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Do you ever see a picture of a player and come up confidently with half a dozen names for him? Matt Nation knows the feeling, especially with one former Arsenal man

A recent article on European Union expansion  highlighted the problems Slovenia faces in trying to convince people that it is who it says it is. People who try to point it out on a map usually end up putting their finger on Serbia & Montenegro. The flag gets confused with the Russian one. Even George W is convinced Slovenia is half of what used to be Czechoslovakia.

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Once upon a time Dave Boyle found the idea of squad numbers exotic, but recent galloping inflation has caused him to question his own and football's sanity, while Barney Ronay has been looking into the wider history of the numbers game

The first leg defeat of Manchester United by Porto was the moment when I realised that football had, beyond all reasonable doubt, gone mad.

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It's a blow to his wife but good news for his credit-card company: Ian Plenderleith has been able to use the internet to further his collection of desperately obscure, occasionally sweat-stained, football jerseys

Borussia Mönchengladbach home, 1997. China, 2002. Sparta Prague home, 2003. Italy, 1994. Glasgow Rangers away, 1992. Various Scotland horror kits with purple lightning flashes or in blinding orangey-pink. Too many Lincoln Citys to mention. Galatasaray home (Istanbul market bootleg), with “Revivo” and No 10 on the back. I wouldn’t say I’m proud of them, but the above are just a part of my undeniable replica-shirt collection.

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Few clubs can be held responsible for the rebirth of a club, but Gavin Willacy believes Preston would not be where they are now without the Town End, which even enjoyed a moment of life after death

Most readers probably have no idea what the Town End at Deep­dale is. It’s now known as the Alan Kelly Town End, a steep modern stand with the face of Preston’s record appearance-maker usually covered up by season-ticket holders’ bums. Al­though the fans chose to name the stand after Kelly – a Republic of Ireland keeper who played 447 times for the club in the 1960s and 1970s – it is only in the last decade that the Town End has become an integral part of North End folklore.

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Coventry's fall from the Premiership in 2001 and financial decline have now led to a team reliant on players borrowed from others, to the confusion of Neville Hadsley

Standing on the temporary, open, terrace on a freezing day at the National Hockey Stadium watching Coventry recently, I found myself squinting at our back four, feeling puzzled. It wasn’t the garish Ajax-style red away shirts, incongruous as they were. Nor the fact that the numbers on the four shirts seemed to add up to a rid­iculously high number – 98, in fact, a total sur­pas­sed the following week when it reached 114. It was the fact that I didn’t recognise two of our defenders.

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