Harry Kettle calls black FA

Quote from Harry Redknapp

Portsmouth boss Harry Redknapp added his condemnation of the failed bid to appoint Scolari.

He added: "It's like most of these things that seem to happen with the FA lately, it seems a bit of a mess-up."

I think the FA can learn a thing or two about the way to handle employment and recruitment issues from a man whose toing and froing on the south coast in the past two seasons have been handled with a level of enormous clarity and simplicity. Something the FA may wish to mirror.

Gripping end to the season?

Well with 3 matches to go there seems every chance of everything being done and dusted in the Championship (Division Two as I like to call it). No last minute nails to be bitten until the play off action kicks in during May.

It seems almost anti-climactic that all the issues are decided with so much left to be played. It has been a strange season with records about to be smashed by Reading at the death. Their achievements appear to be largely going un noticed, heck let's go on and on about Chelsea, Man United and Arsenal with Liverpool filling the media silence in between.

Steve Coppell has proved himself to be an extremely durable manager. Excepting a terribly savage brief spell at Manchester City his career looks really successful, with much of it plied in the unfashionable end of football.

So with nothing much to be decided (sorry Watford Leeds, Preston and Palace) the toast today has to be Stevie Coppell.

Simon Jordan - what's that all about?

He's appeared on Match of the Day 2 on the BBC2 as a pundit. He has his own column in the Observer. IT is pretty safe to say that Simon Jordan is not your ordinary Football Club Chairman.

After the debacle of a "fan at the helm" - The Mark Goldberg Experience, Palace fans could have been forgiven for feeling bit like a hitch hiker been offered a lift home by Ted Kennedy, when Simon Jordan took the reins back in the early noughties. He had money which all glory seeking fickle fans love the look and feel of. But was he just going to roll over throw it all away like his unfortunate predecessor.

What has emerged is a veritable swan from ugly duckling beginnings. He is very media savvy, but avoids all the banality and superficial nature that has to persist in football, because if the truth came out about it's snide and unwholesome nature, there's a danger none of us would want to bank roll it to the level we currently do.

Each month his column in the Observer sends me reaching for an email to applaud and eulogise about the skilful way he exposes and deconstructs. This month he goes for David Sullivan - a persistent thorn in Jordan's (the chairman, not the model) side over the years. In having a go at a fairly easy target he manages to expose the crazy conundrum that is club ownership.

Given the money would you buy your club and expose yourself to grotesque life that passes for ownership of a football club. The abuse, the despair of seeing defeat as an extension of your personality and public standing, it must take a unique individual to be able to contend with such adversity. When you succeed you can only be a hairbreadth away from the return of the abuse and brickbats.

I would commend the artful Mr Jordan to you. His savaging of Mr Sullivan and Mr Gold is here

The biggest ask

It's that time of the season when pundits compare run ins and the relegation dog fights really do assume dobermann meets rotweiler proportions.

Pity poor Dario Gradi's, football's most loved manager, whose Crewe foot soldiers appear to have the toughest of tasks on the final day. Brave isn't the word.

"If we lost two then it might be beyond us but we've got to play Sheffield Wednesday and Millwall on the last game of the season, so I'd settle for
that."

Taken from BBC Sport round up to QPR v Crewe 2/4/06