have taken more points away than any other side. It’s not only the Scampi Fries that have a serious sniff about them.

BLACKBURN v SPURS (Premier League, Saturday 12.45pm, Sky Sports 1)

The brilliant Sam Allardyce has, entirely predictably, done a superb job of cleaning up the mess Paul Ince left at Blackburn: since he inherited a side in freefall in December they have lost just three out of 13 league games, all to top-five sides, and taken 18 points in the process (that’s 53 from a 38-game season, which would have secured a top-10 place in each of the last eight seasons). But Blackburn have developed an uncomfortable habit of not getting their just deserts – one of those defeats, at Old Trafford, should have been a draw, and on the balance of play they could quite easily have won eight and drawn three of the 13 games under Allardyce – and the consequence is that they are only two points off relegation. They should be fine, but with eminently losable games at Liverpool and Stoke next up, anything other than a win at home to an in-form Spurs would leave them vulnerable. Yet they are clearly too good to go down. Aren’t they?

ATLETICO MADRID v OSASUNA (La Liga, Sunday 4pm)

One of the many things that make La Liga so superior to the Premier League (yes, we know the top four are stronger over here, but last time we checked there were 18 or 20 teams in the major European leagues) is the competitiveness. Whereas in England you almost need formal approval to move between the four tiers – Big Four, Everton and Villa, teams who won’t go down, teams who might – from one year to the next, in Spain the league giddyups violently from season to season. Nothing is sacred. Sometimes they even have a different team in the top four! And sometimes, Big Teams go down. In the last decade, for example, five teams who have qualified for the Champions League have also been relegated (Atlético Madrid, Celta Vigo, Real Betis, Real Sociedad and Sevilla) as against just one, unusual case in England (Leeds).

It could soon be Spain 6-1 England, because Osasuna – who finished fourth in 2005-06 – lie in the relegation zone. They have won six of their last nine at home to give themselves a chance of survival, but their away form (no wins in 14) remains awful. This weekend they go to Atlético Madrid, who themselves need a win to potentially narrow the five-point gap to Villarreal in fourth. On the face of it, it’s a home banker. But the lovely thing about La Liga, as we saw when Barcelona hosted Espanyol six weeks ago, is that you never really know.

AZ v ADO DEN HAAG (Eredivisie, Saturday 6.45pm)

For the runaway leader there are two stages of winning the title. The first comes when the public declare you champions; the second when the mathematicians and the proverbial fat lady do so. After the heartbreak of 2006-07 – when they went into the final day of the season top and finished third – AZ Alkmaar, chasing only their second title and their first since 1981, will only be interested in what the mathematicians and the fat lady have to say. They are nearly there: to be certain they need 10 points from their final six games, starting with Den Haag on Saturday. That’s the same Den Haag who smashed AZ 3-0 in September. That was their second defeat in the first two games on the back of finishing in the bottom half last season, when they were hungover and depressed after the brutally cruel ending to the 2006-07 campaign, and collectively not arsed about getting out of bed, never mind brushing their teeth and washing their special place.

Since those defeats, however, AZ have gone on a simply outrageous run of 22 wins and four draws from 26 league games. This achievement is all the more remarkable given that their coach, Louis van Gaal, originally planned to leave in the summer, and that their squad has no truly big names: no AZ players started for Holland in their back-to-back World Cup qualifiers this week, and even the league’s top scorer, Mounir El Hamdaoui, only made his Morocco debut two months ago. One name that is familiar is that of the visionary Van Gaal, who has introduced what our Dutch correspondent Leander Schaerlaeckens calls Total Football 2.0. And after 27 years’ waiting, it is surely going to bring them Title 2.0.

MATCH OF THE DAY (BBC One, Saturday 10pm)

It’s almost worth staying in for again.

Is Robinho a home boy? Our tactical tool – so effective that it can also sit on a fence – says yes and no

So is Robinho a homer? Our exclusive Chalkboards – the first interactive tactical tool so effective that it can also sit on a fence – say yes and no.

