Search: 'Lancaster City'

Colin Peel searches in vain for a long history of exciting derbies in the Second City, as Aston Villa and Birmingham City prepare to resume hostilities

Blues v Villa is the derby that football forgot. No other big city rivalry has had to wait as long for its protagonists to renew the duel for league supremacy. December 12, 1987, was the date of the last clash, in the Second Division, which saw Villa triumph 2-1 in front of 28,000 at St Andrews. Both Villa and their man­­ager that day, an enterprising chap called Graham Taylor, were bound for promotion. For Blues, things got much worse before the current owners began the transformation which has the put the club where it is today.

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Dear WSC
I found Rob Smythe’s comments on Juan Pablo Angel to be a heart-warming defence of life as an assimilating millionaire. I agree that the lazy journalists of which he speaks should “get off their fat arses and make their way up to Villa Park”. Perhaps they could give some of the absent Villa fans a lift while they are at it. For every London-based hack missing out on “the best Villa side for a number of years” there are 1,500 Villa fans out shopping on a Saturday. Oh hang on, Newcastle v Villa is game of the day on tonight’s show. It looks like the team forgot to turn up to this one. Twen­ty minutes prime time and you blew it. Note to Des – only show extended coverage of Villa when they win. Happy, Mr Smythe?
Chris Wright, via email

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Ian Plenderleith looks at a few fan sites

There are a handful of good reasons for visiting another club’s independent website, such as checking for neanderthal-free pubs, or the hosts’ opinion of the 34-year-old, injury-prone defender who is about to sign a two-year contract with your own already struggling team. The other main factor likely to send non-partisan visitors to alien cyber-territory is humour. Not witless abuse of the team from the next town along, but something with the spark to earmark a webzine from the endless screenfuls of hackneyed bile hashed up in the name of rivalry.

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Wednesday 2 “There was nothing kick and rush about that,” says Martin O’Neill as a Matt Elliott goal takes Leicester to the Worthington final at the expense of Villa. “We had our chance and we choked,” says John Gregory, who also claims that Leicester are about to take Stan Collymore off his hands, though the clubs are yet to agree on a fee. Swindon, eight points adrift at the bottom of the First, call in the administrators. They are currently losing £25,000 a week. “I believe we’ll be the first of many,” says chairman Cliff Puffett. The football authorities lobby the government to bring in restrictions on the number of non-EU players used by English clubs to two per team. “A Premiership team without one player from the UK sends out the wrong signals,” says the PFA’s Gordon Taylor. Ears burning, Gianluca Vialli says: “A quota might protect young English players but clubs won’t be able to compete in Europe if we stop some non-EU players joining us.”

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With the next Premier League deal in the offing, ITV’s Jim Rosenthal discusses changes in broadcasting since the arrival of Sky and casts doubt on Duncan Ferguson’s mystique

What has been the main impact of Sky since 1992 from the broadcasters’ point of view?
They’ve taken football coverage on to a new level and basically, for us, they have created a lot of work within the industry. Foot­ball saved Sky, but in return people in TV recognise what Sky have done for football. They have ob­viously created a vast am­ount of wealth for the game – wealth that football has spent as it always will, not necessarily wisely. If you give football club chairmen £1, they will always spend £1.10.

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