Search: ' Portsmouth'

Teams can pass their way into the Premier League, but Adam Bate thinks that the long ball game is the best tactic to keep them there

It all looks set for an interesting battle at the top of the Championship. While Southampton are heralded for their pleasing football under Nigel Adkins, West Ham continue to power on with the arch-pragmatist Sam Allardyce. The prevailing wisdom is that trying to play football is not practical in the Championship. But history suggests you can pass your way to promotion.

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It might not have excited Manish Bhasin, but for David Stubbs this scoreless draw at Brighton’s corporate new ground proved to be an historic occasion

The first professional football match I ever attended was just over 40 years ago in September 1971. A treat for my ninth birthday, en route back from a late summer holiday at the Golden Sands Chalet Park in Withernsea. It was at Hull City, as it happens, at the old Boothferry Park. In later years, with Kwik Save and Iceland stores embedded into its queasy, dirty yellow structure, it cut a grim spectacle indeed (it was home to Hull until 2002) but back then, to my young eyes, it was a veritable Humberside Xanadu, wreathed in the alluring odour of fried onions, a mass plumage of hats and scarves, the floodlights towering with Wellesian awe like gigantic alien overlords at all four corners of the stadium.

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Al Needham welcomed Steve McLaren’s appointment at Nottingham Forest, but won’t miss him now he’s gone

After the initial shock and subsequent debate across the city of Nottingham, the appointment of Steve McClaren as Forest manager in the summer made a sort of perverse sense. After all, both club and new manager had a lot to prove. For the former, the opportunity to replace the moaning, awkward Billy Davies with someone who has sat at the right hand of Alex Ferguson was an irresistible punt. For the latter, the opportunity to return to a club seething with the potential to get back to where they seemingly belonged was an obvious shortcut to expunging memories of holding an umbrella and looking helpless. As a friend pointed out: “Forest have gone from having the best manager England never had to the worst manager they did have.”

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Justin McCurry on Japan’s continuing love affair with English football, despite the Premier League shifting its focus to other Asian markets

When Harry Redknapp brought Yoshikatsu Kawaguchi to Portsmouth for £1.8 million in 2001, detractors spied a case of commercial considerations taking precedence over footballing ability. Sure enough, the Japanese goalkeeper departed under a cloud less than two years later after a series of hapless performances that saw him lose his place to the 42-year-old Dave Beasant.

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Dear WSC
Although I thoroughly enjoyed the article on footballing statues (Striking a pose, WSC 294) it did miss out one rather infamous example – the Ted Bates horror show of a few years back. This short-lived “tribute” to the former Saints player, manager, director and president was astonishingly inept, with legs roughly half the length they should have been. To add to the indignity, more than once a resemblance to dignity-phobic Portsmouth owner/asset-stripper Milan Mandaric was pointed out. The overall effect was of a top-heavy, inebriated and besuited dwarf waving at passers-by. Not really the ideal summing up a lifetime’s service to a club.
Keith Wright, Cheltenham

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