Terry Staunton investigates the changing of the guard at Pride Park
Having spent the best part of two years reading stories with more than a hint of obituary about them, fans of Derby may not appreciate the irony that the club’s new chairman is more used to presiding over inquests.
Karl D Pridmore explains how the board at Nottingham Forest tried to change a football club into a public company in 1997
In April the financial future of Nottingham Forest was decided in the High Court, to almost complete indifference in the national press. It’s a complicated tale, but one with important implications for other clubs and, for Forest, a more or less happy ending.
Irving Scholar was just one of the strange heroes of The Men Who Changed Football. The BBC documentary gave only a partial account of the past two decades, says Nick Varley
I was one of the men who changed football. Well, actually, I was one of those in The Men Who Changed Football, BBC2’s three-part documentary on how the game was transformed from “national disgrace to big business”. Granted, it was a fleeting appearance, lurking behind Tony Banks and David Mellor, the Laurel and Hardy of west London, after they completed an ill-advised football-playing photocall before the launch of the Task Force. The press conference which followed the slapstick routine was, you won’t be surprised to hear, a lot less entertaining.
Shrewdness is the key to success
Bear with us, this month’s issue isn’t entirely about Tottenham. But the current state of the club does raise some intriguing questions about where English football has come from and where it’s going to. When WSC started in 1986, the three men in charge at White Hart Lane were Irving Scholar (chairman), David Pleat (manager) and Glenn Hoddle (lead artiste). Strange, then, to see them all together again, even if it was at Highbury in an atmosphere that was both sombre because of David Rocastle’s death and frosty because of the long-standing differences between Pleat and Hoddle.
Jamie Rainbow tells us about Teletext on the internet, the two main teams in the East Midlands and advice you need to invest in football
Combine the immediacy of Teletext with the scope of the internet and you’ve got the perfect medium for keeping abreast of all the latest football news. Or so you might think. The reality is something of a letdown. Although the Teletext site provides links to specially written club columns and is available for longer than the televised version, that’s about all it has to offer.