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Just nine per cent of Premier League spectators are aged 24 or under. Sean Barnes asks whether the death of the football-going tradition among young people will mean a struggle to fill grounds in future

When football was invented by Rupert Murdoch in 1992, I was only five years old. Fast forward 15 years through the boom of English football – which we all know too well – and the story of my puberty – which, fortunately, no one knows at all – and here we are, footballers on seven-figure wages and English chairmen the exception to the rule of the modernised Premier League. Other well documented pitfalls include the increasing gap between club and supporter, the sanitisation of the match-day atmosphere and the decline of the ­working‑class fan. One problem that doesn’t get much attention, however, is my problem, and the problems of people like me. My generation may well be the last to appreciate fully the ups and downs of supporting a football club. The game needs to face up to its problem with the lack of English youth. And by that I don’t mean footballers, I mean fans.

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The other United are doing well on the pitch despite the Glazers’ takeover and media interest in FC United is waning. The breakaway club are having a rougher ride this season, as Ashley Shaw reports

It began so well. FC United’s first season was accompanied by such sympathetic media coverage that even rival fans supported the brave stand made by those prepared to give up the glamour of the ­Premiership for life in football’s basement.

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Some football sites want to tell you what you really need to know – but this month Ian Plenderleith celebrates those which go in the opposite direction and champion the glorious irrelevance of it all

 “Fascinating but spectacularly pointless” is a label that can be applied to many things in football – mascots, Alan Parry, the Rumbelows Sprint Challenge, Danny Wal­lace’s runs down the wing. To celebrate the game’s abund­ant tapestry of interesting but superfluous facts, people and memorabilia, On The Web this month unscientifically nom­inates a list (what could be more fascinating but pointless than a list?) of the top four Great But Useless websites.

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Dear WSC
Reading your letters page over recent months has led me to the conclusion that many of your correspondents are obsessive on subjects that are essentially trivial. I feel strongly that this valuable space should be reserved for people with something to say. Incidentally, I feel I should point out that in your article on World Cup nicknames (WSC No 137) you refer to Bam Bam as Fred Flintstone’s son, when he was in fact Barney Rubble’s son.
Alastair Walker, Farnsfield

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Brazil and Japan's recent international friendly was less about football and more about a chance to promote a well-known sports brand, says Sam Wallace

The ‘summer tour’ is normally associated with a gentle amble through the locals’ defence in a country otherwise too hot to play football. West Bromwich Albion once made it to China, only for Bryan Robson to muse that he’d rather they’d gone somewhere warmer. More recently Manchester United visited post-apartheid South Africa, where Ryan Giggs identified the clement weather as the highlight rather than the fact that he was met (and recognized) by Nelson Mandela.

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