Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Everyone agrees top footballers are playing too many games, except Roger Titford, who can remember when they endured far more without whining. Phil Ball and Neil McCarthy sum up the situation in Spain and France
England
Once again, the top clubs are calling for a reduction in the number of fixtures. Arsène Wenger (31 players used already this season) is to the fore of the complaints, while Alex Ferguson’s strategy for managing his club’s 60-game workload is plain to see. “The recovery time is too short,” Wenger said after Arsenal’s defeat at Middlesbrough in March, which followed a midweek UEFA Cup match. “It is nonsense to have only two and a half days of preparation.”