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The Archive

Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.

 

Managers and stats

The internet is not just for the younger generation. Football managers are learning to embrace it, as Jamie Rainbow found out

The League Managers Association have created a useful website for their members. One outstanding ­feature is a service for unemployed coaches, enabling them to display their CVs (or in the case of Ian Atkins, their ­autobiography) to any potential employers. Atkins’s playing and managerial career are reproduced in painstaking detail – although one wonders whether his time spent playing for Shrewsbury in the late 1970s will have much bearing on his ability to manage a football club successfully today. Nor are his credentials much enhanced by telling us that: “Holding off the challenge of some of the game’s best known faces, I secured the job of manager at Doncaster Rovers.”

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Same old England?

Supporting England still has its problems as Martin Cloake finds out

It may now be acceptable to admit to being a foot­­­­­­­­ball fan in polite company, but declare yourself an active England supporter and the old suspicions re­surface. Watching the telly and wanting England to win is fine, but actually going or, worst of all, following Eng­land ab­road, surely means there is something wrong with you.

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November 1999

Tuesday 2 Man Utd finish top of their Champions League group with a 2-1 win over Sturm Graz. "The competition will be more exciting for everyone from now on," yawns Alex. Arsenal's magnificently meaningless last group game ends in a 3-2 win in Stockholm. The FA are to take no action against Neil Ruddock over garlic-related remarks allegedly made to Patrick Vieira. "We fully accept that he is not racist ñ as his many black friends in the game will testify," says one of those FA spokesmen. Charlton regain second spot in the First Division after winning at Crewe. Moneybags Wigan, still unbeaten, go top of the Second by beating Chesterfield. Another bad day at the office for Barry Hearn as Leyton Orient slip to the bottom of the Third after losing at Darlington while rivals Chester win at Shrewsbury. Exciting times ahead in the Potteries, possibly, as Stoke City are bought by a consortium of Icelandic businessmen.

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Surface tension

Dominic Smith attended England v Scotland and got a view of the two differing types of England fan

It’s been a few years since I watched a group of England fans – all replica shirts, union flags and Blackburn Rovers tattoos – follow a middle-aged woman down Wembley High Road, jeering and repeatedly calling her a “Paki”. Part of the dark old days which the FA and the media – all eagerly campaigning for the English 2006 World Cup bid – would have us believe are long gone.

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Broken record

The 'Battle of Britain' had all the papers talking, but as Archie MacGregor discovers, the tabloids can take things a little to far

So that was the Battle of Britain. To paraphrase an apposite remark, surely never in the history of Scottish journalism has so much hype and mindless pos­turing been so relentlessly sus­tain­ed by so few. In Scotland, the sight of the national team once again performing its party piece of glorious fail­ure has been greeted with something approaching fat­alistic acceptance. Yet mix­ed in with the anguish, ennui and glee (at the Wembley result) there is also a tangible sense of relief that the goddam war is over. All that remains in the run-up to the season of goodwill is a deep-seated wish that the tabloids abide by the terms of the ceasefire. Some hope. 

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