Quotes of the week

"Just because the fans told him to **** off he awarded the penalty to Rangers. It was incredible, I have never seen anything like it." Former Celtic player

Paolo Di Canio sheds no tears for referee Hugh Dallas after the Old Firm match.

"It's not been easy for me, I no longer have my son (having lost a custody battle), I've lost my mother and I have broken up with my wife, but I've never been the kind of person to seek excuses."

Celtic's Stephane Mahe, who was the first to be sent off against Rangers, seeks, em, excuses for losing his head.

"Now that I've seen what an English education did for Paul Gascoigne, I'm sure I made the right decision."

Former Manchester United player Norman Whiteside, in an interview with the London Independent, grateful that he finished his education in Belfast and not Manchester, as the club had asked him to do.

"I feel like my personality has become more substantial and, from my misfortune, I have taken away positive things. I have done my own psychoanalysis - like the Tibetans I have learned to understand myself, even if you never fully can."

Arsenal mid-fielder Emmanuel Petit, interviewed in GQ magazine, sounding like a right eejit.

"As he came off afterwards he told me that he had got a World Cup winners medal but I told him that I'd got a few medals of my own from my 800 or so games. Centre-halves used to be made of different stuff in my day."

Leeds manager David O'Leary on his brush with Chelsea's Frank Leboeuf, who he accused of feigning injury after a tackle by Jonathan Woodgate, after last Wednesday's game between the teams.

"Instead of celebrating a Chelsea victory that ensured our place in the European Cup on Wednesday night, I found myself in the tunnel at Stamford Bridge being called a `cheating French bastard'. It was not the way that I wanted to conclude a successful evening, but David O'Leary, the Leeds United manager, had other ideas."

Leboeuf on the same encounter.

"We're like a bunch of individuals who don't hurt enough and a lot of them are rubber dinghy men. The ship's going down, they're saying I'll go for help - rubber dinghy men. I think the inmates have been running this club for too long."

Blackburn manager Brian Kidd after Saturday's defeat by Nottingham Forest. Is the pressure getting to him, d'you think?

"English football is great but top players in world football move around these days, and if you want to be considered a top player you have to travel."

Liverpool 'goalkeeper' David James on his plans to move to a continental European club next season. ("Top players in world football"? Crikey).