Harry Pearson realises that football has changed so quickly that he has become old before his time

“You don’t get the build-up of atmosphere that you used to,” I said to a journalist from the Daily Mail one Saturday afternoon at the Riverside Stadium last sea­son. We looked around the ground. It was ten minutes to three, another capacity crowd, yet, aside from the strip occupied by the away fans, 90 per cent of the red seats remained empty. “The fact that everybody’s buying their tickets in advance has something to do with it,” the Mail man said. “People know they’ll get in so they only turn up 15 minutes before kick off.”

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To mark WSC's 150th issue, we invited three critics with different links to the magazine's past to reflect on changes in fan culture since 1986

WSC The term “fan culture”, which barely existed when the magazine started in 1986, has now become commonplace. But it seems as though there is actually less of a unifying fan culture now than there was then. Are there things that still bring people together, from Premiership to the Third Division, as we assumed there were when we started? 

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John Williams comes off his line smartly to grab a chunk of goalkeeping history

I’m not sure how it is with you, but when I think back to childhood footballing days, things seem decidedly hazy. Detailed accounts of the hours we spent playing and watching are pretty much beyond me now.

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A background of Grizzlies and Stompers may prove the right preparation for Portsmouth, says Mike Woitalla

In the USA, Milan Mandaric owned teams called the Earthquakes, Stompers, Storm, Grizzlies and Thundercats between 1974 and 1999.They were outdoor and indoor teams, and covered three different states in four different leagues. They’re all dead. But one made a major impact on the American soccer landscape and another led to his investment in Portsmouth.

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Portsmouth have been bought by a Serbian-American electronics magnate. Steven Morgan is chuffed, so far

The sight of grown men behaving like kids has not been confined purely to footballers on holiday this summer. Serbian tycoon Milan Mandaric’s £5 million takeover of Portsmouth has seen long-suffering sup­porters on the south coast spend the close season pinching themselves in disbelief.

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