“There is a danger that Southampton will come to stand as a fable for modern football: this is what happens if you dare to dream. Fly too close to the sun, start talking – even in private as Nicola Cortese, the former executive chairman apparently did – of qualifying for the Champions League, and your best players will be plucked away, leaving you to plummet to earth. Perhaps the money Southampton has raised from its summer of sales will be wisely reinvested, perhaps in five years the sense of panic this offseason has induced will seem absurd, but even if that is the case, there is a horrible feeling of loss. Clubs have held fire sales in the past, of course, offloading players to stay afloat after relegation, the departure of a sugar daddy or some other financial catastrophe.” SI

“We all remember where we were when the circus came to town. That is, when Sven-Göran Eriksson came to Notts County, his long Swedish overcoat swishing through the corridors of Meadow Lane, lured by the promise of cash that was never actually there. I was at a pre-season friendly in Arnold as Notts beat a local non-league team 7-0, with Chinese whispers buzzing around the huge crowd that stood below a beautiful summer sunset. The strangest month of our lives was becoming even more of an intoxicating dream. A few weeks earlier I’d become the editor of Notts County Mad, a club website and messageboard that held the same quirkiness of any other lower league forum. I wasn’t up to much, having spent the previous few months largely asleep after quitting sixth form because they seemed to expect that I might actually do the odd piece of work. When the former editor offered me the chance to take on the role I was pretty grateful for just having something to whittle away the hours.” In Bed With Maradina

“Football in England has a race problem. And it’s not the one you’re probably thinking of. The recent high profile cases involving racial abuse on the pitch by Luis Suarez and John Terry were disturbing, and not handled impressively by the English FA and Premier League authorities, but such incidents are notable largely by their rarity. In the stands, there has been no replication of the vile behavior of some supporters in Italy and Spain that have led to stadium closures and (paltry) fines for racist chanting. English football’s race problem is in the dugout.” Fusion

“The first cylinders of German chlorine gas were released on Allied soldiers during the Second Battle of Ypres, in northwestern Belgium, on April 22, 1915. The soldiers were Algerian and Moroccan, colonial forces fighting for France. The Germans — this is how sophisticated chemical weapons were in the first year of World War I — used the wind as their delivery mechanism; they simply opened several thousand containers of the poison and let the breeze convey it toward the enemy. When combined with water, chlorine gas turns to acid. If you inhale it, first you smell pineapple, then your lungs burn away from the inside. If it gets in your eyes — well, you can imagine. It’s heavier than air, so at Ypres a dense yellow fog of it settled in the French trenches. The soldiers crawled out onto the field to escape the gas. The field was being strafed with German machine gun fire.” Grantland

“‘When you move somewhere it is important you get to know the area,’ Sami Hyypia says as he confirms that he recently visited the Lord Nelson Inn, a pub located near Brighton’s North Laine area renowned for serving locally brewed real ale. He was spotted there by a group of the town’s sports reporters and the hope for Hyypia is that they will largely be writing good things about him in the coming months. Appointed Brighton manager on a three-year contract in June, the spotlight well and truly falls on the towering, blond Finn on Saturday when his side take on Sheffield Wednesday at the Amex Stadium.” Guardian