Forest want trophies after 'astronomical progress'
The Reds are yet to be beaten in the league and have won 15 of their 18 matches in the third tier since first moving towards full-time professionalism last summer.Harkin is the club's longest serving player, having made more than 300 appearances for the side either side of a six-year spell with Doncaster Rovers Belles, where she featured in the Women's Super League.Harkin has already captained Forest to a double, with the club clinching the National League Cup in 2023 before going on to win the league title.That league success, however, did not bring automatic promotion, as it now does, and they went on to lose their promotion play-off final against Watford."The progress the club has made has been astronomical," Harkin said."With the players we have signed and where the club is at now, it's just amazing."The next step is that we want to get promoted."
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There is one morsel of good news for Newcastle United's incoming sporting director. Whoever it may be, he can't be as bad as the last bloke. Ross Wilson is the favourite for the role, ahead of Jason Ayto, formerly of Arsenal. Wilson has been the chief football officer at Nottingham Forest, so at least we know he's not scared of hard work. And he will need that restlessness. Newcastle's summer has been marked largely by frustration and tumbleweed. Not since cartoon skunk Pepé Le Pew has anyone in black and white had such trouble finding a match. If Newcastle identify a target, he goes elsewhere. Meanwhile, star turn Alexander Isak has fled to northern Spain to avoid the pre-season tour and agitate for a move to Liverpool, whose first bid of £110 million was rejected. Liverpool are briefing that they won't come back, but that hardly matters. Newcastle's preparations are already in ruins. Isak doesn't want to be there and the fans know this and are increasingly against him. It's a mess. What did former sporting director Paul Mitchell do in his year at the club? What did he bestow? What plans, what blueprints? Mitchell cannot be blamed for some recent disappointments, but he was a recruiter who didn't recruit and, by the looks of it, didn't leave much behind that was concrete as his legacy. Plenty of deals are set up in advance. We all knew that Trent Alexander-Arnold was on his way to Real Madrid many months out. Chelsea had Christian Pulisic agreed six months before he came, too. And José Mourinho would never take credit for the arrival of Petr Cech or Arjen Robben, saying those deals were in place before he was. Yet, having supposedly kept their powder dry for the great leap forward, what did Newcastle have arranged that hasn't fallen apart? Not Marc Guéhi — last summer's missed target — not João Pedro. They couldn't even keep goalkeeper James Trafford from joining Manchester City, the club that jettisoned him two years ago. Hopes of beating last season's 15th-placed team, Manchester United, to Benjamin Sesko sit in the balance. And before Liverpool came in for Isak they had already secured Hugo Ekitike, who Newcastle had fondly imagined would be his partner, or his replacement if the unthinkable happened. To see both in red would be little short of disastrous. And if all Mitchell had done was nothing — well, it wouldn't be impressive, but it wouldn't be actively harmful. Yet one of the few calls he did make is believed to have alienated Isak and may be the root of his present dissatisfaction. Having been promised an improved contract by the previous executive regime of Amanda Staveley and Mehrdad Ghodoussi, Isak was then informed that would not be happening. The logic was straightforward: Isak was a high earner with four years left on his deal and Newcastle are mindful of Profitability and Sustainability Rules. Yet the ramifications can now be seen. Isak clearly knows another club can make him happy. One whose recruitment agents are efficiency's gold standard. That's the problem with football's new executive model. Recruiters, sporting directors, call them what you will, appear to be no more reliable than the people they have replaced: the managers. Manchester United were said to have fallen behind because they were entirely reliant on the wit of Sir Alex Ferguson. Last season, Sir Jim Ratcliffe bemoaned the fact the club were still behind on data analytics and could only rely on the eyes of Jason Wilcox, the sporting director. Yet if Newcastle had a coach as ferociously proactive as Ferguson, would they have struggled to get deals done? No criticism of Eddie Howe is intended. He works in a modern club, which Ferguson's United were not. Yet it's not just about chains of command, philosophies and strategies. The best people, that is what Liverpool have. All clubs employ executives to direct football, or sport, or recruitment, whichever title is the fashion. Chelsea's probably have their own wing at the training ground. Yet some clubs buy consistently well, others do not. Newcastle recruited a man to recruit the men, but he failed. The ramifications are significant. Neither Wilson nor Ayto can be active in this transfer window. Another one is passing Newcastle by. Has Howe got too much power, it is asked? After all, Mitchell's time there may not have recovered from an early schism with Howe and with