Nick House and Torquay are bidding farewell to the basement for at least a season or so, but while it's a sweet enough feeling he can't deny that it's a lot less grim than in years past

It’s more than 40 years since the sage of the sixth form, already a football fan of a certain outlook beyond his years, passed judgment on the league to which we had returned in 1972: “Northern teams play industrial football; southern teams are more cultured. You see it at Plainmoor every other week. Dirty northern bas­tards all of them.”

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After failing to win promotion back to Division Two, Martin Brodetsky tells how Oxford United face another season in a "god-awful" league

What was behind the sudden departure of Ian Atkins?
Atkins was suspended after Bristol Rovers chairman Geoff Dunning revealed Atkins would be the Gas’s manager next season. Many fans don’t blame Atkins for seeking job security, but feel he should have had the confidence to stay with United, where his contract apparently had an automatic one-year extension if he won promotion. On the other hand, Rovers offered him a two-year deal, probably on more money, and promotion wasn’t guaranteed. Most fans were happy to see the back of Atkins and his deeply unpopular, boring defensive tactics.

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Dear WSC
Dave Boyle’s article Count Me Out (WSC 207) prompted me to finally come clean about my rather bizarre obsession with shirt numbers. While players wearing 77 seems rather farcical, what gets my goat are squad numbers that bear no relation to the owner’s position. Why does Mark­us Babbel wear No 11 even though he’s a defender? What is Liverpool striker Milan Baros doing wearing No 5? Even during a game of Championship Man­ager I can’t get away from it: the other day I discovered that Barcelona had signed Alessandro Nesta and given him No 1. Unbelievable. But what I really need to get off my chest is a somewhat strange habit of mine. For some reason I can’t walk past a replica shirt-wearer in the high street without running round to see whether they have a name and number on the back. I’ve been doing this for quite a while now, so you can imagine my delight when my wife picked up the habit too. We now have a rudimentary scoring system, whereby teams receive one point for a fan wearing a “plain” shirt and two for someone with a named and numbered-up top. I was hoping that someone might come forward and reassure me that I’m not the only one out there looking at supporters’ backs, but I’ll understand if you all want to remain anonymous about it.
Joe Newman, Brighton

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A team from Grozny in the war-torn Russian republic are on the brink of promotion to the top flight. Except, as Saul Pope explains, it's some time since they had a home game

Much of the football power in Russia is concentrated in Moscow, but the capital city’s clubs may soon have a strong rival from the most unexpected of places: Chechnya. The rising star of Russia’s sprawling first division, which from Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea to Vladivostok on the Pacific Ocean spreads over ten time zones, is Terek, a team representing the troubled republic’s capital city, Grozny. Having taken the se­cond division by storm in 2002, Terek finished fourth in the first division in 2003, missing out on promotion to the Soviet premier league by just one point but at the same time finishing in their highest ever position. This is something of a miracle when you consider the fighting and instability in Chechnya, which have for a long time put sport of any nature firmly on the back-burner.

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As far as Ian Plenderleith can see, if you want even half-decent coverage of Euro 2004 at the moment then there's not a lot of point looking at English language websites. Head for France or Germany instead

Summer’s approaching and your team’s domestic hopes have long since melted with the last frost. Happily it’s one of those biennial off-seasons when those ever diminishing football-free days before the pre-season friendlies start are filled with a major international tournament. What luck. Now it’s time for a couple of sessions at the computer so that come June you can impress friends, family and passers-by with knowledge of Latvia’s tactical master plan and an effortless phonetic pronunciation of the Czech back four.

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