Home improvements

Robinho’s goal threat is significantly greater at home. He has scored nine of his 11 goals at Eastlands; also, he has averaged a shot on target every 41 minutes at home compared to 119 away. He is also massively more accurate in his shooting: 68% are on target at the City of Manchester Stadium; only 21% are on target elsewhere. The graphic below shows City’s games against Stoke this season: at home all six of Robinho’s efforts were on target, including three goals, but away from home only one of his seven shots made Thomas Sorensen feel like he’d earned the beans he took home at the end of the day.

Robinho v Stoke home and away

Playing away

While Robinho is palpably less of a goalscoring menace away from home, the suggestion that he goes missing doesn’t necessarily stand up. He actually gets on the ball more on the road, averaging 2.06 minutes per pass compared to 2.34 minutes at Eastlands, and his pass-completion rate is basically the same: 84% at home, 83% away. If you add Manchester weighting (of the 28 points that City have accrued with Robinho in the team, 86% have come at home) then Robinho is, in real terms, much more effective in general play away from home. The graphic below shows the games against Liverpool this season: Robinho was much more involved at Anfield, with twice as many passes and an increase in his pass-completion ratio from 63% at Eastlands to 86%.

Robinho v Liverpool home and away

The 72-year-old Wigan Athletic chairman is enjoyably outspoken but his club is only the latest in a series of successful projects

Sir Bobby Charlton once described Dave Whelan as a throwback to the times when Victorian mill-owner types still owned Victorian mills as well as their local football club.

He refers to money as “brass”, walks through his factories and warehouses switching off unnecessary lights, says what he thinks without thinking too much about what he is saying and expects loyalty from his workforce whether they be shelf-packers or professional footballers.

As such, the Wigan chairman has been a godsend to football diarists and column writers everywhere. Any press conference is a must-do event, since he is incapable of ducking a question or giving a diplomatically evasive answer. Just last week, for instance, he was advised beforehand to steer clear of the subject of Mike Ashley when he made a public announcement about the change of name of Wigan’s stadium, only to fill reporters’ notebooks almost from the word go with remarks about how the Newcastle owner lacks class and how things were much more dignified under Freddy Shepherd.

The 72-year-old Whelan could hardly complain when newspapers had a field day with this material, gleefully pointing out that a man who made a pile flogging replica shirts through JJB Sports could hardly criticise Ashley for wearing one, while anyone who mentions Shepherd and dignity in the same sentence is simply asking for public ridicule.

Whelan duly got it, although mixed in with the mirth were a few suggestions that the old man might be losing his marbles, or at least succumbing to self-indulgence in renaming the stadium after himself. Fair enough, the DW Stadium does not exactly trip off the tongue, and after the Home Depot Stadium (LA Galaxy) and the Chris Moyles stadium (Featherstone Rovers rugby league, I kid you not) it may well be one of the worst home addresses in sport. But DW does happen to be the name of DW’s new company.

Having bought back into the now ailing JJB, so that in a small but significant way he is now competing against his former company, Whelan needed to come up with a new name for what is now a chain of gyms and fitness centres, with attached leisurewear outlets and a rapidly growing internet operation. He could have just called the business Whelan’s, of course, but that was how he started out in supermarkets in the 1960s, before selling out to Morrisons. In any case the Whelan stadium would scarcely be an improvement on DW. He could have come up with a spurious new name off the shelf, like Winston’s Leisure or Burn Off The Pies, but proud traditionalist that he is, he wanted to keep a thread of continuity and build on what he had already achieved.

The one thing he couldn’t do was keep the JJB name at his stadium. No one goes around giving business rivals free adverts. The new name may not be the most imaginative or evocative around, though it is simply the name of Whelan’s new company. He has not named the stadium after himself in an egotistical bid for posterity, as some have suggested. Had Whelan simply been into promoting himself, he could have changed the name long ago. An egotist, in fact, would never have stuck with JJB for so long.

