Bobby Robson will be unveiled as England's caretaker manager next week, with a brief to lead his country again for three games, the Mirror reports this morning.
According to the newspaper Sven Goran Erikkson is the coach the English FA have made their top target for the longer term.
Meanwhile Bryan Robson yesterday took his spending to almost £79 million sterling since becoming manager of Middlesbrough in 1994 after completing the £8 million signing of Ugo Ehiogu from Aston Villa.
Ehiogu (27), signed a five-year contract and will make his debut at Charlton this afternoon. The fee for the central defender, capped once by England, is a club record, although Robson is adamant Ehiogu is worth every penny.
"There's no risk at all spending that kind of money," he said. "Ugo has proved himself to be one of the best central defenders in England over the last five years. He's good enough to play for his country."
The club where Ehiogu started his career, West Brom, will also profit from the deal, collecting £3 million of the transfer fee having negotiated a sell-on clause when he moved to Villa nine seasons ago.
"I felt I was going a bit stale at Villa and I needed a fresh start," Ehiogu said yesterday. "I didn't get on too well with John Gregory; over the last few months I have been the lowest I've ever been. You can understand it when you're not playing just for football reasons, but that wasn't the problem for me. It was a clash of personalities as well."
As if to prove the point, the Villa manager took one last swipe at his former player. "I always thought when he talked of playing for a bigger and better club where he could win things and enhance his England career that he was talking about Arsenal or Manchester United or someone like that," he said.
Cork City yesterday completed the signing of the highly-rated Waterford United goalkeeper Michael Devine, but the club also announced that they were losing the services of young left-sided player Damien Delaney who has joined Leicester City.
Former Bohemians players Maurice O'Driscoll (Athlone Town), Tommy Byrne and Donal Broughan (both Dundalk) as well as Avery John (Shelbourne) all joined up with their new clubs this week.
RTE, meanwhile, have reached agreement with the National League on a programme of matches to be covered live over the coming weeks with three games scheduled to be covered live before Chistmas and another five to feature in an extended highlights format on Network 2.
The live games - all Friday night Dublin derbies - will be Bohemians against Shamrock Rovers (November 3rd), Shelbourne against St Patrick's Athletic (November 24th) and Bohemians against Shelbourne (December 8th).
