Thursday 1 Clydebank, nearly £200,00 in debt, may close down next week if creditors fail to reach an agreement with the club’s prospective buyer. Alan Buckley is to take over at Lincoln. Long-ball zealot John Beck returns for a second spell as manager of Cambridge and says: “There were a lot of lies told about what we did here before.”
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Dear WSC
Just a pedantic correction to Matthew Taylor’s piece in WSC 156 about foreigners in Britain throughout the century. Danish international Nils Middleboe did indeed play for Chelsea from 1913, but not just for one season. He made 46 appearances for the club between 1913 and 1921, a period encompassing five seasons. As an amateur, he reputedly never even claimed his expenses, rather like today’s foreign contingent. Incidentally, and though I’ve got nothing in particular against Germans or Germany myself, I was interested in Uli Hesse-Lichtenberger’s suggestion in the same issue that the Belgians have never forgotten the German invasion of 1914. The similar over-running of their country in 1940 probably didn’t help either and may be fresher in some elderly Belgians’ memories.
Peter Collins, London SW17
Despite overseeing some of the finest young talent in York City's history, Douglas Craig is not the most popular man in town. Tony Eves explains why
Distinguishing features A magistrate with an MBE, also the proud owner of a light-brown anorak which he elegantly models in directors’ boxes on matchdays (an idea that could almost have come from Jürgen Klinsmann and his insistence on driving a VW Beetle in this era of Ferraris). Active and vocal disliker of fancy dan wingers/fans/chairmen.
Tuesday 2 Sir John Hall resigns from the board of Newcastle Utd and its parent company. Two directors of the plc stepped down last week, apparently in protest at the impending return to the club board of Freddie Shepherd and Douglas Hall. Stan Ternent leaves Bury to become manager of Burnley. Romario is out of Brazil's World Cup squad having not recovered from injury. "We had a similar situation with Gary McAllister so things have evened out," says Craig Brown.
Wednesday 3 Terry Venables criticizes Glenn Hoddle's decision to drop Paul Gascoigne: "I think I would have been a little more patient."
Saturday 6 Hoddle summons Teddy Sheringham for a chat after the tabloids find him drinking in a nightclub in Portugal. "If people read that I was out until 6am I admit that it sounds disgraceful," says Teddy. Slough Town are thrown out of the Conference for failing to upgrade their ground. Telford, who finished in the third relegation spot, are reinstated.
Dear WSC
For those readers who may have heard York City chairman Douglas Craig spouting off on a Radio One/Radio Five programme about the Fabian Society’s ‘Football United’ report, please permit me to fill in a few background details. Mr Craig is the former chairman of the York and District Conservative Association and close friend of Tory MP and club president, John Greenaway, a self-confessed Arsenal fan. He remains the only Football League chairman not to endorse the CRE ‘Kick Racism Out Of Football’ initiative and describes City supporters who campaign for the club to back down and sign as “interfering left wing do-gooders”. Who better, then, to comment on a report by a socialist organization? The BBC confirmed when I spoke to them that Mr Craig was only used because they knew they’d get the desired negative response. This may be all well and good for the purposes of the feature but it is infuriating to hear someone express such myopic opinions without the chance to refute and counter some of their comments. To hear a man who tells his own club’s supporters to stay away if they don’t like what they see on a Saturday afternoon, belittling the report because he claims the authors don’t realize that football is “a business”, is just laughable. But then everybody loves a clown…
Odge, Scarborough