The noise rolled around Molineux like Spring thunder.

“Deano, Deano, Deano”

It wasn’t a lament for a life, cut tragically short.

It merged into spontaneous applause.

It was a celebration of someone who meant more than you’d think.

The football world contracts when there is a death in the family.

The passing of Dean Richards, on Saturday morning, cut across tribal loyalties.

He was only 36, and leaves two young sons, Rio and Jayden.

His clubs – Bradford, Southampton, Wolves and Tottenham – paid their respects.

But the loss of the former England Under 21 defender, to long term illness, was an acutely personal experience.

Three former teammates, Robbie Keane, Don Goodman and Matt Murray, had planned to visit him in a Leeds hospice on Sunday.

All had their own memories.

Murray had the same size feet, and Richards gave him trainers, from his sponsors.

Fans are no different. They keep freeze frame images of players.

In their minds eye, they are forever young.

That’s why next Sunday’s match, between Wolves and Spurs, will be the most poignant of occasions.

Wolves manager Mick McCarthy realised the emptiness of his team’s highest ever Premier League win, 4-0 against Blackpool.

“Forget football” he said,

“I can’t tell you how sad I feel for Deano and his family.

“Only 36…….

“It is just devastating.”

Football, more important than life and death?

Don’t be silly.

Deano, RIP.

Elvis Presley is Arsenal’s warm up man.

He’s warbling “the Wonder of You” when they emerge from the tunnel at the Emirates.

Right singer, wrong song.

Because, for Arsenal, it’s Now or Never.

They can’t afford to leave Wembley without the Carling Cup on Sunday.

It’s a down payment on a sacred debt.

Here’s the deal:

The fans trust Arsene Wenger, implicitly.

They understand what he is trying to build.

They’re slaves to the rhythm.

Now they want to savour silverware.

A first trophy in six years will give them something to sing about.

It will ease pressure, renew belief.

The final will be Arsenal’s 44th match of an arduous season.

It starts a run of four games in nine days.

Already the injuries – to Theo Walcott and Cesc Fabregas – are mounting.

The last game of that sequence is in the Camp Nou.

The Champions League means most to Wenger.

He balances analysis with intuition.

He plays football, as three dimensional chess.

He knows his squad is maturing nicely.

They have the lowest average age of any in the Premier League, 25.4 years.

They are Manchester United’s closest challengers, on all fronts.

Win two or three trophies, and the faithful will call for The King.

A quick chorus of I Can’t Help Falling in Love will be in order.

There’s a bit of Yosser Hughes in all of us.

He’s the unemployed Scouser in that seminal social drama, Boys from the Blackstuff.

His catch phrase – “Gizza job, I can do that” – did the rounds.

I think the same thing, when I watch Nikola Zigic.

He’s a human pogo stick, without the springs.

I’ve seen telegraph poles with greater mobility.

When the tackles are flying in, he’s a conscientious objector.

The Serbian striker is looking forward to Sunday’s Carling Cup final.

How is he an international footballer?

Why?

The tale’s in the tape.

Zigic is 2.02 metres tall.

That’s 6 ft 7 1⁄2 inches, in old money.

Speaking of the folding stuff, he cost Birmingham £6million from Valencia.

Nice work if you can get it.

I’ve got nothing against him.

But I want to feel inadequate when I watch matches.

There’s something reassuring about not being able to dribble like Giggs, pass like Xavi and pout like Ronaldo.

When I watch Zigic, I veer between amusement and bemusement.

Birmingham fans defend him, because he has nudged three goals in his last four matches.

Alex McLeish, his manager, has told him to learn from Peter Crouch.

Good advice.

Crouch makes the most of his natural gifts.

His work ethic cannot be questioned.

He can also play a bit, which helps……

Jose Mourinho couldn’t help himself.

A Spanish radio reporter asked him to imagine what God thought of him.

“He must really think I’m a great guy” he replied.

“Otherwise, He would not have given me so much.”

You could almost hear the wink, on the digital link.

Mourinho knew it would enchant and outrage in equal measure.

He reminds me of Al Pacino, playing Satan in the Devil’s Advocate.

He’s provocative, vain, knowing.

He works in mysterious ways.

When Chelsea are in trouble, he texts his former players, and turns up to watch.

When he feels the need to remind Manchester United of his presence, he falls at Fergie’s feet.

When he falls out with his nominal boss at Real Madrid, Jorge Valdano, he bends club president Florentino Perez to his will.

The Champions League defines Mourinho.

He introduced himself, at Porto, with that wild-eyed dash down the Old Trafford touchline.

He frolicked in the sprinklers at the Camp Nou, when Inter beat Barca in last season’s semi final.

He used Karim Benzema as an impact sub in Lyon last night.

The French striker obliged by scoring against his old club within 42 seconds.

