Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
Chris Taylor is confused – he’s a Manchester United fan, or at least he was. Does he now support FC United as well as or instead of the Glazer-owned Old Trafford team?
It’s not easy being a Manchester United fan at the moment. Oh, stop laughing at the back. It really isn’t. I suppose the playing side of things isn’t too bad, you know, relative to everyone else who isn’t Chelsea. But off the pitch, where things are suddenly far more important, things are screwed up good and proper.
The top two teams in the Deloitte Football Money League are Real Madrid and Manchester Utd. But as Roger Titford finds out, the income they rely on differs greatly
We live in an era when there are prizes for everything: player of the season, calendar of the year, the best pie, the most improved website and many more self-regarding baubles. Combine this with the obsession to put a value on anything in football – press red now for a cost-benefit analysis on that through ball – and we have (hopefully tongue in cheek but probably not) the Deloitte Football Money League (DFML).
Is it offensive to taunt people with a word they use about themselves? Some believe neither Arsenal nor Spurs fans know what they’re saying, as Jon Spurling reports
In November 2005, Alan Sefton, the overseer of “Arsenal in the community”, announced that the club would be setting up five soccer schools across Israel. Arsenal are already involved in working with a number of primary schools in mixed Jewish/Muslim areas of London, and children are encouraged to co-present religious festivals before playing football together. Sefton later confirmed his and the club’s belief that “…football unites people of different classes, social groups, races and nationalities… We don’t want it to focus on divisions and tribalism.”
An attempt to measure racism in the politically charged world of Israeli football appears to be back-firing, reports Shaul Adar
With Maccabi Haifa on their way to a third consecutive championship, the Israeli league isn’t the most exciting, bar daily news about Russian oligarchs pumping in money. But every Monday another Israeli football league is a source of drama and shocks. Every week, 50 observers from New Israel Fund, an über-liberal institution for promoting democratic values, go to the premier league grounds and file reports on racist chanting. All those chants are calculated by a complicated mathematical equation based on the severity of the events, their length and the number of fans taking part; they end up negative points published in a league table.
Wednesday 1 A fantastic night in the Premiership sees the big four all mess up. Arsenal lose 3‑2 at home to West Ham – Sol Campbell, at fault for two goals, is subbed at half‑time and promptly leaves the ground – though Thierry Henry does at least beat Cliff Bastin’s club league goalscoring record with his side’s first. Man Utd are beaten 4‑3 at Blackburn, for whom David Bentley gets a hat-trick, and have Rio Ferdinand sent off. Liverpool concede a late equaliser in a 1‑1 draw with Birmingham, who had been down to ten men for over an hour. Chelsea also lose a lead late on in a 1‑1 draw at Villa. Newcastle lose 3‑0 at Man City to a backdrop of “Souness out” banners. Mark Wright is to sue Peterborough for being sacked over alleged racist remarks.