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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Football commentator Jon Driscoll asks just what it takes for an ex-pro to be a pundit and recalls those he has worked with who suffered from foot-in mouth

Before the first football commentary I did for Talk Radio they told me they’d hired Andy Gray as the pundit. Excellent. I couldn’t believe my luck. I was right not to. They had hired Andy Gray the ex-Palace and Spurs midfielder. He was rubbish.

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New Age health expert Cameron Carter has cast away his CD of rainforest sounds and is here to promote a new route to inner wellness: televised football

We have heard people complaining about football on television. Occasionally I agree with them. Yes, it is true that Ray Stubbs and Mark Lawrenson act out a school play about two men arguing every Saturday lunchtime. I too feel discomfort at the spectacle of Garth Crooks constantly reaching for some higher meaning that poor, simple football and its participants cannot give him.

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It’s 37 years since Keith Peacock became the league’s first substitute. Philip Cornwall traces the changing role of the sub with the help of the man himself

Once upon a time, there were no substitutes. None. By the time I started understanding football, the mid-1970s, they were such an established part of the game that there was an emerging player soon to be known to all as Super Sub, and the idea that football had once been just 11 against 11 was very difficult to get my head around.

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Ankara-based Anthony Lake believes that the recent history of Anglo-Turkish matches could lead to serious danger if fans travel to October's key qualifier

England over 100 Turkey 0 is an unsurprising arrest statistic, though it is one unlikely to be re­peated if England fans are permitted by the Football Association to travel to Istanbul for the return game in October. Sadly the score is likely to be more even, and someone, at least one and maybe more, could be killed.

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