Tom Davies explores the role supporters are playing in saving their clubs

The supporters’ group that has assumed con­trol at Exeter City is facing a sizeable battle to keep the club alive over the summer. Their relegation from the Football League on the last day of the season was swiftly followed by the arrest of chairman John Russell and vice-chair­man Mike Lewis over allegations of fi­nancial irregularities. The pair, who were bail­ed to return to police in September, prompt­ly stepped down, leaving the club’s reported debts at more than £2 million with creditors closing in.

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Thursday 1 The FA is fined £70,000 for the pitch invasion and racist abuse at last month’s Euro 2004 qualifier with Turkey. UEFA also criticises David Beckham for his “provocative” goal celebration. England’s next match, against Slovakia, will not be played behind closed doors, however. Acting joint chief executive David Davies promises action: “We need to take this decision and use it to our benefit. There are people who have shamed this country, we all know that.” UEFA will also be sending a bill to Sir Alex, who’s fined £4,500 for claiming the Champions League draw was fixed. In the Conference play-offs, Dagenham beat Morecambe 2-1 and Doncaster draw 1-1 at Chester. Thierry Henry is named Footballer of the Year to add to the PFA award he won last week.

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Dear WSC
The letter from Joe Newman (WSC 195) claimed that only those managers who have sold their shares in the ProActive agency stand to financially benefit from transfers involving the players on the agency’s books: “You don’t make money from shares simply by holding on to them – the only way to benefit financially is by selling them.”
Sadly, it is this sort of view from a fan that concerns me about the level of ignorance of the financial state of football today. Clearly, if these managers have sold their shares in the business, they stand to make no further money from that business. But Joe is ignorant of the fact that shareholders also get paid dividends on their shareholdings. Surely exactly the point that the Football Confidential book was trying to get across?
Alfie Dunn-Lowes, via email

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Some football sites want to tell you what you really need to know – but this month Ian Plenderleith celebrates those which go in the opposite direction and champion the glorious irrelevance of it all

 “Fascinating but spectacularly pointless” is a label that can be applied to many things in football – mascots, Alan Parry, the Rumbelows Sprint Challenge, Danny Wal­lace’s runs down the wing. To celebrate the game’s abund­ant tapestry of interesting but superfluous facts, people and memorabilia, On The Web this month unscientifically nom­inates a list (what could be more fascinating but pointless than a list?) of the top four Great But Useless websites.

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Not all revolutionaries are fondly remembered. Barney Ronay examines the controversial legacy of Charles Reep, football’s first tactical statistician 

Wing Commander Charles Reep has been called many things. Twenty years ago the Times dubbed him “The Human Computer of the Fabled Fifties”; an obituary described him more simply as “a football ana­lyst”; while a slightly empurpled Brian Glanville once declared him a member of FA coaching director Char­les Hughes’s “band of believers and acolytes”, the arch­angel of “a fanatical credo, a pseudo-religion”.

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