Sorry, your browser is out of date. The content on this site will not work properly as a result.
Upgrade your browser for a faster, better, and safer web experience.

The Archive

Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.

 

Live and kicking

A pub landlady’s legal victory over the Premier League could be good news for all concerned, but we shouldn’t worry too much about negative consequences for Sky, claims David Harrison

Once the knee-jerk media response to the recent ruling on EU televised football rights died down, we were left with a commodity notably lacking during the broadcasts in question – silence. Predictably lazy images – grinning pub landlady pulls celebratory pints in Southsea boozer – were duly filed below celebratory headlines proclaiming Karen Murphy’s “victory” in the European Court of Justice. Well, possibly.

Read more…

Keeping in touch

According to James de Mellow, televising 3pm kick-offs could rob fans of the particular excitement of Saturday afternoon

One of British football’s idiosyncrasies is that at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon, when the majority of weekend’s games are being played, there is no live football on television. The way supporters who are not at their team’s game can follow along has evolved with technology during the past 20 years or so. But live Saturday afternoon football being beamed into living rooms could change all that for good.

Read more…

Free to Ayre

Steve Davies says that dividing TV deals unequally would make football less competitive but it could also be a legal minefield

Ian Ayre, the managing director of Liverpool, quickly qualified his reported assertion that his club should sell its own overseas TV rights and keep the income. He now says he meant that they should be sold collectively but the income divided on the basis of a team’s popularity, in terms of the number of times their games are featured. Clearly he was under pressure to modify his stance, given that even the other clubs who could have benefited from the move were against it. When Ayre heard Chelsea chairman Bruce Buck condemning his plan he must have realised he was on his own.

Read more…

Hammer home

While the Olympic Stadium saga continues, Mark Segal asks whether a move to Stratford really is in the best interests of West Ham

When West Ham first announced their intention to move into the Olympic Stadium after London 2012, the response from fans was at best lukewarm. After it was made clear that the new 60,000-seat ground will include a running track, scepticism grew among fans who were still not entirely convinced that their team needed to move away from Upton Park.

Read more…

Official complaints

wsc299 Brian Simpson reports on the growing problem of violence against referees in amateur football

The odds against newspapers as diverse as the Oldham Evening Chronicle, Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung and the Buckinghamshire Examiner reporting similar local football stories over the same few days are pretty slim. Yet that is what happened in mid-October, when all three covered attacks on referees in amateur and lower-league football.

Read more…

Copyright © 1986 - 2025 When Saturday Comes LTD All Rights Reserved Website Design and Build C2