Wednesday 1 Arsenal stay five points clear but only after a nervous last few minutes in which Chelsea score twice before losing 3-2. “I like to win games like that when you’re tired,” says Arsène, making an excuse even though he doesn’t need to. “It was like watching the tide coming in,” says Howard Wilkinson as Man Utd score two late goals to beat Sunderland 2-1 having trailed for 75 minutes. Liverpool drop down to seventh after a tenth winless match, a 1-0 defeat at Newcastle, but Gérard sticks his chin out, sort of: “I don’t want to commit suicide before the end of the season.” Several fixtures are postponed due to bad weather, and one, Reading v Leicester, is called off at half-time due to a waterlogged pitch.
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Stories
It's the season of goodwill and all that kind of cobblers, so Ian Plenderleith finds some reasons to be cheerful on the internet
In the spirit of transient positivity that is unique to either the start of the new football season or the beginning of a fresh year, WSC hereby presents its Web Awards for the best five independent club-based fan sites, and for the best five general sites. The judge has scrupulously retained his penchant for wang-eyed subjectivity and has failed to cast off irrational prejudices, but would like to emphasise that originality, wit and the quality of writing played a considerable part in his selection of the following webzines, which appear in no particular order.
Ian Plenderleith takes a look at football on the internet
At the website Poems for Football Fans there is a versified view of football where the scribes range in age and talent, but share a common muse. Founded on the work of the Stroud Football Poets, a collective of Gloucestershire round-ball rhymesters, the site welcomes new talent and showcases a sprinkling of fine work such as the above, by Marcus Moore.
Across eastern Europe, black players are making their mark. Filippo Ricci reports
After nearly two decades in the international wilderness, Poland appear to have found a top class goalscorer. And he’s Nigerian. Emmanuel Olisadebe has scored three goals in four games for the national team including two in a surprise 3-1 win World Cup win in Ukraine. He arrived in Poland three years ago, having been top scorer in the Nigerian league, and helped his new club Polonia Warsaw to a league and cup double. A year ago his former coach at Polonia, Jerzy Engel, took over the national team and asked Olisadebe to take out Polish citizenship and start playing for the national team. There are even rumours that the player could change his name to Olisadebowski.
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