Tim Springett bids a less-than-fond farewell to former owners, but hopes for signs of recovery under a new regime

When Rupert Lowe invited himself back to Southampton last summer, two years after being ejected by leading shareholder Michael Wilde, there was palpable dismay among Saints supporters. There is no doubt that the finances of the club were in a perilous state – late in 2007 a sale to the SISU hedge fund that later took over Coventry City had been thwarted by Lowe, Wilde and Leon Crouch, a local businessman who also held a large number of Saints shares. Several of the highest earning players subsequently went out on loan and Saints avoided relegation by just one point. Nevertheless, there was a new manager in Nigel Pearson, who had given fans cause for optimism that better times might lie ahead. Then Lowe – aided and abetted by his former adversary Wilde – returned and the mood changed dramatically.

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The Sven circus has rollled into town and pitched up at the league's oldest club. Dave Evans explores the ramifications

The day before Sven-Göran Eriksson was unveiled as the Director of Football at the sixth worst League club in England I said to a friend “we are in danger of turning into a circus”. His reply, echoed by around 90 per cent of fellow Notts fans, was: “I’d rather pay £20 to see a circus than the rubbish I’ve been watching for the past ten years.”

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Ian Plenderleith looks over  Sky's decision to shut down the Rivals network

The age of the network webzine may be coming to a close. In July, Sky Sports shut down its Rivals family of club sites, sending all of its editors a curt notice of immediate termination, three months’ pay, and deleting the network’s entire content from the web. Few were surprised that Sky chose to brusquely cut off poorly recompensed part-time workers. Rivals had gone through a number of different owners with different ideas since its inception eight years ago, and each incarnation brought a new wave of defections from disillusioned editors, who either moved to or founded alternative networks. Indeed when Sky bought the company in late 2007, many suspected that its only goal was to close Rivals down, a theory that’s now hard to refute.

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Dave Jennings reflects on the demise of Newcastle Blue Star

Winning a promotion play-off final is surely one of the best feelings in football. It’s arguably better than winning a championship or a cup final because it’s transformative; not only has your team triumphed under enormous pressure, but it has turned itself into something higher and better than it was at the start of the day. After all the tension and euphoric release of the big day, you can enjoy the close season while relishing the prospect of the new grounds you’ll visit as your club enjoys its new, improved status.

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Tom Davies looks at clubs experiencing difficult times

Beware rich men bearing loans might well be the cautionary mantra of this decade, and the latest to discover the perils of debt are Wycombe Wanderers. Fans’ joy at promotion from League Two has been tempered by a rancorous summer in which managing director Steve Hayes has been accused of bullying the supporters trust into giving up its shareholding to grant him outright control. Hayes, who also owns the rugby union club Wasps, with whom Wycombe share Adams Park, wants to shift both to a 20,000-seat new stadium, to be operated by a separate stadium management company.

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