The Archive

Dermot Corrigan lifts the lid on the civil action launched against former Barcelona owner Joan Laporta over the money he lost while at the club

Forcing unduly spendthrift owners or executives to repay club money they’ve squandered sounds like a dream for fans of many teams. But that’s what might be about to happen at Barcelona. At a general assembly of club members on October 16, new Barça president Sandro Rosell outlined the immensity of the debt his predecessor Joan Laporta had left behind, and proposed Laporta be held responsible. Rosell abstained in the ensuing vote, but was unlikely to have been disappointed when the motion was passed. A civil action has been launched which could force Laporta to personally pay the club €48.7 million (£42.3m).

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Mike Ticher acknowledges that there are several ways in which to appreciate football. But if we concentrate too much on the view of professionals, we risk missing the point altogether

I was a bit shocked to find out I didn’t know how to watch football, despite years of practice. At least that was the impression I got from Jonathan Wilson’s excellent book on tactics, Inverting the Pyramid. Perhaps a better way to put it is that the book exposes the gulf between two ways of watching: the fan’s way, in which you care about the result and the entertainment; and the coach’s or analyst’s, in which you study patterns and work out what each team is trying to do. The book’s genius is that it successfully explains the second way of thinking to the first group of people.

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A show that combined satire, nostalgia and comment on football culture. Rob Hughes revisits a neglected favourite

They say football and politics don’t mix, but Lenin of the Rovers was a rare exception. Aired on BBC Radio 4 between February 1988 and April 1989, it was a sharp, fabulously inventive comedy series written by Marcus Berkmann and Harry Thompson, with an ensemble cast that included Alexei Sayle, Phil Cornwell, John Sessions, Keith Allen, Jim Broadbent and the legendary Kenneth Wolstenholme.

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A reasonable start to the season for the home side comes to an end with a thrashing as the once illustrious visitors suggest that they may not hang around for too long at the third level. Harry Pearson reports

In the second half at Victoria Park there’s an odd moment when it seems we might be witnessing the birth of a new musical phenomenon. In the past people have successfully fused techno with jazz, hip hop with heavy metal and Indian bhangra with Celtic reels, but so far as I know nobody has until now thought of combining sub-Saharan African drumming with good old-fashioned north-east exasperated football moaning.

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Dave Jennings witnesses a feisty encounter between two favourites for promotion from League Two who have struggled in the early stages of the season

At the start of this season, Bradford City and Gillingham were among the bookies’ favourites to win promotion from League Two. With six weeks of the season gone, both teams still looked to be in with a fair chance of leaving the division, but now the bottom exit into the Blue Square Premier seemed the more likely escape route for both clubs. City had managed just four points and one win from their opening half-dozen League Two games. The team were even booed off the Valley Parade pitch after that solitary victory – a 1-0 success against Stevenage achieved thanks to a penalty and a lot of frantic defending. Bantams manager Peter Taylor complained bitterly about the booing, but readily admitted that the better team on the day had lost.

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