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Inconvenient cups

Aston Villa and Tottenham Hotspur employ squad rotation in the UEFA Cup

It’s been 36 years since two English clubs played each other in the UEFA Cup. Villa and Spurs would have met in the last 16 this year had they got past CSKA Moscow and Shakhtar Donetsk respectively. Instead, they fielded under-strength teams – Spurs in both legs, Villa in their away tie in Moscow – with the same outcome, a 3-1 aggregate defeat. Spurs were knocked out in front of 30,000 at White Hart Lane, Villa were watched by 300 of their fans who’d travelled 3,200 miles for the privilege of getting an update on the progress of the reserve team. Four days later, Man Utd too rested players for the resoundingly awful Carling Cup final in which they nonetheless beat Spurs’ first eleven on penalties. At the same time an almost entirely different Villa team to the one in Moscow conceded two goals in the last four minutes to draw with Stoke. It didn’t seem like much of a return for effectively opting out of what would have been their best run in Europe for over a decade.

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Six appeal

Steve Wilson recalls a time when the biggest names in football turned out for a game of six-a-side. How come it never caught on?

Imagine that the Masters Football tournaments that help fill the void each summer were played during the season. Now imagine that, instead of the best-supported sides being regionally invited to knock together a roster of paunchy, balding alumni, each of the 20 Premier League clubs sent along a squad padded out with first team regulars. Madness? By today’s standards, perhaps, but back in the 1980s it was a regular, and entertaining, occurrence.

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Building block

Plans to build a new stadium on the site of the Maze prison proved too controversial. Robbie Meredith explains why

 When the Labour MP and then Northern Ireland minister David Hanson announced plans for a new multi-purpose stadium on the former site of the Maze prison in early 2005, he couldn’t have envisaged that the project would make building Wembley look like putting together a Lego set by comparison.

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Firing line

Leyton Orient's dismissal of Martin Ling met with most fans' approval yet he left with his popularity intact, says Tom Davies

Supporters who clamour for their manager’s dismissal tend not to get a decent press, portrayed as they are as an impatient and fickle mob, wielding metaphorical pitchforks at the hapless gaffer at the drop of a point. Some of this is fair – sack-the-manager campaigns are often manifestations of the worst kind of phone-in led denunciation frenzies – but much of it isn’t, especially when popular sackings are accompanied not by anger but sadness.

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War of words

Gordon Strachan has always been popular with the English press but all is rather less cordial in Scotland, as Neil Forsyth reports

When Celtic’s talented midfielder Aiden McGeady turned on ­Gordon Strachan after a draw with Hearts in December, it is unlikely that his manager would have seen much immediate benefit in the one-man mutiny. McGeady reportedly reacted to Strachan’s criticism with a tirade that shocked the rest of the team, and shocked one enough for the story to be quickly leaked to the press. 

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