With more Norwegian players leaving every week, Ole P Pedersen explains why the player drain to the English league is causing concern back home
I never thought I would see Norwegian footballers be a major part of English football. But there are now more Norwegian internationals than Scottish in the Premiership: cheap, solid footballers who can run all day, never drink and accept lower wages than their British compatriots.
Dear WSC
A couple of things about the Back, Crabbe and Solomos article on racism in WSC No 118 which I thought was good and said a few things which needed saying. Most of the academic stuff linking hooliganism and racism was actually about support for the national team in the 1980s and 90s. Multi-cultural hooligan groups have been around for a while as Back and co say, but isn’t it mysterious that only their white members turned up to watch England, especially away? They knew what the score was for these kind of events, and violent racism was indeed central to trouble involving England fans abroad for a long time. Secondly, implying that multi-racial hooligan groups are themselves non-racist raises difficult conceptual issues of course; but try telling the Asian community in Newham in the 1980s, for example, that they weren’t sometimes explicit targets of combined back and white hooliganism and racism at West Ham and you might get some puzzled looks. Thirdly, the article’s point about opposing banal racism is important, but it would help if people involved in the campaign sang from the same hymn sheet. What chance do we have of dealing with the old (white) men on the terrace who often equate racism with a critique of redheads, if Ian Wright at the AGARI launch himself describes racism as being like “picking on people with big ears” or “people who are bald”. Saying, well, Wright’s ‘just a footballer’ or ‘just a working class lad’ won’t due unless we’re willing to say the same about his white equivalents most of whom even now don’t take racism seriously enough for exactly these sorts of reasons. Had a prominent white player made the same comment who knows what kind of press he might have had.
John Williams, Sir Norman Chester Centre for Football Research, Leicester
John Perlman got a glimpse into the future when he went to see the Highbury screening of Arsenal's match at Newcastle – and it left him worried
Idiot. Cheat. Bastard. We are screaming at referee Graham Barber, who has just sent Tony Adams off. And all because he just happened to be in the neighbourhood when Alan Shearer decided to launch himself on another dive towards the penalty area. We have quite a bit to say to Shearer too.
Mark Wenham looks at the causes of the riot at a Bristol derby match
The events of December 15th may have caused eyebrows to be raised nationally, but for anyone who has regularly attended Bristol football derbies over the last ten years, the whole day had a grindingly predictable feel to it.
Looking at aspects of maleness and football, Joyce Woolridge explains why the New Lads beloved of the media have little in common with the lads who actually go to watch matches
A few weeks ago at 6am I began a solo train journey from Bristol to Manchester to watch Manchester United lose to Chelsea. I’ve never been to a match alone before, but it happened that this time I was the only one with a ticket. As a solo traveller, I thoroughly expected to observe at first hand some spectacular displays of laddish boorishness, given that football is where the ‘new lads’ are most at home; where they gather to worship the cult of curry, boozing and birds whilst rejecting all standards of decent behaviour.