Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
Football commentator Jon Driscoll asks just what it takes for an ex-pro to be a pundit and recalls those he has worked with who suffered from foot-in mouth
Before the first football commentary I did for Talk Radio they told me they’d hired Andy Gray as the pundit. Excellent. I couldn’t believe my luck. I was right not to. They had hired Andy Gray the ex-Palace and Spurs midfielder. He was rubbish.
Not all revolutionaries are fondly remembered. Barney Ronay examines the controversial legacy of Charles Reep, football’s first tactical statistician
Wing Commander Charles Reep has been called many things. Twenty years ago the Times dubbed him “The Human Computer of the Fabled Fifties”; an obituary described him more simply as “a football analyst”; while a slightly empurpled Brian Glanville once declared him a member of FA coaching director Charles Hughes’s “band of believers and acolytes”, the archangel of “a fanatical credo, a pseudo-religion”.
Some football sites want to tell you what you really need to know – but this month Ian Plenderleith celebrates those which go in the opposite direction and champion the glorious irrelevance of it all
“Fascinating but spectacularly pointless” is a label that can be applied to many things in football – mascots, Alan Parry, the Rumbelows Sprint Challenge, Danny Wallace’s runs down the wing. To celebrate the game’s abundant tapestry of interesting but superfluous facts, people and memorabilia, On The Web this month unscientifically nominates a list (what could be more fascinating but pointless than a list?) of the top four Great But Useless websites.
Dear WSC
The letter from Joe Newman (WSC 195) claimed that only those managers who have sold their shares in the ProActive agency stand to financially benefit from transfers involving the players on the agency’s books: “You don’t make money from shares simply by holding on to them – the only way to benefit financially is by selling them.”
Sadly, it is this sort of view from a fan that concerns me about the level of ignorance of the financial state of football today. Clearly, if these managers have sold their shares in the business, they stand to make no further money from that business. But Joe is ignorant of the fact that shareholders also get paid dividends on their shareholdings. Surely exactly the point that the Football Confidential book was trying to get across?
Alfie Dunn-Lowes, via email
Wednesday 2 England surprise many by playing Wayne Rooney from the start and go on to beat Turkey 2-0 at the Stadium of Light, with late goals from Darius Vassell and a penalty by David Beckham, who says: “It wasn’t a bad display for a team of no-hopers, was it?” Around 100 England supporters are arrested before the match after trouble in Sunderland city centre and at the ground and there is a pitch invasion after the second goal during which a spectator appears to strike Turkey defender Alpay. There is also allegedly a punch-up in the players’ tunnel. UEFA are to investigate. Scotland concede a dubious penalty to lose 1-0 in Lithuania. Northern Ireland have two sent off in a 2-0 home defeat by Greece (“There is not a thought in my head about not carrying on,” says Sammy McIlroy), while the Republic draw 0-0 in Albania. Fulham announce that they are considering a “revised plan” to move back to Craven Cottage.