Search: ' Portsmouth'

Just four months after facing West Germany in the World Cup final, a fiery defender arrived in Wiltshire. Graham Davidson remembers

Before the Premier League era, what few foreigners there were in England often arrived after a World Cup. Nico Claesen came to Spurs in 1986, while Ricky Villa and Ossie Ardiles more famously arrived on the back of Argentina’s 1978 triumph. Italia 90 was the last tournament before overseas players became commonplace in the English game, and saw the aforementioned Ardiles, by then managing Swindon Town of the old Division Two, pull off a notable transfer coup in the shape of countryman Néstor Lorenzo.

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Dear WSC
Simon Goodley’s excellent piece about Notts County (WSC 280) sums up the feelings of many long-standing Notts fans. Following the so-called takeover of the club by the Munto charlatans, the Notts fanbase was taken over by arrogant, intolerant glory hunters. Simon refers to the abuse heaped on the doubters on the internet, I know of two people who were physically attacked for the sin of professing to be less than wholly enthusiastic about the riches supposedly bestowed on us. Many supporters actually turned their back on the club, as a friend of mine said: “This is not the club I have followed for 30 years.” Getting promoted was in many ways the worst thing that could have happened as we may have to put up with these interlopers for a bit longer. Like Simon, I and many others I know actually hoped the team we support would lose matches so that it could regain the soul and good humour that attracted us to it in the first place. Here’s to a long winless run and relegation scrap – let’s see how many of the glory hunters remain then.
Tony Meakin, Nottingham

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Roger Titford reports on a year in the Championship in which may not have been vintage, but was notable for Blackpool providing the headlines

The Championship alternates between “strong” and “weak” years depending on which clubs have just been relegated from the Premier League. Next season we can look forward to a weak, and therefore more open, contest with two financial basket cases (Hull and Portsmouth) and Burnley coming down.

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The immediate past is traumatic and the future as yet unclear. Portsmouth fan Leon Tricker assesses the mess at Fratton Park

As the Chelsea players went up to collect their 2010 FA Cup winners’ medals, all you could hear ringing out across Wembley was the Pompey Chimes. We had dared to dream that we really could win the Cup again, a final act of defiance from fans, players and a manager united in adversity. But what do Portsmouth now have to show for seven years in the  Premier League? We’ve got the same “stadium” we’ve always had, the same antiquated infrastructure, a shattered reputation and a mountain of debt. Fans up and down the country have expressed anger at Pompey’s predicament. But if you feel you’re missing out on something don’t worry – your club could be next.

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David Stubbs runs the rule over this summer's musical offerings and finds a distinct lack of national pride swelling in his chest. Quite the opposite

 Time was when it was possible for the relevant authorities to frogmarch the England team en masse to the studio to record the official England song, in which they would assure us, back home, that this time they were going to get it right, their stilted choral tones betraying an appropriate lack of conviction that they wouldn’t come up short around the quarter-final mark.

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