Few promotion parties have been as damp a squib as Lewes' and, as Joel Abraham explains, it's been all downhill from there

How do you reward a promotion-­winning team? In Lewes’s case, you sack the manager and sell the entire squad. The Rooks’ first ever Blue Square Premier game against Kidderminster Harriers saw ten of the starting XI making their debuts, led by a manager who had never managed before. Four months and 12 defeats later, they are rock bottom of the league, and will in all likelihood be returning to the Blue Square South considerably worse off than when they left it.

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Viewed as romantic story in the FA Cup, Team Bath are considered very differently at league level. Tim Lezard explains why they are attracting hostility from their opposition

You probably remember Team Bath FC as the plucky students who lost to Mansfield Town in the FA Cup back in 2002, in front of 5,000 fans.

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The Manchester City flop was coveted by United as a teenager and was a star in Greece. Dan Brennan diagnoses an ego problem

For the second year running, the January transfer window will see striker Nery Castillo make his exit quietly through the back door. For a player once coveted by Chelsea, Juventus and Manchester United, and fought over by three national federations, ignominious endings are becoming the norm. 

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Forget DVDs: the proper way to watch classic matches is on super 8 films. Marcus Davies describes his collection and what makes this forgotten format so special. No projector required

I have a large, and ever increasing, collection of super 8 football films. Some were acquired as a Christmas present in 1975, but most have been bought on eBay in the last few years. There is a possibility, even at this early stage of serious collecting, that it is already the single largest anthology in existence. This may not be a major claim to fame, though, because I rather suspect that I am the only person collecting them.

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Gavin Willacy compares his experiences as a young player with those of kids today, and finds an obsession with emulating the boys at the top

Early this season, Radio 5 Live’s morning phone-in got all in a lather about a youth league in Huntingdonshire that was unhappy at the FA banning them from publishing under-eight league tables in their local paper. The story subsequently ran in several other national media outlets.

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