The Archive

Gary Oliver examines the latest attempt to fiddle about with the structure of the Scottish League – and explains why the issue is unlikely to go away

St Andrew’s Day, Hogmanay and Burns’ Night – all significant anniversaries in the Scottish calendar. But football fans are accustomed to an alternative winter night ritual: Self-Preservation Day, the annual attempt to force league reconstruction. Eighteen months ago, the clubs formed four divisions of ten and, to secure sponsorship by Bell’s, agreed a five-year respite from further change. A period of stability at last? You must be joking.

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Matt Stone heard the Labour Party explain why government intervention is the solution to football's problems

I used to be a member of the FSA. I am still a (disgruntled) Labour party member and a Spurs season-ticket holder. I’m also one of those idiots who would find it difficult to name a ticket price I wouldn’t pay. So I thought I’d probably be interested in Labour’s plans for football, which were unelashed on the world by Tom Pendry and Jack Cunningham at a press conference last month.

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Mark Perryman explains why the growing trend for players to get injured during pre-match warm-ups is a symptom of clubs' disregard for some basic principles of physical training

“The game is about glory. It’s about doing things in style, with a flourish, about going out and beating the other lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom.” And with these words from Danny Blanchflower the Spurs Way was born. It’s a fine philosophy and can be used to justify the misdemeanours of many a flair player. It is certainly a lot more attractive than anything likely to be provided by the dull followers of work-rate and route one. But at its heart this philosophy has also too often been used to explain away football’s bewildering ignorance of the importance of physical fitness.

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Matt Nation had a close shave with a legendarily "uncompromising" Premier League defender, and lived to tell the tale

The most irrelevant piece of advice that I thought I’d ever received was from a careers officer at school. After having given us leaflets on the police force, agricultural training in Monmouthshire and driving a tank with the best bunch of mates we’d ever have, she announced: “Whatever you end up doing, you don’t need to be nervous at the interview. Just picture in your mind’s eye the person interviewing you getting into a really hot bath. It’s such a silly idea that you’ll be instantly relaxed and it’ll be a doddle.”

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With the Bosman judgment likely to prove a disincentive for clubs to carry on with youth development programmes, Chris Hall looks at the controversy surrounding the treatment of young footballers by professional clubs

Terry Murphy, the man in charge of the youth development programme at Arsenal, showed me a chart which illustrates how many players the club have in each position, in each age group, from the youngest players at under-10, to the first team. He uses this chart to plan how many boys will be retained at Arsenal’s centre of excellence from year to year.

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