Only via the FA Cup and only in the 1970s could Leatherhead hit football's big time. Jon Spurling charts a story of yesterday's men that embraced Tomorrow's World
A maverick striker who courted publicity, a cabbage-patch pitch that mysteriously turned to mud even in the summer, a spit-and-sawdust stadium, a memorable green baize shirt and a tiny but prominent hooligan problem – Leatherhead’s remarkable FA Cup run in the mid-1970s was perfect for football as it entered the Technicolor age.
They may be worth £1 million or so to David Beckham, but not every player picks up a cheque for wearing a brand of boots. Not even, as Chris Britcher writes, every England player
February 1977, Wembley. Stan Bowles, the QPR striker who helped push Liverpool to the wire in the championship, is about to pull on his boots for his fifth England cap. But Stan has a dilemma. Stan has been offered, in the run-up to the match, £200 to play in Gola boots. But on the day of the game, Adidas puts £300 in front of him. Does he upset Gola, with whom he has a deal? Or does he run with the higher bid?
Brighton’s veteran goalkeeper talks Chris Eldergill through the ups and downs of a career spanning 24 years, and explains why he’s happy to carry on playing
At the age of 44 and with a wealth of experience dating back 24 years, Dave Beasant is the oldest player in the Football League. The 6ft 4in goalkeeper is currently helping out at Brighton & Hove Albion, having signed from Wigan back in January. Brighton are Beasant’s 13th club and he has now made more than 750 league appearances during his career. His determination to add to this figure is evident.
As Matthew Le Tissier calls it a day, Cris Freddi looks back on some of the other players who have been almost great, but not quite, in his tricky position
So goodbye then, Le Tiss. Thanks for the sequence of great individual goals that season. If you’d got yourself injured there and then, we’d have called it a really big loss, someone who had the makings of a great player. Instead, they’re saying you didn’t have enough ambition to leave an unfashionable club. I think that’s bollocks personally, but we all agree that something went AWOL in the last few years.
Anthony Hobbs talks QPR – what's gone wrong in recent years, bad signings and mergers
What has been the main reason for the club’s steady decline over the past few seasons?
The then chairman Richard Thompson failed to invest in the squad six or seven years ago, at a time when a moderate outlay might have paid dividends through revenue generators such as UEFA Cup qualification (don’t laugh, we weren’t that far away). His successor, Chris Wright, was much more willing to invest at first. Sadly, he and his managers almost seemed a bit too desperate to buy players and showed all the judgement of the bloke who bought £70,000 worth of Railtrack shares the day before they went belly-up.