Arsenal assistant manager Pat Rice is a beacon of hope to sufferers of a rare and misunderstood social affliction, writes Damian Hall

Some Arsenal fans want assistant manager Pat Rice to retire or even step aside. The idea is that the former Gunners captain will be replaced with some hitherto unidentified tactical genius and “no” man who’ll push the club on to grab some silverware more prestigious than the Emirates Cup. Which we’ve won in three of the last four years, by the way. Pat (I can call him that because we’re mates – you’ll see) is seen as something of a “yes” man to Arsène Wenger and the feeling is that perhaps Le Prof’s philosophy needs tweaking here and there. Such as, try shooting. But I don’t want Pat to leave. Not now. Not ever.

You see, we shared a common affliction. On a mild September afternoon in 2000 I had what can only be described as an epiphany. Dennis Bergkamp had turned the ball towards the Coventry goal, only for an airborne Magnus Hedman to halt its path. “That was his third great chance,” I bellowed from my seat behind the goal. “Bergkamp really should have scored by now!” People were turning to stare my way, with bemused looks in their eyes and we-know-better, sympathetic smiles. I was smirkingly informed that Bergkamp was in fact Freddie Ljungberg. I badly needed spectacles.

Of course, it’s obvious now that I should have taken more time to think about it. But when the optician – who you would hope to be a morally responsible person – suggested spectacles with an in-built automatic tinting system that would be good for driving and stop me having to buy prescription shades too, it sounded like a very good idea indeed. Safe, economical and with a hint of secret spy gadgetry about it.

The thing was, I had bought a pair of frustrated shades. They could, and would, turn black with a pinprick of light – on the underground, in the pub and any time I ventured near a street lamp.

To the outside world I had become a permanent shades wearer, slipping seamlessly into the same bracket as teenage wannabe rock stars and people who think they’re famous because they’ve appeared on Kilroy. I was oblivious to when the glasses were tinting and had to rely on friends to point it out. Which they did reliably. It wasn’t all bad, admittedly. I could see things a bit better. I realised, disappointingly, that David Seaman wasn’t actually wearing a Davy Crockett hat and that someone called Gilles Grimandi had been playing for Arsenal for the last few years entirely without my knowledge. Yet these life enhancements seemed scant consolation. It got worse.

My nadir came on a cold February afternoon as I watched a Conference match at Forest Green’s inappropriately named ground, The Lawn. At just after four it was getting dark. As the floodlights came out to play, my dependably disobedient spectacles did their party piece. I was used to it by then and was oblivious anyway. But the Sky cameras just happened to be there and had, with horrible coincidence, chosen that moment for a close up of yours truly. Wearing shades. In the dark.

Not your average close-up either. The producer, or whoever decides these things, evidently found something worthy of public interest in my appearance and let the camera linger a while. There was nothing much happening on the pitch after all, just a frantic relegation dogfight. And a while more. Long enough for an absent so-called friend, battling back the tears of laughter, to reach for the VCR record button just in time. There’s no two ways about it, I looked a prize pillock. And my moment of fame is on videotape for posterity.

But then, at my lowest point, an angel came to me, albeit an angel in a tracksuit. I had always imagined that I was utterly, bitterly and desperately alone with my miserable social handicap. But I discovered I wasn’t the sole sufferer of spectacle folly. Sitting on the Arsenal bench, without a care in the world, though tucked under a blanket looking disturbingly like a grandmother about to reach for the Thermos at this time of year, was someone with the very same pair. Assistant manager and Arsenal legend Pat Rice. My new hero.

Pat sits there so defiantly unselfconscious as his specs change from transparent to dark and back again by the minute (as, for example, a light-obstructing substitute jogs past). Regardless of what life has dealt him, he just gets on with it, as if he’s as normal as the next man. Saint Pat’s not ashamed or embarrassed, he’s just comfortable with who he is. He is the Rik Waller of football. He is a role model, a beacon of light in dark depressing days, who gives strength and courage to bad spectacle sufferers the world over. Gawd bless him.

I just wanted to say, thank you Pat. You gave me hope when all else was lost. And for this reason he must stay in the public spotlight, to others who’ve made the same dreadful and desperate mistake.

