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Matt Nation explains why his name can be added to the list of people who have had life-changing experiences involving Norman Hunter and a cinder pitch

Norman Hunter was one of the few players who would have induced me to wade bleeding and naked through an open sewer for a chance to see him, such was the esteem in which I held him. Although in the twilight of his career when he arrived at Bristol City, he was still famous, still a cut above the rest and still capable of turning the flow of a game by scything down the opponents’ playmaker in full flight. If there was one man who definitively captured and held my interest in football, that man was Norman Hunter.

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Kevin Bartholomew looks at how Brighton ended up being at the bottom of the Football League

On a Thursday evening in May 1983, Brighton lost 4-0 to Manchester United in the FA Cup Final replay. The outstanding memory of that day for many Brighton followers was the support the team received. Despite the result, by the end of the match Albion fans were, incredibly, outsinging the Red Army. This was in recognition of the Seagulls’ achievements in the FA Cup that season: the campaign had included victories over Newcastle, Man City and Liverpool, and we had come agonizingly close to beating United in the first attempt at the Final. But it also demonstrated the affection held for a club that had risen from being a mediocre lower division outfit to a side able to do battle with the best teams in the country.

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Celtic's Fergus McCann has got big ideas. Problem is they're almost all bad ones, as Gary Oliver explains

In the week scientists went loopy over what they believed to be an organism from Mars, Celtic’s owner and managing director, Fergus McCann, reminded fans that he is Scottish football’s own little green monster – one that remains extremely hostile to its alien environment.

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Steve Davies takes a look at the figures in the annual review of football finance, which as expected offer good news for the big boys and bad for everyone else

Premier League clubs are on the gravy train while the Endsleigh League drift toward oblivion. That, at least, is the commonly held view, and the report prepared by Deloitte & Touche into football finance provides an opportunity to see whether it is supported by the facts.

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Jon Rea explains why the fun of Euro ’96 never quite made it to Nottingham

The disappointing support from local fans is only partly helpful in explaining why, for Nottingham at least, Euro ’96 was the story of the party nobody came to.

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