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Lincoln’s Keith Alexander, back at work after brain surgery, is one of only three black managers in the league. Grahame Lloyd asked him why he thought this was so

Keith Alexander knows he’s very lucky to be alive. Just three months after undergoing major brain surgery following a collapse at his home, the Lincoln City manager was due back in the dugout for the home derby against Boston on February 7. Alexander could hardly have chosen a more volatile atmosphere for his return but, with Lincoln’s next three matches pitching them against neighbours Scunthorpe and Hull as well as promotion rivals Huddersfield, all their games this month are high-profile and high-octane.

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As the anti-racism organisation celebrates its tenth birthday, Tom Davies spoke to Kick It Out co-ordinator Piara Powar about progress made and the battle still ahead

With the well established Kick It Out campaign now ten seasons old, it’s easy to forget just how mar­­ginal an issue anti-racism in football once was. In the 1980s it took the brave efforts of supporters them­selves, often at the places with the worst reputations such as Leeds and Chelsea, to drag the issue to public prominence. And it’s tempting, now, to congratulate ourselves on just how far we’ve come.

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Exeter City are trying to get to grips with their financial crisis, with potentially serious effects for all Conference clubs and football rules, as Howard Pattison writes

Watching Exeter play football may be un­rewarding, but the club’s adventures off the pitch are rich with in­cident, controversy and intrigue. Hav­ing seemingly headed off their most pressing financial worries by entering into a corporate voluntary ar­rangement (CVA) with their creditors, whereby they agreed to pay just ten per cent of their debts, they were immediately ser­ved notice of a 12-point penalty, the punishment set by the Conference at the be­ginning of the season.

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Ian Plenderleith finds artists from Norway and Switzerland exploring the meaning and limits of the game (and the language), while Englishmen past and present have captured the game’s historic vistas

The history of football and art is littered with badly proportioned pencil drawings, misty-edged portraits and, on the pitch, mostly miscued overhead kicks that end up leaving their artists flat on the canvas. Once in a while, though, those overhead shots hit the target and we celebrate the beauty, just as the occasional non-playing artist captures some­thing of the game’s elusive but undeniable aesthetic side.

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And you think rebuilding Wembley was a saga. Paul Doyle reports on the homelessness crisis that could bring the Republic of Ireland to a ground nearer than you would think

Can Irish football recover from its current crisis? A nation that was last year trying to convince the continent it should co-host Euro 2008 is set to admit that it cannot, in fact, host its own home matches.

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