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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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