East Stirling have a new investor who is hoping to transform their forutnes after six consecutive seasons at the bottom of the Scottish league. Neil Forsyth reports
It would be expected that the recent travails of Gretna, in administration and facing daily reports predicting their imminent demise, should stand as stark warning against investment in Scotland’s minor clubs. Recent developments at the country’s worst professional football team, however, would suggest that hope springs eternal.
Should NRR replace QPR in the league tables? Thom Gibbs reports on a takeover by Formula One bosses and a steel magnate that seems to promise much more than mere survival but carries risks of its own
On the evening of August 14, 2007, during a League Cup match against Leyton Orient, Gianni Paladini’s world was in tatters. QPR’s Italian chairman thought he had secured a deal to save the club from impending administration. Flavio Briatore, managing director of the Renault Formula One team, was set to take over, until significant shareholder Antonio Caliendo balked at Briatore’s offer. The deal looked dead. Rangers were destined for financial meltdown, possibly complete extinction. They also lost 2-1 to Orient.
Youngsters in search of a football career are turning to the sport’s equivalent of a public school. Gavin Willacy wonders whether this experiment will work or if good money is going after bad
Borehamwood’s Hertswood School v Birmingham City was a league fixture. On the same day, Dagenham & Redbridge lost at home to Brightlingsea Regent, Conference club Histon played Queens’ School in Bushey and Oxford United lost at home to someone called FCV Reds.
The season is not half-done yet relegation is assured, despite the arrival of a new manager. But amid the retail outlets and call centres, there’s no anger – it’s not so much Pride Park as Resigned Park. By David Stubbs
It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve made the trip up north by rail. It matters not that you were actually brought up in the north. No matter, either, that you have resolved not to fall into the usual trap of the condescending London-based writer venturing into the provinces and remarking on the frightfulness of it all, the supreme example of which was a piece written by the Guardian’s Katherine Whitehorn in the 1960s, entitled “You Can’t Take Aubergines For Granted Outside London”. Step off the train at Derby, step outside and the scene that greets you, dominated by a browned-off looking Midlands Hotel, makes you deeply conscious not just that you have stepped outside your home town, but stepped outside your own decade.
December 16’s match-ups of the “Big Four” sent Sky’s publicity machine into overdrive. After six hours of Keys, Gray and Redknapp, the only thing Barney Ronay wanted to slam anywhere was the remote control
Like many other irresistible global happenings, it all started with something very small. The tectonic tremor that would eventually lead to the towering tsunami of Grand Slam Sunday was the announcement of the Premier League fixture list in June. As in 2006-07, the supposedly random computer selection had presented us with two weekends when the top tier’s “Big Four” would play each other. Clearly, this has started happening rather more often than it should. Not surprising, then, that despite the boundless advertising budget, the limitless man-hours developed to styling, tweaking and generally buffing-up, the most recent edition of this gala televised soccer extravaganza should end up looking a lot like the last time we all did this.