It's the season of goodwill and all that kind of cobblers, so Ian Plenderleith finds some reasons to be cheerful on the internet

In the spirit of transient positivity that is un­ique to either the start of the new football sea­son or the beginning of a fresh year, WSC hereby presents its Web Awards for the best five independent club-based fan sites, and for the best five general sites. The judge has scrup­ulously retained his penchant for wang-eyed subjectivity and has failed to cast off irrational prejudices, but would like to emphasise that or­iginality, wit and the quality of writing play­ed a considerable part in his selection of the following webzines, which appear in no par­ticular order.

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Tom Davies takes a look at four clubs in the news for the wrong reasons

The controversial Tony Petty is still in charge at Swansea after winning a legal battle with the former City cap­tain Mel Nurse on Nov­em­ber 23. Trouble began after Petty bought the club from the prev­ious ow­n­ers, Ninth Floor (effec­tive­ly former chairman Mike Lew­is), for £1 in September and promptly tried to sack or re­duce the wages of 15 mem­bers of staff . “If the players’ con­tracts had been continued, there would not be a club here,” he claimed.

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Mathias Kowoll bemoans the decision of 1860 Munich to cosy up to their more powerful neighbours

Rangers and Celtic have teamed up. They are now planning a shared ground with a capacity of 80,000 next to the municipal sewage plant. Profits from any games played there will be shared equally. In order to persuade the public to support the plan, the last Old Firm derby is promoted as one big demonstration for the common cause. Both sets of fans put on a show, hair dyed green and blue – often both colours on the same head – and the two chairmen can frequently be seen hugging each other.

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Dianne Millen looks at Aberdeen's hopes to move to a new stadium and complex as part of Scotland's bid to host the Euro 2008 Championships

Aberdonians of a certain age can remember the glory days. Not the hot Eighties nights un­der Fergie when even the likes of Bayern Mun­ich were sent home from Pittodrie to think again, but further back yet, to the Fifties and Sixties. In those pre-wage inflation days, an ordinary league game against Hibs or Dundee United would see the official 40,000-odd cap­acity swelled by a good few hundred who never touched a turnstile – clinging to the roof of the Main Stand, maybe, or even perched peril­ously on the newly installed, state-of-the-art floodlights.

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Dave Espley looks at Stockport County as Andy Kilner departs and Carlton Palmer gets his first taste of management

In what might seem to an outsider to be one of the least surprising sackings of the season, Stockport County dispensed with the services of Andy Kilner the Monday after a 4-0 home de­feat by Millwall on October 27. What is per­haps surprising, however, is that the County chairman Brendan Elwood was still insisting to all and sundry on the Saturday night that Kil­ner’s job was safe. Granted, chairmen do that as a matter of course and, as we all know, votes of confidence usually precede a sacking as inevitably as night follows day, but in El­wood’s case, he genuinely meant it.

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