In a dark season for the game as well as Stoke, Ken Sproat saw Newcastle inflict one of the Potters’ 31 defeats of 1984-85 – but can now see it wasn't all gloom

A football team cannot get much worse than Stoke City during the 1984-85 season. There, in the all-time records for being hopeless, they skulk alongside such Victorian disasters as Darwen, Loughborough Town and Glossop. The fewest points in a season (17), the fewest wins (three – all at home), the most defeats (31) and, with 24, the fewest goals (the leading scorer was Ian Painter with six, of which four were penalties). They failed to score in 25 of the 42 league matches. They suffered mathematically definite relegation with eight miserable matches still to play.

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In the first of two features on record-breaking top-flight relegation seasons, Joe Boyle struggles to find any positive signs amid the despair at Sunderland

There are internet addresses that snare you and reel you in, even as you sense something unwholesome. Like this: www.freud.org.uk/archiegemmill.html.

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No promotion for Falkirk equals no interest for the fans, believes Dianne Millen, at a time when Scottish football can ill afford to be encouraging stagnation

“Have fun in Division One” was the visiting fans’ chant at Fir Park a few weeks ago: but despite the ritual abuse, it won’t be SPL bottom club Motherwell going down after all. Instead, champions Falkirk will stay in the Bell’s First Division next season, after their application to the Premier League was, as widely predicted, rejected by seven of the 12 clubs on May 23.

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No longer will ageing players be able instantly to become Premiership managers: soon you will need proper FA and UEFA qualifications, as Ryan Lovejoy reports

During his time as the Football Association’s Technical Director, Howard Wilkinson pushed through proposals which will soon bring England into line with the rest of Europe. By 2003-04, each Premiership manager must hold an FA Coaching Diploma or a UEFA Professional Licence. In 2010-11, the Pro Licence, UEFA’s most-esteemed qualification, which takes 240 hours to complete, will be a requirement.

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After Graham Taylor’s resignation as Aston Villa manager, David Wangerin looks back at the ups as well as downs of a man who more than once took a job too far

Graham Taylor’s hasty departure from Aston Villa has in all likelihood ended a coaching career spanning five decades. To many, that career will live in a sort of infamy, largely due to the shortcomings he exhibited as England manager a decade ago which led to the team’s failure to qualify for USA 94. But to others, his greatest blunder came not with the national teams he selected, the tactics he deployed, or even the results he failed to deliver, but in allowing himself to become the subject of that fly-on-the-wall television documentary for, as it turned out, the benefit of a rather bitter and recriminatory audience. Within a worryingly short time, “Do I not like that” became a kind of catchphrase for ineptitude, the TV programme an inadvertent testimonial for the Peter Principle of a man rising to the level of his own incompetence.

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