Despite being unbeaten in September, Stoke City have new owners and a new manager. Penny Stanley tells us why
September was a surreal month for Stoke fans. The team didn’t lose a single league match, earning an award for Gary Megson (Mr Third Choice Manager when he was appointed just two months previously). Kyle Lightbourne, a £500,000 flop throughout the previous 18 months, suddenly looked like a contender for player of the season.
Once again the matter of abuse from fans has been brought to the media's attention, but has it ever gone away?
It’s no reflection on Bobby Robson’s age to suggest that perhaps his memory is failing him in certain respects. The Newcastle Utd manager was apoplectic about the treatment meted out to Alan Shearer by Watford fans at Vicarage Road in November. “Think about what he has done for club and country,” Robson entreated us. “Whatever has happened to our so-called sporting public?”
Tuesday 2 Man Utd finish top of their Champions League group with a 2-1 win over Sturm Graz. "The competition will be more exciting for everyone from now on," yawns Alex. Arsenal's magnificently meaningless last group game ends in a 3-2 win in Stockholm. The FA are to take no action against Neil Ruddock over garlic-related remarks allegedly made to Patrick Vieira. "We fully accept that he is not racist ñ as his many black friends in the game will testify," says one of those FA spokesmen. Charlton regain second spot in the First Division after winning at Crewe. Moneybags Wigan, still unbeaten, go top of the Second by beating Chesterfield. Another bad day at the office for Barry Hearn as Leyton Orient slip to the bottom of the Third after losing at Darlington while rivals Chester win at Shrewsbury. Exciting times ahead in the Potteries, possibly, as Stoke City are bought by a consortium of Icelandic businessmen.
Most football fans look back at 1981 as the year Ipswich lost the title, and deserved to take it back to Suffolk. David Wangerin disagrees
In the dim and increasingly distant days before the Premiership, live football on TV and the Champions League, it was a widely held assertion that small, settled squads were a desirable thing, and that a collection of a dozen or so talented, motivated and well-organised players stood as good a chance as any of winning the championship – as long as they kept their limbs and ligaments intact and their noses clean.
Dear WSC
You published a letter from me in WSC 70 (December 1992), suggesting that Newcastle City Council may one day be cajoled into erecting an Arthur Horsfield memorial statue in Eldon Square. For over six years, WSC then callously ignored the career of one who, even in the face of fierce recent competition, must still rank as one of Newcastle United’s least successful signings (seven games in six months before being shipped off back to the lower leagues from whence he came). Imagine my surprise, then, upon reading an article in WSC 150 in which Harry Pearson suggested that the music which Middlesbrough used to run out to was “far too exotic to announce the arrival of Arthur Horsfield”. Having read Mr Pearson’s latest contribution in WSC 153, where he again cites Arthur in his musings on loyalty at Middlesbrough, I am convinced he shares my obsession with this shadowy character from my footballing childhood. Nevertheless, I must object at the vilification of Arthur as a footballing “serial philanderer” given that, apart from his brief stay at Newcastle, history shows that he played between 78 and 139 games for each of the other clubs which he represented (presumably with greater distinction), and indeed held the record of consecutive appearances for Charlton Athletic. Perhaps Mr Pearson would care to provide moral support to my latest plan to lobby Derwentside Council for a statue based on Arthur’s famed pose with arms outstretched, screaming for the ball to be centred? This could be situated inland, midway between Newcastle and Middlesbrough, high up on the rolling moors which dominate those great industrial conurbations. The Arthur of the North?
John Wright, Limours, France