Saturday 1 Leeds are bottom of the Premiership after a 4-1 home defeat by Arsenal. Mark Viduka is left out of the squad after missing a players’ meeting and arriving late for training. “If I started looking over my shoulder with all this speculation, I wouldn’t be able to look forward,” quips Peter Reid. Chelsea beat Everton 1-0 at Goodison Park, but defeat fails to stop Wayne Rooney dressing up as Oliver Hardy for his 18th birthday party, where guests include Atomic Kitten, Robbie Williams and “more than 200 friends”. Man Utd beat Portsmouth 3-0 at Old Trafford, Cristiano Ronaldo pausing long enough between performances of the hokey-cokey to score his first goal for the club, while at White Hart Lane Jay-Jay Okocha inspires Bolton to a 1-0 win over Spurs. Manchester City beat Southampton 2-0 at St Mary’s amid rumours that Nicolas Anelka’s absence from the City side is a consequence of his failure to attend a clay pigeon-shooting trip. “Mills is just a fucking idiot,” observes the usually unflappable Paul Ince after Danny Mills’s altercation with Lee Naylor creates confusion from which Gaizka Mendieta scores Boro’s first goal in a 2-0 victory over Wolves – a surly afternoon ends with police quelling a full-time mêlée in the tunnel. First Division leaders Wigan beat Crystal Palace 5-0, Andy Liddell’s two goals making him the club’s all-time highest goalscorer. Wimbledon win their first game at Milton Keynes, 2-1 against Bradford, but stay bottom. West Brom’s Darren Williams faces a police investigation for kicking a spare ball off the pitch and injuring a woman in the crowd during the goalless draw with Sunderland. QPR are the only club in the top nine of the Second Division to win, beating Stockport 2-1 at Edgeley Park and moving up to third place. Leaders Plymouth draw 2-2 with Oldham, while Brighton also draw 2-2 against Peterborough in Mark McGhee’s first match in charge. In Division Three, leaders Hull are held 2-2 at home by Macclesfield, allowing Doncaster and Oxford to edge closer as both win.
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The Archive
Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
We boast about the Premier League being 'the best league in the world', but the domestic superiority of England's elite clubs is not reflected in their European form
At least once a year there are rumours of a breakaway “Atlantic League” or some such, a competition for the dominant clubs in smaller football countries where the domestic title is only ever contested by at most three teams. The next time it’s floated expect to hear that Arsenal, Manchester United and Chelsea have been approached about joining, on the grounds that they, too, would get stronger competition from, say, Porto, Anderlecht and Ajax than from any of the other 17 clubs in the Premiership.
The Miracle of Bern was a massive commercial success in Germany, and its London viewing was a sell-out. Errol Lawrence, who despises many other samples of sport on the big screen, believes it could be the best film ever of its kind
Soenke Wortmann’s The Miracle of Bern stopped over in London at the end of November to open the annual German Film Festival. The film has become a huge commercial success in Germany and won praise across Europe and such is its reputation that the film’s single screening in London was a sell-out, attracting a polyglot audience of native Germans, students, film buffs and even the odd football fan.
As a survey reveals the extraordinary sums the game has paid some people for doing very little, Barney Ronay hopes one man can be persuaded to put a little back
As Woody Allen once said, money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons. English football currently has both in equal measures: the League is rife with talk of exactly how many clubs are toting around life-threatening debts; meanwhile, the Sunday Times Pay List 2003, published last month, reveals that, of the 500 best-paid individuals in the United Kingdom, 56 made their money from football, 44 of them players.
For clubs in trouble, bringing the fans on board can help stabilise a crisis and renew confidence. Ken Gall reports on the experiences at the Sixfields Stadium and Tannadice
In a world of Russian billionaires, Franchise FC and “living the dream”, it’s not hard to see why greater supporter involvement in the boardrooms of UK clubs is to be desired. The rise of the supporters’ trust movement and the arrival of fans – elected or otherwise – as directors has been a welcome development and one of the few beneficial consequences of the financial shambles that is UK football.