Friday 2 All league football in Italy is suspended after the death of a policeman in a riot outside Catania’s stadium during their match with Palermo. “What we’re witnessing has nothing to do with football, so Italian football is stopping,” says Federation boss Luca Pancalli.
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Alex Ferguson has achieved so much in his two decades at Old Trafford – but what happened to the club he left behind? Keith Davidson charts how Aberdeen were undone by Old Firm cash
This month marks the 20th anniversary of Alex Ferguson’s move to Manchester United, so it’s a safe bet that newspapers and television will be full of glowing features, plus the odd dour analysis of whether he has outstayed his welcome. Few will dwell on the club that Fergie left behind, or what has happened to it over the last couple of decades, but the subsequent fate of Aberdeen does chime in with wider changes in Scottish football.
Steve Menary examines the possibility of a Scottish Premier League Two and the ramifications it could have
Does Scotland need a second premier league? The Scottish Premier League (SPL) was formed as a protectionist dash to ring-fence cash and crush rumours that the Old Firm would play elsewhere. Now, clubs in the first division of the Scottish Football League (SFL) want even more protection.
Thursday 1 “I think I have arrived here at the perfect time,” says Andriy Shevchenko on joining Chelsea for £30 million. Arsenal are to be questioned over a loan payment made to their Belgian nursery club Beveren, which may have breached FIFA regulations. Ronnie Moore steps down as Oldham manager, to be replaced by John Sheridan.
We covered the Three Kings on December 3 but for the 14th day of the WSC advent calendar we’re looking at their home – the Orient. Leyton Orient, obviously. After going nowhere but down since 1989, Martin Ling’s unsung east Londoners battled the yo-yoing Mariners with promotion or the agony of the play-offs at stake in June 2006, issue 232. Tom Davies reported
They don’t do triumphalism very well in this part of London. And going into an Easter Monday six-pointer in third place in League Two, with automatic promotion still in their own hands, takes most Leyton Orient fans into completely uncharted territory. This is a club that have not won promotion since 1989 – when a late play-off charge took the Os out of Division Four – and have not gone up automatically since 1970’s Third Division title. Grimsby, a point and a place below Orient, have been up two divisions and back again in that 17-year period. Other teams yomp up and down the divisions with drunken cavalier abandon. But Orient fans look on wistfully as nothing much changes in their landscape. “It was so much easier when we were coming 17th every year,” grumbles one fan in the bustling Birkbeck pub beforehand. He’s joking of course. Well, perhaps half-joking.