East Stirling have a new investor who is hoping to transform their forutnes after six consecutive seasons at the bottom of the Scottish league. Neil Forsyth reports
It would be expected that the recent travails of Gretna, in administration and facing daily reports predicting their imminent demise, should stand as stark warning against investment in Scotland’s minor clubs. Recent developments at the country’s worst professional football team, however, would suggest that hope springs eternal.
The Autobiography
by John Hartson with Alex Montgomery
Orion, £17.99
Reviewed by Graham McColl
From WSC 240 February 2007
Flicking the picture section of this book is a bit like watching the Incredible Hulk expand to the point where his clothes burst from his body. John Hartson arrived in top-flight football just as players were starting to pay greater attention to diet and Hartson, too, was always keen to do so. Awaiting, nervously, an ultimately unsuccessful fitness test with Glasgow Rangers in 2000, he relaxes in a smart restaurant in Glasgow’s West End. “I was so hungry I had four portions just to fill me up.”
In the dying days of George Graham’s Arsenal reign, the Scot signed a player as far from his own image as imaginable. Jon Spurling remembers a Dutch enigma
As fortysomethings waxed lyrical about Geordie Armstrong’s “magnificent engine” and Brian Marwood was voted the club’s greatest ever short-term acquisition, debate raged among Arsenal fans on a website over who was the club’s greatest recent wide player. Anders Limpar – rather harshly – was described as a “poor man’s Robert Pires”. So what, I wondered, did that make Glenn Helder. A destitute’s Marc Overmars, perhaps?
Panorama's report into corruption and the impact it is having on the game
Is football full of corrupt people? We have no idea. Or at least we have no proof. But with plenty of agents and managers saying that bungs – that is, bribes – are rife, we do know that the alternative is that the game is full of liars.
Tuesday 1 Steve McClaren begins his first day as England manager by saying: “It will be totally different from Sven and the past five years. I’m going to do it my way.” Liverpool’s Champions League opponents Maccabi Haifa are contesting UEFA’s plan to switch the Israel leg of their tie to a neutral venue. That man Ken Bates is to report Chelsea to the Premier League, the FA, FIFA and the World Council of Churches after claiming they recruited two Leeds youth-team players through an illegal approach. José Antonio Reyes is hoping to tie up a move to Madrid: “Real are like a candy that is difficult to turn down.” Ghana full-back John Pantsil joins West Ham.