Dear WSC
The Spurs “yids” thing (WSC 230) is indeed well and truly weird. This derogatory term emanated from Arsenal, a club with a proud tradition of support from the large north London Jewish community. As an eight- or nine-year-old, sitting high in the Highbury east stand with my uncle at my first ever game, even my pre-pubescent jewdar was sufficiently sensitive to know I was among my own. These days it’s a London thing. The term is seldom heard from northern fans, whereas one Chelsea fan website, presumably popular as it is on Google’s first page, proudly lists the lyrics to more than 25 (I stopped counting) anti-Semitic songs. In the mid-1970s, some Spurs fans created an incomprehensibly bizarre variant on terrace youth sub-culture by wearing skinhead uniform, skullcaps and Israeli flags. There’s one for all the sociologists out there. I sit in a different east stand now and for years optimistically clung to the notion that, in reclaiming the word, Spurs fans displayed rudimentary class consciousness and solidarity with discriminated groups in our society. This forlorn hope has been shattered in the face of vicious, sustained homophobic chanting, ostensibly related to Sol Campbell’s predicaments. The lip service paid by most clubs to kick out racism seems positively enlightened by comparison, and if we can’t learn anything from all this then the future’s bleak for football.
Alan Fisher, Tonbridge
The Archive
Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
Derby won the title with a low 53 points, as the title fight was between a mish-mash of "town" teams. Roger Titford reports
The long-term significance
If there was a remake of this season it would be called “What Happens When Big Clubs Go Bad”. For the last time, possibly ever, a variety of “town” teams – Ipswich, Burnley, Derby and Stoke among them – contested the League title deep into the spring. It was an unusual year in many respects: miners did relatively better than stockbrokers in the economic crisis, glamrock was dying and punk not yet born, and England’s big three suffered like never since. It was Liverpool’s only trophyless season between 1973 and 1984. Arsenal spent some time bottom of the table, which they haven’t done since. Manchester United weren’t even in the top flight. Revie, Shankly, Nicholson, Greenwood and Sexton had all followed Sir Alf Ramsey out of long-occupied managerial seats in 1974 and a chance emerged for the lesser lights to shine. It sounds now like an impossible feast of equal opportunity, but at the time they said it was dismal, mundane, violent and “the death of football”.
As we reach the end of the season is the Premier League the most unpredictable league?
Looking at the tables as the end of the season approaches, it might occur to you that, with very few exceptions, no one really knows anything. Passages of play in matches have been described as little more than a series of random events, their final outcome decided by whoever is able to impose a distinct pattern, which more often than not neither side manages to do. This season, the same sense of galumphing randomness has applied to the football predictions business. Never before have the forecasts for how the season will pan out come so badly unstuck – the confident assertions made in tabloid and broadsheet columns and TV discussions may as well be seen in same light as contributions to the astrology page.
Update on clubs in crisis. Tom Davies reports
The takeover of Rotherham by a group of local businessmen has saved United from the immediate threat of liquidation that has hung over them since the turn of the year, but the club’s financial position remains precarious and fundraising campaigns are continuing.
Cameron Carter sees that diving and simulation has become the BBC's current topic for discussion
The big topic on the BBC last month was diving and, in particular, how terrible and somehow foreign it is. During the last FA Cup quarter-final, Garth Crooks gamely attempted to turn a half-time studio debate into a political bear pit when the subject was introduced by Ray Stubbs. Some days later, on Match of the Day II, Stubbs seemed to get a little peevish when Graeme Le Saux and Lee Sharpe didn’t appear to treat his debate on Didier Drogba heatedly enough. At one point he jokingly asked Sharpe why he was smirking, in the way that someone jokingly asks you why you can’t get your own cup of tea. Stubbs is obviously of the view that there are some subjects one simply doesn’t joke about.