Tel will win with a one-track mind

Years ago I made the mistake of suggesting to Sir John Smith, Liverpool chairman in the glory years, that I'd heard the manager was thinking of signing so and so.

John reeled back in mock horror: "The manager, the manager! Listen my lad, the manager doesn't sign anyone here. The directors do all of that." And that's how it should be in any well-run club.

Peter Ridsdale will forget this lesson at his peril, and various past luminaries of Crystal Palace and Portsmouth will doubtless be available to put the Leeds chairman right if he remains in any doubt.

I hope that Pious Pete has prized him out of the television studios.

The trouble with being as talented as Terry is that doing one job is too boring. Former Tottenham chairman Irving Scholar summed it up when he called him "grasshopper minded".

I shall miss Terry on ITV. Gazza or whoever won't be an adequate replacement.

But turning Leeds into genuine achievers rather than noisy pretenders will take every ounce of Terry's not inconsiderable nous. He says it's his last chance of Premiership glory, and so it is. And if he's sensible this thought will concentrate the mind wonderfully whenever the grasshoppers start jumping around again.

I have no problem with separating Terry the coach from Terry the businessman and Terry the entertainer. The more interesting point is: what sort of coach is he now he is nearing his 60th birthday. Those triumphs in Barcelona were in the mid-Eighties. That single worthwhile domestic honour - the FA Cup with Spurs - was in 1991.

His spells at Portsmouth and Palace were pretty inglorious.

Terry's time in Australia ended disappointingly as his team were knocked out by Iran in a World Cup play-off, while saving Middlesbrough fromrelegation was at best a score draw, not an outright win. In Barcelona, he won 92 games out of 173. At Palace, second time around, it was 11 out of 31. Even at Middlesbrough, from which such a lot of easy praise came, it was only eight wins out of 25.

Is Terry past it? I don't think so although he has something to prove. I prefer to believe that this will be a genuine Indian summer for him. Bobby Robson, a decade older than Tel, has blazed a trail here. The wisdom of the years has served the Toon Army well.

If I had predicted this time last summer that Newcastle would make the Champions League you'd have had me certified.

Style, leadership, wisdom and experience transformed a demoralised St James' Park. And don't say I didn't warn you if the same thing happens at Elland Road.

The Football League bosses, chairman Keith Harris and chief executive David Burns, have been a bit like that.

The intransigent refusal of club chairmen to face reality over the demise of ITV Digital meant that the duo were afraid to cut a deal with the broadcaster when one was on offer although, to be fair, such proposals might have been illusory anyway.

The much more modest arrangement - £95 million over four years - with Sky is a sign that realism is dawning and leadership is starting to be exerted.

This deal values the product properly and proves that the crazy arrangement which ITV made could never be repeated.

Some of the chairmen are bitching like mad about the Sky deal, calling for Burns's head.

They're wrong. His departure would solve nothing, but it is interesting that it is his head and not Harris's which is on the block. Now is a good moment for Keith to prove that he's a man to go into the jungle with.

He and Burns should make sure they stick together now.

Besides, things may be looking up for the League.

After Wednesday's demo brought an extraordinary turnout of 50 chairmen, a Carlton spokesman had the cheek to say: "The demands of the Football League are entirely without merit." This is untrue. If Carlton and Granada had been companies regulated by the Financial Services Authority they would never have been allowed to create a joint venture subsidiary, and then walk away from its obligations when it crashed.

And there are plenty of references in bid documents, annual reports and the like to suggest that Carlton and Granada were giving the impression all along that they stood four square behind ITV Digital.

The moral high ground plainly belongs to the League.

Although this may not be backed up in law, if I were Carlton and Granada, and their over enthusiastic spokesmen, I wouldn't bet on it.

Thoroughly entertaining in part, but only in the way that mud wrestling is. Dominic Negus is probably a pretty good minder (his day job) but as a boxer he's a bum - another one for Audley in a fight that meant nothing.

Let's face some facts once again about Harrison. He's in his thirties. He isn't fully fit, nor to my mind, fully committed.

He hasn't fought anyone worthwhile and he's never likely to. It's all a bit of a con isn't it? Enough of this licence payer-funded nonsense.

He should be fixed up with a fight against a topranking heavyweight and let's see what happens.

On Wednesday night's evidence, the sooner he spends his time doing something else, the better for the noble art of boxing.

More than 40 West African golfers allegedly in Britain to try to qualify for The Open have disappeared.

As another foreign-dominated championship beckons, wouldn't it be a kindness if a lot of the British contingent did the same? Before the cut at Muirfield - rather than after i