It seems as if there's been an exponential increase in clubs heading for the courts over unpaid tax or VAT bills this season. The answer to the question, "Accrington Stanleee, ‘oo are dey?" was "the League Two club that owe £308,000 to HMRC" until they found salvation the other week. And it feels like every other lower league Scottish club has been up before the tax beak in recent weeks.

We'll be back a little later on today with a report on the match between Paulton Rovers and Norwich City. In the meantime, however, The First Round of The FA Cup started yesterday evening with three matches. The remainder, of course, are to be played over the next three days. One of the traditions of The FA Cup is the press sending one of their hacks who is probably none too happy at not being to assigned to a Premier League match to write a few words about the smaller clubs that are taking their spot in the limelight.

Twice a year, Phil Gartside lays bare his most inner fears. Bolton Wanderers may some day be relegated from the Premier League, and Phil doesn't like the idea of that. He is scared that they will relegated and that they won't be prepared for life back in the Footbal League. He's right to be.

Just as the Second World War had started at the beginning of the football season, it ended in Britain, at least at what would have been the end of it. It took, however, many years for the country to recover from the end of the fighting, so perhaps it is unsurprising that the Football League was unable to resume fixtures for the start of the 1945/46 season.

Swine flu fever has overtaken Heart of Clackammanshire this week but new manager Gary Burns isn't going to let that get in the way of the club's best winning run in years, in this week's episode of "Shit Shot Mungo", which also lays bare the truth of Mungo McCrackas Lemsip addiction. This week's Mungo is brought to you by Ted "The Neck" Carter (who, if you were wondering how he got his nickname, fell through a roof and broke his neck a little over three years ago, in case you were wondering he's okay now, but he's not allowed to go on rollercoasters any more), and is available in a higher resolution here.

When the story first broke that Newcastle United's Mike Ashley had decided to sell the naming rights to St James Park, it seemed unlikely that he was doing it with the best interests of the supporters of the club at heart. However, the confirmation made this week that for the rest of this season St James Park will be known as "sportsdirect.

Surprise results aren't merely restricted to the latter rounds of the FA Cup. In a Fourth Qualifying Round replay at Priory Lane last week, Eastbourne Borough of the Blue Square Premier were beaten 4-3 by Tooting & Mitcham United of the Ryman League Premier Division. The win for the South London club was a welcome return to the competition proper for the club.

It's not what you own, it's what you're owed this is how the balance of power currently lies at the Rangers Football Club. Lloyds Banking Group is owed far more than they own, and they are prepared to take drastic measures to get what they are owed up to and including administration, if reports of Rangers' mid-October board meeting are to be relied upon.

The second of our articles to mark the First Round Proper of The FA Cup heads west to Paulton, a village between Bath and Bristol tonight. This weekend, the village team, Paulton Rovers, plays host to Norwich City in a live, televised match, but the club has already won financially, at least.

On Wednesday this week Stirling Albion face a winding-up order from HMRC, their second recently following a similar one back in May. A deal was agreed by Chairman Peter McKenzie back then, but according to the latest petition, the amount seems to have gone up slightly in the interim, to £48,000.

It's the FA Cup First Round this weekend so, in the first of five pieces about the Oldest Cup Competition In The World (and there's a phrase that is probably copyrighted by The FA), we take a look back at Wycombe Wanderers' run to the semi-finals of the competition in 2001.

The FA Cup is a competition that throws up surprise results every season, but some records remain and one that may never be broken is that no-one from the bottom two divisions of the Football League has made The FA Cup final.

More than a decade before "The Full Monty", the decline of the city of Sheffield and the effect of the collapse of the city's steel industry was already well documented. This week's Video Of The Week goes back to 1984. "Steel City Blues" traces the decline of the city and ties it together with Sheffield Wednesday's attempts to get back into the First Division for the first time since 1970.

After a disappointing start to the season that sees them sitting above the League One relegation places on goal difference, Brighton & Hove Albion have parted company with their manager, Russell Slade. This in itself isn't much of a surprise, but it does provide us with a reasonable case study on the psychology of football supporters and the pressure under which clubs find themselves.

1974: The year of the Watergate scandal, West Germany hosting and winning a World Cup made nervous by the hostage crisis of the Olympic Games held in the same country two years earlier, the death of Juan Peron and two British general elections. It was also the last year in which Rochdale AFC last played outside the bottom division of the Football League.

Football fans have become better educated in the mysteries of football finances over recent years out of necessity as much as anything else, but just occasionally old naiveties come to the fore. It might just be that they can't believe that things could be as bad off the pitch as on it at the moment, but Hull City fans are less concerned than they should be about the lack of financial information coming out of their club in recent times, and now that the information has come out and has proved as grim as one may have feared, they still don't sem to believe that things can be as bad off the pitch as on it; despite the phrase "significant doubt over their ability to continue as a going concern" appearing not once, but three times in a relatively short annual report and statement of accounts for the Tigers' promotion year.