England may have failed to live up to the promise of September 1, 2001, but as Pete Green will tell you the slide from a rare high has been even worse for Grimsby
In 2001 Grimsby Town were a second-flight football team and binge drinking was called “going out”. Quite a few England fans probably indulged in that pastime after the 5-1 win in Germany on September 1. So imagine the double hangover that awaited Town supporters as their side chose the same day to move top of the Football League.
Did you hear the one about the Slovenian and the Frenchman? This sounds like a joke, but Jonathan Barnes and fellow Ipswich fans struggle to see the funny side
Anyone in any doubt how Ipswich Town got into such financial strife after troubling the Premiership’s top five at the turn of the millennium should look no further than Amir Karic and Ulrich Le Pen.
There’s heartache for the visitors as survival hopes are dashed – but have we just been brainwashed into thinking that being in the Premiership is all that matters? Taylor Parkes finds out
First – and this isn’t unusual – a team owned by a very rich man won the title. People who don’t know what the term “Russian oligarch” actually means, who have probably never heard, say, the exciting story of the race for the governorship of Chukotka, will think nothing of it, or applaud, because the money “must be good for football” and, after all, who cares where money comes from? There he is on television, look, sitting in the stand. Half-smiling. He looks a bit like Harry Enfield.
Losing your social club can be disastrous for a semi-pro side. John Bourn reports on a fire that cost Spennymoor dear and plunged the Unibond League into crisis
Whoever discarded a cigarette end behind a fruit machine at the Brewery Field social club on Christmas Eve 2003 has a lot to answer for. They began a chain of events that were to wreck a long-established north-east club and left the Unibond League in chaos this spring.
Was Everton’s success was all down to David Moyes’s singing skills? Mark O'Brien explains how a warble in an American bar last summer became a song for Europe
Everton fans can be forgive a wry smile when the supporters of teams obsessed with playing in Europe use participation in the UEFA Cup or the Champions League as an explanation for their club’s poor performance in the Premiership. Or, to be more precise, why their club finished below Everton at the end of the 2004-05 season.