What is it about the Newcastle United manager’s job, filled until relatively recently by Willie McFaul, Jim Smith and other domestic gaffers, which has become so overblown that the club’s chairman, Freddy Shepherd, can describe the St James’ Park vacancy as ”one of the biggest in world football”?

With the season of comfort, joy and compulsive over-eating almost upon us, it is sad to report that the troubling case of the Watford Two still rumbles on. Ian Grant and Matthew Rowson argue they are guilty of nothing more than the words in the title of their Watford fanzine website, which Grant, a web designer, launched in December 1994.

Graham Rix, then, has arrived in the heart of the Romanovs’ ruthless empire, sidestepping the gore on the Tynecastle carpet. Now, after the departure of the former manager George Burley and the chief executive Phil Anderton, a further apparent shock for Hearts: Vladimir Romanov, the Lithuanian banker and industrialist, is funding the club with loans only.

A strain of Sol Campbell’s troublesome hamstring, another furrow on Arsene Wenger’s careworn brow, and once again the cry goes up: clubs should be ”compensated” for releasing their players for internationals. It is understandable on the face of it, but in football nothing is straightforward, all is political.