a void at the top sporting direction increasingly lands at the manager's door. Yet what option is there, in Newcastle's state? They had a man to do that job. Not only didn't he do it but some of the decisions appear to have benefited a rival. That's what you call a good recruitment strategy. Liverpool have even got the opposition working for them. And not so much as a thank you. We used to be such a polite nation too. Manners maketh man and all that. Yet no so much as a tip of the hat in the direction of the Netherlands for Sarina Wiegman. We've heard a lot about patriotism and 'proper' England since the European Championship was retained, but very little acknowledgement of the method behind it all. For that would mean conceding it really isn't all our work. It can't be, with a foreign coach. England's women were superb in this tournament. Resilient, brave, determined. The moment Spain did not get the game won in extra time, it was England all the way. Yet much of the credit for that strength of attitude goes to Wiegman and her largely Dutch backroom team, and the credit for them goes to the Koninklijke Nederlandse Voetbalbond (KNVB), the Royal Dutch Football Association. So this was an Anglo-Dutch victory, an Anglo-Dutch operation, like Unilever, Shell or The Legendary Pink Dots. Close, but England's women had never got over the line at a major international tournament until Wiegman arrived. And she didn't fluke it this time, as was churlishly implied until the moment of ultimate victory. Yes, England can play better. Yet there are very solid reasons why England defeated Spain, many of them down to the work of the central midfield, which was no accident. Wiegman has reached five straight tournament finals, winning three. That's no fluke, either. The system that produced this remarkable head coach deserves its due. Now there is concern because the proportion of English players in the WSL has halved to just 30 per cent. Baroness Campbell, instrumental in Wiegman's appointment, is worried. Ironic that champions of a national team with a foreign coach suddenly think nationality is important. We want it all ways. In victory, we wish to celebrate and promote this as the best of us, which is what successful international sport is supposed to represent. Yet the FA, and its chief executive Mark Bullingham, are too frightened of failure to take a chance on just our best. It wishes for England to comprise that, plus the best of yours too, if we're short. And it will blow the competition out of the water with its financial might to facilitate this. Just don't expect the tiniest acknowledgment if it pays off. That's why it was so amusing when Bullingham said Wiegman was 'not for sale at any price' in the build-up to the final. For a start, she is. That's why she left her position as Netherlands head coach to manage England: because she is very much the gun for hire. But that's her call. The real reason she's not for sale is because there is not another nation in Europe — and only one, the United States, across the rest of the world — that would pay what she receives for coaching England. When Wiegman won the European Championship with the Netherlands in 2017 she was made a Knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau and was awarded a statue in the garden of the KNVB; which is all well and good, but the FA gave her £400,000 a year and that rather ended discussions. Not to be outdone on the titles, there is now talk of making Wiegman a dame here too. It's another form of ownership. Look, she's ours, really. She's one of us. So we're Manchester City. And the majority don't care because all that matters is winning. Yet how a nation wins is important, too, particularly if that victory is going to be seized upon with great nationalistic fervour. Chloe Kelly's declaration that, 'I'm so proud to be English' was particularly well received. 'Uncomplicated patriotism,' one headline called it. But it is complicated, isn't it, if the manager is Dutch and the English didn't land a trophy until she arrived? The team have every right to wrap themselves in the flag because what they have achieved is exceptional; but the FA should at least have the decency to offer some small thank you to their counterparts in Zeist. Without them, we're nothing. When Richard Gould, the ECB chief executive, spoke to the media before the start of the fifth Test with India, he attempted to explain the thinking behind Test series being crushed into ever-shorter periods of time. He said the idea of keeping August free for the Hundred was here to stay and that part of the reasoning for making June and July the Test season was to avoid a clash with big football tournaments. When the Ashes are contested here in 2027, the schedule will replicate that for India this summer. The one that has culminated in a ruinous round of injuries. Yet that plan is already out of date. Now that tournaments involving England's women command almost as much attention as the men, there will not be a summer that cricket does not have to share with international football. Take the next four years: 2026, men's World Cup, 2027 women's World Cup, 2028 men's European Championships, 2029 women's European Championships. And that is before factoring in the 2029 Club World Cup, which may feature an expanded roster