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Away from the rants of the message board maniacs, there are plenty of people trying to use the internet to stage more reasoned debates about the game. Ian Plenderleith picks a few arguments

It’s six years since this column took a critical look at a site called Voice of ­Football , a pomposity-packed home page for all kinds of blustering, big-name opinion-­mongers such as Alan Green, Uri Geller and the late Tony Banks. Thereafter the site was cursed and soon disappeared into oblivion, celebrity sheen proving no compensation for words of genuine substance.

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Back in issue 234 we asked you for your views on the World Cup and more than 600 readers took part. Roger Titford shares the results and compares them to the answers you gave us after the 1998 finals

While England may have had a Grip on the bench, WSC readers were less gripped by the 2006 World Cup, our summer survey reveals. Despite – or perhaps because of – the high hopes for England, there was a rather grumpy response to the tournament compared with the answers we had to similar questions in our 1998 France World Cup survey.

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If clubs need hand-outs from the FA, then they're not going to ask too many questions of the man in charge – even when he lines up his son as his eventual successor, as Rodrigo Orihuela explains

The transfers of Carlos Tévez and Javier Mascherano opened Argentine eyes to Russian corporate involvement in football, but the background to the September 3 friendly between Argentina and Brazil in London was still a surprise to the average local fan. The game was the first arranged through a contract, signed in April, between the Argentine FA and Renova, a Russian corporation that calls itself “the leading Russian asset management company”. Viktor Vekselberg, Russia’s third richest man, is chairman of Renova.

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Dear WSC
Being a non-League fan, with a major Premiership side playing their reserve-team football at our stadium, I have long since believed reserves to be almost totally unnecessary at the top level (Nothing In Reserve, WSC 235). A Chelsea v Arsenal game in February 2004 stuck out in particular. The 4,500 crowd probably hoped for the odd household name among a foundation of emerging talent. The players that actually performed would have struggled to get into a non-League team (one of them has signed for my side, Aldershot, this season). The game lacked any quality at all and the players never showed anything that might suggest either José Mourinho or Arsène Wenger might have been presented with an unexpected selection headache. With Chelsea releasing more players this summer, most of whom never got close to the first team (Dean Furman, Joe Keenan, Dean Smith, Jack Watkins, James Younghusband, Lenny Pidgeley, Filipe Morasis and Danny Hollands) again it appears that their reserve team offers nothing for José – and why should it? They have limitless resources, so why should they take a risk with untried youth? The players that are rated are sent on loan to gain “valuable first-team experience” at other clubs. Other clubs also use the loan system heavily, at their reserve teams’ expense: Arsenal and Manchester United have sent five players on loan, Liverpool four, with several others released. Fulham and Everton have also both released many young and up-and-coming players. Bizarrely, other Premiership clubs take loan players at the expense of their reserves – look at Watford giving experience to Ben Foster, Charlton to Scott Carson, Everton to Tim Howard, Wigan to Chris Kirkland and that’s just keepers. Top-level reserve football doesn’t need the Premiership to kill it, the clubs are doing that quite well enough. The days of players being discovered in the reserves are long gone; top managers know what players they have in reserve and that’s why they are there.
Andrew Hailstone, via email

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An early-season meeting between two teams suffering hangovers from relegation finds the home side also paying the price for mistakes committed long, long ago and distracted by a meddling council. Taylor Parkes reports

Airy, friendly and staunchly tolerant, Brighton is a magnet for those worn down by the dark heat and pace of denser, less liberal cities – the San Francisco of England, or close enough. It seems right that a team from such a self-consciously bohemian town should be too laid-back for the uptight glare of the top flight, but most inappropriate that they’ve become dependent on the approval of others.

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