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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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Moving targets

Once again the matter of abuse from fans has been brought to the media's attention, but has it ever gone away?

It’s no reflection on Bobby Robson’s age to suggest that perhaps his memory is failing him in certain respects. The Newcastle Utd manager was apoplectic about the treatment meted out to Alan Shearer by Watford fans at Vicarage Road in November. “Think about what he has done for club and country,” Robson entreated us. “Whatever has happened to our so-called sporting public?” 

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Souness destroyed Liverpool

Liverpool's decline in the 1990s is often blamed on one man, but John Tandy sees it differently

The myth goes something like this: Liverpool’s astonishing success was based on blending continuity and evolution. Gra­eme Souness smashed the club’s traditions and left it in a tattered state from which it has never recovered. 

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Hull City, Hastings Town

Troubles at Hull City and confusion at Hasting Town and St Leonards

When clubs get rid of an unpopular owner, fans are naturally tempted to greet his successors with a relatively uncritical eye. Few at Hull City were sorry to see the back of David Lloyd and the new regime of chairman Nick Buchanan appears to have restored a measure of stability. However, there may still be trouble ahead.

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1999 and beyond

Some of WSC's regular contributors give their views on 1999 and their hopes for football in the new millennium

Harry Pearson
Ups
The return of Juninho.
Des Lynam’s move to ITV. The adverts mean we get less of his banter.
Alan Shearer’s public persona. A comedic tour de force combining the best of Victor Meldrew and Harry Enfield’s teenager. Every time I see his face I just crease up.

Downs
Paul Gas­coigne’s appearance as a sub v Chelsea. Sad and ­irritating in equal measure. And that was just his hairstyle. Continued ranting about foreign players and the pernicious effect their presence is having on our national team. As if England have never been useless before now. The media’s barrel-scraping attempts to fill hours of airtime and acres of newsprint with England v Scotland build-up. Sending a reporter to Hampden Park, Eastbourne.

Hope for 2000
Someone high up at the FA to slap his forehead one morning and say, “I’ve got it! Why don’t we stop the Premiership wages spiral by putting a cap on admission prices!”

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