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Dermot Corrigan on the sad fate of Drogheda, after they nearly knocked Dynamo Kiev out of the Champions League

In August, Irish champions Drogheda United came within inches of eliminating Dynamo Kiev from the Champions League. Midfielder Shane Robinson saw his injury-time cross-shot diverted on to a post by Kiev keeper Taras Lutsenko, before the ball agonisingly rolled across the goalline with no Drogheda player on hand to tap home. Minutes earlier Adam Hughes had somehow fired over an open goal from six yards. The rattled Ukrainians held out to sneak through 4-3, then hammered Spartak Moscow 8-2 on aggregate to seal their place in the group stages. Drogheda were left ruing what might have been.

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TV companies are promising bigger and better things for the new season, but Simon Tyers is not so sure they'll deliver

Televised football is, like Tottenham, undergoing a transitional phase. Setanta have not so far met their customer-base predictions, but start 2008-09 with their strongest hand yet in terms of live games. This despite not having yet found a permanent first-choice commentator, Jon Champion still being on loan from ITV, nor a notable accomplice. Craig Burley has clearly set out to be the new Andy Gray, but hasn’t bothered to develop tactical nous or a commanding commentary-box presence. Instead, he has gone straight for the unshakeably dour, moaning persona Gray has been perfecting of late.

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The title race was over by Christmas, but in the end it wasn't that bad a season in League Two, writes Ron Hamilton

Over recent seasons it has become an increasingly popular pastime for League Two aficionados to point and sneer at the lopsided and avaricious Premier League, scoffing at the hype and hoopla in comparison to the somewhat earthier charms of football’s basement division. Yet while much of this scorn is predicated on the assumption that the lower leagues represent the last vestiges of football’s soul, the 2007-08 season has seen the fourth division’s occupation of the moral high ground somewhat ­undermined.

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Points deductions have set the agenda in League One, writes Huw Richards

This was the Year of the Asterisk, with three teams – Leeds, Luton and Bournemouth – suffering points deductions. It also saw our Premier League-fixated national media, not for the first time, missing the point lower down. Hypnotised by the spectacle of Leeds and Nottingham Forest, regarded as Premier League members-in-exile, so far down the tree, they ignored the fact that much of the season was dominated, and the best-quality football played, by teams with a radically different provenance. Doncaster and Carlisle have both spent time in the Conference, while Swansea nearly went there only five years ago. If nobody quite reached the sublime heights attained by Blackpool in the later stages of 2006-07, there was some genuine quality.

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The press are having a field day as Chelsea and Manchester United head to Moscow for the Champions League final

By the day of the Champions League final, recycling bins everywhere will have been full to the brim with pull-out previews, all the daily papers, broadsheets as well tabloids, having produced supplements of some sort. Meanwhile, anyone intent on reading the post-match analyses will use up all their waking hours until Christmas.

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