The Archive

While today graffiti is a public method of making coded statements, in the 1970s it was about football and plain speaking, if not always great spelling, as  Jim Heath recalls

Apart from Arsenal fans spraying their hair red in honour of Freddie Ljungberg, it’s been a long time since spray paint played an active part in the football supporters’ repertoire. Football graffiti had its heyday in the early 1970s when it gave crumbling stadiums that extra, almost indefinable character, the worn brick and corrugated iron surrounds of the terraces being a per­fect canvas for budding artists. It wasn’t just re­stricted to the grounds themselves, with daubings on all points from the city centres and railway stations. Given its intimidatory presence which heightened the fear that you were going to get your head kicked in, it’s ironic that the graffiti trend was inspired mainly by the 1960s peace movement, who used it to protest against the Vietnam war and express support for Castro’s Cuba (“LBJ get out of Vietnam” was still visible on a wall opposite the Craven Cottage turnstiles into the 1980s).

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The graffiti at Middlesbrough’s Ayresome Park was so extensive and in unexpected places that they opted to knock it down rather than clean it, as Harry Pearson explains

When Ayresome Park was finally eradicated the demolition men took with them a lot of bricks and a small slice of folk-art history. True, there was nothing that left its mark on the conscience of a generation like north London’s splendidly indelible “M Khan Is Bent”. Nor was there anything quite as archaic as the north-east’s oldest surviving product of bore­dom and testosterone, the carving on Hadrian’s Wall that depicts a giant penis hopping about on chicken’s legs (had a Roman Legionary had some ghastly premonition of Kieron Dyer?). But there was enough for us oldsters to get wistful over in much the same way our coevals in Leicester do when they recall the evil threats on the back wall of the away end at Filbert Street.

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After failing to play his way out of Scottish Division Two, the midfielder looked set for the scrap heap in 2002. But as Neil Forsyth writes, he found an unlikely second wind

Generally speaking, football careers tend to arc in achievement. For some the peak comes achingly early: think Norman Whiteside, Lee Sharpe or Peter Marinello. More fortunate are those who delay the dip until late in their career, leaving earlier achievement undiluted. Kenny Dalglish, Alan Shearer and the  1997-98 Arsenal back four ease into this category.

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Ruud Gullit may have failed to bring “sexy football” to Newcastle, but he won’t try that when he takes over at Feyenoord. And the fans there won’t care, Ernst Bouwes writes

Situated at the “arse” of the Netherlands, where several rivers come together to spit Europe’s chemical waste into the North Sea, Rotterdam is a place where people love winning football matches by a dub­ious penalty or a deflected free-kick in the last minute. A world removed from the entertaining and high-quality football associated with Holland, Feyenoord fans mainly care for industrious, tough and ruthless players, the type who have won all sorts of trophies for their club since 1970. It is no surprise, therefore, that Ruud Gullit will be in charge for the start of next season.

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The internet has sparked a boom in betting and inevitably there are sites that promise to help you to beat the bookies and win endless riches. Ian Plenderleith – just for fun – gave a couple of systems the once-over

I’m not a gambler, but I can bet you one thing for sure. If betting were profitable for pun­ters, bookies wouldn’t exist. Bearing this in mind, I locked up my credit card and examined two websites that promise to help players beat the odds.

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