Relegation, a much-loathed owner and an uncertain future. Dermot Corrigan examines troubled times at Real Betis
Since Real Betis’s relegation on goal difference on the last day of last season, the club’s fans have been directing waves of anger and frustration at the club’s majority shareholder Manuel Lopera.
Tim Springett bids a less-than-fond farewell to former owners, but hopes for signs of recovery under a new regime
When Rupert Lowe invited himself back to Southampton last summer, two years after being ejected by leading shareholder Michael Wilde, there was palpable dismay among Saints supporters. There is no doubt that the finances of the club were in a perilous state – late in 2007 a sale to the SISU hedge fund that later took over Coventry City had been thwarted by Lowe, Wilde and Leon Crouch, a local businessman who also held a large number of Saints shares. Several of the highest earning players subsequently went out on loan and Saints avoided relegation by just one point. Nevertheless, there was a new manager in Nigel Pearson, who had given fans cause for optimism that better times might lie ahead. Then Lowe – aided and abetted by his former adversary Wilde – returned and the mood changed dramatically.
The Sven circus has rollled into town and pitched up at the league's oldest club. Dave Evans explores the ramifications
The day before Sven-Göran Eriksson was unveiled as the Director of Football at the sixth worst League club in England I said to a friend “we are in danger of turning into a circus”. His reply, echoed by around 90 per cent of fellow Notts fans, was: “I’d rather pay £20 to see a circus than the rubbish I’ve been watching for the past ten years.”
Tom Davies looks at clubs experiencing difficult times
Beware rich men bearing loans might well be the cautionary mantra of this decade, and the latest to discover the perils of debt are Wycombe Wanderers. Fans’ joy at promotion from League Two has been tempered by a rancorous summer in which managing director Steve Hayes has been accused of bullying the supporters trust into giving up its shareholding to grant him outright control. Hayes, who also owns the rugby union club Wasps, with whom Wycombe share Adams Park, wants to shift both to a 20,000-seat new stadium, to be operated by a separate stadium management company.
With Carlisle Utd facing an average away trip of 257 miles, their chairman is calling for League One and League Two to be merged on a regional basis. Roger Lytollis reports
Carlisle United managing director John Nixon wants fixtures played on Christmas Day and supporters issued with rattles and rosettes as they enter Brunton Park. Well, possibly not. But many would hardly be surprised, having heard Nixon argue that the Football League’s bottom two divisions should be regionalised, 51 years after Division Three North and South were scrapped.