The Archive

An American website could herald a new way of completely digesting football, as Ian Plenderleith describes

Looking back on historical sporting events, how much information do we really need to know? A California-based website called Match Analysis has been using its specially tailored software to provide detailed touch-by-touch breakdowns of football games, mainly to professional US coaches, for the past five years. Now it wants to expand that service to fans keen to focus on each kick, slice, header or fumble by every player.

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The Lions' share of football glory has been fairly minimal down the  years and pre-season hopes were low, while Carlisle were play-off semi-finalists in May. Yet there has been a reversal of fortunes since August, even if a good run for Kenny Jackett's Millwall has been punctuated with nasty defeats. David Stubbs reports

As I enter The Den, the strains of Sonny and Cher’s I Got You Babe resound around the stadium from a PA system so tinny they could be better off making their announcements from the one at nearby South Bermondsey station and hoping the wind carries them. The cine-worm of Groundhog Day immediately squirms to mind – that was the song Bill Murray woke up to every morning. This being a cold evening – all gloves, big cups of coffee and visible breath – you half expect Murray and Andie McDowell to come running out of nowhere throwing snowballs at you. 

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Michel Platini is trying to level out football’s financial playing fields. It’s a big task, as Ben Lyttleton reports

As Michel Platini knows only too well, timing is everything in politics. It is one of the reasons why, of late, we have heard an increase in the UEFA president’s complaints about one of his biggest bugbears, the signing of foreign players at a young age. Platini wants to implement Sepp Blatter’s plan of a six-plus-five quota to the game, which would limit foreign players but currently does not conform to European employment laws.

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Supporters Direct is gaining momentum and credibility, with friends in high places. Adam Brown reports on their annual conference

A cabinet minister making a keynote address, a speech by the chair of the FA and even the shadow sports minister in on the act – it’s hardly what you would expect at a conference for several hundred fan activists. But this signalled just how far Supporters Direct, the ­government-funded agency promoting fan ownership of clubs, has travelled as it held its 2008 conference.

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Wolves are the quintessential Championship side, in the second tier for two decades, bar one season. Coventry used to be the epitome of top-flight survivors. Both are casting their eyes upwards this autumn, though neither is exactly confident, writes Josh Widdicombe

At 2.15pm in the car park Molineux shares with a 24-hour Asda, a sprinkling of people amble away from their cars, the odd old-gold replica shirt peeking out from under a coat the only clues that they aren’t here for the weekly shop. The loudest shouts come from the raffle-ticket sellers and the strongest evidence of pride in the home colours can be found on the metalwork in and around the ground, an area painted on the Midas principle: anything that can be gold, should be gold.

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