The Archive

Just two points seperated first from fourth at the end of the 1977-78 season, with Keith Burkinshaw's Tottenham returning to the top-flight at the first time of asking, albeit on goal difference. Philip Cornwall reports

The long-term significance
It’s not the winning or the losing, it’s the coming second or third. Bolton, managed by Ian Greaves, took the title, but it would be 20-odd years before Wanderers, led by one of Greaves’ defenders, would become top-flight regulars. Yet the two teams they pipped for the title, Southampton and Tottenham, haven’t been relegated since achieving this promotion. Keith Burkinshaw, the manager of Spurs who had taken them down the previous May to end 27 seasons in the top flight, was given the opportunity to put that right, something unlikely to happen today.

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Manchester Utd and Arsenal play out yet another ill-tempered game

“That game, with the baggage that goes with it, is almost becoming an impossible match to referee, and I speak from personal experience.” So said former Premiership referee Jeff Winter after the latest outbreak of hostilities between two implacably opposed foes, an event also known as Man Utd v Arsenal.

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Socrates, futebol de salão and Premiership ambitions – Steve Wilson looks at the strange case of Simon Clifford's Garforth Town

Watching Garforth Town crash out of this season’s Northern Counties League Cup on the kind of wet and windy Tuesday evening in northern England that foreigners are habitually assumed “not to fancy much”, it was difficult to imagine anywhere further from Brazil.

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Photography is at the heart of football culture and Ian Plenderleith is happy to tour the best sites on which you can admire the snappers' art.

The Franco-Mauritanian artist and sage Malcolm de Chazal once said: “When indifferent, the eye takes still photographs; when interested, movies.” His aphorism applies to football photos, too.

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Having made £6 million less from last season's Champions League than the previous year, Manchester United chief executive David Gill yearns for UEFA to revert to the second group stage format for the competition

There is a never a shortage of opportunities to despair at how the businessmen who run major clubs do not understand the principles of football. David Gill, chief executive of Manchester United, for example, recently declared that he wants to see the return of the second group stage in the Champions League when the current contract ends in 2006. “I think all the big clubs would have preferred to keep it. There was a higher quality of opposition in the second group phase than the first one.” “Higher quality”, of course, means western European teams containing famous players who ap­­pear in Nike ads and would fill all the stadiums for three extra group games with tickets at 30-plus quid a throw.

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