By Saf Hossain, writing hours after returning from Craven Cottage

Attending a live match is, obviously, an entirely different experience to watching on TV. When you are free of the director's control, you might choose to follow an individual on the field for long periods of the game.

A little gallows humour can go a long way. Kettering Town's patchwork team played Gateshead in the Blue Square Premier in Tuesday night. Another crowd of under one thousand, another critical evening in a relegation battle that may yet prove to be highly important should the club somehow scrape through its current woes.

This week, Alex Salmond held discussions with David Cameron about the terms of a referendum on independence, and Cameron launched his own pleas in defence of the Union. It's a story that has been dominating the headlines for weeks in Scotland not unreasonably but this week, Cameron was unlucky with his timing.

The head of European football's anti-racism group has urged the Football Association to charge Liverpool with bringing the game into disrepute over their response to Luis Suarez's eight-match ban.
Piara Powar, executive director of European football's anti-discrimination body FARE, said Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish's comments had been ''undignified'' and that their reaction had damaged the club's brand across the world.

The FA Cup Third Round this weekend sees a handful of fascinating ties for the non-league clubs still in the competition, with Blue Square Premier title chasers Fleetwood Town taking on Blackpool, Tamworth travelling to Goodison Park to play Everton and Salisbury City of the Blue Square South making the journey to Bramall Lane to play Sheffield United.

Manchester City are weighing up a sensational £60 million move for unsettled Manchester United striker Wayne Rooney in a deal which will shock British football. Rooney is at the centre of a bitter row with United boss Sir Alex Ferguson after the Scotsman axed him from the team to face Blackburn Rovers at the end [.

What is UP, Arshavin! According to Spanish newspaper, Sport, occasionally loco striker Andrei was seen on Monday in Barcelona, ??where he went to shoot a sports commercial (just like Neymar did last week) in the city. And you can officially put the 'Arshavin to Barcelona?

I was lucky when I first used to go to Manchester United matches, over fifty years ago. Although the team was in the painful early stages of recovery from the Munich Air Crash they still often managed to play wonderfully expressive football in keeping with the finest traditions of the club.

Welcome to Offbeat Wednesday, where we cover the wacky and gossipy side of football! In today's edition, read about Lukas Podolski's second car accident, David Beckham's new editorial, Luca Toni's fatherly pride and Sara Carbonero!

We kick things off with David Beckham's new editorial spread in Men's Health magazine!

Sad weekend for British football as Nottingham Forest Owner Nigel Doughty was found dead in his home yesterday. He was 54. According to a statement released by the club, Doughty was found dead in his gym.

"It is with enormous sadness that Nottingham Forest announce the death of the club's owner Nigel Doughty, Mr Doughty, who was 54, was found dead earlier today in his gym at his home in Skillington, Lincolnshire.

By Alan Duffy

Tony Pulis is sick, sick and tired of the 'foreign disease' which is polluting this nation's untainted character. In his press conference ahead of Stoke's Europa League clash with Valencia, the baseball-capped crusader for all that is good and proper, bemoans the growing occurences of cheating in the British game, where men used to be men, not flouncy-haired paella-scoffing cheats.

This week, Alex Salmond held discussions with David Cameron about the terms of a referendum on independence, and Cameron launched his own pleas in defence of the Union. It's a story that has been dominating the headlines for weeks in Scotland not unreasonably but this week, Cameron was unlucky with his timing.

A while back we featured a very successful Football Manager player's application to Middlesbrough for their vacant manager's position and the club chairman's fantastic replay. Along similar lines to that correspondence, Fraser Syme has written an as yet unpublished book aptly entitled "My Book of Absurd Letters to British Football Clubs.

For much of the last decade, British football has been teetering on the edge of a precipice. In an era during which the game should have been reaping the rewards of unprecedented amounts of money flowing through the game, we have seen over half of the clubs of the Football League forced into some sort of insolvency event and numerous non-league clubs lose their grounds or cease to exist.

Gary van Egmond has one Championship under his belt and looks like he has the craft to give this years title a little shake.
As he builds his team around him it was the quality of the goals that took my eye.
Ruben Zadkovich spreading 40 yard balls, player movement off the ball and young Jacob Pepper a local lad tapping home not once, but twice.

