Saturday 1 All the action in Man Utd’s 3‑2 win at Fulham happens before half-time. Despite his team’s defeat, Chris Coleman senses a weakness: “Defensively, I didn’t think they were great.” Spurs come back from two down to win 3‑2 at Charlton, but stay behind them in third on goal difference. Blackburn fans get their first sightings of Shefki Kuqi’s rupture-threatening bellyflop celebration after he scores both goals in a 2‑0 defeat of West Brom, who drop to 19th. “I was happy for once with a scrappy goal,” says Arsène, who is ageing quickly, after Arsenal need a late deflection to beat Birmingham. Sunderland’s 1‑1 draw with West Ham takes them out of the bottom three. Sheffield Utd’s eight-match winning run ends in a 2‑1 defeat to their nearest Championship challengers, Reading; Neil Warnock will face an FA charge after eyeballing the referee over not getting a late penalty. “The laws of football are black and white and the referee has seen purple,” say Blackpool keeper Les Pogliacomi of League One leaders Swansea’s decisive goal in their 3‑2 win when striker Lee Trundle, in an offside position, backs away from a cross that goes in while the defence stand still, appealing. Swindon are five points adrift at the foot after a 3‑1 defeat at second-bottom MK Dons. Wycombe remain the League’s only unbeaten team, but slip to third in League Two after a 3‑3 draw with Chester. In the SPL, Hearts finally drop points, needing an injury-time equaliser to draw 2‑2 with Falkirk. Celtic, 5‑0 winners at Livingston, are three points behind.
The Archive
Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
Blink and you might miss it. But, as Matthew Brown writes, the quiet passing of this year's anti-racism week may not be a negative thing
You had to look pretty hard to notice it, but the days from October 13 to 25 were officially football’s “national anti-racism week of action”. It’s ten years since the FA and Premier League were first dragged out of their complacency into taking the issue seriously, forced – partly in reaction to Eric Cantona’s kung-fu kick – to join the national campaign then headed by the Commission for Racial Equality, the Professional Footballers’ Association and the Football Supporters Association.
Yet another Ireland qualifying campaign has ended in a near miss and Brian Kerr has paid the penalty for some strikingly strange decisions, as Paul Doyle relates
What do you do when there are 25 minutes to go in your last qualifying match and your team desperately needs a goal to avoid World Cup elimination? If you’re Brian Kerr, you take off your country’s record goalscorer. Then, with just four minutes left, you replace your other striker.
James Copnall chronicles the year of the underdog in Africa
With all five qualifiers being decided on the last matchday of the ten-round series, this was undoubtedly the greatest African World Cup qualifying campaign ever. That Angola should have finished ahead of Nigeria was perhaps the biggest shock of all. The southern Africans have next to no pedigree, having qualified only twice for the Nations Cup and had little success once they got there. In contrast to Nigeria’s team of star names, Angola players come from the semi-professional local league, alongside a handful of veterans from the former colonial power Portugal and the middle-eastern leagues. Yet Angola upset Nigeria at home, thanks to a goal from SC Qatar’s Fabrice Akwa, drew the return, and then, when only a win would do, beat Rwanda away, Akwa scoring a late header.
Fans who want a return to terracing are not content to sit in silence while they wait, explains Amanda Matthews
Memories of standing on the terraces are now fast fading in the Premiership. Young fans are more likely than not to sit in the stands and watch their team in near silence. But members of “Stand Up Sit Down” feel all-seat stadiums and being made to sit contribute hugely to the lack of atmosphere, and that that is increasingly influencing fans’ decisions to stay away.