Roger Titford examines how ground advertising is becoming a much more visible part of the matchday experience in recent times
The move from commercial innocence to commercial overload has radically affected what the fan sees inside a football ground nowadays. All the clutter that is on display now seriously infringes on the beauty of football as a visual spectacle, especially when looking at one end of the ground from the other.
Football is the most popular sport in the world, so Matthew Foreman wonders why sponsors aren't earning enough out of it
It seems remarkable given the multi-millions sloshing around the Premier League, but in advertising circles they’re saying the world of football sponsorship is in crisis. Some of the game’s sponsors are seeing sales rise but others are wasting millions, naively thinking that football’s trendy status will help them sell any product they fancy. So what’s the secret of a good marketing campaign, and is there a downside to the advertising upsurge?
Roy Hodgson hasn't always managed foreign clubs. Matt Nation remembers his short stint in charge of Bristol City
On turning to the front bit of your Sunday tabloid, you often find pages five to eight plastered with a ‘seedy past’ exposé. The host of a sofa-based chat-show, for example, is revealed to have once visited a topless bar, dropped a couple of tabs and then thrown a cloakroom attendant through a plate-glass window. The nation smirks behind its collective hand for a couple of days, then loses interest, comes over all moral and decides to let bygones be bygones.
Jan Molby was loved at Swansea but Huw Richards documents how his reign as manager was ended
The sacking of Jan Molby under-lines what we already suspected about the new owners of Swansea City – they are either brave, daft or both. You must be to take over a Third Division football club, and you certainly have to be to then sack an authentic folk-hero.
Jozef Venglos was expected to bring glory to Villa on the basis that he was continental, but David Wangerin remembers how it never quite worked out for him
Jozef Venglos was manager of the best Villa side I’ve ever seen. For ninety minutes, anyway. That delightful October evening in 1990 when we inexplicably smashed Inter Milan into little pieces and scattered them across our pitch remains the most captivating game of football I’ve witnessed. It still seems inconceivable – trouncing a collection of Europe’s finest with a team captained by Stuart Gray. Surely no run-of-the-mill manager could ever have orchestrated it.