Stuff to read while you get an elephant addicted to heroin.... A ref banned for being garbage to ref this weekend's Scotland-Macedonia qualifier. (Guardian) How not to treat a pitch invader. (Dave's Football Blog) Sky Sports reads an email on air insulting Geordies. (The Spoiler) More thoughts on Man City ownership. Click to continue reading...

The Inside Left kiss-of-death continues. As soon as we say that a team are playing well, stringing the results together and generally impressing, they go and lose. So it was that Deveronvale, mentioned in yesterdays early season review lost to local rivals Huntly in the Aberdeenshire Cup. Goals from Mike Ewen sank 'Vale at Christie [. Click to continue reading...

With the Scotland squad about to start a series of games that will hopefully qualify us for the World Cup in 2010, we continue our story of how Scotland recovered from the disappointment of Argentina '78 to reach the next world Cup in '82. We left off in Part I with Scotland in the middle of [...] Click to continue reading...

Neil Lennon was the subject of sectarian abuse after -- what else? -- and Old Firm match.

He was beaten unconscious by Rangers fans as he walked home alone.

Scotland scares me. Click to continue reading...

As we head into the first of the league breaks while our national side start their World Cup qualification games, it's a good time to look back at the season so far. We've asked the Inside Left correspondents to give us their opinions on their team's performance so far. We begin though with a look at [. Click to continue reading...

Fifa rankings for August 2008 (previous position in brackets): 1. (1) Spain 2. (3) Italy 3. (2) Germany 4. (4) Netherlands 5. (5) Croatia 6. (6) Brazil 7. (7) Argentina 8. (8) Czech Republic 9. (9) Portugal 10. (13) Turkey 11. (12) France 12. (10) Russia 13. (11) Romania 14. (15) Cameroon 15. (14) England 16 (16) Scotland 16 (17) Bulgaria 18. Click to continue reading...

Welcome to another Performance Of The Week award ceremony, in which Inside Left recognises those who have made a valuable and/or valiant contribution to the game north o' the border. This week we have four new nominations for Performance of the Week for you to mull over. Simply leave a comment with your vote - the [. Click to continue reading...

WordPress, on which Inside Left is hosted, allows you to gather all sorts of meaningful statistics about who reads the blog, where they're from, which of our many articles are the most popular and so on.  But perhaps most interestingly, it tells you what people search for to end up at the site in the [. Click to continue reading...

We were saying in Friday's weekend-action preview that the Highland League let us all down last week, what with the teams scoring a miserly 23 goals and only having two players sent off. This is not the sort of thing we expect from one of the highest scoring leagues in the country: something simply had [. Click to continue reading...

'If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well, It were done quickly' - Macbeth (Scotsman), William Shakespeare (Englishman)

Team GB is getting ridiculous. The prospect of Britain fielding a football team at the 2012 Olympics should have been something to celebrate after years of absence. Click to continue reading...

Kenny Miller's controversial return to Parkhead ends with the former Celtic striker, now in his second spell at Rangers, scoring twice as he helps his new team beat Celtic 4-2, the first time Rangers have scored this many goals at Parkhead since 1894. Pedro Mendes added a third and Daniel Cousin, a surprise choice in [. Click to continue reading...

The young guy's looking pretty sharp in the new uni, eh?

Too bad a failing airline nearly kept from arriving in Glasgow.

Zoom Airline, which Edu was scheduled to fly, went bankrupt the day before he was due to leave for Scotland.

The delay won't affect his playing time on Sunday though. Click to continue reading...

It's been another cracking day across all the leagues in Scotland. We have new league leaders in all but one of the Scottish Divisions, while up in the Highland League, the call for more goals was answered with a stunning 34 goals in the seven games played! In the Scottish Premier League, a rather unique [. Click to continue reading...

There are many great derby games in the world of football. Benfica and Sporting Lisbon. AS Roma and Lazio. Boca Juniors against River Plate and there's no love lost between Rio's Flamengo en Fluminense, or for that matter, between the two giants of Turkish football, Galatasaray and Fenerbahce. But it is in Glasgow that you'll [. Click to continue reading...

It's week four in the SPL, week five in the SFL and we have another busy programme of games to get through. This weekend sees the first Old Firm derby of the season on Sunday as Rangers come to Parkhead, looking to maintain their run of form that has seen them recover from early disappointments [...] Click to continue reading...

Sorry for the lack of posting yesterday - one of the Inside Left U-5 squad needed to go into hospital for something Holby-esque, but he's grand now. A few weeks in the reserves and he'll be right as rain. It's going to be a quick Off The Ball, our look at the news in [...] Click to continue reading...

Something to read while you hide from Storsjöodjuret the Swedish Sea Monster... Who's leaving MLS next? (WVHooligan) No Team GB in 20120, but maybe a Team Scotland (Leaders We Deserve) French reaction to Champions League draw (Forums Offside) Is this Darren Fletcher's year? (Soccer Training Info) Sheva's return, in photos (Serie A Talk) Optimistic in Amsterdam (Ajax Offside) China puts a totalitarian [. Click to continue reading...

The next round of the CIS Cup provided another upset, while two below-par performances from SPL provided plenty of drama on another exciting evening of Scottish football. There will be no Edinburgh teams in the next round as Hearts where knocked out on penalties by Airdrie United this evening (3:4 pen). Click to continue reading...

It's about time we did another Meat Pie feature about the best team in Scotland. Now, we know that statement should come with a standard disclaimer, but as we exclusively revealed in an earlier Meat Pie article a few weeks back, had it not been for the Old Firm last season the mighty Aberdeen FC [... Click to continue reading...

Who would win the Premier League? The Champions League? The FA Cup? Would Manchester United and Chelsea still fight for the title? Will Arsenal and Liverpool be dumped out of Europe by Villa, Everton and Tottenham? Which is the best kit in England? in Europe? Oliver Fowler finds out... Scotland Champions & FA Cup - Partick Thistle The two colours [. Click to continue reading...

It's been another busy evening in both European and domestic cup competitions for several of our sides. In an evening of high-scoring games, including a rampant performance by St. Mirren, the magic of the Cup has given us one shock result, while it's more bad news for St. Johnstone. Queen of the South's European adventure came [. Click to continue reading...

US midfielder Maurice Edu has been on the go non-stop over the past few weeks, having represented his country in the Beijing Olympics and a World Cup Qualifier in Guatemala, as well as pulling club duties with Toronto FC and flying to Europe for negotiations all within the span of 10 days. Now, the 22-year-old midfielder is finally getting set for a calmer spell at his new home, Ibrox Stadium, which will officially begin when Edu joins Rangers in Scotland later this week. Click to continue reading...

Gordon Chisholm and his team travel to Farum this evening - along with about 1,000 Doonhamers who will hopefully arrive on time despite the delays at Midlands airport - hoping to overturn a 2:1 deficit from the first leg of their UEFA Cup game against FC Nordsjaelland. The Danish side have only played one game [. Click to continue reading...

The second round of the Co-operative Insurance Cup (or Scottish League Cup) takes place this evening and tomorrow evening as we add First Division and SPL teams into the mix. Perhaps the most interesting tie of the round is the one taking place at the Almondvale this evening, as Livingston entertain St. Click to continue reading...

This week we have another three candidates for "Performance of the Week" for you to chose from. Simply vote for your candidate by leaving a comment at the bottom of the page. Fort William, for scoring their second goal in all competitions in the Highland League this weekend. Michael Gillespie's goal in Saturday's 3:1 defeat to [. Click to continue reading...