Keith Butterick took on the job of persuading Halifax to keep a football club and invest in its shabby ground. Here's how he got on

You have always needed a sense of humour and irony to be a Halifax Town fan. The club is currently on the verge of having one of the finest grounds in the lower divisions and has never been so rich, the recent wind­fall of some £700,000 after Fulham sold Geoff Hors­field adding to already swollen coffers. Yet we are languishing at the bottom of the League and, at the time of writing, looking for a manager

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For 100 years, Bradford City battled boardroom conservatism, economic decline and rival clubs of two codes – and won.  Mike Harrison wonders when Leeds will notice

For a city with a metropolitan population of nearly half a million (more than Manchester and nearly twice the size of Newcastle), Bradford has rarely come close to fulfilling its potential as a football centre. In some ways the figure is misleading, including as it does the rural suburbs of Ilkley, Addingham, Menston and Burley. In addition, Bradford has had a growing Asian population since the 1960s, working in what remained of the wool industry. Very few have become regulars at Valley Parade, even though the ground lies in the heart of their community. While that does not reflect well on the club’s efforts to draw them in, it does help to explain why City, even in the Premier League, struggle with a relatively modest fan base.

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Leeds United no longer have to look back in anger, says Dave Cohen. They have finally shed the burden of the club's great years under Don Revie

The history of Leeds United is the history of Don Revie and can be written as follows: Chapter One: Before Don Revie; Chapter Two: The Revie Years; and Chapter Three: The Revie Legacy.

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Ian Plenderleith  takes a look at Rivals.net, a new site that brings unofficial online fanzines to one site, and Impnet, the Lincoln City fanzine that has signed up to the Rivals venture

Rivals.net is a new umbrella website for unofficial online fanzines. It is a joint venture between US-based online sports network Rivals.com and media giant Chrysalis Group plc which says it is providing “a powerful online soapbox that sees the future of sports media publishing placed in the hands of the fans”.

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WSC’s almost annual roundtable brought together three contributors from different branches of the media to discuss trends in football reporting and a host of other relevant (and irrelevant) matters

WSC It’s often said that players these days are remote from the fans. But has the attitude of players towards journalists also changed now that many of them are so phenomenally wealthy?

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