From WSC 295 September 2011

Lyon’s huge investment has had a damaging effect on the club and on player development. But sympathy is limited, says James Eastham

For football fans that feel a sense of schadenfreude when big-spending clubs fall short of their targets, Lyon have provided plenty to smile about in the past three seasons. Shortly after the club won their seventh consecutive league title in 2007-08, president Jean-Michel Aulas decided the way to achieve their ultimate goal of adding the Champions League to their list of honours would be to embark on a spending spree bigger and bolder than anything that had taken place before in France.

Three years and tens of millions of wasted euros later, Lyon are counting the cost of what turned out to be a recklessly expensive policy. Aulas has admitted his strategy proved spectacularly unsuccessful, although it would have been difficult for him to argue otherwise considering his previously all-conquering side have failed to win a single trophy since deciding to go for broke. Reaching the Champions League semi-finals for the first time in their history briefly stemmed the criticism, but that momentary high 16 months ago cannot mask the wider failings of an ill-advised plan.

There’s usually a fall guy in these situations and at Lyon it’s Claude Puel. He was the manager Aulas hired in 2008 to maintain Lyon’s domestic dominance while guiding the side towards European glory. He failed on both fronts despite receiving a level of financial support his predecessors never enjoyed. It was anything but a surprise when the club sacked him at the end of last season. Equally predictably, the affair has now turned bitter, with Puel demanding that the final, unfulfilled year of his contract is paid up. “Having backed him against everyone’s advice, I expected him to behave with more dignity. I put everything in place for him to succeed here,” growled Aulas.

The president has a point, in that he gave Puel bags of money, but looking at how the funds were spent it’s easy to see why Lyon came unstuck. Fees such as €18 million (£16m) for Brazil international Michel Bastos, €14.5m on Jean Makoun – sold for less than half that to Aston Villa last January – and the €14m gamble on a midfielder called Ederson appear more absurd the longer you stare at them.

An overall outlay of €163.5m from 2008 to 2010 in transfer fees alone felt misguided at the time – as if by spending money Lyon would automatically graduate to a higher plane of European football – and looks like seriously bad business when set against the smarter activities of their main domestic rivals during the same period. Marseille’s net spend was around €30m less, yet they ended a trophy drought going back 17 years by winning the league and two league cups. Even more alarmingly, four of Lyon’s signings each cost more than the entire Lille squad that claimed the league and cup double in style last May.

This combination of poor results and unsustainable spending levels has persuaded Aulas to change tack – the idea from now on is to operate along more austere lines. Aulas has replaced Puel with one-time Arsenal captain Rémi Garde, who was assistant to former Lyon managers Paul Le Guen and Gérard Houllier. His experience of heading up the club’s youth scheme should prove useful.

With money running out, Lyon will turn back to the highly regarded training academy that has produced France internationals Karim Benzema, Hatem Ben Arfa and Loïc Rémy over the past decade, but was effectively mothballed by the previous regime. One of the major frustrations of Puel’s final 12 months in charge was that Lyon had five members of France’s 2010 European Under-19 Championship-winning squad on their books but the manager ignored them even though first team performances were below par. After being thwarted by what Aulas now calls “the elitist policy of recent seasons”, this exciting generation of youngsters will finally get a chance to impress.

Garde has been handed a one-year deal but frugality seems to be a long-term proposal. Aulas says the club will sell players consistently over the next few seasons to get their finances in order as they prepare for life in the new 60,000-seat stadium they hope to move into before Euro 2016. And while expectations remain high – a top-three finish is the aim – there will inevitably be less pressure on Garde than Puel because of the financial constraints within which he’s working.

One of the enduring joys of football is that money doesn’t guarantee success. There are plenty of neutrals who believe if a more prudent Lyon get their hands on a trophy, it would be a victory not only for the club but also the wider French game.

From WSC 295 September 2011

Saul Pope follows offical attempts to control rising racism in the Russian Premier League, which are proving ineffective and ill-targeted

The first phase of the Russian season has been a busy one but unfortunately most of the action has involved incidents in the crowd rather than excitement on the pitch. In 15 rounds fans have twice racially abused Anzhi Makhachkala’s Roberto Carlos with bananas, and other black players with monkey noises. Zenit, Spartak and Dinamo Moscow supporters have torn out seats, fought the police and thrown fireworks at several venues. There has also been tension between Moscow sides and the newly powerful teams from the Caucasus.

