Dear WSC
Is anyone else irritated by the increasing tendency of radio and TV commentators to refer to a shot hitting “the frame of the goal” or, even worse, “the frame of the goals”? How many sets of goals do they think the attacker is shooting at? Commentators should drop these expressions ad return to using post, bar or, where appropriate, the nicely precise “angle of post and bar”.
John Perry, Chelmsford
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Stories
The oldest club in the League have never been in the Premiership and probably never will be, so their last top-flight season is one for Martin Naylor to savour
On hearing the words “Neil” and “Warnock” a decent percentage of football fans would grimace and mutter an obscenity. But the current Sheffield United manager is remembered with fondness by Notts County supporters for the back-to-back play-off wins that took us into the top division for what will surely be the last time in our long history.
Nottingham Forest have lost another manager and are playing their worst football of most fans’ lifetimes. Al Needham looks around frantically for signs of hope
When Joe Kinnear accused the supporters of Nottingham Forest of living in a time warp last month after resigning as manager, it was hard to deny that he had a point. After all, fans in pubs, factories and offices across the city have done little else this season than casting their minds back and trying to remember a Forest team as uniformly lamentable as the current one. The relegation teams of 1993, ’97 or ’99? The Matt Gillies-Dave Mackay-Allan Brown era of the early 70s, when Forest trod water in the old Second Division?
Michael Owen is in danger of becoming a symbol of Real Madrid’s decline – but is winning fans over and doing pretty well when given a chance, as Phil Ball explains
So Michael Owen is the latest victim of those nasty local cliques in which Johnny Foreigner has specialised, ever since Kevin Keegan went to Hamburg? Real Madrid’s Raúl, a nasty piece of work according to certain recent reports in the English sports media, has apparently been making life uncomfortable for the latest export of England’s finest, telling the recently departed José Antonio Camacho to leave him out of the team because he wanted his mate Fernando Morientes to play instead. Raúl was also the alleged guilty party in the cold shouldering of Nicolas Anelka, but if this was true then surely he deserves a medal for bravery above and beyond the call of duty.
Today Cambridge United would need a mad tycoon to get into the Premiership, but John Morgan remembers when a tactical eccentric almost managed the impossible
First Division tables from the 1970s and 80s now look like relics from a bygone era. They are filled with unfamiliar and unexpected names: Bristol City, Brighton, Notts County, Swansea, Carlisle and Wimbledon. Clubs who had chanced upon the talent of an exceptional manager or group of players were able to suddenly spring to the top from the depths of mediocrity. Even the most desperately unsuccessful lower-division teams could take solace in the dream that one day they might reach the same heights.