Real, level after the first leg, should reach the quarter finals for the first time since 2004.

If that is the platform for Madrid’s tenth European Cup, in Wembley’s May final, the Special One will be anointed as a saint.

It’s impossible to miss the banner, which dominates Stamford Bridge.
“JT. Captain, Leader, Legend.”
It was hung in his honour immediately after his penalty miss, in the Champions League final.
It was a reaffirmation of faith, a declaration of loyalty.
It meant a lot to John Terry, a man with a clear self image.
He’ll be one of those gladiators carried out of the Coliseum on his shield.
Years of percussive punishment are taking their toll.
He can still read the game brilliantly.
He senses danger in empty space.
He scans the quicksilver minds of world class strikers.
But, there are hints of immobility.
He is far from immune to injury.
Watch him closely. He runs as if he has a broom handle for a spine.
During lulls in play he stands, hands on hips, as if assessing his discomfort.
Only the wilfully ignorant doubt the strength of his character.
Carlo Ancelotti justly hails him as one of only two players justifying their reputation.
There’s no hiding the gravity of the Chelsea crisis.
It is a club that takes no prisoners.
Terry will rage against the dying of the light, starting in Copenhagen tonight.
But football is an unforgiving business.
David Luiz is a different type of defender, but folk hero material.
It won’t be long before they unveil a banner to him.

David Moyes needs to invest in a crash helmet.

He risks concussion by continually head-butting football’s glass ceiling.

Yet he was wearing a smile, and gagging for a lager.

Everton had defied financial logic, and inflicted Chelsea’s first FA Cup defeat for nearly three years.

Up in the Stamford Bridge boardroom, they were wearing sackcloth, and ordering poison.

This is a club that relies on its spending power, and the savagery of its ambition.

Roman Abramovich will use cash to coagulate the wounds to his ego.

Football is his designer drug, and it is ruinously expensive.

The £75million, lavished on Fernando Torres and David Luiz, is merely a down payment on redemption.

Moyes, meanwhile, will do cold turkey in the transfer market.

He has a coach’s eye for under-appreciated talent, and convincing strength of character.

He knows he must make strategic sacrifices to rebuild his team.

Jack Rodwell, coveted by Manchester United, will raise £15million.

Marouane Fellaini is being touted as the answer to one of Chelsea’s problems.

“If you’ve got money, great” Moyes rationalised. “If not, you do the best you can”

As philosophies go, it is a peerless insurance against insanity.

His nine years at Goodison Park have taken on aspects of a prison sentence.

He is not seeking parole.

But Chelsea need a football man of his substance, and fast.

Some boys are swamped by a tsunami of tears. Others disguise despair with stiffened shoulders, quivering lips or thousand-yard stares.
Good coaches, dealing with the professional duty of destroying a dream, are dry-throated, moist eyed.
Their guts are scoured by guilt.
They know the truth – the boy will not become a professional footballer – hurts.
Hideously.
They don’t want to think about what happens in the car on the way home, when a father must console a son who is convinced he is worthless.
I admire youth coaches. They are undervalued and, in many cases, under-resourced.
They care.
I know what happens when a bad coach does his worst.
His boys are nameless, faceless. I’ve seen them released in batches, without apology or explanation.
The human chemists of the Premier League create the illusion of opportunity for boys from the ages of nine to eighteen.
And now, in the name of progress, they want to harvest them from the age of four.
They’ve called it an Elite Player Performance Plan.
It’s a hotch-potch of genuine insight, under-graduate generalisations, and artfully disguised greed.
Strip away the veneer of boarding schools, specialist coaches and educational psychologists.
Ignore, for a moment, the rallying call to the flag, and England’s need to produce technically gifted, tactically literate, players like Jack Wilshere.
Concentrate on the limited horizons of 20 clubs, who have a vested interest in keeping Football League counterparts below stairs, like Victorian scullery maids.
Football needs fresh meat for the grinder, as cheaply as possible.
Top clubs want to take more, and give less, through weighted reform of a flawed tribunal system.
They want to take boys away from their communities, deny them the chance to play other sports.
Parents are part of the problem. Many magnify the pressure of expectation.
They live their lives through their sons, become paranoid and manipulative.
Around 10,000 boys are in the Academy system. Around one per cent will end up playing football for a living.
Two thirds of those given a professional contract at 18, are out of the game by the time they are 21.
Even the special ones, like Raheem Sterling, are quickly dehumanised by their talent
He’s had some half term week, away from Rainhill High School on Merseyside.
On Monday he scored five goals as Liverpool reached the quarter finals of the FA Youth Cup.
On Tuesday he was trending on Twitter, a You Tube sensation.
On Wednesday he was on a plane to Prague, as part of the first team squad.
On Thursday he awoke to headlines, hailing a “Superkid”.
On Friday, he was confirmed as Kenny Dalglish’s pet project.
I had to smile.
I thought back to last year.
He and my nephew played, jumpers for goalposts, in the park.
Two days later, he was sold, by QPR, for £500,000.
He went from a 15-year-old kid to a commodity, worth up to £5million.
He will need the inner strength he has inherited from his mother.
She brought up Raheem, one of four children, on her own.
He is a respectful young man, uniquely vulnerable.
I see echoes of John Barnes in his speed, and sinuous running.
He already has a better football brain than Theo Walcott.
He could be the winner, who unintentionally tramples on others’ dreams.
The circle of football life is never squared.
Here’s an everyday irony.
My son, released at 16, is now an aspiring age group coach at a League club.
He knows what’s coming, and it will not be nice.
He will tell rejected boys he has experienced their pain.
It won’t make the slightest difference.

