Poor organisation has turned the battle for tickets for the FA Cup semi-finals into a luck-of-the-draw contest, writes Tom Whitworth

The four participating clubs in this season’s FA Cup semi-finals had the responsibility of fairly distributing their 33,000 Wembley tickets. They have each failed in various ways. The FA had reduced the original pricing structure of £55-£95 to £25-£55 in an attempt to ensure demand was sufficient to fill every seat. But all four clubs compelled fans to purchase tickets for games that followed their quarter-finals rather than rewarding past loyalty.

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Gillingham's success in recent years has come at a cost and now the club are paying the price, writes Haydn Parry

In a BBC Radio Kent interview in March, Gillingham chairman Paul Scally said: “We’re all judged by results in football, unfortunately. If we could take away the football, then the club is actually doing very well.”

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Simon Tyers takes a look at Setanta Sports News, Sky's unthreatening rival

Watching Setanta Sports News, you are reminded of the scene in I’m Alan Partridge where, on being told by the BBC director of programming that the glut of regional police shows he has listed suggests there’s too many, Partridge suggests “that’s one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is, people like them, let’s make some more of them.” Sky Sports News is delivered by a combination of an authoritative father figure/elder brother type and a power-dressed blonde while information scrolls around them. Setanta has decided that the only way to improve on this is to have a go at it itself and hope nobody makes the connection.

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Respect reaction

On March 18, the FA launched a new strategy entitled “Respect”, designed in part to address bad behaviour at all levels of football. Within 24 hours, Ashley Cole was given only a yellow card for a dangerous tackle in the Spurs v Chelsea match, a punishment strongly disputed by his team‑mates. It had scarcely been mentioned in the immediate aftermath of the game, but Cole’s disrespectful reaction to referee Mike Riley soon assumed prime importance. By the time of Grand Slam Sunday three days later, the new FA chairman Lord Triesman was making personal appeals to Alex Ferguson to “show some respect” towards referees.

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Relegation to the Conference could spell the end for Mansfield or Wrexham largely thanks to their destructive chairmen

It has been a while since relegation to the Conference was tantamount to dropping into a black hole. In the past ten years, seven clubs have been promoted back into the League after falling out. That won’t be any consolation to fans of Mansfield Town and Wrexham, who remain stuck at the foot of League Two with games running out fast.

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