Saturday 1 Man Utd go top again after beating Villa 2-1, while Chelsea win 3-1 against Everton, who still need a point to avoid the drop. Southampton move out of the bottom three for the first time this season by beating Leicester 2-1. "We've got our heads above water and now we have to stay there," says winning goal scorer James Beattie. Charlton and Blackburn share a goalless draw at The Valley though the latter are refused what appears to be a clear penalty for a foul on Ashley Ward, who has to be restrained from attacking referee Gary Willard at the final whistle. Rob Harris, in charge (after a fashion) of West Ham's game with Leeds, also comes close to being thumped after dimissing Ian Wright with just 15 minutes gone. West Ham have another two sent off in a 5-1 defeat. "We were tremendous while we still had ten men," says a seething Harry Redknapp. "I thought the referee had a good game," says David O'Leary. Bradford's promotion hopes are knocked back by a home draw with Oxford United, while Bristol City are down after losing at Sheffield United. Walsall are promoted from the Second Division. Brentford join Cambridge and Cardiff in going up from the Third, while Scarborough still have a chance of avoiding the drop after an away win at Halifax. Celtic confirm that Kenny Dalglish is to rejoin them as "technical director" in the summer.
The Archive
Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
The German media were quick to put Bayern's failure to win the European Cup down to rank bad luck. Ian Plenderleith begs to differ
For many a long year German football commentary was characterised by the adage that “the good teams make their own luck”. That was the line after penalty shoot-outs against England, for example, or after winning the 1990 World Cup through a penalty awarded after a blatant dive, or winning Euro 96 through a deflected golden goal, or even after Bayern Munich’s late winner in this season’s Champions League group game against Barcelona after they had played abysmally for an hour and a half. But, as Günter Netzer famously commented after the national side’s 3-0 defeat by Croatia in France 98, “at some point luck has to run out”.
Cris Freddi trawls further through the dustbins of 20th century football by selecting champion crap sides from the merely awful
This is a category you know you’re not going to be able to cover properly. For a start, there are so many poor teams around, at every level. Selkirk losing 20-0 in the Scottish Cup, Hyde 26-0 to Preston in the FA Cup, the Austrian club who lost every match in a season except the one in which their opponents didn’t turn up because they’d folded. There’s always some schoolboy side cheerfully conceding double figures in every game. We could all make acceptable lists and none would look the same.
Rumours of the death of hooliganism may have been exaggerated. Adam Powley sees signs that it is making a comeback – though not in the newspapers
Remember the Worthington Cup final? Neutrals and even committed spectators could be forgiven for failing to recall anything memorable from such a grim game, but there was one incident that stood out for those at Wembley that day.
Adam Powley asks who is to blame for Tottenaham fans obtaining tickets for the Leicester end at Wembley and what are the FA are going to do about it?
Since the trouble at the Worthington Cup final, attention has focused on how Tottenham fans got seats for the Leicester end. The root of the problem seems simple: someone, or a group of people, almost certainly with connections to Leicester City, sold tickets either directly or indirectly to Spurs fans, thus at a stroke negating the effectiveness of any segregation policy. The big question is “who dunnit?”