Ian Plenderleith remembers the night when it felt like Lincoln could beat anyone

It wasn’t the size of the Sheffield United team that came to Sincil Bank that had the home support wor­ried. It was the number of away fans. You could see them crossing the bridge from the coach park in the gap between the old wooden South Park and St And­rews stands. It was a never-ending stream and, for the only time in all the matches I ever saw at Lincoln, they took over the entire swath of open-top terrace that stret­ched alongside the ground, leaving the home fans to cram in behind the goal at the Railway End.

Read more…

Paul Whitehouse tells WSC about his love for Spurs, the basis of Ron Manager and the first ever pop record he brought

Who did you want to be when you were a kid in the playground?
George Best, Alan Ball. I did play all the time when I was a kid, I wanted to be a footballer more than anything else. I liked the ad hoc games best, playing on concrete.

Read more…

Neil Wills reads Tom Finney's book from 1958 and cannot help but think that, despite certain differences, parts of the game remain the same

An evil press fabricates stories to provoke trouble. Players are paid to throw games. England’s administrators are out of touch with reality. Italian football is dogged by too many foreign signings and the chican­ery of top industrialists. The skewed allocation of Cup final tickets leads to a healthy market for touts. Fans invade the pitch to assault players, and talk of a Eur­opean super league continues unabated. Welcome to 1958.

Read more…

As well as looking at sad stats for transfers and appearances, Jamie Rainbow takes in unofficial Stoke City and official Accrington Stanley

You get what you pay for, we’re often told. Not in the world of football you don’t, where, according to a site devoted to the transfer market, Transfer News, financial outlay bears little or – in the case of Newcastle – no relation to success. Since the inception of the Premier League in 1992, the three heaviest spending clubs have been Newcastle, Liverpool and Everton, none of whom currently show any signs of justifying their massive investments. 

Read more…

Italy have tried the idea of two referees. Richard Mason tells us why he is impressed

The second round, first leg matches of the Italian Cup, played on October 12-14, saw the start of an experiment that could have far-reaching consequences. For the first time in an important competition in Europe, matches were controlled by two referees.

Read more…