Thursday 1 Ottmar Hitzfeld turns down the job of German national coach. Bradford survive: their administrators are in talks with “interested parties”. MK Dons, meanwhile, prepare for their headlong dive through, uh, League One by coming out of administration. James Milner is set to join Newcastle while his ex-team-mate Mark Viduka completes a medical at Boro (peevishness may not show up in the tests).
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Stories
Dear WSC
In his article Mind the Gap (WSC 209), which celebrated a rise in attendances in what used to be Division Two, Ed Parkinson did confess that as a fan of promoted Hartlepool he might be viewing the league with rose-tinted spectacles. Having read the article, I feel he must have gone the whole hog and had a full rose-tinted laser eye operation. Having witnessed many games in this division last season and having seen all the teams play at least once, I can honestly say that the standard of football never exceeded mediocre. Plymouth were the only good footballing side and they didn’t look anywhere near as good once Paul Sturrock swapped addresses on the south coast. As well as attributing the rise in attendances to what he considered to be “fine football”, Ed also noted that the struggles of “a few self-styled big clubs” such as Sheffield Wednesday provided pleasure for many. However, average attendances in Division Two were only up 6.5 per cent on the previous year and, with an average home attendance of 22,000 (almost twice that of any other team in the Division and four times more than Hartlepool), is it not more likely that it was the presence of “self-styled big club” Sheffield Wednesday that caused the upsurge in attendances rather than the alleged quality of the football?
Stuart Thorpe, via email
Tuesday 1 England scrape a 1-1 draw with Japan, who should have won after Shinji Ono equalised Michael Owen’s first-half goal. Sven’s not flustered: “The game today was not important. We were superb for 30 minutes but then we got tired.” Rafael Benítez resigns as Valencia coach and will shortly takeover at Liverpool. Inverness are turned down for promotion to the Scottish Premier League after failing to get the required two-thirds vote.
Ed Parkinson is delighted Hartlepool's stars are no longer thought worth a transfer to Chelsea as Stamford Bridge seems worlds apart from Victoria Park
As a follower of a newly promoted club who just achieved their highest league placing in 94 years of grim struggle, it’s tempting to view the Second Division through heavily rose-tinted specs. To me it seems a delightful, cheerful and friendly division which all clubs should visit regularly. A survey of the changes in the division since Hartlepool’s last visit in 1991 shows that rigorous asset-stripping of promoted teams seems to have fallen out of fashion. In 1991 the winners of the old Fourth Division were gleefully dismantled by middle-aged men in sheepskin coats – any promoted side would lose three or four key players to big clubs (defined as anyone who was in the First Division, had ever won a major trophy, or just had a big ground). This year all three upwardly mobile arrivals retained nine or ten of their first-choice promotion team.
Despite only losing once all season, Rhyl FC only wrapped up the Welsh Premier title on the last day of the season, before completing the Welsh 'treble' within a week. Paul Ashley-Jones reports on their excellent season
Rhyl FC may not have managed to emulate Arsenal’s feat of going unbeaten in the league all season, but they came out on top when it came to winning silverware. The start of May saw the club clinch the Welsh Premier Championship, the Welsh League Cup and the Welsh Cup all in the space of eight days.