After over a century of hosting professional football Goodison Park may soon be facing the bulldozers, as Graham Ennis reports

During a recent edition of BBC TV’s Close Up North on December 5th, Peter Johnson, Everton’s Chairman, admitted moving away from Goodison Park was a “possibility”. He had said so before: in an interview with The Evertonian (a Pravda-esque publication printed in conjunction with the Liverpool Echo), and curiously first of all in an interview with the fanzine When Skies are Grey. The alarm bells didn’t sound then, but this time the local media leapt on the issue.

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Nigeria look odds on to qualify for the 1998 World Cup in spite, rather than because, of their organisation off the pitch, as Osasu Obayiuwana explains

Perhaps like nowhere else in the football world the recent history of the game in Nigeria is one of odd but intriguing contrasts, a showcase for both excellence and mediocrity. “A foreign manager with no backbone and an aversion for conflict cannot work as coach of the national team in Nigeria,” says Clemence Westerhof, the Dutchman whose five year reign came to an end after the 1994 World Cup Finals.

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Patrick Harverson of the Financial Times explains why football clubs are suddenly eager to become listed on the Stock Exchange

Six years ago, Newcastle United tried to sell shares, but the club couldn’t give them away such was the lack of interest among fans and financial investors. In the next few months Newcastle will try it again. Only this time things will be a little bit different. The queue to buy shares in NUFC plc will stretch from St James’ Park, across the Tyne Bridge and down the M1 to London where pension funds, insurance companies and other blue-chip City institutions will be lining up around the block for a piece of the Toon pie.

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After a few turbulent months Blackburn fans seem to have a cause for optimism again, as Phil Crossley reports

Sometime between the end of Euro ’96 and late October we were led to believe that the world had fallen apart for Blackburn Rovers. Within a matter of weeks we had contrived to part company with the ‘dream team’ which won us the title. First our talisman, Billy Bigpockets, the man to whom it does not matter who scores (as long as it’s not any of the ten makeweights in the side), closely followed by King Ken, fed up with sorting out away travel arrangements for the reserves for five grand a week. When ‘Laughing’ Ray Harford decided that enough was enough as we floundered at the bottom of the division, we were told that the game was up. 

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Julie Pritchard considers the likely outcome of the power struggle at Nottingham Forest

There’s an old Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times”, and 1996 was never boring for Forest fans. We’ve gone from the hope, and humiliation, of the UEFA Cup Quarter-Final v Bayern Munich, to being everyone’s favourites for relegation, pausing only to challenge Manchester City for the title of Joke Team of British Football.

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