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Walking to the ground is not only a traditional part of the matchday experience, it’s good for you, too. Strangely, it’s becoming much more difficult to achieve. Pete Green reports

“The pedestrian remains the largest single obstacle to free traffic movement,” said a Los Angeles planning report in the 1960s. Four decades and billions of tonnes of carbon emissions later, some UK planners are seeing the light and pedestrian access figures increasingly in new developments. Except for football stadiums, that is – where careless designs and cheap locations threaten to make walking to the match a thing of the past.

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Will Everton be on the move soon – leaving the city of Liverpool? Gavin Willacy examines the history of clubs looking for new homes and concludes that the Blues have little choice but to head for Kirkby

If national media coverage is any barometer, there was surprisingly little uproar when Everton announced that they are considering a move out of Liverpool into neighbouring Kirkby. A few shareholder-fans objected at the AGM, concerned that the city would turn red in their absence, but otherwise the supporters seemed resigned to the inevitable. Once the King’s Dock project fell through in 2002, Everton had to come up with an alternative. With ground-sharing Liverpool’s Dubai-funded ground in Stanley Park seemingly out of the question and the chances of two new stadiums being built in the city unlikely, someone would have to move out.

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It was time for a new kind of reference work on the game. One that celebrated the culture of British football and did not just record the facts and figures. And, to celebrate the launch of our Half Decent Football Book, what better to serve as a taster than a look at food? And meet John Gregory, art critic

Pre-match meal 
Food has always been a controversial subject in football. The pre-match meal was once the only occasion during the season that a footballer’s dietary habits would come under any great scrutiny. Steak and chips, egg and chips and roast beef have all been favoured at various stages in the game’s development. Bill Shankly is reported to have abandoned his players’ strict pre-match steak diet in the early 1960s, after which meat was absolutely prohibited at lunchtime on a match day; this even extended into Shankly sending “spies” along on train journeys to away games to monitor whether players were loading up on ham rolls from the buffet trolley.

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James Medhurst takes us back to the turn of the century when the Southern League was teaching the Football League a thing or two

The long-term significance
This was the peak season of the Southern League as a credible competitor to the Football League, characterised by Tottenham’s success in winning the FA Cup, the only non-League side to do so since 1888. The strength of the eventual champions, Southampton, was also demonstrated by an England international against Ireland at The Dell, featuring three Saints players, plus one each from Bristol City and Millwall, a record Southern League contribution to the national team. However, it was also the beginning of the end, as second-placed City successfully applied to join the Football League, to be followed in later years by Spurs and Fulham. In 1920, the top division of the Southern League was swallowed up, as Division Three (South).

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From Bolton’s bright spark to Tranmere reject and retirement aged 30, Helen Duff charts the downward spiral of a footballer who wanted to make love not war

Hope and disappointment were the competing themes of Sasa Curcic’s football career, but in the end the latter won decisively. By the time the Yugoslavia midfielder opted for early retirement two years ago, he had convinced football fans across a broad span of the planet that he was one part virtuoso to two parts woeful lummox. Remembered with fondness for his lud­icrous comments, he’s still reviled by those supporters who once saw him as a saviour and remains, in at least two English boroughs, the man least likely to be invited back to switch on the Christmas lights.

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