Search: ' grounds'

With financial uncertainty and franchising in the air, Barney Ronay looks at Fulham's 'temporary' move

Fulham fans really are extremely stylish and well dressed individuals. Certainly, the group of people queuing to buy tickets on the morning of the Cottag­ers’ first Premiership fixture at Loftus Road look a sartorial cut above your average football supporter. Designer labels mingle with vintage denim. Beneath immaculately styled hair, Gucci sunglasses glint in the August haze. The Fulham look is retro, perfectly acces­sor­ised… and strangely Japanese.

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Tom Davies's update on clubs with pocket problems

Bournemouth fans have been trying to prevent the club embarking on a “sale and leaseback” of their ground, similar to that at Wat­ford (see page 19). The chairman Tony Swaisland, who dreamt up the plan, resigned at the end of July after vociferous protests, in­cluding a walk-out at one pre-season friendly. His replacement Peter Phillips is reluctant to go through with the deal, but has the backing of the AFCB Trust Fund (which controls a majority of shares in the club) to do so unless the club can raise £2 million by the end of September.

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While fan violence may well be on the decrease, Mark Rowe says little can be read into the latest batch of arrest figures for the season just gone

In what is becoming a pre-season tradition, the government and police recently unveiled football arrest figures for 2001-02 and pro­claimed their policies are kicking hooligans out. Their headlines this time: arrests for foot­ball-related offences associated with Foot­ball League matches down by 30 per cent in the last ten years, despite bigger crowds; Premier League arrests also down; far fewer arrests at in­ternationals; the vast majority of matches troub­le-free.

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For a few weeks, it seemed he might be the answer to Derby's goal drought. But then the mysterious Argentine ran into a new opponent, as Chris Hall recounts

In August 1999 a burly Argentine headed the winner for Derby against Everton at Pride Park. Less than three months later, the same man, on his way back from a training camp in Portugal, was refused re-entry into England at Heathrow on the grounds that his passport was a forgery. The name on the passport was Esteban Fuertes – and the play­er, whoever he was, never appeared in a Der­by shirt again.

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In May, an arbitrarily appointed FA body sanctioned Wimbledon's move to Milton Keynes. Ian Pollock reorts on the staggering logic of a hugely damaging ruling

Just before the World Cup started, a special three-man commission of the FA came to one of the most profound decisions any foot­ball authority in England has ever made by giving permission for Wim­bledon to move 60 miles north to Milton Keynes. With most fans’ at­tention firmly fixed on events in Japan and South Korea, it is not surprising that hardly any scru­tiny has been given to the ruling handed down by the commission on May 28. After all, it only concerned Wim­bledon, so who cares?

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