Dear WSC
Well, I’m really sorry to moan, especially as it was your 150th issue. But your Nick House (Football League Review, WSC 150) was watching a different Division Three to me last season. I’ll just say five things. Firstly, it was a tremendously exciting season. You wouldn’t think so to read this review. It culminated on the last day with first playing second for the championship. And it’s not often that happens. Secondly, how can Peterborough possibly be described as an enigma? One of the great certainties of Division Three football, and one of its great entertainments, is that Peterborough United consistently underachieve. It’s called the Barry Fry effect. Thirdly, there are some tremendous young players in this division, but you would need to be very blinkered indeed to name messrs Thomas, Breslan and Bastow among them. What about Martin Butler at Cambridge United, for goodness sake! Fourthly, he must be a really cautious punter if he wouldn’t have bet on any of the top v bottom games. If he had done, he would have made himself a tidy profit. Finally, eventual champions Brentford merited just one mention in the entire article. This despite one of their most eventful seasons ever, with the Ron Noades saga, a host of talented youngsters and that exciting final game. By contrast, Exeter City were mentioned five times, Devon clubs in general 11 times. Hey – that Nick House couldn’t be a Torquay fan, could he? Simon Knott, via email
The Archive
Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
Thursday 1 The Department of Employment issue new rules on work permits. Players will be given permits for the length of their contracts rather than having their cases reviewed at the end of each season, and the rule stipulating that non-EU players must be among the top five wage earners at their clubs is scrapped. Forest's search for a manager ends with the appointment of the impressively tanned David Platt, who says: "The two months I had at Sampdoria were a massive learning curve." That's just what Sampdoria fans will have been thinking when they went down. The charges against Sol Camp≠bell for assaulting a steward after the Derby v Spurs match last autumn are dropped. Arsenal spend £3.5 million on a Brazilian full back, Silvinho, who says: "I have been following Arsenal ever since I knew they were watching me."
Friday 2 The PFA's Gordon Taylor criticises the changes to work permit rules. "We already have more foreign players than anywhere else in the world. Removing the wages criteria means you are opening the door to players who are not neccesarily top quality". Terry McDermott joins the Barnes-Dalglish dream team at Celtic as "social manager" – a highly specialised position which involves a lot of shouting and laughing plus the collecting of betting slips.
A fractured league system in Bosnian football continues to hamper the national team, as Mirsad Cviko explains
Season 1998-99 could be the turning point for football in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Incredibly, after a disastrous run of results last year, the national team still has a chance of qualifying for Euro 2000 and there now seems to be a possibility that pressure from UEFA will bring about a unified national league.
John Williams comes off his line smartly to grab a chunk of goalkeeping history
I’m not sure how it is with you, but when I think back to childhood footballing days, things seem decidedly hazy. Detailed accounts of the hours we spent playing and watching are pretty much beyond me now.
To mark WSC's 150th issue, we invited three critics with different links to the magazine's past to reflect on changes in fan culture since 1986
WSC The term “fan culture”, which barely existed when the magazine started in 1986, has now become commonplace. But it seems as though there is actually less of a unifying fan culture now than there was then. Are there things that still bring people together, from Premiership to the Third Division, as we assumed there were when we started?