Welcome back Owen Coyle, you have been missed. Especially by Barclays.

Coyle was the man who, every time he was interviewed when manager of Burnley and Bolton Wanderers, name-checked the Premier League sponsors so promiscuously the only logical explanation was that he was on piece-work, getting a handy little payment for each mention.

“The Barclays Premier League,” he would say on an almost hourly basis, “is not an easy league. To win the Barclays Premier League, you’ve got to be the best team in the Barclays Premier League.” Kerrrrr-ching.

Now with this return to the management at the

Watching England’s U21s labour to defeat against Israel yesterday, I kept thinking of something my dad always used to say when I was a teenager. Surveying me and my mates shambling about the place, he would raise an eyebrow and opine: “if you lot are the cream of the country, God help the skimmed milk.”

It was not the most elevated of 90 minutes, not the most encouraging, not the most uplifting football match I have ever seen. It was not one that filled you with optimism. Actually, Andre Wisdom aside, it was about as sorry a showing as I can recall from a representative side. Players bereft

It’s all gone gloomy in Israel. Stuart Pearce has been bemoaning his lack of resources as England prepare for their next group game in the Under-21 European championships. Imagine if he could call on a front six of Danny Welbeck, Wilfried Zaha, Raheem Sterling, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Jack Wilshere and Tom Ince. Now that is a prospect, he says, to put the fear of God even into the Spaniards.

We are never going to find out if Pearce is right. We will never discover if such a combination would have the Spanish team shaking in their maracas. An unholy mix of injury, suspension and full

Never mind the historical revisionism currently coming out of Real Madrid, never mind the withering, lofty contempt of the Barcelona hierarchy who dismiss him as “a disaster for football”, never mind the fact Manchester United preferred not to take up the opportunity to further his career, of this there can be no doubt: Chelsea have signed themselves a brilliant manager in Jose Mourinho.

Mind, you might not appreciate that given some of the things that are being written about him. The new theory about Mourinho is that he is a busted flush. Writing in the Daily Mail, John Carlin, the English

Nedum Onuoha, Djibril Cisse, Bobby Zamora, Samba Diakite, Federico Macheda, Taye Taiwo, Andy Johnson, Ryan Nelsen, Stephane Mbia, Robert Green, Park Ji-Sung, Junior Hoilet, Estaban Granero, Julio Cesar, Fabio: brace yourselves, Stoke fans. If your club is not careful, this could be what lies ahead.

Yesterday, to much teeth gnashing and grumbling among the Britannia faithful, Mark Hughes was unveiled as Tony Pulis’s successor at Stoke. According to Peter Coates, the amiable holder of the Stoke purse strings, Hughes was the only candidate considered.

Coates reckoned the former Wales, Blackburn,

Tonight Ashley Cole will be wearing the captain’s armband and leading England out on to the Wembley turf for the FA’s anniversary friendly with Ireland. Not much to get het up about there, you might have thought – long-serving full back is given the honour of captaincy to mark his hundredth cap, where’s the controversy in that? But it is news sufficient to set the moral arbiters of football fulminating. Cole, you see, is not reckoned to be of the right stuff.

Never mind that the manager Roy Hodgson has said this is a one-off. Never mind that in reaching his century, the player has

London has already turned German.

There are more than 150,000 followers of Dortmund and Bayern Munich expected to flood into the capital over the weekend and yesterday the advanced party was already moving into place. By tomorrow lunchtime, the city will be awash in luminous yellow shirts and leather shorts.

Not just any leather shorts, either. But official Bayern lederhosen, smart looking traditional Bavarian mountain gear, with a discreet Bayern crest on the leg, as worn by Bastian Schweinsteiger on the club’s merchandise website.

Never mind that, in his modelling role, Basti looks about as

At the time of writing, the plans for the Stoke Sentinel’s Tony Pulis 16-page souvenir supplement were still up in the air.

But doubtless the production will be straight forward, without frill or artifice, getting to the point with minimum fuss, a route one publication.

Arsenal fans may disagree, but we’ll miss Pulis. In his tracksuit and cap he was the manager who most resembled a touchline dad, ranting and shouting his way through a Premier League season. In press conferences he always stood up, perhaps to convey a message of urgency and momentum. Either that, or he suffered from some