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14 November 2008 ~
It's always nice when a public figure who knows nothing about football attempts to show that they follow what they would no doubt call “the beautiful game”. So it was this week when the leader of the opposition, “Dave” Cameron, piped up with the suggestion that the four home nations’ Under-21 teams should play off to decide who represents Great Britain at the 2012 Olympic football tournament. It’s such a poor idea that the football authorities have scarcely even bothered to ridicule it. So we’ll do it instead – run along Dave.
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 Badge of the week
GAIS are a Swedish side based in Gothenburg with a strangely non-pictorial club crest. Deciphering the meaning behind the symbols here would take a team of MI5 codebreakers five months of punishing analysis in a windowless room. It would be nice if there were simply a picture of a ship and a revolver and then we could say to ourselves: “Aha, this team is based in a city that has among its chief industrial traditions shipbuilding and extortion.” Instead we are faced with a cold enigma. It could be something to do with freemasonry, of course, with the dark inner circle alluding to the All-Seeing Eye, an occult image also clearly visible on the US $1 bill, the logo of the US Government’s Surveillance & Information System and the closing credits of Loose Women. Or there could be a more innocent explanation – the flurry of arrows representing the leading goalscorer’s method of moving from offside-but-inactive to active-and-onside in the second phase. Clarity is apparently not the main objective here. Cameron Carter
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from Stephen Lawrence
“On Tuesday, November 11 I was present at the Leonard Cohen concert at the Bournemouth International Centre. I know that Harry Redknapp has had some gloomy moments in his managerial career but couldn't believe my eyes when I noticed him in the interval busily chatting away on his mobile phone. Is he really a fan of the Canadian singer/poet, I asked myself. He didn't make it in for the second half of the performance, so either the bard wasn't up to Harry's expectations or he'd had a better offer than listening to one of the world's greatest living singer songwriters.”
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Long Players The Glorious History Of Football’s Full Length Recordings  Cantona – The Album Various Artists
This is an unusual football album in that at least four of the tracks make for acceptable listening. Raymond Bizarre’s Introduction weaves in the statutory crowd noise with Gallic folk instruments, French lyrics and lots of laconically delivered ooh-la-la-las. Cantona Superstar by Her is an impassioned torch song declaring its unqualified love for the former United No 7. Eric (Please Don’t Go) by Half Time Oranges is another love plea, although a more introverted indie-pop number with murmured vocals. And Captain Sensible’s Have You Heard About Eric? is a well constructed reflection of the Crystal Palace fan assault, even if, from a musical point of view, it’s very much a first-take mail-in.
If there weren’t so many filler tracks of the K-Stand drawling terrace numbers you’d only want to hear if you were in the stadium, drunk, and a convert to the cause, it might have shaped up as a decent concept album. The unsurprising theme pretty much throughout is that Eric, flaws and all, is a genius, which you can argue with, but which you don’t need to hear repeatedly in song form, interspersed with the inevitable over-excited commentary clips. Unless you’re susceptible to idolising well paid sportsmen who are good at their jobs. Which many of us may do to the extent of buying the replica shirt. But would we buy the LP too? Ian Plenderleith (with thanks to Chris Taylor)
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from Huw Davies
“After his abject performance at QPR v Cardiff City, referee Lee Probert seems to have had some adjustments made to his Wikipedia page.”
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The WSC Archive is growing rapidly, so each week the Howl will revisit an article related to a current topic. The debate over video technology has been rumbling on for a number of years, as Barney Ronay’s piece from January 2007 shows.
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This week in history ~ Division One, November 14, 1953
Results
Wolves closed to within a point of leaders West Brom after a goal from winger Jimmy Mullen secured a 1-0 win at Molineux in front of 56,590. Mullen was one of ten players in the Wolves squad to win England caps. He had made history as the first England substitute, replacing the injured Stan Mortensen against Belgium in 1950.
The Black Country rivals contested the title throughout the season. Wolves went top in early December, only to be overtaken by West Brom two months later. The return fixture on April 3 proved decisive with another 1-0 win for Wolves, who went on to take their first League championship by four points. Manager Stan Cullis's side won two more titles in the 1950s.
Jimmy Glazzard scored both of newly promoted Huddersfield's goals in their 2-0 win over Sheffield Wed and went to be the League's top scorer with 29 goals as his side finished third. Second was West Brom's Ronnie Allen with 27 goals, plus another two in the FA Cup final, a 3-2 defeat of Preston. Allen later managed both West Brom and Wolves.
Portsmouth slipped into the bottom two after their home defeat by Preston but they rallied to finish 14th. Their squad contained five players who'd taken part in the consecutive League title-winning teams of 1948-50. The second relegation spot was decided on the final day of the season, Middlesbrough going down after a 3-1 defeat at Arsenal while Sheffield United saved themselves thanks to 2-1 home win over Villa.
Liverpool finished bottom after a club record 14 games without a win between December and April. Their side beaten 3-2 at Sunderland was missing several regulars including future managers Phil Taylor, who preceded Bill Shankly, and Bob Paisley, plus John Peel's boyhood hero, Scottish striker Billy Liddell.
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WSC Trivia ~ No 41
We registered wsc.co.uk as a domain name well over a decade ago, in the days of dial-up connections. Having not expected to get much response, we were greatly surprised when emails flooded in. Most of them turned out to be from textile mills in India trying to contact the Wakefield Shirt Company, who were then the owners of wsc.com. Should we have gone ahead with buying all that cotton at wholesale prices? Possibly, yes.
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Stickipedia
A mine of information constructed from sticker cards
 Derek Brownbill, Liverpool Wonderful World of Soccer Stars, 1974-75
Think of the Liverpool forwards of the mid-1970s. There was Keegan, Toshack, Heighway and... Derek Brownbill. Deputising for John Toshack, 19-year-old Derek made his one and only Liverpool appearance at Birmingham City on September 15, 1973, a moment captured in a photo used in the following season's football card album. He was substituted – indeed this picture may be the moment when he was hauled off – with his replacement Brian Hall going on to score Liverpool's late equaliser in a 1-1 draw. Derek spent another year with Liverpool's reserves, often as the strike partner of another teenager David Fairclough (who was to score several important first team goals as a “supersub”) before moving on to Port Vale then Wigan. By his mid-20s Derek was playing non-League football and went on to have a long managerial career at that level; he is currently director of football at Warrington Town of the Unibond League Division One North. Apparently the surname is a variation on Brownhill rather than anything to do with ducks.
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