Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
Dianne Millen explores the most suitable means of preventing incursions on to the pitch by fans
When is a pitch invasion not a pitch invasion? When there’s only one person involved, of course, as happened twice in the second weekend of the new Scottish Premier League campaign. Amid the debate among the condemnatory, permatanned pundits about whether a single fan constituted an “invasion”, however, were serious safety questions.
Dover soul Mark Winter believes that the dramatic changes to the non-League game outlined below will give Athletic a lot more matches he can actually go to
Imagine you spend your season in a league with just one promotion place on offer. From here, take the quantum leap to assume that there are now 13 promotion slots on offer. That is the prospect facing supporters of the three feeder leagues below the Conference, which is to get two second divisions, a north and a south, from next season. For clubs at this level, restructuring of non-League football is long overdue and something to be celebrated.
Four years after the Football Task Force recommended them, the FA still haven't produced rules on who can and cannot own a club. James McNamara explains why
Despite their latest move to investigate an initiative designed to rid the game of opportunist asset-strippers, the Football Association have been accused of dragging their feet over introducing a Fit and Proper Persons Test (FPPT). The 1999 Football Task Force report Commercial Issues recommended the introduction of a vetting procedure for those wishing to become large shareholders in a football club, but the proposal has remained on the drawing board. On the back of recent speculation about “mysterious” foreign investors circling the game, the government has hardened its pressure on the FA to address the matter. Following the Chelsea takeover, a source from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport reportedly told the Guardian that Tessa Jowell hoped football would introduce a "fit and proper persons" test in the near future. By mid August the FA’s newly formed Finance Advisory Committee (FAC) met for the first time and pledged to introduce the test at next sum-mer’s FA Annual General Meeting, ready to be implemented at the start of the 2005-06 season.
Every August, football pretends it's going to be different and exciting with added oomph. Millions are taken in, but Cameron Carter likes it just the way it really is, thank you
As far as I can see we fall for it every time. I don’t consider myself a gullible person – although I believed for some little while that the Lilt Ladies were a publicly registered company of beach vendors – but every time a new season is about to begin I see my fellows become completely excited and forget all about the pain, suffering and humiliation a year of football brings.
Heralded as an indicator of football’s rise when launched 12 years ago, it’s the best guide to the game’s health. Roger Titford looks at this year's Deloitte & Touche report
Deloitte & Touche’s annual review of football finances is now in its 12th year. The series will offer the football historian of the future a far more accurate and detailed source for the football boom-and-near-bust years than the usual run of football/business books.