The Archive

Apart from pubs and the stands themselves, internet message boards are the best place to debate your club’s fortunes and praise or criticise in the company of fellow fans. But, as Ian Plenderleith reports, this freedom of expression is increasingly under threat as clubs use lawyers to clamp down on dissent

Many people compare the football message board to their local pub. You can meet your mates there to relax, say anything you like, and the next day no one will remember a word. There’s the odd idiot who gets out of hand and maybe a fight breaks out, but after a while everyone calms down. Sometimes it’s quiet because there’s no one around, so you leave again. And strangers are treated with suspicion until they show they didn’t just come in to cause trouble, but rather gain acceptance by expressing the sort of opinion that’s greeted with knowing nods (the online equivalent of getting your round in unprompted).

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He was a defensive liability in League One but seemingly comfortable at international level. Chris Lynham reflects on Kent’s very own World Cup star

When Neale Cooper was installed as boss of freshly relegated ­Gillingham in 2005, he decided to use his knowledge of the Scottish market to rebuild the flagging squad. In among the deranged goalkeepers and tanked-up forwards he acquired on the cheap was ­Trinidad & Tobago defender Brent Sancho, signed on a free from Dundee. With the Medway towns possibly being the only conurbation on earth that could make Dundee look like an oasis of bohemian chic, it was hardly a glamour move for Sancho. But for Gills fans it was an exciting acquisition – an established international who was intent on sealing his ticket to the World Cup in Germany.

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The menace of meddling chairmen

“The only crisis we have here is when we’ve run out of champagne in the boardroom,” said John Cobbold when Ipswich chairman. The Cobbolds, whose family brewery was one of the town’s main employers, are often held up to exemplify the attitude of the patrician dynasties who used to own many teams. They may have looked upon their clubs as heirlooms – one of the last of the breed, Peter Hill-Wood at Arsenal, has been magnificently disdainful of the rumoured interest in the club from US billionaire Stan Kroenke – but they also knew better than to interfere with the manager’s role.

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The papers get over-excited about the new season

The Premier League: a fetid pit of greed serving up underheated fare to jaded consumers? Or a breath of fresh air ushering in yet another glitzy rollercoaster ride? Is football awful? Or is it, in fact, great? You may be feeling a little confused if you’ve read the papers much this month.

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Players are moving from the sportspages to the style sections in expensive trousers

Footballers have had a long and sometimes painful relationship with fashion. The default position has always been that they’re basically a bit of a joke when it comes to this kind of thing. The nature of the joke may have changed over time – from terrible slacks, bad hair and nylon blazers to the current blizzard of conspicuous consumption – but it’s never really gone away.

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