David Hunt had enjoyed better days off.

He’d arrived home at 1.58am, after a four hour coach journey from Wrexham.

The children woke him as dawn broke.

He mislaid his mobile phone during a mid-morning visit to the playground.

His afternoon was spent chasing a plumber to mend a sudden leak.

Don’t even mention the joys of the weekly supermarket shop.

Yet things were not all bad. He was given some earplugs for his one year old.

They’ll be needed on Saturday, when Daddy plays for Crawley Town at Old Trafford.

Manchester United’s multi-millionaires are members of the same trade union, the PFA.

But they inhabit a different planet.

The FA Cup offers Everyman pros like Hunt the chance to share the same stage.

The Cup is 139 years old, and showing its age.

Reformers want to introduce seeding, to spice it up.

They want to ban replays, play the final on Saturday evenings, or in midweek.

The Plutocrats of the Premier League barely bother to disguise their apathy.

Crawley haven’t captured the imagination, because they are non-League’s answer to Manchester City.

Yet Hunt has paid his dues, in a career that has taken him from Crystal Palace to Crawley, via Leyton Orient, Northampton, Shrewsbury and Brentford.

His excitement is tangible.

He sent me a picture of him on the pitch at Old Trafford last night.

His arms were spread wide. His smile would have serviced the National Grid.

The magic of the Cup was alive and well.

Raheem Sterling.

Remember the name.

He’s 16, still at school.

He announced himself at Anfield on the day Ronaldo retired.

Football’s circle of life continued.

Sterling scored five of Liverpool’s nine goals as they reached the quarter finals of the FA Youth Cup.

There were immediate, inevitable, comparisons with Theo Walcott.

I thought of John Barnes.

With greater pace, a more convincing work ethic.

And…..

This is not a direct comparison…..

But three of Sterling’s goals carried echoes of Lionel Messi.

He cut in from either wing.

His close control taunted defenders, invited the challenge.

Slaloms were completed by powerfully struck, angled drives.

Sterling wore the number seven shirt, a heavy item of equipment.

At Anfield that jersey is associated with legends.

It’s been on the backs of Kevin Keegan, Kenny Dalglish, Peter Beardsley, Steve McManaman.

I’m told Dalglish has taken a personal interest in the starlet.

Signed from QPR for an initial £600,000, the fee could rise to £5million.

Hey presto, he’s in line to make his first team debut in tonight’s Europa League tie against Sparta Prague.

It’s a precarious business.

Sterling may have his head turned.

He is prey to the inconsistency of youth, the expectation of strangers.

Pieces like this should carry a health warning.

Like Ronaldo, Sterling may eventually be betrayed by his body.

But, in the meantime, he can dream.

If a certain lager did son-in-laws, they would be like Theo Walcott.

He’s courteous, intelligent, understated.

He’s diligent, reliable, exquisitely talented.

In short, he’s too good, for his own good.

Bambi needs to bare his teeth.

He needs to exude arrogance and aggression.

He needs to dominate, dictate.

Tonight, against Barcelona, would be a fine time to start.

No one doubts he is a once-in-a-generation player.

His pace terrorises, but the end product often disappoints.

A manager to whom I spoke likened Walcott to a shaken bottle of champagne.

“When you pop the cork, the stuff sprays ¬everywhere” he said.

“Most of it is ¬wasted because there’s no control.”

He’s an intriguing case study.

Walcott didn’t play football seriously until the age of 12.

That’s the outer limit for a boy – reliably to acquire technical skills.

Most develop these from the age of seven, and plateau when they reach physical maturity.

He’s a fast learner, but physically vulnerable.

He could be a match winner against Barca.

He rattled them last year, as a match-changing substitute.

Barca press high up the pitch, and their full backs bomb on.

Walcott has the pace, and eye for space, to get in behind them.

They will seek to deny him possession.

If they fail, Walcott will make grown men, rather than matrons, swoon.
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