Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
They reached European semi-finals in five consecutive seasons in the 1990s, but Paris Saint-Germain are in a sustained slump. Their fans aren't making them very popular either, writes James Eastham
Sympathy for Paris Saint-Germain is often in short supply in France, yet you had to feel a little sorry for them after the 2008 French Cup final. They dominated but ended up losing 1-0 to Lyon in extra time. It was, admitted winning goalkeeper Gregory Coupet, “un joli hold-up”.
This season's Championship has been a strange affair, says Tim Springett
The Championship, we are told, is the fifth richest football league in the world. That doesn’t alter the fact that it will always be the poor relation of the Premier League. The financial gulf between the two continues to grow and one could be forgiven for thinking that Derby’s abject experience this season served as a deterrent to many teams in the Championship to strive for promotion. It was a division that, in 2007-08, nobody seemed to want to win.
Points deductions have set the agenda in League One, writes Huw Richards
This was the Year of the Asterisk, with three teams – Leeds, Luton and Bournemouth – suffering points deductions. It also saw our Premier League-fixated national media, not for the first time, missing the point lower down. Hypnotised by the spectacle of Leeds and Nottingham Forest, regarded as Premier League members-in-exile, so far down the tree, they ignored the fact that much of the season was dominated, and the best-quality football played, by teams with a radically different provenance. Doncaster and Carlisle have both spent time in the Conference, while Swansea nearly went there only five years ago. If nobody quite reached the sublime heights attained by Blackpool in the later stages of 2006-07, there was some genuine quality.
The title race was over by Christmas, but in the end it wasn't that bad a season in League Two, writes Ron Hamilton
Over recent seasons it has become an increasingly popular pastime for League Two aficionados to point and sneer at the lopsided and avaricious Premier League, scoffing at the hype and hoopla in comparison to the somewhat earthier charms of football’s basement division. Yet while much of this scorn is predicated on the assumption that the lower leagues represent the last vestiges of football’s soul, the 2007-08 season has seen the fourth division’s occupation of the moral high ground somewhat undermined.
An FA Cup final between two teams outside the “Big Four” was a blessing
The fact that Portsmouth are to embark on their first ever season in Europe is an indication of one of the enduring strengths of the English league. Nowhere else in Europe are there teams with as many supporters who are yet to qualify for one of UEFA’s competitions. Portsmouth’s FA Cup victory still leaves several well supported clubs who are yet to play in Europe, notably Sheffield United, Charlton and Crystal Palace – although the last-named finished third in 1991 and would have done so but for the Heysel ban.