Matt Nation explains why his name can be added to the list of people who have had life-changing experiences involving Norman Hunter and a cinder pitch

Norman Hunter was one of the few players who would have induced me to wade bleeding and naked through an open sewer for a chance to see him, such was the esteem in which I held him. Although in the twilight of his career when he arrived at Bristol City, he was still famous, still a cut above the rest and still capable of turning the flow of a game by scything down the opponents’ playmaker in full flight. If there was one man who definitively captured and held my interest in football, that man was Norman Hunter.

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Following Alan Ball's resignation, Steve Parish looks at the problems at Man City

Dave Bassett woke up screaming in the night and we reached the end of the month with Manchester City still desperately seeking a new manager. Well, not that desperately. All sorts of rumours abound, most about whether having an ex-pro as chairman was putting people off. Cobblers: if people would come and manage for Peter Swales, I don’t believe Francis Lee is that fearsome, nor that he is merely, as Simply Red’s manager Elliot Rashman reckons, “Swales with charisma”. Lee denies “interference” in team matters, though a simple thing like having the chairman on the new team photo may suggest otherwise.

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Alex Horsburgh explains why Cowdenbeath have particular cause to be grateful for the intervention of the motor car

There’s an old Scottish saying “it takes a long spoon to sup with a Fifer”. Meaning people from the ancient kingdom of Fife, once the stomping ground of Robert the Bruce, are hard to know, suspicious to the point of paranoia.

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Kevin Bartholomew looks at how Brighton ended up being at the bottom of the Football League

On a Thursday evening in May 1983, Brighton lost 4-0 to Manchester United in the FA Cup Final replay. The outstanding memory of that day for many Brighton followers was the support the team received. Despite the result, by the end of the match Albion fans were, incredibly, outsinging the Red Army. This was in recognition of the Seagulls’ achievements in the FA Cup that season: the campaign had included victories over Newcastle, Man City and Liverpool, and we had come agonizingly close to beating United in the first attempt at the Final. But it also demonstrated the affection held for a club that had risen from being a mediocre lower division outfit to a side able to do battle with the best teams in the country.

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Adam Brown of the Football Supporters Association was in Turin for a Champions League game between Juventus and Man Utd. He recalls seeing some highly old-fashioned police tactics first hand

This is getting to be a bit of a habit. Manchester United head off to Europe, full of optimism that this year we’ll get it right, only for things to go horribly wrong both on the pitch and off it. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised then, when our trip to Juventus ended in tears, not due to the 1-0 defeat but because we’d been tear-gassed, as well as beaten with batons and crushed.

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