Those initials are a high-street commonplace now, though originally there was just the tiniest of sports goods retailers called John James Bradburn, whose Wigan business was bought out by Whelan when he realised that the millions made from his supermarkets sale would not stave off boredom in early retirement. That was three decades ago, and the rest is history, though history does not always record that Whelan initially thought squash was the sport to latch on to, because players went through equipment at such a rapid rate. While it didn’t work out quite like that, Whelan found himself in a handy position when the entire country began wearing trainers and then football tops as fashion items.

Perhaps Whelan could keep his mouth shut a bit more, though the Premier League would be that bit less colourful without him. His arch enemy Ashley was supposed to be the colourful addition to the ranks of owners and chairmen, though the Newcastle owner still seems unsure about what it is he has bought into. No one could ever accuse Whelan of that. Bold as, er, brass, he seems to make a success of most things he takes over. Just look at the league table. With Wigan on the verge of Europe, Newcastle fans worried about relegation may like to ponder what might have happened had they been taken over by the other sports retail tycoon. It would never have happened, since Whelan is only interested in supporting his local team, though if it had Newcastle might be preparing for a Champions League quarter-final now. Playing at DW Park seems a small price to pay.

Steve Gibson and Gareth Southgate are among football’s good guys, but between them, they are taking Middlesbrough down

Steve Gibson being shocked at Middlesbrough finding themselves in a relegation fight is a bit like the scene in Pirates of the Caribbean where Keira Knightley tells Geoffrey Rush she doesn’t believe in ghost stories. “You’d best start believing,” the captain of the Black Pearl roars, moonlight stripping his flesh as he speaks. “You’re in one.”

The Boro chairman is being portrayed as a saint for extending what, on past form, must be assumed to be a genuine vote of confidence to Gareth Southgate, despite his team’s parlous position in the bottom three with little evidence to suggest they are robust enough to climb out.

Fair enough. It is Gibson’s club, he can do as he wishes. If he prefers to be known for altruism and patience rather than the success of his team, it is entirely his lookout. Southgate, too, is one of football’s good guys, and absolutely no one wishes him ill or hopes he gets the chop.

Yet between them they are taking Middlesbrough into the Championship. Boro are five points behind Stoke City with nothing like the battling ability. Already there is the suggestion that Gibson will stick by his man through a relegation, and the even shakier assumption that a period outside the Premier League could enable Southgate and Boro to march back all the stronger. Already there are people lining up to suggest this is the way football clubs should be run, with far-sighted integrity rather than knee-jerk convenience, to which one can only reply with one word. Cobblers. Or perhaps four words. Cobblers and Bryan Robson.

For Gibson, not to mention the long-suffering Boro fan, has been here before. The chairman invested seven years of patience in a previous favourite, who brought the team back into the top flight as player-manager only to have his limitations cruelly exposed when he had to step back from the pitch. Commendable though Gibson’s support of Robson was, it went beyond the bounds of common sense and only ended up with the assorted miseries of relegation, failure to fulfil a fixture at Blackburn, and eventually leaning on Terry Venables for help. No one could accuse Gibson of failing to give Robson every possible chance, but he could not be counted a managerial success at Boro, or indeed at any of his subsequent clubs, and is no longer in that line of work.

Southgate is not Robson, and there is no reason why his career should follow the same trajectory, though one feels he is in danger of being killed by kindness at the moment. Like Robson he was appointed young and perhaps before he was properly ready – certainly before he was properly qualified – and his chairman is again in the position of either having to admit a mistake or back his judgment until the footballing fates force an unhappy conclusion. It is sweetly romantic that the pair of them fervently believe there is still time for the tide to produce a run of luck or results to propel Boro up the table and prove all the doubters wrong, yet with every passing week the paying spectators become less sweetly dispositioned towards romance.

Because football, like all professional sport, is about what works and what doesn’t. Chairmen make mistakes all the time, and have to correct them, while managers get sacked and have to bounce back. These are facts, as the newly unassailable Rafa Benítez might say. The terrific job David Moyes has done at Everton would not have been possible without the club taking a deep breath and showing Walter Smith the door, while Wigan would not be eyeing Europe and an equally incredible fifth Premier League season had Dave Whelan waited a moment longer to replace Chris Hutchings with Steve Bruce.