It is probably fair to say that 2012 hasn't been the greatest year for British football clubs so far, financially speaking at least. Rangers, Portsmouth, Darlington and Port Vale all languish in administration and it is possible that others will join them. The language of the discussion of these clubs carries many tropes that are easily identifiable, but there is one that sends a cold chill down the spine of supporters more than any other: the possibility of a club failing to complete its fixtures.

One of the quieter success stories of the last twenty years of British football has been the establishment of the Welsh Premier League. The foundation of this league, however, was far from harmonious with eight clubs which felt they were being corralled into leaving the English non-league pyramid ending up in a bitter dispute with the Football Association of Wales.

After Roberto Mancini lost Manchester City any chance of the title with his views on ScudamoreWorld yesterday, his damning appraisal of the Premier League Product not looking after the health of players due to cost should be added to the list of how ScudamoreWorld has utterly and totally destroyed British football.

Four things we've learned about British football rivalries - originally posted on Soccerlens.com

Newly compiled data from Hotelclub has thrown up plenty of interesting conclusions regarding Britain's greatest football derbies. The company, who help football fans find cheap hotels in Manchester for the Manchester derby, get people into accommodation for the Second City Derby and give Fulham fans somewhere to hide after another thrashing from Chelsea, have looked at the last 20 matches played in these massive fixtures, noting the number of goals scored, and runs of wins and losses along the way.

By Chris Wright

The odds are you may not be familiar with the Torbay Sunday League in Devon, but a team going by the name of 'Wheel Power' are currently topping the table and their 'goal difference' tally received one hell of a shot in the arm last weekend when they inflicted what has tentatively been labelled 'the biggest defeat in the history of British football' on their opponents, second-bottom side Nova 2010.

On an introductory note, I would first like to take the opportunity to shake my head and indeed cock a snook at M. O'Neill Esq., supposedly one of the brightest middle-aged things British football management, but who today lent his signature to the Petition for Death to Football. Defend, defend, defend and try to score from set-pieces – and all in front of their home fans?

Twenty-three years ago today, a disaster occurred that would claim ninety-six lives, indelibly alter the character of one of Britains great sporting institutions and change the face of football in Britain forever. The Hillsborough disaster of 1989 had an indelible effect on both Liverpool Football Club and British football in a wider sense, and to mark this years anniversary we have asked some people for their recollections of that dreadful day.

"Celebrate good times c'mon" werethe lyrics pumping out of every Liverpool fan's vocal cords, at theweekend, as the Reds celebrated overcoming their bitter rivals,Everton, in the FA Cup semi-final.
However, whilst the celebrations in thered half of Merseyside may well continue for a few days to come, thereality remains that Liverpool are now a side playing second fiddleto the top teams in England.

Celtic football club has been a cornerstone of British football. Becoming the first British team to lift the European Cup, and dominating with Rangers in the Scottish Premier League for decades, how would this club fair in arguably the most watched league in the world?

The uncompetitive nature of the SPL has been noted more evidently in recent times, with the financial instability of Rangers, and the crowning of Celtic's 43rd league title.

So.
Paul Clark of Duff Phelps, the Rangers administrators, is strongly critical of the decision to impose a transfer embargo on the club and he is absolutely beside himself that his old work colleague Craig Whyte has been fined and banned for life from Scottish football.
Firstly, Whyte should be imprisoned.

Viewers of the BBC's flagship football programme Match Of The Day were treated to a somewhat extraordinary sight last weekend when presenter Gary Lineker launched into a somewhat bizarre impersonation of the Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger complaining about refereeing decisions going against his team during their match earlier that day against Stoke City.

Since British football began to mirror the industrial revolution in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, the story of the politics of the game in this country has been very much about the relationship between those that have come to own the clubs and those that have, whether directly or indirectly, contributed to keeping them going as sporting institutions into the twenty-first century.

The speculation season has started in earnest for the British football press. With the domestic season over and the European Championships yet to begin, there is still a need for footy hacks to justify their bloated salaries and write stuff that sells newspapers. And they never let the truth get in the way of a [.