WHICH TEAM HAS PLAYED THE MOST GAMES IN A MONTH?
"I notice that Preston North End are having to play nine games in March," writes Gordon Butler-Smith. "While this is above average, I doubt it has made it into the record books. What is the most games a team has had to play in a calendar month?"
This question has elicited a number of candidates from readers for the title of most absurdly overworked team in a calendar month. Alister Campbell writes to point out that Rangers can match Preston's nine in May 2008 when they played Hibernian, Dundee United, St Mirren, Aberdeen and Motherwell twice in the league, the away leg of their Uefa Cup semi-final against Fiorentina (which they won on penalties), the final in Manchester against Zenit St Petersburg and rounded off their season with victory over Queen of the South in the Scottish Cup final. From 1 May to 24 May they played nine times.
Alister Campbell and Michael Haughey then turn back the clock to April 1980 to come up with a team to trump Preston, and Rangers. In that month Arsenal played 10 games – Norwich, Southampton, Spurs, Liverpool and West Brom in the league; the FA Cup semi-final and two drawn replays against Liverpool and both ties of their European Cup Winners' Cup semi-final against Juventus, the second of which earned Paul Vaessen the briefest of spells in the spotlight.
Nottingham Forest had already hit a 10-match month. In April 1979, Forest played 10 games, eight in the league (W4, D3, L1) and both European Cup semi-final legs against Köln when Ian Bowyer scored the decisive goal in the 1-0 win at the Müngersdorf after drawing 3-3 at home.
"Somewhat bizarrely," writes Adam Wilson, "Brian Clough also made the same Forest team – Peter Shilton, Tony Woodcock, Trevor Francis etc – play friendlies against Exeter, WBA and Southampton within days of the above sequence of games. The Southampton match drew a crowd of 14,000."
Earlier still, Coventry City had set a benchmark. Jim Brown, the club's historian, writes: "Coventry City can equal Preston's feat of nine games in a month – and they did it in two consecutive months. In 1962-63 the winter of the big freeze, the Sky Blues had their FA Cup third-round tie at Lincoln postponed 16 times and eventually played it on 6 March 1963. Between then and 30 March the team played six FA Cup ties (they reached the sixth-round after two replays with Portsmouth in round four) and three league games. The Cup run and the weather-ravaged fixture list meant they had a large number of league games to complete and they played nine of them in April and seven in May, finally completing their fixtures on 22 May.
"The Coventry record, however, is 10. In April 1955 they had to play 10 Third Division South games with nothing to play for (one team promoted in those days and Bristol City ran away with the title). City fans got fed up with the excess of meaningless games and the lowest postwar Coventry gate was recorded that month (3,936 v Newport)."
European competition and progress to the FA Cup semi-final contributed to Middlesbrough having to play 10 games in April 2006, as Paul Mackay highlights. Boro lost four of five Premier League matches, defeated Charlton in an FA Cup quarter-final replay before losing to West Ham in the semi-final at Villa Park, knocked Basel out of the Uefa Cup with a 4-1 Uefa Cup quarter-final, second-leg victory and earned their place in the final in Eindhoven by coming back from a 1-0 first-leg semi-final defeat by Steaua Bucuresti in Romania to win 4-2 thrillingly late in the second leg at home.
During Stockport County's finest ever season in 1996-97, when they were runners-up in the Auto Windscreens Shield, made the Coca-Cola Cup semi-final and were promoted from League Division Two (now League One) for the first time in 60 years, April may not have been the cruellest month but it was the most gruelling. Michael Haughey writes that the Hatters played 10 games in the month – and won six, drew two and lost two to secure an automatic promotion place ahead of the other Hatters, Luton Town.
Those feats of endurance, though, would probably have Canvey Island's players from the 2000-01 season muttering "luxury" in the style of Tim Brooke-Taylor, Marty Feldman, John Cleese and Graham Chapman.
