Football Notebook

An extraordinary tale has emerged of why the massively popular Steve Perryman quit as Brentford manager in 1991.
Perryman told the fanzine website beesotted.com about a disagreement with chairman Martin Lange over trying to sign Fulham left-back Gary Elkins.
He recalls: "I'd done my homework and found out Fulham would let him go on a free. The chairman didn't want to sign him . . . in one conversation he said one reason he didn't want me to sign Elkins was because Terry Bullivant had told Lange that he thought the Fulham player had 'shifty eyes'!
"What the chairman was inadvertently telling me was that he'd rather trust the judgement of one of his players than his manager, not based on footballing ability, but facial expression."
That persuaded Perryman to resign. Elkins (eyes pictured above) went on to play in the Premiership with Wimbledon. Bullivant now works with chairman Simon Jordan at Palace. It's enough to make you misty eyed.

Diego, the great whale of China

Diego Maradona is turning into the Homer Simpson of football. The blubbery Argentinian has shown how to make enemies on his first visit to China, a trip designed to publicise stores selling Diego-branded clothes.
Maradona missed a series of publicity dates and, reported Shanghai's Oriental television, "stayed in his hotel suite eating roast chicken, drinking diet cola and watching satellite television".
After days of wrangling over money, his entourage drove to the airport only to turn round and return after a new deal had been reached with promoters.
Chen Honglei, the Italian-based Chinese businessman whose company sponsored the trip, was manfully upbeat. Chen said: "Mr Maradona performed extremely well."

Winston's £2.1m straitjacket

Winston Bogarde (annual salary £2.1million) has picked up his £40,000 a week despite not playing a league game for Chelsea since December 2000.
He tells football magazine When Saturday Comes: "I often have the feeling that I am stuck in a tunnel, that I'm wearing a straitjacket. I can't move, can't turn over, can't even look back. So I walk on, on to the light, to the end of the career, to freedom."
All together now . . . you poor lamb.

Blues are not well read

BOOK CLUB 15: CHELSEA -The squad were stuck for three hours on Wednesday morning on a plane on a runway at Dusseldorf airport waiting for fog to clear. Not quite the Big Read, as there was not a single book in sight, although they were watching DVDs.