Loyalty is fine, as long as it is loyalty, and not indecision. It is standard on these occasions to admire the patience shown by Manchester United to Sir Alex Ferguson in the lean years between 1986 and 1990, and speculate on what they might have missed had they sacked him. There’s no arguing with history, though United were failing only to win trophies. They were never in the bottom three, four points from safety with eight games to play, having scored fewer goals than anyone else in the division. There is a time for patience and a time for impatience, but when you are in Middlesbrough’s position the overwhelming consideration is that soon there will be no time left.

Liverpool can chase United down the long and winding road

Alvaro Arbeloa is only in his third season at Liverpool but has just passed the honorary Scouser test with flying colours. Give him an inch and he’ll take about nine metres.

“This team is on the way to becoming more famous than the Beatles,” the full-back said after the splendid sequence of results that has put the pride back into Merseyside. “We are developing a sensational game at Liverpool, we have a chance of the league and I still insist we are favourites in Europe.”

While it could be argued Liverpool are not yet as famous as previous editions of Anfield world-beaters, without even starting on the city’s musical heritage, one fully understands Arbeloa’s enthusiasm. Having attracted criticism throughout most of the Rafa Benítez era for being painstaking and predictable, Liverpool have suddenly unleashed a controlled long-ball element to their game that opponents are finding impossible to counter. The goals by Fernando Torres and Andrea Dossena at Old Trafford spring to mind, together with Albert Riera’s straight-from-the-goalkeeper stunner against Aston Villa, yet but best of the lot, had not Nigel Reo-Coker converted it into a penalty, might have been the stupendous Dirk Kuyt crossfield pass and sumptuous Riera first touch that brought about Liverpool’s third goal in their last game.

On this form the very least Liverpool can hope for is to emulate Chelsea’s empty yet still vastly impressive achievement of last year in keeping Manchester United honest until the last kick in the league and taking them every step of the way in Europe. Whether they end up with anything more than Chelsea depends on how long it takes for normality to reassert itself at Old Trafford. Even the Manchester Evening News felt it necessary to admonish United last week. Not just for two successive defeats, but for the manner of them. Not dignified. Not United. Not acceptable.

United are now under pressure from themselves as much as from their rivals, and that never happened last year. Forget the comfortable assumptions about how many titles and cups Sir Alex Ferguson might collect before retiring, and ignore any suggestion made here a few weeks ago that the United manager’s job is getting easier all the time. Football, as the great man says, has a habit of biting you on the bum. It just has done, and opponents scent blood. Right now Fergie is having one of his more difficult seasons.

It’s up to the clubs - so they should stop stockpiling

It seems amazing after all the accolades Liverpool have earned that Middlesbrough managed to beat them four weeks ago, all the more so given that Gareth Southgate has one of the smallest squads in the Premier League while Rafa Benítez can call on more than five dozen professionals.

Five dozen! The scandalous stockpiling of players by leading clubs is one of the ways in which Premier League’s permanent top four keep ahead of the rest in this country and, increasingly, the rest of Europe. Johann Cruyff has become the latest figure to complain that something needs to be done to re-level the playing field. “The gap is getting bigger all the time and that is bad for football,” the Dutch maestro argues. “It has become all about resources, clubs can now buy so many players that 10 or 20 guys who could be top players elsewhere cannot play.”

The report on these pages shows this to be exactly the case, with some clubs running enormous squads just because they can afford it and are allowed to do so. Cruyff blames the “stupid” politicians for allowing free movement across Europe, and hopes Fifa’s 6+5 proposals, aimed at forcing clubs to field a quota of home-grown players, will help restore balance. They might, though there is something much simpler the clubs could do for themselves first.

The Premier League could set an example. Instead of moaning about European law or finding ways to flout Fifa directives, English football could put its own house in order by capping squads at a certain size. While Uefa are actively encouraging such a policy, the Premier League say squad size is entirely a matter for individual clubs and are prepared to countenance any level of inequality on the basis that individual clubs’ needs differ greatly.

