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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Jan Molby talks to Huw Richards and tells him about cultural changes in his time in England and the transition from player to manager

As a youngster, how conscious were you of British football?
Very aware of it. In my part of Denmark, the interest was in English and German football – in other parts it’s only in the English game. The Danish game then was still amateur. My first team was Arsenal. It was the year they won the double and while I didn’t know what the double was, you get interested in teams you see a lot on television. That interest in British football is still there in Denmark. There was a period when you had stars like the Laudrup brothers playing in Spain and Italy when they got the similar coverage, but nowadays all the kids want to play for Manches­ter United, who have incredible support in Den­mark, the same way Liverpool do in Nor­­way. I remember when we played Ros­enberg, there were about 10,000 people to greet us at the airport and in a stadium hold­ing 24,000 there were 21,000 supporting Liverpool.

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Relieved to see the end of Peter Johnson's reign at Everton, Neil Wolstenholme hopes for better times at Goodison Park

Given the many false dawns over the past year I will only believe that Bill Kenwright has bought Everton when Peter Johnson’s shares are safely transferred. As Kenwright is a current director of the club, the process of due diligence, allowing for the books to be examined before the deal is a concluded, should not be a problem. A bigger concern for many fans lies in the identity of the new owner’s possible backers, rum­oured to include marketing moguls the Barclay brothers and the corporate raider Philip Green, recently lin­k­­ed to an attempted takeover of Marks and Spencer. It is to be hoped Kenwright will identify his partners as soon as possible.

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Blessed with an unpopular chairman, Colin Dobell writes on how a group of fans were encouraged to formulate a plan to make Mansfield their own once more

The story of Mansfield Town’s decline is a familiar one of dubious financial dealings, serially broken promises and a wanton lack of investment. However, it may not have a conventional ending if the efforts of a group of fans achieves its goal of ousting the current chairman Keith Haslam. Unlike other such campaigns, they also have concrete ideas about how to go about replacing him effectively.

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Huge debt, daily losses and a bankrupt chairman – Dominic Fifield recounts the sorry saga at Crystal Palace

Crystal Palace, founder members of the Premier League which they left just two years ago, have now been perched on the brink of oblivion for nearly a year. Over £20 million in debt and losing £40,000 every week, south London’s perennial under-achievers have been brought to their knees by gross financial mis­management.

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