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Damien Blake looks back on the last season when a win meant two points and the FA Cup holders played outside the top flight

The long-term significance
This was the final season played under two points for a win. The addition of an extra point was one of the recommendations made in a document called Soccer – The Fight For Survival. Put together by a group of club officials and managers, including Terry Venables and Graham Taylor, the report had been triggered by concern over a variety of issues, notably falling attendances. This was also the last time to date that the FA Cup holders played outside the top flight. West Ham had won the trophy in May 1980, beating Arsenal 1-0 (with a rare Trevor Brooking header that was still a source of mirth to his Match of the Day colleagues 20 years later) but they had only finished seventh in Division Two, six points off a promotion place.

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The team from Northern Ireland that play in the Republic are more used to international competition than most and well worth a famous UEFA Cup victory over opponents who take too much for granted. By Robbie Meredith

It may have been a common experience for Everton and Sheffield Wednesday fans, but for the first and perhaps only time in my life I’d really like to know what Niclas Alexandersson is thinking. The captain of IFK Gothenburg is wandering across the pitch at Derry City’s Brandywell ground, carrying a set of training bibs for his team’s pre-match warm-up, and is looking disconsolately up into the rickety main stand. Maybe he’s wondering what has happened to the Franz’n’Sepp show he witnessed first-hand in Dortmund, Berlin, Cologne and Munich as the right-back in Sweden’s underwhelming World Cup team.

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Saturday 1 Berlin’s stadium announcer is replaced after urging the crowd to cheer Germany during their quarter-final. Glenn Hoddle resigns at Wolves. “My expectations and the club’s have drifted too far apart,” he says. Paul Ince is tipped to step in.

Sunday 2 David Beckham quits as England captain, although he wants to keep playing. He tearfully mentions Steve McClaren and Peter Taylor twice, with a solitary nod towards “Sven”. “Maybe we’re a victim of our own honesty and Wayne more than most,” reasons John Terry as the campaign against “Sly Senor” Ronaldo gathers momentum. Honest Wayne is quoted as telling team-mates over breakfast that he wants to “smack him on the head and split him in two”, though he may have been referring to his boiled egg.X

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Sheffield United are back in the Premiership, led there by one of the game's most outspoken managers. Pete Green examines the enigmatic and anagrammatical Neil Warnock

It has been said many times in recent weeks that there are no suitably qualified English managers to take charge of the national team. Yet one such man has 20 years of managerial experience in England and has won promotion six times at a series of different clubs, building an unparalleled knowledge of the game in this country along the way, and in the search for Sven’s successor his name has never once been mentioned. What do you mean, you don’t want Neil Warnock to do it?

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With candidate after candidate ruling themselves out of the race, who will take up the poisoned chalice that is the England job?

“What a mess this is,” said Graham Taylor of the latest developments in the selection of the new England coach. And there’s a man who knows about mess. It’s hard to disagree with him as we write, a few days after Luiz Felipe Scolari said no and on the eve of an expected announcement that Steve McClaren will shuffle up the bench to occupy the seat Sven-Göran Eriksson is to vacate. Time, obviously, to dispense with the men responsible for this debacle.

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