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Lincoln’s Keith Alexander, back at work after brain surgery, is one of only three black managers in the league. Grahame Lloyd asked him why he thought this was so

Keith Alexander knows he’s very lucky to be alive. Just three months after undergoing major brain surgery following a collapse at his home, the Lincoln City manager was due back in the dugout for the home derby against Boston on February 7. Alexander could hardly have chosen a more volatile atmosphere for his return but, with Lincoln’s next three matches pitching them against neighbours Scunthorpe and Hull as well as promotion rivals Huddersfield, all their games this month are high-profile and high-octane.

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Dear WSC
I enjoyed Roger Titford’s nostalgic piece about half-time scoreboards (WSC 202). Many people will remember Hud­ders­field Town’s big scorebox at the old Leeds Road ground. It was manned from within and, although it couldn’t boast Fulham-style coloured lights, it was still a complicated business to fathom its information. Scores were displayed in three groups (A, B & C) of eight and unless you watched it constantly, you couldn’t be sure whether the scores shown were from Group A or Group B. I missed many a goal and other dramatic incidents early in second halves through over-attentiveness to my programme to see how (for example) Ply­mouth and Blackburn were getting on. It was usually 0-0.
Stuart Barker, Carlisle

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In the dizzy heights of the Premier League when emotions run high things can get out of hand

Millions of neutrals will have watched the recent Manchester United ver­sus Arsenal match and greatly enjoyed its conclusion – even people who dislike the Premiership for what it represents will have been entertained. They may have been surprised, therefore, to learn that civilisation itself was undermined by what followed a late penalty miss. Sky, of course, were shock­ed by the hounding of Ruud van Nistelrooy and made sure we saw why, repeatedly, from every angle. Revulsion swept through the media – phone-ins were jammed, the tabloids brought out extra large point sizes for their head­lines and the letters pages were full of tearful letters from parents about how their poor children were shocked by what they saw (while they were outside, argu­ing over who was going to play Mar­tin Keown in their reconstruction).

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Is Terry Venables really any good as a coach? Leeds' new manager is the subject of this month's Head to Head

Yes ~
I met Terry Venables once. He’d brought out a rather bizarre board game called The Man­ager and was trying to sell it as a TV pro­gramme. I was hired to answer the quiz ques­tions on it in front of some BBC big­wigs. They didn’t take it up and I had to spend the morning with Eric Hall, so it wasn’t a suc­cessful day.

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There's a World Cup coming up, apparently, so we invited three well-travelled journalists to make some rash predictions about what will happen. As a Swede based in London Marcus Christenson has ties to two of the countries in Group F. Gabriele Marcotti has lived in Japan and how tries to explain English football to Italians and vice-versa. Alan Duncan reports regularly on Nigeria and Cameroon, who face England and Ireland respectively, as well as the three other African qualifiers

Are playing styles and tactics are becoming more homogeneous throughout the world, because most of the top players are playing in the same leagues? If so, does that make the World Cup less interesting?
Gabriele Marcotti There’s a greater uniformity. Not just in the way teams play, but also in how they train. If you look at the size of the Italian or Spanish players, they are now as big as the northern Europeans are expected to be. Everybody’s an athlete. Some of the English play­ers still get drunk and irresponsible but the impression I get with players like Beckham and Owen is that they train seriously and take care of their diet. In some ways it has become more uniform, but in a positive way – the level of fitness has definitely increased everywhere.

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