The problems are not new but they are on the increase. The most disappointing aspect has been the failure of the football authorities to find an adequate way of dealing with them. It is disappointing, yet to Russian football fans not surprising.

The Russian Football Union (RFU) regularly fines clubs whose fans have offended, but seems impotent when it comes to punishing individuals – and much less powerful than the clubs themselves. The identities of those who abused Roberto Carlos remain a mystery. Following the first incident at Zenit St Petersburg, RFU president Sergey Fursenko told the press it was “essential that Zenit seek out this perpetrator, prevent him from coming to matches, and give [us] his name and place of work”. He suggested this would teach like-minded people a lesson, but Zenit didn’t agree – the club claimed to have found and disciplined the racist, but wouldn’t reveal his name “for his own safety”.

An image of the fan who threw a banana at Roberto Carlos at Krilya Sovetov three months later was published just hours after the incident. Fursenko said he would be immediately brought to justice and the  Premier League’s security director said they would get his name. He is still at large.

Part of the problem is that current laws are outdated. A new “fans’ law”, which would make it possible to blacklist individual troublemakers, was first mentioned more than two years ago in WSC 265 and is supposed to be enacted later this season. Fan groups – who get the blame for much of the trouble at stadiums – are opposed, fearing the police would abuse any extra power they were given, and claiming they’re being made scapegoats for a general slide towards a more violent society.

The authorities are at least making a show of taking their concerns seriously, probably because they fear the worst. Led by intelligent but shadowy individuals with disaffected, nationalistic youths as footsoldiers, fan groups make up considerable parts of crowds and are capable of causing mass disorder as well as creating more articulate demonstrations. At the Russia v Armenia Euro 2012 qualifier held in St Petersburg in June, fan groups revealed a banner saying: “Before the law.” During the second half they emptied an entire stand, leaving behind a second slogan: “After the law.”

Of course, the fan groups may be resisting something that won’t work in any case: observing the law properly is a weakness of both law enforcers and citizens in modern Russia. Writing in Sport Express, Evgeny Dzichkovsky felt only draconian measures would truly overcome the problem: “If we don’t want fans to kick Russian football to the gutter, they need to live in fear of real punishments, not cardboard ones. Pavlov created an efficient mechanism for this a long time ago… So that the clubs don’t simply buy their way out of trouble and work seriously with their fans, they [the fans] need to be put into a situation where they are unable to act in any other way but one.”

Maybe efforts would be better put into tackling the root causes of the problems. While the talk is currently of punishment, few are asking why there are growing nationalistic and aggressive cabals at stadiums in the first place. Racists are usually criticised with the caveat that the whole world is battling with such problems, as if the monkey noises and the flying fruit are a regular part of matches everywhere. That such a famous player as Roberto Carlos was abused seems to have caused more upset than previous incidents among ordinary fans. However, regretful comments on Championat.ru were combined with banana jokes, moaning about political correctness gone mad and claims of Russians being victimised.

The first step to solving such problems might lie in Russia realising – at all levels of society – that their crowd problems are worse than in other European leagues of similar stature. The second would be trying to understand why. Expensive and long-winded it might prove to be, but it would bring about better results than even more cardboard laws.

From WSC 295 September 2011

Football has changed in many ways since the 1960s but one rule hasn’t. For many, including Seb Patrick, away goals continue to confuse and annoy

On message boards, phone-ins and WSC letters pages alike, the refrain is a familiar one. “Why, oh why, do commentators insist on saying during a European tie that ‘away goals count double’? If they counted double then a team that lost 3-2 away from home would be considered to have won 4-3!”

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It’s a big day for the home team as they unveil ground improvements against Premier League opposition. The Londoners face a stern test but everyone goes home smiling. Robbie Meredith reports

The last time I went to a Fulham game was on a dull and cold night in Hamburg last year, when a late extra-time goal from Diego Forlán denied them an unlikely European trophy. Watching the team at Seaview, the compact home of Irish League part-timers Crusaders, I wonder if any of the players involved against Atlético Madrid allow themselves to think that tonight’s game could be an early step to a similar occasion next May. Do they, in the words of their supporters’ song, still believe?

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