True, a club in the Champions League need a larger squad than one not playing in Europe. But if the Champions League itself Uefa cap squads at 25 it is hard to see why a team would need more than twice that number to get through a season. It is immoral to sign and register young players, in particular, if there is no realistic chance of their advancement. A cap in the region of three dozen professionals would not hurt. If it is up to the clubs. They can get together and vote it through – if 14 of the 20 agree they can introduce a new rule. Nothing too drastic is necessary, nothing that would put English clubs at a disadvantage – but were the Premier League to follow the Champions League and restrict clubs to an agreed limit on squad size, it would be a smart PR move. Were it also to save money, spread talent more fairly, prevent clubs sending out whole teams on loan and pre-empt further criticism, so much the better.

Rafael Benítez’s men will have to deal with references to their last title win as they try to overhaul Manchester United

Come with us now to a world called April 1990, where Nelson Mandela is free at last and delivering his great Wembley speech, Germany is being reunified and John Barnes is burying a penalty against Queens Park Rangers that wins the Division One title for Liverpool for the 10th time in 15 years.

This is the year the world wide web is invented, when the term “information superhighway” is still hip. At an Extraordinary General Meeting of the Football League, two days after Barnes has knocked the ball in, chairmen hear a proposal for a five per cent levy on all transfer fees to be paid to the Football Trust to help meet the safety requirements of the Taylor Report.

In Liverpool’s next game, their 38-year-old manager, Kenny Dalglish, performs a final 19-minute cameo against Derby County and the league sponsors, Barclays Bank, present the champions with a cheque for £100,000, which is less than Steven Gerrard’s current weekly wage.

A Liverpool squad sporting Bruce Grobbelaar, Alan Hansen, Ian Rush, Peter Beardsley and Jan Molby (not forgetting Barry Venison) have seen off an Aston Villa XI whose team for the 3-3 draw with Norwich that extinguishes their title hopes lists Ian Olney, Derek Mountfield and Tony Cascarino, who has an important role in this tale of self-doubt and what it can do to you.

Evolution has yet to equip us with a switch that kills inhibition. “You’re going to miss” called a voice in Cascarino’s ball-hardened nut occasionally as he bore down on goal. Nearly two decades later, Liverpool are going to have to live with every metre of April prose featuring the “19-year wait”, which, if left uncontested, will become the worm in Anfield’s brain now that Rafa Benítez’s men are one point behind Manchester United, who have a game in hand.

Here is a thought to take some heat off. By now it’s compulsory to talk of Liverpool’s domestic aspirations as a Sisyphean ache. Sure, no Koppite can have enjoyed chasing the tails of Man Utd, Arsenal and Chelsea in all the years since the Poll Tax and Strangeways riots.

Yet long spells in the wilderness are less shameful than we imagine. United went 26 years between the title win of 1966-67 and the first of Sir Alex Ferguson’s Premier League conquests in 1992-93. Arsenal were off the plinth for 18 years from 1971 to 1989. And Chelsea took 50 years to re-live the Brylcreemed win of 1954-55.

United’s psyops unit will have been scrambled back to Carrington. With the table altering so dramatically, Ferguson is bound to redeploy the smart weapon of his suggestion that Liverpool would get “nervous.” That tactic is more likely to fail if Gerrard, Jamie Carragher and Fernando Torres can avoid gazing into the stale well of history, which has no bearing, outside the psychological realm, on the mission to stop United drawing level on 18 league title wins.

One echo is unavoidable; 15 April brings the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough calamity, when 96 Liverpool fans were crushed to death in the Leppings Lane end of Sheffield Wednesday’s ground, and supporters cried to Grobbelaar, hauntingly, in his goal: “They’re killing us, Bruce, they’re killing us.”

Those memories are obliged to resurface as Liverpool enter the season’s final phase, just as United winning the Champions League 50 years on from the Munich air disaster became a compulsion. It may help, in the narrow trophy chasing sense, that the many foreign members of Benítez’s team might be able to separate the emotion of a major Hillsborough anniversary from the less momentous task of trying to depose United.

