Doug Stenhouse offers his predictions for the forthcoming season

Imagine a club in your league makes up a new rule to dissolve the competition as it stands and form a new league expelling five clubs. Imagine all the clubs are circulated with the proposal except the five to be expelled. Couldn’t happen? It has happened before: this is exactly what Glasgow Rangers tried to do in Scotland at the end of 1965-66. The five were Stranraer, Albion Rovers, Berwick Rangers, Stenhousemuir and Brechin. Only a last ditch court room battle and intense lobbying by Berwick chairman George Shiel won the day. A costly result for Rangers as two years later they lost to lowly Berwick in the Scottish Cup.

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A fans' preview of the Scotland's Division One season

AIRDRIE

Jim Milton

How will your team do? Well we made the playoffs last season when nobody fancied us, so the same again must be within our grasp. Much will depend on manager Alex MacDonald’s close season activities.

Most important figure? With the club about to return to its roots with the opening of our new stadium, chairman David Smith’s role in relaunching the Diamonds within the community will be crucial.

New piece of merchandise? A Johnny Martin goalkeeping doll that burps, farts and swings on a replica crossbar.

Change to matchday environment? Bring back the target golf or referee/goalie mime troupe which proved so popular years ago at Bloomfield, and dump all these pointless mascots.

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An assessment of the likely winners and losers in Scotland in 1997/98 – no prizes for guessing the former

ABERDEEN

Keith Davidson

How will your team do this season? With Celtic having a complete shake-up over the close season, perhaps second, although the general view from the Scottish press is fourth.

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John Williams of the Sir Norman Chester Centre for Football Research previews some of the main findings of the 1997 Carling Premiership survey due to be published next month

You know that smug Carling poster ad, with the guy with his head in his hands contemplating the message of his son’s catastrophic defection to (gulp) rugby? The words a father most dreads hearing? Forget it. Much worse is to learn that your offspring has resisted the obvious charms of your own footballing heroes for another football club.

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  Roger Titford analyses your replies to our annual readers' survey from WSC No 126

With the help of the Sir Norman Chester Centre for Football Research we have analyzed the first 800 odd questionnaires to come back. So, without further ado, here’s what a hundred focus groups-worth of you had to say.

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