of Premier League clubs, including some of the bigger draws such as Liverpool or Arsenal. Test cricket has always competed with football in some way, and endures. Ben Stokes's famous match-winning innings at Headingley in 2019 took place across August 24 and 25, the same weekend as a full Premier League programme including Liverpool versus Arsenal and, on the day of the heroics, Tottenham Hotspur versus Newcastle United. Anyone much remember those matches? Nobody is forgetting Stokes's 135 not out and his partnership with Jack Leach, though. The Open, Wimbledon, the British Grand Prix, cricket is always challenged by our sporting summer. On Sunday, July 19, 2009, England were trying to win a Lord's Test against Australia for the first time since 1934. It was the day before Freddie Flintoff's iconic, kneeling, open-armed celebration. Yet on day four, many in the media centre were gathered around a television in a back suite because at Turnberry, the 59-year-old Tom Watson was within a hair's breadth of winning the Open. England's dramatic victory in the 2019 Cricket World Cup took place at the same time as arguably the greatest Wimbledon's men's singles final in history, Novak Djokovic defeating Roger Federer 7-6, 1-6, 7-6, 4-6, 13-12. So a little faith is needed, surely. For cricket to rearrange its calendar shows an absence of confidence in a sport that, at its best, still offers rewards like no other. How can we not believe in that? It was 46 degrees when Manchester United reached Chicago last week, with extreme weather warnings across the Midwest. Still, there was money to be made: £7.5million in United's case, the most of any Premier League team engaged in the Summer Series in the United States. So, a little bit more than Pachuca from Mexico got out of the Club World Cup, not quite as much as Los Angeles FC. No glory in the Summer Series, either. Chelsea can bask in the glow of being world champions for four years, with all the added commercial value this affords. Who won the Summer Series? Who cares? There are even suggestions that, far from being a money-spinner, it is failing commercially. The inaugural version two years ago lost £5.4 million — and that was before Fifa came in and delivered a genuine football competition for the locals, not a succession of glorified friendlies. We are yet to see the toll, if any, of the Club World Cup on Chelsea and Manchester City as the domestic season unfolds, but there is a risk-reward from taking part in a tournament with such obvious benefits. The Summer Series, by contrast, seems one big drain. Sunderland have already spent more than £100million on transfers. Coming into the Premier League via the play-offs it is no doubt necessary, while offering no guarantees. Ipswich Town were similarly ambitious last season and look where it got them. One prospective signing is interesting, though. Marc Guiu has started only seven games for Chelsea. On the face of it, his loan move to Sunderland would not make waves. The reason Chelsea are not prepared to make the deal permanent, however, is that inside the club Guiu is believed to have Cole Palmer potential. He's 19, four years Palmer's junior and with only slightly more first-team experience than Palmer had at the same stage of his career with Manchester City. So watch this space. Sunderland may be getting a special one, even if only for the season. The reason fans felt such love for Joey Jones was a shared devotion. Late in his career, at Huddersfield Town, snow had wiped out a weekend's fixture list. Mick Buxton, the manager, had an idea. He got the club to secure tickets at matches for all those players who had shown ambition to go into management. Watch the game, he said, and then write up a scout's report. It'll be good practice for you to get pointers from a manager's perspective. He assigned each player a match based on where he lived. Joey, a resident of north Wales but a Liverpool fanatic, was told there would be a ticket for him at Everton. 'I'm not going there,' he said. Buxton was bemused. 'I've never set foot inside Goodison Park unless I was playing,' Jones insisted. 'I'm not going to start now.' Despite Buxton's protests, he wouldn't budge. 'No way, not Everton. Anywhere but Everton.' Joey died last month. There is to be a statue of him at the home of his other great love, Wrexham. And if anyone goes near it with a blue scarf, he'll come back and haunt them. Numbers at the Women's European Championship told a story. Most goals, most assists and most chances created went to players from Spain, as did the first five berths for successful passes. Leading on most dribbles and most touches in the opposition box was Klara Buhl, of Germany. So how did England win? Most tackles, Keira Walsh. Most interceptions, Alex Greenwood. Most recoveries, Leah Williamson. Proof that even at the highest level, the dirty work brings reward. Standing besides the Uefa president, Aleksander Ceferin, on the podium in Basel was the general secretary Theodore Theodoridis, a native of Athens and formerly a board member of the Hellenic Football Federation. Uncanny, isn't it, the way that Olympiacos and Nottingham Forest, the clubs owned by Evangelos Marinakis, manage to nervelessly tiptoe their way through Uefa's minefield of multiclub ownership when Crystal Palace cannot.
