A weekly dose of Champions League is not necessarily proving to be a hit in Europe
There’s more than a slight air of desperation hanging around this season’s Champions League, and it’s not just emanating from Bob Wilson. “This first stage of the competition doesn’t interest me,” says Johan Cruyff, and frankly we’d have to lump ourselves in with the thousands of fans who appear to agree with him.
Sunday 1 Tony Banks joins the Kate Hoey row: "If they go back in the FA Cup then that would be bloody disastrous. This sacrifice is worth paying even if it is unpopular with a number of politicians." Arsenal beat Man Utd 2-1 in the Charity Shield, Ray Parlour scoring the winner. Nicolas Anelka does not turn up to cheer on his old mates.
Brian Clough amongst others used to call them cheats. Nick Varley remembers them for a bit more than that
Let’s play a quick game of word association. Liverpool? Bill Shankly and the boot room. Keegan and Toshack. Barnes and Beardsley. Dominance in the late 1970s and 1980s. Manchester United? Sir Matt Busby’s Babes and Sir Alex Ferguson’s Fledglings. Charlton and Best. Beckham and Giggs. Utter dominance in the late 1990s. And Leeds? The cynical and mean Don Revie. Jack “Little Black Book” Charlton and Norman “Bites Yer Legs” Hunter. And David Batty, the modern reincarnation of the aggression of Billy Bremner. Oh, and the odd trophy in the late 1960s and early 1970s too.
Dear WSC
So Adam Powley thinks Chelsea have “obscene ticket prices” (WSC 151). He’s right, obviously, but having paid £29 to watch Tottenham play Chelsea from a seat situated behind the police control room at White Hart Lane last season, I hardly think Spurs fans are in a position to take the moral high ground. As for Chelsea’s “contrived glamour image”, I can only wonder at how he sees the image of his own club. “Real” glamour perhaps?
Colin Maitland, Ascot
Known as many things, mainly to rude to print, the referee has a tough job. Cris Freddi is taking no pity on the men in black
As always, there are enough examples of dreadful refereeing to fill a book, let alone a couple of pages. Only room here for a quick mention of Alan Hudson being given a goal for Chelsea against Ipswich, when the ball hit the side netting, and Clive Allen being denied one when his free-kick came back off the stanchion, both pushed aside by more momentous examples.