The Archive

Tom Davies looks at three more clubs in crisis

One of the genuinely encouraging success stories of recent seasons has been Stockport County, rescued by a fans’ takeover three years ago, promoted via the League Two play-offs last year and well placed in League One until a recent slump. However, the realities of running a club to budget could yet overwhelm County, with lingering debts threatening to push the club into administration before the end of the season and a familiar search for investment becoming the priority.

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In 1989 football’s future was uncertain. Roger Titford looks at how Hillsbrough began a process which created a safer but less visceral experience for fans

Just as they had been in 1969, the 1989 FA Cup semi-finals were scheduled for simultaneous 3pm kick-offs at Villa Park and Hillsborough. Twenty years on in 2009 they will be both be at Wembley on different days, live on TV and under the banner of “E.on, bringing families and football together”. If you can remember 1969 and 1989 you will read a hidden sub-text in that banner; something like “keeping young blokes and football apart”.

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The Damned United proves Cloughie was perfect for the big screen, says Terry Staunton

It’s not often that a film’s most noticeable, perhaps only, stumbling block is that its star is actually too good, but it’s arguably the case with Michael Sheen’s turn as Brian Clough in The Damned United. Sheen is, as we all know, the go-to guy du jour for screen portrayals of real people, his stock ever rising after taking on, in the last five years alone, Tony Blair (twice), Kenneth Williams and David Frost.

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Enrico Preziosi has faced bankruptcy and a match-fixing conviction, but Paul Virgo finds he’s still a hero to Genoa fans

For someone supposedly banned from professional football, Enrico Preziosi is not doing too badly as chairman of Genoa. This season Italy’s oldest club have outshone Sampdoria, something of a rare occurrence since their upstart neighbours formed in 1946, and at the time of writing they were challenging AS Roma and Fiorentina for Serie A’s final Champions League slot.

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After a winter of mud and ice Ligue 1 sides are eyeing a permanent solution to bad pitches, reports James Eastham

When French sports daily L’Equipe described the Emirates Stadium pitch as “magnificent” the day after Arsenal’s 1-0 win over Roma in the Champions League last 16, you could almost hear the envy in their voice. Ligue 1 has just emerged from a winter in which the dreadful playing surfaces made a mockery of dozens of games. The word bachee (tent) entered the sporting lexicon as French clubs erected great big canvases over their pitches in futile bids to keep the frost at bay. When the covers came off just before kick-off, referees would usually decide pitches were playable, but the evidence in front of our eyes said otherwise.

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