Or it could inspire the whole operation to reclaim an honour they last held in the season when Michael Knighton’s Old Trafford takeover collapsed, and United finished 13th in the league before Lee Martin’s goal did for Crystal Palace in an FA Cup final replay and (maybe) saved Ferguson’s hide.

For Liverpool the present campaign is already a triumph over boardroom instability and ego. As the debt mountain casts its shadow, and two American speculators perform their self-saving dance, Benítez has signed a new five-year contract and Gerrard says he wants to stay a Red for life. On the pitch they are chain-sawing the best opposition.

In those long years of keeping an eye out for Godot they have finished second in the Premier League once and third five times. They have won the Champions League, a Uefa Cup, three FA Cups and a trio of League Cups. To depict them as a raddled dancefloor dad from the 1970s and 80s is ludicrous and just turns the “19-year wait” into a mental wrecking ball.

How to stop our pasts destroying our futures? On an infinitely grander scale, I seem to remember Mandela offering a few tips.

Whatever it is, the British will bid for it

Apart from the April weather, security concerns, the non-availability of many grounds, the G20 summit in London, which will stretch police resources, tax complications for the 220 players, the need for 30,000 hotel rooms and the logistical conundrum of squeezing 59 new fixtures into a packed English domestic calendar, we stood an excellent chance of hosting the Indian Premier League (IPL) until South Africa stepped in with its pesky sunshine.

Saturday’s Grand National will be an egg and spoon race compared to all the Becher’s Brooks that blocked the IPL’s relocation to the shires. We have a seriously bad case of bidding disease. If it moves, a British administrator will insist on our right to stage it. The 2012 Olympics, 2011 Champions League final and 2010 Ryder Cup are all in the bag, so that just leaves bids for the 2014 Commonwealth Games, 2015 Rugby World Cup and 2018 Fifa World Cup. There is even loose talk of the 2013 Super Bowl being played at Wembley.

Gordon Brown, whose job he thinks it is to save the entire global financial system, has talked of a “golden decade” of sporting events staged in Britain. The IPL farrago will hardly soften our reputation for hubris.

Five tales that show off the best sides of Don King

1 Boxing’s Barnum is trying to have Amir Khan’s victory over Marco Antonio Barrera annulled, claiming the fight should have been stopped earlier. After the controversial Lennox Lewis-Evander Holyfield draw in New York in 1999, which King promoted, the ‘Only in America man’ protested: “We can’t let them get away with this. There has to be a rematch!”

2 For the 1973 Joe Frazier-George Foreman fight in Jamaica, King arrived as Frazier’s cheerleader, but left with Foreman, sidling round the ringstepping over the stricken Smokin Joe. “I came with the champ and left with the champ,” said King.

3 Pressed by an earnest German TV crew about the proposed McCain bill to protect fighters from exploitation, King turned to the camera and yelped: “Ich bin ein Berliner! If you can’t be on the scene, get it on the screen! Call your cable operator now.”

4 In 1975, King was granted the keys of the City in Scranton, Philadelphiaennsylvania. Later, James McNulty, the new mayor, said: “Since then we’ve changed the locks.”

5 In Mike Tyson’s $100m lawsuit against his former promoter, the head comptroller for Don King Productions revealed that the office motto on expenditure was “CBMT”, or Charge Back Mike Tyson. The comptroller’s name: Joseph Maffia. I’m not making this up.

Sports Personality of the week

Sir Bobby Robson tells a story of the night he entered the manager’s room at Nottingham Forest to find it pitch dark. A light flicks on to reveal Brian Clough, Peter Taylor and Larry Lloyd. Ipswich Town have drawn 3-3 with Clough’s Forest in the FA Cup and Robson wants his rival to agree to delay the replay an extra day.

Clough says: “Fuck off, you. I want to play you tomorrow, so I’m doing you no favours. I’d play you on Felixstowe beach.” The cinematic menace in that yarn seeps from the book, The Damned Unitedtd, and is its truth.