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.
Being league runners-up and FA Cup winners doesn’t sound too bad, but, as Arsenal prepare for a last close season at Highbury, Jon Spurling reports on a growing sense of unease
After Arsenal remained unbeaten during the 2003-04 season, Arsène Wenger commented: “I enjoy a feeling of fulfilment when I feel the team has deserved its success.” Judging by his beatific grin at the end of the FA Cup final, undeserved success is a more than acceptable alternative. Dogged defending, a packed midfield, goalkeeping heroics, “lucky” and/or “boring” prefixes in tabloid reports, and the Millennium Stadium sound system belting out a tinny version of One Nil To The Arsenal; the “windfall final” was reminiscent of the club’s cup triumphs a decade ago. Short of John Jensen joining the midfield fray at some point in the second half, or Paul Merson indulging in a spot of mock lager swigging after Patrick Vieira dispatched his winning penalty, this was as close to a George Graham-style win as you could get. Yet only the most blinkered Arsenal fan would suggest that Wenger’s tactical genius (playing Bergkamp as a lone striker was never likely to bear fruit) was behind Arsenal’s unlikely victory. He got lucky.