Opinion

70 pieces on this desk, across the 2014-15 and 2015-16 seasons, under 18 bylines. The longest of them runs 2712 words.

Everything here came out of the archive of the old site and was re-set, not rewritten: the wording, the numbers and the dates are the ones that were filed at the time. The desk keeps the pages because the links to them are still live and because the record is worth having in one place.

Argument rather than report. Pieces on this desk take a position and defend it, which means they are the ones most exposed by time — a column about what the club ought to do next is a prediction whether it calls itself one or not. They are kept exactly as they ran, including the ones that turned out badly, because a comment desk that only keeps its hits is an advertisement.

What the desk asks of a column is that the reasoning be visible: a reader should be able to see which facts the argument rests on and disagree with the conclusion without having to guess. Opinion is labelled as opinion on the card and in the passport at the top of the page, and it is never mixed into the reporting desks.