Dingwall, home of Ross County, is the smallest town in Great Britain with a senior league club. Gordon Cairns explains the secret of their success against Inverness

When the Scottish Football League was formed in 1890, the founding members gave their new organisation a very misleading title. The clubs were clustered within Scotland’s industrial heartland – the central belt – and could hardly be said to represent the nation. Only now, with two Highland teams, Inverness Caledonian Thistle and Ross County, on the cusp of the Premier League, can top-level football truly be seen to encompass the country. These two teams have reached this position ten years after admission, but whether they can take the next step up depends on the whims of the clubs who make up the Premier League.

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Chaos and farce reign in Scotland, where the Premier League's anti-groundsharing stance has been underminded from within. Chris Fyfe makes some sense of it all

That Partick Thistle are bottom of the Scottish Premier League this season is primarily due to having a very poor manager for the first 14 games. By the time Gerry Collins was shown the door the struggling Glasgow club had two points and were destined for bottom spot. But life in the SPL is never simple. Thistle will not know if they are relegated until May 30. This is the deadline set by the SPL to the two aspiring First Division clubs (Clyde and Inverness Caledonian Thistle) and also Falkirk to find a ground to share that has the 10,000 seats required for promotion.

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Is ITV's former pundit an idiot, a racist, or both? Al Needham wonders whether that is what matters most about a pundit's fall from grace, or whether his fate tells us how far we have come and how far we have to go

In the end, after all the finger-pointing, hair-shirt wearing, editorials and think-pieces, the only truly shocking thing about what Ron Atkinson said was that, for pretty much the first time in his public life, he came out with a phrase that came frighteningly close to plain English. He didn’t describe Marcel Desailly as “totally nigmatic with his workrate, to be enocular”. He refrained from mentioning that the Chelsea defender had been “giving it big lips all game”. He didn’t even advocate giving minorities the full gun, or bunging them in the mixer.

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The great escape artists of English football, Carlisle United, finally surrendered their league status this month. Roger Lytollis reports on their relegation to the Conference

On December 20 last year Carlisle kicked off their home game against Torquay 16 points adrift of Third Division safety. Their first 21 matches had yielded a grand total of five points: one win, two draws, 18 defeats. The next 23 games produced 39 points. A team which had just set a club record of 12 consecutive League losses embarked on half a season of promotion form. And now it all counts for nothing. Carlisle United, football’s great escape artists, have finally been snagged on the barbed wire. 

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Tom Davies looks at a batch of clubs in crisis

The future of Telford United is in serious doubt following the collapse of chairman Andy Shaw’s business empire. The Conference club were forced into receivership in March along with Shaw’s other main companies, Miras Contracts and Whitehouse Hotels. A players’ wage deferral and some short-term funding from the remaining directors saw the club through to the end of the season but unless the future of their recently modernised Bucks Head stadium can be secured, neither can that of the club.

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