This week's Video Of The Week goes all the way back to 1962, and a short film called "The Saturday Men". Produced as part of a shot series of films sponsored by the Ford Motor Company called "Look At Britain", "The Saturday Men" spends a week following West Bromwich Albion around. It follows them to training, the inner workings of the boardroom (to the extent to which the inhabitants of said room were going to be honest when there were cameras around), takes the time to meet a former player who is about to embark on a new career as a salesman and even stops in on a pre-match team talk by the club's then manager, Archie McAuley.

As if by stealth, the end of the season is creeping up on us. League matches now all hold a degree of greater significance, but the finite nature of the season doesn't feel so obvious until the last few weeks. At the bottom of the Championship, things are as tight as ever. There is a gap at the bottom of the table between Plymouth Argyle, Peterborough United and the rest, but either of them could yet, with a burst of form, drag themselves clear of the foot of the table.

For many people, major sports tournaments are the only occasion that national anthems are heard. These peculiar tunes have become a genre of their own, transcending the mere hymns that many of them were in first place, and they range from the gloriously uplifting to mournful dirges. The selection of words has, in many countries, brought about national debate that has been all-encompassing.

Spring is in the air, and the good news stories just keep coming. Former Chester City supporters seem to have a decisive upper hand in their battle to get their own club, run on their own terms. Durham City of the Unibond League end a run of twenty-nine successive defeats with two wins in a row. And now Fulham have beaten Juventus in the UEFA Cup.

Four years ago, we ran an article on the subject of the theme music used by British television companies for World Cup finals series. It seemed to touch a nerve at the time and today it's back. It's a little more complete than it was four years ago, although there are still one or two gaps and we would gratefully appreciate anybody that can help to fill these for us.

This week's Shit Shot Mungo is episode number fifty, no less, and in this week's episode Heart of Clackmannannshire finally face up to the relegation battle that sees them almost one hundred points from safety in the league. Unfortunately, Mungo McCrackas isn't the man to spearhead any revival, so Sir Roddy Bulbs takes control of the situation and brings back the only man that can save the day: Glen Roeder!

As Portsmouth slid into administration, the grim reality of their predicament could be seen from a cursory glance at the bottom of the Premier League table. The club is, of course, bottom of the table, but they have been there much of the season. The unpleasant added bonus is that they are now cast adrift at the foot of the table on ten points, after the nine point deduction pro-rata'd down from the usual ten points to take into account that Premier League clubs only play thirty-eight league matches over the course of a season for entering into administration kicked in.

Cardiff City and Southend United were both given a stay of execution recently by the High Court in their bids to stave off winding up petitions brought against them. Mark Murphy takes a look at what they have been up to since then and doesn't find much cause for encouragement.

Well, reports are emerging of a fourth "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie.

How would you feel if you were Roman Abramovich after this evening's Champions League match between Chelsea and Inter? When he disposed of Jose Mourinho just over three years ago, it was reportedly a show of player power the likes of which the English game had seldom seen before. Mourinho, however, has never quite gone away.

This season was supposed to be a tough in the Blue Square South, if you listened to the pre-season pundits. Chelmsford City had missed out in the play-offs and were anticipating another championship challenge, Woking, with Wembley appearances and FA Cup giant-killings still comfortably within living memory and had been arguably surprisingly relegated from the Blue Square Premier.

We have a little break from the usual this morning, with a downloadable, four-part audio cassette produced by the BBC in the early 1990s, just before the death of Sir Matt Busby, which tells the story of Manchester United Football Club through the prism of the involvement of the man that took a run of the mill First Division club and made them the champions of Europe and one of the biggest club sides in the world.

It is a small piece of received wisdom that when a major sporting event ends, there is a small power surge as millions of homes put the kettle on in order to make a cup of tea. When David Beckham pulled up during Milan's match against Chievo yesterday, the same phenomenon may well have taken place as a billion computers were powered up in order to discuss an injury that seems likely to end Beckham's career, at least at international level.

Uninformed viewers of Sky Sports News on Saturday evening might have expressed a degree of surprise at their decision over the weekly "Result Of The Day", but it was hastily explained. Durham City's 2-1 win away against FC United of Manchester wasn't just an upset. It was a massive, massive surprise, of course but, considerably more importantly than this, it was a vindication for a season that has seen them trying to play out their fixtures with a degree of dignity in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds odds that haven't often been given by those pointing and laughing at the club's record this season.

