After winning League One you would think that Mike Newell would be over the moon. As Neil Rose finds out, the Luton manager is still his old, dour self
It feels strange to come over all protective about your team’s manager, but that is how I feel about Mike Newell. Here is a decent and honest man who has found himself at the centre of a bewildering furore. Publicly he’s bullish and holding up well enough, but I would still like to give him a hug and tell him everything will be all right.
Update on clubs in crisis from Tom Davies
You can tell a club is in trouble if fans protest throughout a 5-1 home win, as Derby’s did during last month’s thrashing of Crewe at Pride Park. Supporter protests against a board of directors presiding over a debt thought to be more than £44 million and the inevitable depletion of playing resources that has entailed have escalated in recent weeks and many fear for the club’s existence, especially if they are relegated. Subsequent embarrassing defeats by Coventry and Colchester will scarcely have improved morale and led to the dismissal of manager Phil Brown late last month.
Macclesfield Town have found themselves in hot water over their new stand. Mike Whalley reports
The News of the World didn’t foresee what a traumatic time lay ahead for Macclesfield Town when tipping them to win League Two at the start of the season. But then not even the most pessimistic fan foresaw the financial penalty that has threatened the club’s existence.
Communism may have been collapsing around them, but Russian football was healthier than ever writes Saul Pope
The long-term significance
By the time the season ground to a halt in November, football was not the first thing on most people’s minds. During August, President Gorbachev had been held under house arrest for three days as his (and Soviet) power ebbed away. A few weeks after the end of the football season, on Christmas Day, the Soviet hammer and sickle flag was lowered over the Kremlin for the last time and the USSR was no more. The turmoil that followed spawned a corrupt economic and social system that would soon lead to one former Soviet citizen being able to buy a leading English team and overnight become the richest man in football.
Tom Davies gives us an update on clubs in crisis
Barnet fans hope to use May’s council elections to break three-and-a-half years of deadlock surrounding their attempts to find a new ground. Club and council have been at loggerheads since 2002, when the Conservatives won control and scuppered plans approved by the previous Labour administration for a stadium on land immediately south of their existing, and inadequate, Underhill home. The Tories refused to sanction the sale of the land necessary for the stadium.