As Martin Ling begins his second spell as Cambridge United manager in the space of a few weeks,  Matthew Gooding reflects on a bizarre sequence of events at the Abbey stadium.

Although it isn’t unusual to see a manager returning to his former club, it’s rare to hear of one going back to the job he left just a week previously. And when you also consider that Martin Ling’s first spell in charge of Cambridge United only lasted eight days, you begin to get a flavour of what a bizarre summer it has been for fans of the Blue Square Premier club.

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Cameron Carter casts his eye over the BBC's football presenters

With no summer tournament as a distraction the new season has been a long wait for all of us. Even so, it is still irritating of Gary Lineker to preface each Match of the Day with a promise of “enthralling” games and “high drama”, as if a significant amount of those watching were still debating whether to commit to the whole programme. Match of the Day is one of the few commodities left, along with milk and weapons-grade uranium, that does not require a hard sell. Lineker is dangerously close these days to resembling the kind of schoolboy no one ever liked until his parents invited all the neighbourhood kids to his birthday party with a bouncy castle (symbolically, Lineker’s 1986 World Cup goals) and a chocolate fountain (the 1990 World Cup goals). This makes the boy popular for a while, but not, as he mistakenly believes, forever. In other words, we’re not actually winking back at you, Gary.

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Referees seek respect with the help of the FA's new season guidelines

Every football season begins with a “clampdown”. Traditionally this involves new FA directives intended to punish foul play accompanied by a healthy dose of moral hysteria about the state of game. On the pitch, referees attempt to implement the new rules, producing a spate of early bookings and a subsequent outcry from managers. Match officials feel the need to loosen their interpretation of the new disciplinary regime a little, often after a meeting with managers at which “robust views” are exchanged. We end up roughly back to how things were before, except that at least one match official will have been maligned in highly personal terms.

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The papers were pleased by the trouble at West Ham v Millwall – it gave them a reason to get angry

“We hoped it had disappeared forever but deep down we knew it was still out there festering, simmering.” Unfortunately Ken Dyer of London’s Evening Standard was not speaking about the hypocritical moralising of the great British newspapers, but rather the shocking, photogenic and highly lucrative stories about football hooliganism in the wake of the violence at West Ham v Millwall. “Today, when the blood is washed from the pavements of east London and the ripped seats, coins and debris are cleared from the pitch, questions will be asked,” mused Dyer evocatively. Perhaps, prior to writing about the “violence we prayed had left our game for good”, he ought to have questioned his paper’s marketing team’s use of billboards plastered with the gaudy advertisement: Football riots – all the pictures inside.

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Hooliganism is not attractive, but the media are more than willing to exploit its financial potential

We received a call at the WSC office from a researcher at the BBC. He was canvassing views about football violence for a forthcoming programme. He had an angle, prompted by recent events: “It’s never really gone away, has it? Should we not be concerned about what might happen at the World Cup?” This was in 1990. 

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