Town And Out

Sunrise, sunset. The Independent this morning reported on the successful start made by AFC Liverpool, at least off the pitch – commercial activities including a sponsorship deal have, it was reported, earned them between £50,000-£100,000, while the appointment of Derek Goulding (who took Burscough to an FA Cup First Round in November 2005) as manager [...]

A Rare Outbreak Of Common Sense

At five o’clock this evening, Swansea City were finally crowned as the champions of League One. Swansea have spent the whole of this season doing rather well out of getting quietly on with the business of winning matches whilst playing some of the best football to be seen in England outside of the Premier League. [...]

Tough Love

I thought I’d better warn you first – this isn’t going to make for particularly happy reading. I have, however, been doing a considerable amount of pondering about the number of clubs falling into financial difficulties this season. We continue to live in an age of comparative wealth. The Football League TV deal is dwarfed [...]

An Early April Fool’s Joke

Take a close look at the picture on the left. That man is John Batchelor, and you might just be hearing quite a lot about him over the next few weeks or months. The reason for this is fairly simple – John Batchelor has launched a take-over scheme for League Two club which might even [...]

Windy Millers

As the football season wends its way towards its conclusion, it’s easy to forget the harsh realities that many clubs have to operate under in order to put a team out each Saturday. That harsh reality has, however, reared its ugly head again, with Rotherham United becoming the third Football League club to be placed [...]

You Too Could Own A Piece Of Edgeley Park!

If you’re looking for a decent synopsis of how the average English football supporter can be made to suffer in a wide variety of different ways, you’d have to search pretty hard to find a better example that Stockport County. There are clubs that have been treated worse, and that have had sets of circumstances [...]

Franchising In Scotland

In Scotland, the harsh realities of the wrong people getting involved in football clubs has been even more pronounced that it has been in England in recent years. Meadowbank Thistle were unceremoniously moved to Livingston, and several clubs have been left homeless or playing in two-sided grounds because of aborted development projects, but the most [...]

Send My Regards To Queen Street

It was only three months ago that Horsham FC briefly made national news headlines after holding League One Swansea City to a 1-1 draw in the Second Round of the FA Cup. They lost the replay 6-2, but made a substantial amount of money from their run. Back in the present day, however, the club [...]

Too Much, Too Young?

Some of you will have already seen the piece that I wrote for “Pitch Invasion” on the boom & bust football culture in Essex over the last fifteen years or so. The dangers of being dependent on a single benefactor are being thrown into even sharper perspective north of the border, where Gretna FC’s existence [...]

He’s At it Again

It looks like Leeds United’s Ken Bates started legal action against his team’s fifteen point deduction for not following Football League rules on administration just in time because, on the pitch, his team is falling to pieces. They haven’t won a single match in their last seven games, and have collapsed from being being contenders [...]