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Falkirk appear to hae been saved from relegation by Airdrie's demise. But James Teideman is still bitter about the fate of clubs excluded from the SPL

It is the night that Bayer Leverkusen host Manchester United in the second leg of their semi-final. The Cham­p­ions League music that welcomes the teams on to the pitch at Brockville Park floats with comic irony over the terraces – as if it isn’t surreal enough that Ev­erton are playing here tonight for the honour of lifting the Alex Scott memorial trophy, highlight of Falkirk’s 125th anniversary celebrations. The travelling fans must have had a laugh as they surveyed the crumbling “stadium” that sums up the melancholy malaise of small Scottish clubs.

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Airdrie have gone bust and Motherwell almost suffered the same fate. Ken Gall reports on the financial troubles besetting Scotlands's middle-ranking clubs

After more than a century, Airdrieonians FC have, to all intents and purposes, ceased to exist. A few miles down the road, their not-much-loved Lanarkshire neighbours Motherwell – following an initial panic that they were headed for the same fate – entered interim ad­ministration, slashing wages, sacking staff and can­celling players’ contracts. All in all, then, the grim­­mest few weeks for Scotland’s domestic game since Third Lanark went out of business in 1967.

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Al Needham isn't ashamed to admit he was an ITV Digital subscriber. Here he recalls the channel's highlights – that's the first two paragraphs anyway

When ITV (née ON) Digital was launched in aut­umn 1998, it seemed a very appealing offer to the televisual tat aficionado such as myself. You could get WWF and back-to-back episodes of On The Buses without throwing any cash directly into the maw of Rupert Murdoch, and you only had to plug it in and ring a call centre to get connected.

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Ian Plenderleith discovers a Swede with an addiction to Slough Town, what Colin Addison's main failing as a manager was, and where the Jail End can be found

How far would you travel to watch Slough Town? It’s one of those questions consistently posed in philosophical and political de­bating salons across the nation. In the case of Mats Tallqvist, leader of the Slough fan group the Swedish Rebels, the answer is “all the way from Halmstad”, and with great regularity, jud­ging by the diary accounts on his Unofficial Slough Town Web Page.

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Ian Plenderleith burrows through the heaving mass of World Cup sites to discover the debut official song and the meaning of Korea's "intangible cultural assets"

Predictably enough, there has been a huge amount of cyberspace set aside for online coverage of the coming World Cup. The following is an attempt to help you focus on the least drivel-ridden websites.

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