Reading supporters knew how Leicester City fans felt when Mark McGhee decamped to Wolves, as Roger Titford explains
What’s so great about Mark McGhee that he’s managed to break 25,000 hearts in Reading and Leicester and cost his new employers around £1 million compensation in the past twelve months? What makes him last year’s most expensive temp?
Gary Oliver examines the latest attempt to fiddle about with the structure of the Scottish League – and explains why the issue is unlikely to go away
St Andrew’s Day, Hogmanay and Burns’ Night – all significant anniversaries in the Scottish calendar. But football fans are accustomed to an alternative winter night ritual: Self-Preservation Day, the annual attempt to force league reconstruction. Eighteen months ago, the clubs formed four divisions of ten and, to secure sponsorship by Bell’s, agreed a five-year respite from further change. A period of stability at last? You must be joking.
Lance Bellers remembers Harry Cripps, who passed away on December 29, 1995
’Arry Cripps was the best player ever to have a name beginning with an apostrophe. Born as Henry Richard Cripps in Norfolk during the war, it merely took a move to East London to give him his proper and rightful name. Kicking off his football career at West Ham, he played just one senior game for the Hammers – against Millwall. Between that Southern Floodlit Cup fixture in 1956 and an eventual move to Charlton in 1974, ’Arry Boy fitted in 447 appearances for the Lions and won the hearts of the Millwall faithful.
Joe Ferrari reports from Norwich on why the clamour for Robert Chase's departure is getting louder by the day
Norwich City’s traditional Yuletide slide – two points from seven games – took on deeper significance this year, set against a backdrop of bitter division on and off the pitch, blame for which can be laid squarely at the door of club chairman Robert Chase.
A look into how club owners business mentality needs to stretch from the football field
Imagine for a moment that we have taken leave of our senses. As is common with those who find themselves in a befuddled state, a single concept has become fixed in our heads, one which we are doggedly determined to communicate to as many people as possible. It might run something along these lines. The Football Trust should be abolished. Far from making grants to football clubs, the government should seek to extract every available penny from them; unlike other businesses, which may be free to relocate abroad, football clubs, even Wimbledon, for example, are tied to specific locations. The Japanese are unlikely to want to build any football clubs over here while they’re still getting the hang of their own, so no harm would be done to ‘inward investment’ by closing down any tax advantages clubs might have.