Another weekend without football, another weekend providing space to keep our readers – and pundits – up to date with our chosen clubs. If you think as far back as the start of the season you’ll probably recall six clubs being selected by our readership as the most likely to finish in the top six slots come the end of the season.
Sunderland made the cut but would have been selected regardless. The other five clubs were Ipswich Town, Rotherham, Peterborough Portsmouth and Doncaster. Ipswich apart, they haven’t done as well as expected. In fact, they haven’t done as well as Sunderland who, as the first two graphs show, haven’t done as well as they did last season
Rotherham
Sunderland, Portsmouth, Ipswich, Peterborough, Rotherham and Doncaster – the League One top six?
John McCormick, writes: our ‘who to follow’ poll remained quiet, although the trickle of votes that came in over the last week did result in some changes. Sunderland and Portsmouth are clear leaders, with not much between them, after which we have Ipswich, Rotherham and Peterborough. Then come Doncaster, who edged ahead of Coventry, followed at a distance by Lincoln and Burton.
I did expect Blackpool to do better but our site appears to have attracted few of their fans. Their season tickets had reached 4,818, when I last checked, so there’s obviously life returning to this once-troubled club. That’s about twice the number sold by Coventry, whose own troubles are nowhere being resolved and who slipped out of our top six after Doncaster Rovers gained a few votes. A third troubled club, Bolton Wanderers, who might or might not be sold by the time this post goes live, also didn’t do too badly and finished in the top half of the table. I don’t know how they’ll do that with only 7 first team players but what do I know about football?
From Rotherham to Wycombe Wanderers via Shrewsbury Town, Southend United and Tranmere Rovers: our third financial ramble
Here are the last five of the clubs in League One apart from Blackpool, Bolton, Bury and Sunderland, who will arrive presently, by which I mean when I get round to it.
As ever, visiting fans are welcome to post comments, corrections, updates and their thoughts on their and other clubs’ prospects for the season.
For earlier posts in this series try these links:
Clubs beginning A-L: Rambling through Accrington, Coventry and Ipswich to Lincoln. How do Sunderland’s rivals shape up financially?
Clubs from M (MK Dons) to R (Rochdale): From MK Dons to Rochdale via Oxford, Peterborough and Portsmouth: it’s a short financial ramble
The ugly face of corporate football: Newcastle, Swindon, Blackpool and now Rangers
Question: what is it about the appalling suits who run much of football that makes them think they and their clubs are above criticism?
Answer: a mixture of control freakery, arrogance and sheer stupidity
In Yorkshire near Rotherham, an encounter with Essex’s finest and England’s worst
Internationals weekend means Pete Sixsmith goes out in search real football. A trip to South Yorkshire brought him closer than he might have wished to the flipside of democracy …
Soapbox: hopping mad for proper football in Coalville and beyond
A long weekend of international football, starting with France’s disgraced World Cup flops – or some of them – being welcomed back by Laurent Blanc and continuing with perfunctory success for England, holds no joy for Pete Sixsmith. So off he went on the sort of mission he regards as heavenly, others might consider grounds for having him certified …
It’s 7.15 on a Friday night. After a busy week at work and a bout of unpleasantness with rumbling gall stones, I am parking the car next to a small football ground in a South Yorkshire village called Kinsley.
Situated between the liquorice fields of Pontefract and the (former) coalfields of Barnsley, this is not the most prepossessing of places. It’s only a spit and a throw away from Grimethorpe, immortalised as Grimley in Brassed Off and, like many similar towns, it seems to be made up of boarded up pubs, kebab shops and places selling anything and everything for 99p.