Tim Povey and Paul Roberts wrote in to nominate the Gulls and the latter takes up the story: "For some sad reason, I'll always remember seeing a set of remaining fixtures for Canvey Island in the spring of 2001. Due to runs in the FA Cup and FA Trophy, they had to play their final 12 games of that season in 13 days. They were gunning for promotion to the Conference but ended up relinquishing top spot – presumably because they were totally shagged. Sadly I can't find a results list from that season to verify."
Here's the results list, courtesy of Tom, which shows that they played 12 league and cup games in April and five matches on successive days at the beginning of May.
Because of fixture congestion caused by waterlogged pitches in the Ryman League Premier Division after the floods of autumn and winter 2000 and runs in the Essex Senior Cup and FA Trophy, Canvey Island were left playing nine games over the last 12 days of the season.
It began with a Wednesday night game at Hampton which was abandoned after 33 minutes, three minutes after the cut-off point for full refunds for spectators, then they were due to play Enfield at Meadowpark on the Thursday but were sent home because the pitch was unplayable. Instead they played the rearranged game on the Friday (even though the results list puts it on the fixture's original date), travelled to Croydon to play on Saturday and went to Basingstoke Town on the Sunday. They then had Monday off before playing their last five matches on successive days. The congestion was a result of the rain and a vote taken by Ryman League clubs not to extend the season beyond 5 May 2001 because players' contracts in the league were due to expire the following day. Because of that rule, Hornchurch had to play two games on the same day to catch up, opting to field two different sides.
Mick Bodley, who had a 17-year career in the Football League with Northampton, Barnet, Gillingham, Southend, Birmingham and Peterborough, was not exactly enjoying the last fortnight of his first season with Canvey Island. Combining centre-half duties with his day job as a postman, he had to get up early for work each day having returned home from away trips long after midnight. "I had to laugh when I heard Gérard Houllier moaning about Liverpool's number of games," he said. "He should try playing eight games in nine days – and go out on the post every morning. I'm up at 4.30am, home at lunchtime, couple of hours kip, out to football, back at midnight. And then I'll go and do it all again."
The marathon ended with the club in second place, 10 points behind the champions Farnborough Town, who were promoted to the Conference. When they began the run of their last 10 games they were 18 points behind Farnborough with six games in hand, but won only three, drew four and lost three. There was some consolation. After a week's rest they won the FA Trophy final at Villa Park, defeating Forest Green Rovers 1-0 when the captain, Ben Chenery, scored his first ever goal for the club. They were the first team from outside the Conference to win the competition for 20 years.
IS THIS ENGLAND'S WORST SEASON IN EUROPE?
"If Chelsea and the two Manchester clubs go out of Europe this week, England will have no European quarter-finalists," notes Melanie Cooper. "Has that ever happened before?"
It has, but only once. If you exclude the period from 1985 to 1990, when English clubs were banned from Europe, the only time England has not had a European quarter-finalist was in 1992-93, the first season of the Premier League. Leeds were well beaten, 4-2 on aggregate, by Rangers in the Champions League, having only got to the second round because VfB Stuttgart used an ineligible player; Spartak Moscow trounced Liverpool 6-2 in the Cup Winners' Cup; in the Uefa Cup, Manchester United lost on penalties to Torpedo Moscow and Sheffield Wednesday were beaten 5-3 on aggregate by Kaiserslautern. England's European season ended on 4 November.
WAS RONALDO ORIGINALLY CALLED RONALDINHO?
"I found a video of a young Ronaldo scoring for Brazil at the 1996 Olympics, yet he is called Ronaldinho by the commentator Clive Tyldesley and has Ronaldinho on the back of his shirt. What's that all about?" asks James Lewis.
There was more than one Ronaldo long before Cristiano came on the scene. When Ronaldo Luís Nazário de Lima first emerged at Cruzeiro and PSV Eindhoven there was already another Ronaldo in the Brazil squad, Ronaldo Rodrigues de Jesus. He became known as Ronaldão (Big Ronaldo) and the younger Ronaldo – the one who went to achieve greatness – became known as Ronaldinho. He kept that name for the 1996 Olympics, when he was in the squad alongside a third Ronaldo, the defender Ronaldo Guiaro.
