Search: 'Paul Ince'

The plans to restructure the Welsh Premier league have been met with an equal amount of support and opposition, as Paul Ashley-Jones reports

In May the Football Association of Wales (FAW) published plans to restructure the Welsh Premier (WP). The move, the greatest change in Welsh domestic football since the WP (previously the League of Wales) was created in 1992, proposed a cut from 18 teams down to ten by the end of next season. This plan didn’t come as a shock and had been endorsed by the clubs themselves some time ago. What did surprise them was that the FAW rejected a ten-club second division.

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Love for your club is not always blind. For a fan of Brighton the excitement of the future stirs up worries of the past while a West Ham fan finds his fellow supporters are turning him cold

On May 19, I had the shock of seeing the name of my club, Brighton, used in the same sentence as “Abramovich” – without apparent irony. It came in the Guardian headline: “Brighton finds its own Abramovich with £80m loan”; the man being Tony Bloom, an “internet gambling entrepreneur”.

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Huw Richards sums up the Championship season whilst asking of whether being at the top of the division correlates with playing better football

Do you want your team to play in the Premier League? Well, yes, me too. But this year’s Championship season shows that achieving what we’re told is the Holy Grail – or at least the answer to a £60 million question – can have unwanted side-effects. When your team is newly risen from the lower orders you have certain expectations. Better grounds, bigger crowds and classier football. No doubt about the first two, but hope of number three went largely ungratified.

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Dear WSC
AFC Wimbledon fan Aled Thomas (Letters, WSC 267) bemoans people not knowing what to call his club. He would have enjoyed this exchange on Talksport on a recent Saturday when they decided to venture south of the Premier League, for a change. Ian Danter: “AFC Wimbledon could gain promotion to the Conference today.” Micky Quinn: “Is that the original club?” Danter (hesitantly): “Yes.” Quinn: “Do they still play at Plough Lane?” Why so knowledgeable?
Glyn Berrington, Brierley Hill

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Having slid to the fifth tier Fortuna Cologne are looking to a web-based model to revive the club, explains Paul Joyce

Under their dictatorial president Jean Löring, Fortuna Cologne were possibly ­Germany’s least democratically run club. Löring once fired manager Toni Schumacher at half time during a match in 1999 with the words: “I, being the club, had to react.”

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