Stories | When Saturday Comes

Cottage transformation

While Fulham are now established in the Premier League, Neil Hurden has fond memories of older matchday customs, despite the prevailing chaos at the club for much of the 1980s and 1990s

Happiness is such an awkward bastard to pin down, isn’t it? We are told that think-tankers, politicians and philosophers spend countless hours of valuable research time pondering why we’re not as happy as we were in 1948 when we now have about ten times more food to eat, infinitely more sources of entertainment to occupy us and clothes that are startlingly less beige.

Tuesday, June 21st, 2011 - Book reviews

Austerity measures

Continuing our anniversary series we look back at how the spectator experience has changed in the last 25 years. David Wangerin was fascinated with English football in the 1980s as everything was so different to his native US. Times have changed

I was unlucky, I suppose, that both of the first two English football matches I ever saw ended without a goal. But what I remember most about my first trip to Villa Park, on the first Saturday of February, 1984, wasn’t the score, the weather, or even the opposition: it was all the empty seats.

Tuesday, June 21st, 2011 - The Archive

International playboys

Owen Amos explains how two brothers dealt with rejection in England – by becoming footballing celebrities in the Philippines

While Chelsea wait for Josh McEachran to establish himself (or be sold to Fulham), two of their other youth team graduates are doing rather well. James and Phil Younghusband, brothers from Middlesex, were released by Chelsea in 2006 and 2008 respectively. Now, they’ve got 50 caps between them, a string of sponsorship deals and – most importantly of all – 200,000 followers on Twitter. The Younghusbands have made it; they’ve just made it 7,000 miles away, in the Philippines.

Tuesday, June 21st, 2011 - Book reviews

Stick or twist

Mark Brophy isn’t surprised that both clubs and players take the big-money gamble on promising teenagers

I wouldn’t recognise Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, the Southampton winger, if I saw him in the street. Thanks to the footballing gossip columns, I know that he’s 17 and the same kind of hot property Theo Walcott was in his Saints days, supposedly worth £10 million and interesting the very biggest English clubs. Ipswich’s Connor Wickham, perhaps better known, is another to be the subject of speculation on a close-season transfer. Should either make a move this summer they will be embarking on a well-trodden path.

Tuesday, June 21st, 2011 - The Archive

Slippery slopes

From Wembley hopes to League Two reality in the space of a year, David Squires tries to make sense of supporting Swindon Town

To locate Swindon Town in the League One table, you need to scroll a long way down; a whole rotation of the mouse wheel in fact. It’s no surprise to see them down there though – with the obligatory “R” next to their name – for the 2010-11 season has been one of almost unrelenting misery.

Tuesday, June 21st, 2011 - Book reviews