When Ronaldão and Ronaldo Guiaro stopped playing international football, Ronaldinho became Ronaldo – just in time for a fourth Ronaldo to emerge: Ronaldo de Assis Moreira, or Ronaldinho Gaúcho as we came to know him at PSG, Barcelona and Milan. All of which, when you think about it, is probably easier than having to say "Gary Stevens of Everton" or "Gary Stevens of Spurs" every time they get the ball.
KNOWLEDGE ARCHIVE
"Liverpool have gone through this season losing only two league games yet still finished second," asked Graeme Kennedy. back in the day. "In the 1995-96 SPL Celtic lost only one game but still finished runners-up. Has a team ever gone a whole season undefeated but failed to win the league?"
"Perugia went undefeated all season in 1978-79 and still finished second in Serie A to Milan," writes Dan Seppings, among myriad others. "They drew 19 games out of 30 that season. The conclusion? Serie A was very boring for a number of years." What they'd give for excitement like that now, though, eh?
This dubious achievement can also be claimed by four other teams in major European leagues. In 1951 Spartak Sofia finished a point behind CDNV Sofia, despite winning 14 and drawing eight of their 22-game programme. Benfica were the next unfortunates, losing out on goal difference to Porto in 1977-78. After Perugia's antics of 1978-79 in Italy, Galatasaray were next to experience this singular type of frustration, trailing Besiktas on goal difference in 1985-86 after a 36-game unbeaten streak. And only last year Red Star Belgrade finished a whopping five points behind their rivals Partizan Belgrade after 33 games of mellow fruitlessness.
The best example Britain can offer is Rangers' doomed domestic campaign in 1967-68. "Going into their last game of the season, Rangers were unbeaten and level on points with Celtic," writes Warren Lyons. "However, Rangers lost their last game at home 2-3 to Aberdeen on Saturday 27 April. Three days later Celtic won their last game 2-1 away to Dunfermline to win the title by two points. Though it looks as if Rangers blew their title chances, it is not quite as bad as it seems as (in a time when goal average separated teams level on points) Rangers would have had to beat Aberdeen by about 40 goals to win the title."
It is worth sparing a thought for the then Rangers manager, Davie White, who had taken over from Scot Symon at the tail end of 1967. Having come so close to wresting the title from Jock Stein's reigning European champions, he reached a Fairs Cup semi-final and a quarter-final, and a Scottish Cup final, only to lose them all and be turfed out on his ear in November 1969, the first Rangers manager never to win a trophy. It was an unwanted record he held until the arrival of Paul Le Guen.
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CAN YOU HELP?
"More often than not a player given out on loan is unable to command a regular place in his team and goes off to the first team of a club in a lower league. Has any regular first-team "star" player been loaned out (maybe as a punishment?)" asks Peter Clarke.
"In 1999 while living in England I watched a TV programme about a fictional team which wins the FA Cup in the 1970s. Throughout the show they used footage of Sunderland's FA Cup run in 1973. Does anyone remember the name of this show?" asks Peter Greaves.
"I have a question related to the current craziness which is the Swiss Axpo Super League. In the current season, being walked by high-flying Champions League underdogs FC Basel, Xamax Neuchâtel have been declared bankrupt over Christmas and have been automatically relegated to the third division, while Servette Geneva have just gone into administration. At the same time FC Sion have been deducted 36 points after their drawn-out battle with Uefa and the Swiss Football League for fielding unregistered players on multiple occasions. So in the case that Servette would also be forced into relegation, Sion would be in the unique situation that they could potentially not be relegated with the grand total of -1 points (their current standing). Would this be the lowest number of points a team has ever received without being relegated?" wonders Antony Neale.
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