This week's Video Of The Week is a piece of World Cup fluff from ITV's build-up to the 2006 tournament in Germany. If you can mentally tune out the clichés from the voice-over and the more objectionable viewpoints of some of the talking heads, though, there is some interesting archive footage to be had here as well as, of course, a brief recap of some of the tournament's more idiosyncratic stories.

For many people, major sports tournaments are the only occasion that national anthems are heard. These peculiar tunes have become a genre of their own, transcending the mere hymns that many of them were in first place, and they range from the gloriously uplifting to mournful dirges. The selection of words has, in many countries, brought about national debate that has been all-encompassing.

Some ill-advised comments made by the Celtic chairman John Reid at last year's club AGM may now be coming back to haunt him, as rivals Rangers seem to be coasting to a Scottish Premier League championship. Mark Murphy takes a look at how the two clubs have progressed this season and finds that Reid's bullishness couldn't have come with much worse timing.

Newcastle United go into this afternoon's Tyne-Tees derby match at Middlesbrough in reasonably rude health on the pitch. Six points clear at the top of the Championship and with a game in hand, a swift return to the Premier League now seems more likely than not and, in managing this in what could at best be described as frequently trying circumstances, Chris Hughton has earnt himself something of a reputation as an alchemist and a master in the specialist art of pulling a squad together that seemed last summer to be capable only of pulling itself to pieces.

Cambridge United of the Blue Square Premier face a battle to save their home, The Abbey Stadium. They have asked us to post this on here to highlight their current position and we are only too happy to do so.

Getting on the property ladder is a difficult business these days, but fans of Blue Square Premier league outfit Cambridge United have unveiled an ambitious plan to buy their club a home to call their own.

The Champions League match between Manchester United and Milan had been punctuated by what are now starting to become familiar images. The green and gold gold scarves and the "Love United Hate Glazer" flags are starting to feel like part of the furniture at Old Trafford, but the question that was on many people's lips could probably best be summarised by a four letter acronym: WWDD?

It's springtime, so discussion has started again about how to make the game in Scotland more exciting but, as Gavin Saxton reports, none of those that are being put forward are likely to do much about the two or three elephants that live in the room that is Scottish football.

As happens every year in Scottish football, there have again been calls for a revamp of the league structure, in particular an expansion of the SPL.

This week's episode of Shit Shot Mungo deals with the aftermath of what has come to be "Nutsgate", wrestles the tricky situation of Heart of Clackmannanshire being so far adrift at the bottom of the SPL table that they can only be seen with binoculars and also features the welcome return of the chairman, Sir Roddy Bulbs.

A million miles removed from the opulent lives of the millionaire players and the neatly coiffured executives, the reality of Portsmouth's financial desperation came home to roost. It didn't, however, come home to roost for those that can afford it or those that are to blame for this whole sorry mess in which they find themselves.

Anyone turning up at The High Court on The Strand in London this morning hoping or expecting to see fireworks was disappointed. There was to be no last minute impassioned speech, in the manner of Gregory Peck in "To Kill A Mockingbird". For the second time in less than two weeks, the owners of Chester City Football Club didn't even carry the common courtesy to attend a meeting that would shape the destiny of their club.

It all started around a week ago, when a committee member at Northern League club Billingham Town found an envelope taped to the gates of their Bedford Terrace ground. Inside the envelope was a writ from Hartlepool United, who allege a debt of £10,443.97 owed for improvements carried out to the ground by them.

To anyone that has been following the modus operandi of the British gutter press for the last few years or so, the news that the England hotel at The Grove Hotel at Chandler's Cross, near Watford in Hertfordshire was bugged prior to their friendly match against Egypt will come as little surprise. In 2007, the News of the World's royal editor Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire were jailed after they were caught and admitted tapping the telephones of members of the royal staff.

For many people, major sports tournaments are the only occasion that national anthems are heard. These peculiar tunes have become a genre of their own, transcending the mere hymns that many of them were in first place, and they range from the gloriously uplifting to mournful dirges. The selection of words has, in many countries, brought about national debate that has been all-encompassing.

There is something strangely appealing about a really bad pitch. In an age in which so many aspects of football seem to be so sanitised, there is something quite comforting a pitch with puddles on it or one that is completely and utterly devoid of grass. Colchester United have only been at The Community Stadium for a couple of years, but the pitch there is in a ruinous condition already.

This week's Video Of The Week is another episode of the "Frontline Football" series from 2006, featuring a World Cup qualifying match between Palestine and Iraq. The Palestinian national team was not officially recognised by FIFA until 1998, but their qualifying group for the 2006 World Cup saw them briefly head their AFC qualifying group after an 8-0 win against Taiwan.

