Crossley was said to be attracting the interest of the Scotland manager, Craig Brown, last season, although Frank Clark, the Forest manager, discounted such stories, which he claimed were affecting the form of the Barnsley- born goalkeeper. Now the 27-year-old Crossley has revealed that he is also qualified to play for Wales as well as England, and Saunders has expressed his wish to play alongside his club keeper in the national side as Wales attempt to qualify for the 1998 World Cup finals."I don't know what Mark wants to do, but I am trying to get him to play for Wales and I will be having a word with Bobby Gould," Saunders said."I'm sure we would love to have him playing for us He's in the top bracket in the Premier League. In his nine years at Arsenal, they won the championship twice, the FA Cup and League Cup "double", and the European Cup-Winners' Cup.Yet his teams were also labelled "boring", and despite his reputation as a disciplinarian there were problems with drink-driving (Tony Adams), alcoholism and gambling (Paul Merson) and spitting (Wright). Before his sacking, 19 months ago, some observers felt Graham had become a lame- duck manager. Unfortunately he couldn't."Graham is expected to try to lure Stewart Houston from his caretaker manager's role at Highbury as his No 2.

Some of Caspian's pounds 10m kitty for signings may go on Graham's former Arsenal charges, Steve Bould and Ian Wright the most likely targets."I've got to stamp my way of working on my staff and players, and bring in some new blood," Graham said. "Sometimes people get stale at their job, and it needs an infusion of new ideas."I'd like us to be challenging for the championship and go for trophies I did that in my last job. He added: "When we took over we looked at Howard Wilkinson's record and wanted to stick with him But it didn't work out It was a case of seeing whether he could turn things round. "We discussed what happened to him," he said, "but decided it wasn't relevant."Chris Akers, the chairman of the Caspian Group which bought control of Leeds during the summer, said they had acted quickly because they did not want "a void".

Graham has accepted a two-and-a-half- year contract on a salary of pounds 300,000. He said he had been "dying to get back, but obviously to the right job, somewhere near the top of the League and where the expectations are big".Fotherby admitted the board had considered Graham's self-confessed folly in accepting "unsolicited gifts" of pounds 425,000 from Hauge, a Norwegian agent. He will oversee training today and study videos of their recent games before Saturday's visit to Coventry. Bill Fotherby, the Leeds chairman, insisted he had not met the 51-year- old Scot until 7am that morning. Barely 24 hours after Howard Wilkinson's tenure was terminated at a news conference, the former Arsenal manager told a similar gathering of his determination to challenge for the championship again. Graham, whose year-long ban from football ended in June, had been out of the game for 14 months since being found guilty of misconduct in the Rune Hauge "bungs" affair. Substitutes not used: Stadler, Villa, Kaessmam (gk).Referee: U Meier (Switzerland).More reports, results, page 25. With almost indecent haste, Leeds United confirmed George Graham as their new manager yesterday.

Wright's consolation goal two minutes from time will surely make little difference to the ultimate outcome of the tie.Arsenal (4-3-1-2): Seaman; Winterburn, Linighan, Keown, Dixon; Merson, Platt, Parlour (Bould, 79); Bergkamp (Helder, 18); Wright, Hartson. Substitutes not used: Morrow, Shaw, Lukic (gk).Borussia Monchengladbach (4-4-2): Kamps; Andersson, Neun, Fournier, Passlack; Hochstatter, Lupescu, Schneider, Nielsen (Wynhoff, 73); Juskowiak (Kastenmaier, 85), Effenberg. Opponents in European competition are not noted for their charity, and the home side's humiliation was complete with nine minutes remaining.Christian Hochstatter's free-kick from the left appeared to be dropping amid three defenders, but Stefan Passlack rose above them all to head home. Mostly, the visitors were content to defend in numbers, confident that Arsenal's attractive approach rarely developed into a serious threat. Glenn Helder, in particular, was guilty of several wasteful crosses from the left when strikers were waiting in the middle.The lack of invention up front was bad enough, but Arsenal's frailty at the back was unforgivable. Arsenal's third recovery from a two-goal deficit in as many matches was almost completed 10 minutes later when Wright, put through by Merson, placed a careful shot past Kamps which shaved the wrong side of the post.By now, Effenberg was often a lone and neglected figure up front, though still capable of holding play up when Borussia did venture forward. Instead of a shot, his simple ball sprang Juskowiak through the off-side trap and his side-foot shot past Seaman was a formality.Worse followed within a minute of the restart.