Hungary's Sandor Puhl will not referee another European club match this season after his failure to punish Feyenoord's Paul Bosvelt for his blatant foul on Denis Irwin in Manchester United's European Champions' League match in Rotterdam last month.
European football's ruling body UEFA announced the sanction against Puhl, who refereed the 1994 World Cup final between Brazil and Italy, last night after a meeting of their referees' commission.
Puhl failed even to book Bosvelt after the Dutch player appeared to deliberately stamp on the Republic of Ireland defender just below the knee during United's 3-1 win in Rotterdam on November 5th. Irwin was left with damaged knee ligaments.
Having studied the official reports of the game, UEFA decided to remove Puhl from their list for the rest of the season because he had failed "to take the appropriate sanction".
Juventus are considering buying a stake in Crystal Palace. They have been invited to put £3 million into the club and join a consortium interested in a £30 million buy-out from Ron Noades.
Representatives of the Serie A club watched Palace's game against Newcastle at the weekend and last night a delegation headed by the Juventus executive vice-president Roberto Bettaga was at Palace's Premiership game at West Ham. Mark Goldberg, a Palace director, is masterminding the attempted takeover and he sees Juventus as central to his plans. The 33-year-old, life-long Palace fan invited Juventus representatives to London in an attempt to persuade them to match his own investment of £3 million. He believes the cachet of Juventus' involvement would then entice other investors to inject the remaining £26 million or to meet Noades's asking price. Juventus's association with Palace follows their earlier attempts to link up with Oxford United and Manchester City.
Ray Harford will be installed as the new manager of Queen's Park Rangers in time for Saturday's Division One game at home to Sunderland. Harford has reluctantly decided to leave West Bromwich to take on the challenge of trying to lead Rangers into the Premiership. He will walk out of The Hawthorns despite a last ditch attempt by the Albion board to hold on to him, which even included a "name-your-price" contract offer from the chairman Tony Hale. However, Albion's move came too late to persuade Harford to change his mind.
Alan Shearer yesterday set his sights on a March comeback. Shearer's ankle injury has left him on the sidelines since August, leaving a massive hole for both England manager Glenn Hoddle and Newcastle chief Kenny Dalglish to fill.
"I will be fit for the World Cup," the England captain said yesterday. "The recovery is going extremely well. I'm running at three-quarter pace, just below a sprint, and I hope to start twisting and turning in the next fortnight.
"I'm hoping to be kicking a ball in January. I've still got a couple of hurdles to overcome before that, but at the moment everything is going well. Hopefully I'll be back playing in the Premiership in March." Leeds chairman Peter Ridsdale said yesterday that he was "disappointed" that Rod Wallace and Republic of Ireland defender Gary Kelly had signed long-term contracts with the club. Kelly's signature is slightly less pressing because he still has a year left after this season. But Wallace will be a free agent in the summer.
