Having got used to relegation from the top flight, Huw Richards writes on how Rayo Vallecano are having an unexpected prolonged stay at the top
El Rayo Vallecano está de moda (Rayo Vallecano are in fashion). One can think of more unlikely headlines – “Manchester United back profit-sharing” or “Swansea sign midfield playmaker” come to mind. But few others.
Most football fans look back at 1981 as the year Ipswich lost the title, and deserved to take it back to Suffolk. David Wangerin disagrees
In the dim and increasingly distant days before the Premiership, live football on TV and the Champions League, it was a widely held assertion that small, settled squads were a desirable thing, and that a collection of a dozen or so talented, motivated and well-organised players stood as good a chance as any of winning the championship – as long as they kept their limbs and ligaments intact and their noses clean.
Dear WSC
You published a letter from me in WSC 70 (December 1992), suggesting that Newcastle City Council may one day be cajoled into erecting an Arthur Horsfield memorial statue in Eldon Square. For over six years, WSC then callously ignored the career of one who, even in the face of fierce recent competition, must still rank as one of Newcastle United’s least successful signings (seven games in six months before being shipped off back to the lower leagues from whence he came). Imagine my surprise, then, upon reading an article in WSC 150 in which Harry Pearson suggested that the music which Middlesbrough used to run out to was “far too exotic to announce the arrival of Arthur Horsfield”. Having read Mr Pearson’s latest contribution in WSC 153, where he again cites Arthur in his musings on loyalty at Middlesbrough, I am convinced he shares my obsession with this shadowy character from my footballing childhood. Nevertheless, I must object at the vilification of Arthur as a footballing “serial philanderer” given that, apart from his brief stay at Newcastle, history shows that he played between 78 and 139 games for each of the other clubs which he represented (presumably with greater distinction), and indeed held the record of consecutive appearances for Charlton Athletic. Perhaps Mr Pearson would care to provide moral support to my latest plan to lobby Derwentside Council for a statue based on Arthur’s famed pose with arms outstretched, screaming for the ball to be centred? This could be situated inland, midway between Newcastle and Middlesbrough, high up on the rolling moors which dominate those great industrial conurbations. The Arthur of the North?
John Wright, Limours, France
UEFA seem intent on changing the transfer system. Guy Osborn & Steve Greenfield explain how this could affect England and beyond
It seems barely a week goes past these days without a new proposal to regulate the international movement of players. The most recent have involved reintroducing restrictions on foreigners, standardising transfer windows across Europe and effectively abolishing the transfer system. Yet again, it appears that poor old Jean-Marc Bosman is the root cause of most of these ideas.
To mark WSC's 150th issue, we invited three critics with different links to the magazine's past to reflect on changes in fan culture since 1986
WSC The term “fan culture”, which barely existed when the magazine started in 1986, has now become commonplace. But it seems as though there is actually less of a unifying fan culture now than there was then. Are there things that still bring people together, from Premiership to the Third Division, as we assumed there were when we started?