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Taking their lead from the Bundesliga, Celtic fans are campaigning for the return of standing areas, reports Mark Poole

Terracing could soon be returning to top-flight British football. Celtic are conducting a feasibility study into installing safe standing areas at Celtic Park, following a proposal from the Celtic supporters’ trust. The board seem well disposed to the proposal and Neil Doncaster, the Scottish Premier League chief executive, says it is an option he “would like to see explored”. Unlike in England and Wales, Scottish law doesn’t prohibit terracing, but SPL and SFA rules would have to change before any top-flight clubs could bring back standing areas.

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Ed Parkinson on how Darlington’s demise means Hartlepool need a new local rival

For the best part of a century Hartlepool and Darlington were bound together through shared derbies that added a couple of high points to what were, more often than not, long and dreary seasons. Holding little hope of any more substantial achievement, fans of both clubs focused intensely on beating “them” once or twice a year. There was the occasional season apart but the breaks never lasted long as both clubs quickly returned to their natural habitat of the fourth division.

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Andy Brassell looks at a confusing and controversial TV deal for the Conference

It normally takes comedians or cover bands to pack out the bars at AFC Wimbledon and Kingstonian’s Kingsmeadow stadium on a night without a home game. But on a cold Friday evening in January, a few hundred were crammed in to watch live football. Wimbledon were playing at Gateshead and such is the relative obscurity of Premier Sports, the TV rights holder for the Football Conference from this season, that fans squeezed into the hostelries behind KM’s main stand to watch the transmission.

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Tom Davies examines the financial crises at Chester City and Southend United

It’s already been a season of high-profile financial crises and ownership murkiness, as recent developments at Portsmouth, Notts County and Leeds demonstrate. It’s no brighter further down the scale either. Chester City continue to dangle tortuously over the precipice, a threat of expulsion from the Conference delayed until November 16.

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A late summer night out in Selhurst. Manchester City breeze down to south-east London for the early rounds of the Carling Cup where Crystal Palace huff and puff against mega-rich opponents. David Stubbs reports

It’s grim down south. The freshly mint Manchester City and their supporters come down to Selhurst Park like a delegation from Italy’s Lega Nord descending with wrinkling noses on one of the more malodorous outlying districts of Naples. What a culture shock it must be for visiting fans from the regenerated and nouveau riche north-west as they emerge from Selhurst station, with its unappetisingly urinal-like walls, down a ginnel flanked with mistrustful barbed wire and as rank as the breath of an alcoholic in the afternoon.

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