Search: 'Cowdenbeath'

Ken Gall describes Gretna's meteoric rise from the depths of English football to taking the Scottish Third division by storm

To those sadly unenlightened individuals not au fait with the gálactico-fest that is the Scottish Third Division, the news that Gretna FC had only just lost a seven-goal classic to Dundee United in the third round of the Scottish Cup might have caused some surprise. (Among those so surprised would be those Bolton Wanderers fans who can recall their side knocking Gretna out of the FA Cup just over ten years ago.)

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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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Alex Horsburgh investigates the life and times of the Cowdenbeath chairman, a man who sacked his manager the week after they were promoted

Distinguishing features  Small and wiry, reminiscent of Granville from Open All Hours.

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Foreign players were effectively banned before 1978 but, as Matthew Taylor discovers, there were ways for a select few to ply their trade

Before the arrival of Ossie Ardiles and Ricardo Villa at Tottenham in 1978, foreign players were rarely seen on British football pitches. A mixture of xenophobia and sheer arrogance convinced the authorities that there was little need or desire to import players from abroad. The British – mainly the English – clung to an assumed role as footballing masters who had nothing to learn from their continental pupils, especially on home soil. Even so, the British game was never com­pletely insulated from the outside. The place of for­eigners in our domestic football did not suddenly emerge as an issue in the wake of the Bosman judg­ment, or even in 1978. There had, in fact, been a trickle of foreign footballers into this country for almost a century before the present flood.

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After looking painstakingly through all the surveys our readers sent in, Roger Titford explains the results

In an unusual turnabout, this year’s WSC survey gives Sepp Blatter a helping hand. Ever anticipating the key issues, we asked what damage you thought the number of foreign players was causing the game to­day. Of the first 900 questionnaires re­turned, 50 per cent said the England team was suffering, 45 per cent saw damage in the Premiership, 35 per cent in the Scot­tish Premier League and 30 per cent to the Scottish national side. Only 29 per cent felt the number of foreign players causing no damage anywhere in the game. Thirty-two per cent felt, like Sepp, the restrictions should be tightened, but 51 per cent thought they were about right.

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