United have brought in 26 year old striker Craig Russell on loan from Manchester City. Russell, who is available on a free transfer, was formerly with Sunderland (under the management of Denis Smith, surprisingly) and moved to the Sky Blues in a swap for former swindon player Nicky Summerbee in a deal estimated to be worth £1 million. When he was at Sunderland Russell was extremely popular with half the supporters, the other half believing that he was totally over-rated. Since leaving the Maccems, where he was averaging a goal every five games, Russell has struggled to score, but some City fans feel that he was being played out of position as a wing back and not as an out-and-out striker.
Despite a fine performance from Andre Arendse South Africa lost 2-0 to Nigeria in the semi-finals of the African Nations Cup, thanks to two first half goals from Tijani Babangida, the first after just 40 seconds. South Africa will now face the losers of the Tunisia v. Cameroon match in the 3rd place play-off on Saturday.
Unsurprisingly central defender Mark Watson is the Rage Online readers' favourite to be offered a new contract at the end of the season. Amongst the eleven players whose contracts expire in the Summer, Canadian international Watson, who is currently in Los Angeles preparing to play in the CONCACAF Gold Cup on Sunday, polled an enormous 54% of the votes. Perennial U's favourite Joey Beauchamp came second with 27%. Also receiving votes were Nigel Jemson, Pål Lundin and Rob Folland, the six other out-of-contract players didn't get a single nomination between them.
Malcolm Shotton is amongst the favourites to succeed Neil Thompson as York City's manager, according to that excellent source of unsubstantiated rumours Teamtalk. An announcement might be made before the weekend.
The Chairman of Barnet FC, A.A. Kleanthous, said today that if Barnet are not given dispensation to play at Underhill next year they will take the matter to the High Court, as some clubs have been given special dispensation for four years and have done nothing progressive on moving to a new ground. He claimed that there were three or four clubs who have been treated well by the footballing authorities, one of which has a Director who used to be a Director of Barnet (Oxford United Director Fenton Higgins used to be a Director of Barnet, for example). Check out the Keep Barnet Alive website for further info.
Martin Aldridge's funeral took place yesterday in Daventry. Amongst the mourners were most of the members of United's promotion winning team of 1996, including Matty Elliott, Phil Gilchrist, Joey Beauchamp, Les Robinson, Phil Whelan, Martin Gray, Mike Ford and many others. The pall bearers included Denis Smith and Aldo's former United room-mate and good friend Matt Murphy.
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another fine mash from ox9encoding