Search: ' midlands'

After a tortuous and shambolic process, the final, final decision on where the new Wembley will be built is expected any day now. And the answer, as Colin Peel exclusively reveals, well be, er, Wembley

As this is being written, the announcement of the location of the new English national stadium is late. It might be another month before the choice is re­vealed, but make a couple of enquiries and it becomes clear that location is no longer much of an issue for those who are behind the decision. The rather more taxing questions now facing the “stakeholders” are: what sort of stadium will be built at Wembley and, above all, how will it be paid for? Those plucky out­siders from the west midlands were never in with a chance from the outset.

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The football website intended to bring extensive football coverage to those in the US but as Rich Zahradnik explains the dream soon decended into a nightmare as spiralling costs and debt meant that the site had to be closed down

Football: speed, colour, noise, passion, even – when you’re lucky – dazzle. The web: click, click, click, yawn, click. Was there ever a bigger mismatch? The dotcoms are now dot-bombs and it’s become fun to bash the net. Did football gain anything from the web frenzy besides more of big media’s tentacles in the game?

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Continuing our series about extinct competitions, Jim Heath glances wistfully back at the Texaco Cup, which briefly gripped parts of Scotland and the west midlands 

The Texaco Cup will always hold a special place in the hearts of Wolves fans whose team were its first winners, exactly 30 years ago. It marked the beginning of a very successful and eventful era for the club, one which only lasted a couple of years but was loads more fun than supporting them now.

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Tuesday 1 The FA pull out of financing the new Wembley, claiming that it could bankrupt them, and ask for government assistance. “It is not right for us to act as sole sponsor of the scheme,” says Adam Crozier. Plans for a new stadium in the midlands may now be revived. Gary McAllister’s fifth goal in as many games helps Liverpool to a 2-0 win at Bradford. Huddersfield move five points clear of the relegation zone in the First Division with a 1-1 draw at Wimbledon (whose fans probably wouldn’t have minded losing). Rushden (and, of course, Diamonds) are promoted to the League after rivals Yeovil lose to a last-minute goal at home to Hereford.

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Players in the "old days" knew how to behave, unlike the overpaid prima-donnas of today. Not at all, says Steve Field

Think of an example of boisterous, drunken or oafish behaviour on the part of a highly-paid football personality. It might be Peter Beagrie’s Great Escape re-enactment in a hotel foyer, Brian Law’s hijack of a West Midlands Travel single-decker, Stan Collymore doing just about any­thing. The alleged misdemeanour could be sex­ual (Pleat, Shilton), financial (Macari, Venables), addiction-related or violent (too many to men­tion). Whatever, you can be sure of one thing. Within hours of the story breaking, pundits will be queuing up to proclaim that such a thing would never have happened in The Old Days.

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