The new England manager Roy Hodgson hopes to speak to Rio Ferdinand within the next week to gauge the Manchester United defender's feelings about playing for England at the European Championships next month.

It is almost 16 years since Stuart Pearce scored his penalty against Germany in the shoot-out at the end of England's semi-final at Euro '96, a brief moment of exhilaration in what turned out to be another famous disappointment chalked up by the national team.

City only criticised because of big spending, insists club's hard-tackling Dutch midfielder Nigel de Jong

Professional Footballers Association chief executive Gordon Taylor wants more black British players to be given a fair chance to enter management.

Kenny Miller has accepted with honour the Scotland captaincy for the first time in his career – and will use the former England captain Paul Ince as his role model.

Former United hardman is working his way up again from the bottom and has taken Ferguson's advice on dealing with modern stars: don't give them an inch. Jon Culley meets Paul Ince

Sunderland 1 Notts County 2: Bruce offers no excuses for upset as his team of internationals fall to a spirited League One side

Paul Ince has been appointed as Notts County's new manager until the summer of 2014.

Norwich City 1 Middlesbrough 0

No doubt you've read enough by now about Jonathan Franzen and this year's Great American Novel, Freedom. So, what of next year's Great American Novel: The Pale King, the posthumous, unfinished final work by Franzen's friend, David Foster Wallace, who took his own life in 2008? Due for publication in April 2011, The Pale King is about the "soul-crushing tedium" endured by workers at a tax-return processing centre. Wallace struggled with the work and, Franzen told me at the launch party for Freedom, "If he'd finished it I think he'd be alive today. Boredom is a tough subject to tackle in a novel and, arguably, Dave died of boredom." Franzen hasn't read the full text of his friend's last book, but admits such challenging material is unlikely to enjoy the same commercial success as Freedom. Then again, Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times' lead book reviewer, whom Franzen calls "the stupidest person in New York" has declared herself a fan of Dave's work – so perhaps everyone else will jump on the bandwagon.

The factual accuracy of The Social Network, the film about the founding of Facebook, is disputed by those it depicts. Now it seems that those involved in the movie took little trouble to learn about its subject.

MK Dons have today made Karl Robinson the youngest manager in the Football League after naming the 29-year-old as Paul Ince's successor.

First black manager in league hailed as 'pioneering figure' in anti-racism fight

Keith Alexander's family will be asked to decide whether Macclesfield's League Two match at Hereford on Saturday should go ahead following his shock death.