"Hopefully things could change."Meanwhile, along the south coast at Brighton, plans for a new stadium alongside a shopping complex at Toads Hole Valley have been rejected by the local council. The beleaguered Seagulls could still end up ground sharing with Portsmouth.. He is rumoured to be keen on a move to a British club, and United are among the clubs believed to be interested in the player, valued at about pounds 10m.Celtic and Alan Stubbs, their new signing, were yesterday given fines totalling pounds 70,000 by Fifa, world football's governing body, for using an unlicensed agent, Neil Rioch, in the former Bolton defender's transfer to Parkhead.In fining Celtic pounds 42,000 and Stubbs pounds 28,000, Fifa warned the Scottish Premier Division club that any repetition of the indiscretion could lead to a freeze on transfer activities.Arsenal, who have been conspicuous by their lack of activity in the transfer market, have announced a pre-tax loss of more than pounds 3.6m on last season. Quite apart from Gary Pallister, Ryan Giggs, Nicky Butt and now Cole, it looks as if United, who yesterday unveiled their new strip, will also be without their latest signing, Jordi Cruyff, whose clearance papers have been held up at the Spanish FA. "We've been trying non-stop to get his papers but it always seems to be manana over there," Ferguson said.One player who seems sure to be there is Patrick Kluivert, the young Dutch international, for whom Blackburn Rovers yesterday denied making a bid. Now his enforced absence provides his young deputy, Paul Scholes, with the opportunity to establish himself in the side.Cole will not be the only absentee today when United face Ajax in the four-team Umbro tournament at Nottingham. The pounds 7m signing from Newcastle - the club who eventually secured the services of Shearer - had originally been thought to be suffering from bronchitis but that diagnosis turned out to be incorrect. It is yet another blow for the 24-year-old, whose career since his move from St James' Park two seasons ago has been blighted by indifferent form and injury.

His goal touch deserted him alarmingly, yet Alex Ferguson persevered with the player until, at the climax to the season, in the FA Cup final at Wembley, the United manager was forced to substitute him.Had Shearer's move to United gone through, Everton were prepared to offer Cole the chance to resurrect his career. Andy Cole has contracted pneumonia and will be out for five weeks, thereby missing the start of the season. The former British record signing had seen his Manchester United career threatened by the possible arrival of Alan Shearer this summer, but now finds himself displaced by illness. In Wales, that is left to the magic circle of opinion-formers, who are apparently reluctant to admit that diversity is no bad thing. But the National Eisteddfod is a reminder that the fact that the inhabitants of these islands make up a yeasty mixture, rather than a homogenised pap, is to be welcomed..

Last year, he forced the right-wing governor of California, Pete Wilson, to apologise for using the term.In a kingdom looking increasingly disunited, to register a distinct identity is not to claim superiority. Rees Lloyd, a California lawyer who runs the grandly titled Welsh-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, is a staunch ally of the country from which his forebears emigrated. "Newspapers that would never use slurs against blacks or Jews insult the Welsh by using the word as a term to mean cheating on debts," he says. Of course, the same could be said about leafy Surrey or Tunbridge Wells and Wallsend or Whitehaven.But in north and south - in Wales, that is - everyone unites in distaste when the doggerel "Taffy is a Welshman/Taffy is a thief/Taffy came to my house/And stole a leg of beef" is trotted out, or when someone is accused of welshing on an undertaking.

Gritty former mining towns like Tredegar, birthplace of Nye Bevan and Neil Kinnock, seem to have little in common with the rural north-west, where the language is overwhelmingly Welsh. And, away from the geography books, it is indeed a curious mixture. Japanese is taught at Cardiff University to 35 students, Welsh to 100.The Welsh Fourth TV Channel (S4C), set up 15 years ago when the veteran nationalist Gwynfor Evans threatened to starve himself to death, collects a subsidy of more than pounds 1m a week - a figure which arouses understandable envy in broadcasting circles elsewhere. The Government's Welsh Language Board energetically promotes the ancient tongue.