Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
Mark Perryman discusses the need for England fans to set a good example for future generations
At the end of June, some 30,000 England supporters belonging to the England Members Club received a brightly coloured envelope through their letter boxes. It was a package that most had been expecting, the news that the EMC was being replaced with a new organisation.
Dear WSC
I’ve heard some daft excuses for losing matches but Trevor Francis has surpassed even Manchester United’s grey shirts fiasco at Southampton with his moaning over Birmingham’s play-off penalty shoot-out at Preston. Perhaps the poor dear would like to consider the following points. At any ground other than Deepdale there would have been spectators behind both goals, and if the penalties hadn’t been at the Preston end they would have been at the Birmingham end. Therefore, by his logic, that would be unfair on the Preston players. If Birmingham were a better team than Preston they would have finished above them in the league table, therefore the second leg of their play-off and the penalty shoot-out would have taken place at their own ground. They only finished fifth over 46 league games so they were lucky to have any chance of promotion in the first place. If his players are unnerved by taking penalties in front of opposition fans what chance would they stand of surviving in the Premiership? In a ground filled with paying spectators it makes sense for the deciding moments to take place at the end where most of them will have the best view. Who cares whether the referee or police changed their mind about which end the penalties should be taken? The notion that the whole match should be replayed because of that is absolutely ludicrous. If I was a Birmingham fan I would be embarrassed that the manager could come out with such a lame excuse for defeat instead of accepting that his team was simply not good enough.
Richard Watts, Sydenham
Simon Edwards explains how promotion from and relegation to the Conference is not an improvement for the Football League
The prevailing view of relegation to the Conference from the Nationwide League is that it provides an opportunity for a struggling club to rebuild both on and off the field, and eventually return to the fold in rude health. This has always been bunkum. The overall benefits have been negligible.
Sol Campbell's departure from Spurs calls into question the level of players' wages
In the last week of May, the golfer Andrew Oldcorn collected more than £300,000 for winning the Volvo PGA tournament at Wentworth. Not a bad return for four days’ work by anyone’s standards, but few in the press were lining up to savage the mild-mannered Oldcorn for his rampant avarice. No matter how he performs on the tour this year, he will not be greeted on the tees of Europe by snarling fans chanting that there is “only one greedy bastard”.
Despite a magnificent cup run, German minnows FC Union's success may not last long, writes Markus Hesselmann
In the weeks between promotion and cup final, Union were all the rage in Germany. The club made headlines in the arts pages of the national newspapers. There were television features about the upright working-class blokes from the eastern district of Köpenick, who had always been subdued by the Stasi but would now arise as the true team of east Berlin and the whole of eastern Germany.