Spring is in the air, and since it is the start of a new season, it must be time for a new financial crisis at Weymouth Football Club. The club was relegated from the Blue Square Premier at the end of last season and is already adrift at the bottom of the Blue Square South and facing relegation for the second season in a row.

Portsmouth beat Birmingham City 2-0 at Fratton Park yesterday afternoon to reach the FA Cup finals for the second time in three years. This in itself is a remarkable achievement considering the absolute chaos that is unfolding behind the scenes at the club, but it seems likely that any financial benefits from this will be the equivalent of applying a sticking plaster to a gaping wound.

As quietly as a mouse, spring has sprung. The FA Cup quarter-final between Fulham and Tottenham Hotspur this afternoon is a 5.20 kick-off, but the sun is still glittering on the River Thames behind Craven Cottage as the teams kick off and the football season, which, throughout the winter months, starts to take on the feel of being endless, is starting to feel considerably more finite now.

Mark Murphy spent all week peering through the windows of the Soccerex European Forum in Manchester, and found that, even in these financially straitened times, there were plenty of people prepared to part with over £800 in the pursuit of making even more money from football.

To judge by newspaper and website reports (and without a delegates fee of £775 plus VAT to hand, I had to), the recent Soccerex European forum in Manchester was a rather panicky gathering of the clans.

There are few more poignant sights in football than the goalkeeper that has just conceded a goal, and most goalkeepers will experience this on average once a match, if not more. It's a small wonder that more of them don't go insane with the existential angst of it all. Covered in the dirt that acts as a visual metaphor for the futility of their attempt to keep the ball out of their goal, they will turn and trudge back towards the goal, maybe lifting the net to pick the ball out and kicking the ball disconsolately yet angrily back towards the halfway line and standing, hands on their hips, replaying what has just happened over in their mind.

So, there are just ninety-eight days left until the start of the 2010 World Cup finals in South Africa. As a very small number of you may be aware, this site started out as a World Cup site almost four years ago and we plan to mark the coming of our second World Cup finals with a build-up to and coverage of the tournament that will make your eyes and ears bleed with their luxuriousness.

With as near as he can manage to understatement, Richard Scudamore confirmed this afternoon that his idea of play-off matches for the fourth Champions League place will not be taken any further forward for now. It was something of a surprising decision. Unlike Game 39, this new idea didn't require a great deal of support from outside of the Premier League.

It may be heading in the direction of cliché somewhat to start any sort of public statement with a definition from a dictionary, but on some occasions it is so wholly and completely appropriate that we are left with no alternative but to do exactly that. When football competitions started to form themselves into competitions in which everybody played each other home and away (and this, it has been written elsewhere, is the English game's most enduring and longest lasting legacy in terms of world football), they didn't choose the phrase "round robin" or any one of a number of other phrases to distinguish itself from other types of sports competitions (the word "league" in a sporting sense, for the record, can only be traced back as far as 1879).

Thursday night, of course, is Mungo night, and this week's "Shit Shit Mungo" sees art (to the extent that this can be calld "art") mirror life, as news of Mungo's affair with a woman from 1967 (which he managed when he passed through a vortex in time and space oh, do keep up) breaks in the present day.

Roll up, roll up. It's the biggest circus in town. This year, without a single ball having been kicked, hasn't been a terribly successfully one for England so far. On the one hand, there were the varying discretions of members of the England team John Terry offering his own special brand of comfort to Wayne Bridge's recently separated former partner and Ashley Cole reportedly sending pictures of "Little Ashley" to some poor girl which led to national hand-wringing in the press, followed by Ashley fracturing a bone (no, not that one) and Wayne deciding that he couldn't bear to be in the same England team as John.

At the time of writing, England are about to kick off against Egypt in their first friendly match of 2010. This is football as a peculiar mix of Hollywood and pantomime, a story that often seems to have very little to do with what goes on during the matches themselves. It's a world that frequently feels alien.

Hidden away in the back pages of a couple of local newspapers, another football club is dying. It's a club that has been to the brink before and, unlike, other, bigger clubs that have faced financial problems this season, they haven't exactly hogged the headlines over the last couple years or so. Farsley Celtic have crossed our rainbow, firstly when their chairman openly considered changing their name to "AFC Leeds" to try and grow their local support and secondly when they fell into serious financial difficulties during the summer over an unpaid a £200,000 bill to HMRC which resulted in their near expulsion from the Blue Square North.