The Conference could claim both sides, but the fans of these supporter-owned clubs will not give up easily, no matter how many points the players throw away. Taylor Parkes reports

It has never been fun being bottom of the heap. The Conference spreads its jaws, so you can smell its breath. It smells of damp, failure and loss, empty stands and uncertainty. When you’re low, you think you might never stop falling. The last thing you need is to hear that someone somewhere might consider you “unsustainable”.

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After a prospective investor failed the Football League's "Fit and Proper Persons Test", Ipswich fans are lefting thinking what might have been. Gavin Barber reports

When is a test not a test? It might sound like a Graham Taylor quote, but it’s a question that Ipswich supporters were asking themselves last month.

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Under political pressure, UEFA are looking into the murky rules surrounding club ownership and finance. But, as Steve Menary reports, some want to stop them

Over the next few months, UEFA is supposed to be reviewing how European football is run. The study of the game’s corporate and social governance was announced by the sports minister, Richard Caborn, on December 8, towards the end of the UK’s six-month presidency of the European Union. But the results of this review are far from certain and plenty are willing to debate its purpose.

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The appointment of Steve Staunton and Sir Bobby Robson has not met universal acclaim in Ireland, as Paul Doyle reports 

“Oh Christ, we’re doomed. Not Sieve Staunton, anyone but Sieve bloody Staunton!” Those were the exact words that resounded through the Lansdowne Road press room on June 2, 2001, when the team sheet revealed that partnering clumsy Richard Dunne in defence for the Republic of Ireland’s vital World Cup qualifier against Portugal would be 32-year-old Steve Staunton, a once-admired left-back who in recent years had become the personification of a tool with many holes but, mercifully, had hardly so far featured in this campaign. It was obvious that either Luis Figo or Staunton himself would tear the Irish defence apart.

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It’s war at the Britannia Stadium, after manager Johan Boskamp found his authority undermined from the stands by Stoke’s director of football. Andy Thorley reports

November 1, 2005 and Stoke City win a crucial game away at the Ricoh Arena. It might not seem the sort of match to begin a feud between the club’s managerial staff that is likely to see at least one of them leaving his job. However, this is the sort of thing that passes for normality at the Britannia Stadium.

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