The Archive

Season ticket prices are in a state of flux, as clubs try to fill their grounds, whatever the price, says Adam Powley

Strange things have been happening in the Premiership with several clubs freezing, or even reducing, their season ticket prices for the next campaign. Leading the charge in this bizarre phenomenon is Tottenham, a club notorious for its high admission charges and dreadful public relations. Others have fol­lowed. Aston Villa, Leicester City and freshly relegated Watford have all decided either to cancel any increase or, in the latter’s case, actually cut some prices to the level they were two years ago. Even Chelsea have promised to put prices on hold for 2001-02.

Read more…

Poor management, failed takeovers and petty squabbling – the struggles facing Cardiff City, West Bromwich Albion, Oxford United and Barnet

“It is almost as if the club has forgotten how to do anything successfully,” one recent visitor to a Cardiff City internet bulletin board re­marked. That includes selling it to a member of the Sullivan family, which has been a reg­ular agenda item since the early 1990s, when David Sullivan first expressed an inter­­est.

Read more…

MLS has abandoned the Americanisms in soccer to please supporters familiar with the game as it is played across the rest of the globe. Mike Woitalla reports

When Major League Soccer kicked off for its fifth season last month, there were a number of new rules for the fans to get used to. For once, however, they were intended to drag the US back towards the mainstream of world football. Arguments over the rules in the MLS date back to a meeting in New York some years ago. Those present plot­ted the return of a professional league in 1996. And they believed in enlarging the goals.

Read more…

Bill Costley, the Kilmarnock chairman, is a chef with a long term plan for his club. Graeme Jamieson investigates Aryshire's answer to Delia

Distinguishing features A respectable, bespectacled gentleman with a headline writer’s dream name. And a moustache.

Read more…

Blyth Spartans are still the best known non-League club from the north-east thanks to their 1978 FA Cup exploits. But, as Ken Sproat explains, their centenary year has not gone smoothly

Increasingly, the term “north-east football” means only Newcastle United, Sunderland and Middlesbrough. The arrival of George Reynolds has brought some cheap publicity to Darlington, but Hartlepool rarely get a mention and at non-League level Gates­head’s sporadic forays into the Conference attract little attention either nationally or locally.

Read more…