Search: 'Keith Alexander'

When Keith Alexander passed away on March 3, 2010, football lost one of its nice guys. Rob Bradley pays tribute to a true gentleman of the game

From 2000 to 2005 I was chair of Lincoln City Supporters Trust and chairman of the club. For three of those years Keith Alexander was our manager and I got to know him well. Keith liked his sayings. We liked them too. They lifted us when the finances were bad or when we were worried about the results. “We’ll be there or thereabouts,” was his favourite. And our favourite too because it reassured us when the going had got tough. Or had got even tougher.

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Highly popular at each of his nine former clubs, Chris Powell is now looking forward to his 23rd season in professional football. Yet he also wants to project his ideas about the game, and the changes he has witnessed, to a wider audience. Mick Collins talks to the well-travelled left-back

When Chris Powell was named in Sven-Göran Eriksson’s first England team, the London Evening Standard reacted in strident terms. “Chris Who?” it demanded across its back page, seeking a cheap and patronising laugh. So what of the various parties now?

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by David McVay
Reid Publishing, £9.99
Reviewed by Pete Green
From WSC 261 November 2008 

Buy this book

How should a serious newspaper cover lower-league football? The Guardian hardly bothers at all, contemptuously summarising 72 clubs’ weekends in a negligible bullet-point “round-up”. The Times and Telegraph, superficially at least, sometimes offer the lower divisions greater respect, with weekly columns dedicated to life outside the top flight. But exactly how respectful is it to commission lower-league specialists to get their hands dirty at Underhill while their staff writers hoover up the posh nibbles in comfy Premier League press rooms?

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Paul Ince and the dearth of black managers

Should you need evidence that football is the global game, then England is the place to find it. The Premiership is the most widely followed league in the world (if not perhaps the best, whatever Sky may claim) and there are more nationalities represented in it than any other. All of which throws into stark relief that in one way English football upholds a very old tradition – almost all the managers are white.

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Monday 1 Manchester United miss a chance to go nine points clear, drawing 2‑2 at injury-hit Newcastle. Liverpool’s 3‑0 win over Bolton takes them third. “They’ve shown me in the last couple of weeks why they are down there,” says Alan Curbishley as West Ham crash 6‑0 at Reading, their third successive defeat. Wigan drop to 17th after a fifth straight loss, 3‑0 at home to Blackburn. Antti Niemi is hospitalised with a serious neck injury in Fulham’s 0‑0 draw with Watford. Derby’s 2‑1 win at Preston takes them to within three points of Championship leaders Birmingham, beaten by a 90th‑minute goal at Ipswich. Torquay are six points adrift in League Two after losing 1‑0 at Bristol Rovers.

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