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24 October 2008 ~
It’s been a while since a club chairman has called for the creation of Premier League II. The almost annual tradition has been upheld this week by Bolton's Phil Gartside who wants two divisions of 18 clubs with no relegation to the Football League. Apparently this would “even things out and make it more competitive” although Mr Gartside doesn't explain how. He wants to give the impression of having done some research, though: “We have already got to the situation where the three clubs that go down from the Premier League are usually the three that come up.” This statement would be more accurate if “usually” were to be replaced with “never”. But when you have a vision you don't want to be troubled by facts and figures.
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 Badge of the week
This is, in fact, how not to do it. Union Luxembourg have managed to make their club crest more boring than a regional news bulletin. Dispensing altogether with pictures, their badge displays the letters U, L and S in an ungodly fusion of sharp, brutally pointed lines. It hurts the eye if you look upon it for too long. Unusually for something that is so simple and basic, clarity is also compromised – it is like staring at an optical illusion until you see something so unlike what you’re expecting (in this instance an S-faced hag waving at you before she dies of malnutrition) that you forget what you’re meant to be looking at and also how you came to be here in the first place. If Union Luxembourg want people to contemplate the void and so encounter a new reality behind the veil of the Clamorous Everyday, then they should come out and say so. Putting this out only makes the world a slightly uglier place and confuses people who like to see footballs and lions. Cameron Carter
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Which two former players would you recruit for “an exciting initiative to tackle the problem of IT illiteracy through football”? BT and the Football Foundation have opted for Peter Shilton and Martin Keown. Earlier this week they helped to launch Communicating for Success which involves the creation of IT study centres at sports clubs around the country. Peter and Martin demonstrated how they will be “tackling digital exclusion” like this. We've signed up already.
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Long Players The Glorious History Of Football’s Full Length Recordings  Let’s Have A Party Gazza And Friends
I used to live with a friend who was slow to clean the house. For his birthday he requested Elton John’s Greatest Hits. On the big day myself and his other flatmates gave him a variety of parcels, all of which turned out to be household cleaning material. Last of all was an LP, which he clearly thought would be his “proper” present. But it wasn’t. Instead of Mr John’s most successful pop compositions, we gave him the just released Let’s Have A Party LP by Gazza And Friends.
This five-second gag was ultimately at my own expense, as I’m probably the only person, living or dead, who went into a record shop and paid the full £5.99 for it. At the time, in late 1990, Gazza was a national hero being milked for every last goofy smile. This utterly worthless and cynical offering features Gazza on only three songs, one of which was the single Fog On The Tyne that saw Lindisfarne wheeled out for a final payday. Their body language in the video is instructive: “We’ll do owt for cash, us.” Watch it and weep at its portent of a shamefully wasted career.
“Whatever I do in life has to be fun,” state Gazza’s pensive sleeve-notes. In between his colicky raps (Geordie Boys times out at less than two minutes, possibly due to a studio strike) we hear Elvis, Motown and, bizarrely, Gilbert O’Sullivan medleys with no aural sign that the player is still in the studio. Not even a belch. But there’s more than one way to have fun at a party, so perhaps he was off sorting the guests out with drinks. Ian Plenderleith
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The Daily Mirror has been covering football for over a century but they seem to have got the measure of the typical supporter a long time ago. Barney Ronay spotted this in a copy of the Mirror from February 1907, entitled Why Are Football Crowds So Melancholy?
“Suppose there were an artist of Hogarth's genius alive to-day, and he were to study crowds at football matches as Hogarth studied them in theatres, and then, to give us a picture, what sort of expressions would he put on their faces? He would show us faces devoid of any expression at all; gloomy faces; uninterested faces; faces not lit up by array of gladness or excitement; faces whose settled melancholy fills one with profound depression, and makes one ask in amazement: ‘Why are they there?’ What a dreary time they must have to affect them with such long, heavy countenances, such empty expressions, such sad, pathetic, unseeing eyes.
Nearly all are young men, who ought to be playing themselves. If they were, they would look different altogether. It is standing still to watch that makes the vital organs sluggish, and gives that dreadful look of pale-faced pusillanimity and pessimism. The strange thing is that, when a goal is kicked for their side, all these flat-featured countenances will be distorted by sudden frenzy. There will be yelling, stamping, throwing up of caps. Then the set, dull look will return. Once more they will relapse into glumness.
Their lives are so empty of interest that they will remain glued to one spot for hours on the chance of getting one or two such moments during the afternoon. Surely there must be something wrong with the social conditions which drive masses of men to snatch at such poor little imitation excitements as these. No sound race could take its pleasure so sadly.”.
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 from Anthony Mannion
“I've been living in Chicago for the past year and attending occasional Chicago Fire MLS games. Anyway, it seems I’ve been quite lucky. I must have been to four or five games before I spotted this warning sign. Obviously now I take extra care, but I dread to think what might have happened.”
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WSC Trivia ~ No 38
Some collective nouns submitted by readers in WSC 40, 42 and 43:
a stable of useless centre-forwards
a spongiform of matchday caterers
an intolerance of season ticket holders
a subsistence of on-loan players
an exorbitance of replica shirts
an utmost confidence of sacked managers
an absence of ladies’ lavatories
a rip-off of programme sellers
an invertebrate of Sports Ministers
a regression of fanzine editors
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Stickipedia
A mine of information constructed from sticker cards
 Hugh Sproat, Ayr United Panini 1978
“I'm a punk rocker,” Hugh Sproat explained to Shoot after he'd taken the field for an SPL game wearing a razor blade as an earring, which he had to remove before being allowed to play. Sproat, a milkman before he joined Ayr in 1974, had already made himself a fan favourite for his choice of goalkeeping jerseys when playing either of the Old Firm. He normally wore red for Ayr but changed to green for matches against Rangers and blue for Celtic. Sproat's heyday was a few years before videoing of matches became widespread so there is relatively little footage of him, but was also known for dribbling with the ball or heading it when he might have punched or caught. For all the eccentricities he was highly rated as a goalkeeper, making over 200 appearances for Ayr and a further 150 for Motherwell.
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