English clubs are struggling in Europe
It’s not often that something Graham Taylor once said comes flooding back but it happened last week, after another set of bad results for English and Scottish clubs in Europe.
Sunday 1 England beat Moldova 3-0. "We came here with a few banana skins lying about and sidestepped them," says Glenn, whose metaphors might need a bit of working on.
Tuesday 3 Sheff Wed extend their lead at the top to five points after a 2-1 home win over Leicester, the first of their two coming from 'teenage sensation' Richie Humphreys who now has three in four games. "He came, he saw, and (guess…) he conquered," says David Pleat.
Wednesday 4 Never a dull moment for George Graham. Both he and Frank Clark are to help Norwegian police with their enquiries into the business activities of agent provocateur Rune Hauge, facing jail on fraud charges. Colchester stage the come back of the night in the Coke Cup First Round – 3-2 down from the first leg they win 3-1 at West Brom. Southend lose 3-2 on aggregate to Fulham and Reading's first-ever visit to Wycombe ends in a 2-0 defeat. Internazionale's Nwankwo Kanu may have to retire due to a heart condition spotted during a medical following his move to Milan from Ajax.
Dear WSC
I know the battle for the soul of football has been lost when someone writes to WSC to justify both the ticket arrangements and pricing of Euro ’96 (Letters, WSC No 115). For the record, the minimum admission at Birmingham City this season is £10, but to attempt to justify Euro ’96 prices by comparing them with admission prices for (what is effectively) a Division Two game is surely to miss the point not once but twice.
David Warren, Keighley
Premiership superstars swap cubs for millions but down in the lower divisions the picture is rather different. Tom Findlay reports from the twilight world of pre-season trialists
In the summer months, when football is supposed to take a break, thousands of ‘free agents’ trawl around the smaller playing fields of England desperate to find a club. Loanees, refugees and YTSs trying to fulfil their dream. It’s not a pretty business. Cambridge United, who have spent the last two seasons bobbing round the nether regions of Division 3, played some twenty games through August featuring a small army of trialists. The first game of the shopping season featured 22 players the club had never seen before – none survived.
Celtic's Fergus McCann has got big ideas. Problem is they're almost all bad ones, as Gary Oliver explains
In the week scientists went loopy over what they believed to be an organism from Mars, Celtic’s owner and managing director, Fergus McCann, reminded fans that he is Scottish football’s own little green monster – one that remains extremely hostile to its alien environment.