- 1. It’s A Wonderful Life: My story by Cliff Jones
- (Players)
- VSP, £20 Reviewed by Huw Richards From WSC 359, January 2017 Buy this book Was the basis for Spurs’ Double-winning campaign of 1960-61 supplied by a close-season trip to Moscow in 1959? Cliff Jones, ...
- Created on 03 January 2017
- 2. Mind games
- (Fan culture)
- ... The game has furnished me with a level of broader interest that simply was not there before. The simple pleasure I experience from choosing how to spend my imaginary budget in the close-season, from ...
- Created on 01 April 2012
- 3. Stick or twist
- (Youth football)
- ... clubs. Ipswich’s Connor Wickham, perhaps better known, is another to be the subject of speculation on a close-season transfer. Should either make a move this summer they will be embarking on a well-trodden ...
- Created on 21 June 2011
- 4. Borussia Dortmund 3 - Manchester City 1
- (Match of the month)
- The former European champions spent heavily throughout the 1990s and ultimately suffered after floating on the stock market. A similar financial fate is unlikely to befall the cash-rich visitors. Uli ...
- Created on 21 September 2010
- 5. Wish you were here
- (Players)
- Jon Spurling looks at how footballers' holidaying habits have changed radically since the days of the maximum wage For England’s multimillionaire footballers, there is one major consolation to having ...
- Created on 21 September 2010
- 6. Minding the gap
- (Media)
- Thom Gibbs knew there would be little domestic news during the summer, but he couldn't help checking anyway Pre-season is a tough time. After the white-hot glare of the World Cup we’re left with four ...
- Created on 21 September 2010
- 7. Academic excellence
- (Clubs)
- Developing local young talent used to be the way forward for Millwall, but they can no longer see the point. Paul Casella takes up the sorry tale After a close-season tribunal judged that teenage starlet ...
- Created on 21 November 2008
- 8. Letters, WSC 251
- (Readers' letters)
- ... our record? I do have to confess to a slight doctoring of the facts – while unbeaten in England, we have lost twice in France and once in Holland in close-season tournaments, but on each occasion the kicks ...
- Created on 20 February 2008
- 9. Washed out
- (Non-League)
- ... weekends to repaint and decorate Meadow Park and who believed, thanks to manager Tim Harris’s close-season signings, the team had a realistic chance of promotion to the Conference South. But the floods ...
- Created on 17 September 2007
- 10. August 2006
- (Diary)
- ... on a close-season tour. Juventus buy Jean-Alain Boumsong from Newcastle for £3.5m. Really, they have. Wednesday 23 Chelsea are disowned by the boss – “That was not a José Mourinho team” – after two late ...
- Created on 14 October 2006
- 11. Summer loving?
- (Miscellaneous)
- ... time. With football shrunk to just two pages in the press and the Confederations Cup, the close-season survivalist has to dig deep to find sustenance. One option is to find a foreign country where they’re ...
- Created on 14 August 2005
- 12. Screaming blue murder
- (Clubs)
- ... thought the nadir had been reached in the final match of last season with that 5-1 drubbing by Manchester City, they hadn’t reckoned with the close-season implosion and an unseemly all-out civil war between ...
- Created on 14 September 2004
- 13. May 2004
- (Diary)
- ... UEFA Cup: a 3-3 draw at Southampton leaves them five points behind Liverpool with one game to play. Sir Bobby is baffled but defiant: “Football is a mystery but we live to fight another day.” Leeds’ close-season ...
- Created on 14 July 2004
- 14. Reality check
- (Miscellaneous)
- ... or eight goals from the big guy. Spurs fans will look down the fixture list and see no really difficult games there. Down in Division Three, the close-season arrival of a chap with a Norwegian name will ...
- Created on 14 October 2003
- 15. "Too big for his boots?"
- (Players)
- ... transfer to Real Madrid has provided the press with a close-season story beyond its wildest imaginings. The amount of print dedicated to increasingly wild speculation about the sale of (variously) “The ...
- Created on 14 August 2003
- 16. The Jimmy Seed Story
- (Classic football literature)
- ... with Argentine players which was only broken up when armed troops stormed the pitch. With exemplary understatement, Seed concludes that after that he preferred close-season tours to Sweden. The promotions ...
- Created on 14 April 2000
- 17. Humiliation - Luton
- (Fan culture)
- ... week later, after Walsall scored on the hour, Lawrence decreed things must be done. So winger Simon Davies, finally having a decent game for the first time since his close-season transfer from Manchester ...
- Created on 14 February 1998
