The Archive

Jon Matthias on the Shrews

Kevin Ratcliffe carried the can for last season’s relegation – was this unfair?
No. It was his team, his tactics and his persistence with players who were blatantly unfit and were not getting any fitter that saw us relegated. Our defence, his apparent field of expertise, was appalling. I think the board and many fans were afraid of being too negative so nothing was said until it was too late. In March, chief executive Keith Sayfritz commented that this season was “not as bad” as the Great Escape season of 2000. That sort of misplaced optimism is why it ended up so much worse.

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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.

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Ben Lyttleton looks at what's going on behind the glitz and glamour in Spain

Spanish football looked in a healthy state when two billion fans tuned in to see David Beckham sign for Real Madrid last month. After all, the England captain had joined the biggest club in the world to play in the best league in the world. But Beckham’s arrival has coincided with a financial crisis in the Spanish game that Catalan daily El Periodico described as: “Total ruin, immense debt, crippling of the sector, zero credibility with the banks as well as on­going investigations by tax officials.”

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Organised football in deprived parts of London and other cities is giving refugees and recent immigrants a chance to build a sense of community, explains Steve Wilson

Skipping past a second challenge just inside the op­position’s half, Gazza looks up and sees the keeper marginally off his line. He lets fly from all of 35 yards and peels off in wild celebration. After shipping three cheap goals, this effort, added to his free-kick from a similar range, has pulled his team back into the game and the final ten minutes now promise to be tense.

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A side rooted in London’s Bangladeshi community will be playing four rungs short of the Conference this season. Matthew Brown traces the rise of Sporting Bengal

As footballing milestones go it probably won’t rank up there with the first FA Cup final or England’s World Cup win, but the acceptance of an east London amateur team into the ranks of the Go Travel Kent League marks a breakthrough of no little significance for one section of the footballing fraternity.

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