Monday 1 Arsenal go a point clear after a 3-0 win at Charlton. “We know it’s down to us now,” says Arsène. “We’ve gifted six goals in two games,” sighs a baffled David O’Leary as Leeds’ Champs League hopes fade further with a 2-1 defeat at Spurs. Ipswich slip into the bottom three after Marcus Bent misses a penalty in a goalless draw with Chelsea, while John Gregory is “almost lost for words” after Derby’s 1-0 home defeat by Middlesbrough. Everton survive the early dismissal of a punch-throwing Duncan Ferguson (“He was stupid and I’ve told him,” says his new manager) to record a 3-1 win over Bolton, also reduced to ten. In the First, West Brom’s 1-0 win at Coventry takes them level on points with Wolves, beaten 2-0 at home by Man City. Brighton go two points clear at the top of the Second with a last-minute winner against Bristol City, displacing Reading who draw at home with Northampton. Several Luton players are questioned by police following a nightclub brawl to celebrate their promotion. Halifax, 5-0 losers at Darlington, go down to the Conference for the second time in nine years.
The Archive
Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
As the Premier League indulges in its tenth birthday cake, the gulf in class between the top flight and the rest of the Football League has stretched almost beyond repair
At the time of going to press it seems that a new Premiership record will be set this season – and, as the ridiculous fuss over Alan Shearer’s 200th goal since 1992 shows, those are the kind of records that count these days. This season, the tenth since football began, is almost certain to be the first that all of the promoted teams have succeeded in staying in the Premiership.
Mathias Kowoll leads us round the grounds that the home nations may or may not be visiting four summers from now
Does anyone remember Sir Bert Millichip’s alleged promise to the DFB (German FA) that England would not bid for the 2006 World Cup because Germany had supported England for Euro 96? Well, Bert himself didn’t. But Franz Böhmert, the president of Werder Bremen, must have recalled it when he found out that the Weserstadion would not be one of the 12 stadiums selected for 2006.
Ken Gall gives a resounding cheer for the exasperated Scottish Premier League chairmen who finally stuck two fingers up at Rangers and Celtic
To anyone who says that there are no surprises left in Scottish football, the events of April 16 will have been the cause of some bemusement. In what might seem at first glance to be the equivalent of the Christians expelling Jesus from Christianity, all the Scottish Premier League clubs, with the exception of Celtic and Rangers, gave notice of their intention to resign en masse from the league in two seasons’ time, leaving Glasgow’s much-loved double act, not for the first time, in a world of their own.
There's a World Cup coming up, apparently, so we invited three well-travelled journalists to make some rash predictions about what will happen. As a Swede based in London Marcus Christenson has ties to two of the countries in Group F. Gabriele Marcotti has lived in Japan and how tries to explain English football to Italians and vice-versa. Alan Duncan reports regularly on Nigeria and Cameroon, who face England and Ireland respectively, as well as the three other African qualifiers
Are playing styles and tactics are becoming more homogeneous throughout the world, because most of the top players are playing in the same leagues? If so, does that make the World Cup less interesting?
Gabriele Marcotti There’s a greater uniformity. Not just in the way teams play, but also in how they train. If you look at the size of the Italian or Spanish players, they are now as big as the northern Europeans are expected to be. Everybody’s an athlete. Some of the English players still get drunk and irresponsible but the impression I get with players like Beckham and Owen is that they train seriously and take care of their diet. In some ways it has become more uniform, but in a positive way – the level of fitness has definitely increased everywhere.