Colin Todd left Bolton in farcical circumstances. Gary Parkinson untangles the story behind his decision to leave
The business equivalent of pride before a fall is the construction of a flash new HQ followed by financial disaster and bankruptcy. Building the Premiership-standard Reebok Stadium has brought Bolton Wanderers into such financial peril that there is a grave danger of never getting near that division again.
The various clubs to be affected by Reg Brealey and Steve Morgan
Sheffield United fans will be only too familiar with the reputation of Reg Brealey, the chairman of their club in the 1980s. The one-time jute magnate is now officially bankrupt and has 20,000 luckless shareholders from a previous company failure on his conscience, but he has been far from idle since leaving Bramall Lane. In conjunction with sidekick Steve Morgon he has recently embarked on an unlikely groundhopping tour, sowing further confusion, debt and dissatisfaction wherever he goes.
Dear WSC
So Adam Powley thinks Chelsea have “obscene ticket prices” (WSC 151). He’s right, obviously, but having paid £29 to watch Tottenham play Chelsea from a seat situated behind the police control room at White Hart Lane last season, I hardly think Spurs fans are in a position to take the moral high ground. As for Chelsea’s “contrived glamour image”, I can only wonder at how he sees the image of his own club. “Real” glamour perhaps?
Colin Maitland, Ascot
Match-fixing has always been in football. Simon Craig looks at the murky history
The lights went out at Upton Park and at Selhurst, and might yet have followed suit at The Valley and up to eight other grounds over the country.
A brief guide to football in New York, told by Jack Bell
1626 Dutchman Peter Minuit plunks down $24 in trinkets and baubles and backs his group of settlers against a disorganised band of local Reckagawawanc Indians for the island of Manna-Hatta. It is a precursor to Holland’s Total Football, known locally as Total Rip-off.