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There are 763 footballers out of work and many clubs face an uncertain future. Barney Ronay looks back ten years to the bright sunrise of the Premiership era, the beginning of the boom when football was just money, money, money
In the summer of 1993 the tabloid press was in the process of acquiring a new footballing vocabulary. The first Sky TV-fuelled English Premiership season had just ended, and suddenly “come and get me pleas” were being issued, “want-away contract rebels” abounded, and Big-Spending Blackburn rubbed shoulders with Moneybags Man Utd as multi-million market madness descended. It all sounded extremely empowering for the soaraway red tops; and there would be plenty more to come. Topped and tailed by the Murdoch corporation, football had gone tabloid.
Playing for England at youth level doesn’t always herald a glittering future. QPR’s Kevin Gallen tells Barney Ronay about life after Patrick Kluivert
I dropped down a league to come back to QPR because I love the club – it’s where I’m from. I would definitely still love to have another crack at the Premiership. But I started going to QPR around the time of the team that reached the FA Cup final in 1982 and got promoted under Terry Venables the season after. Then when I got older there were players like Ray Wilkins, Roy Wegerle and Les Ferdinand, whom I ended up playing with.
When taking over at QPR, Ian Holloway did not realise the severity of the situation he was getting into. Here he talks to Barney Ronay about administration, finances and Kevin Gallen
QPR were among the clubs to have been traumatised recently by relegation from the Premiership. What was it like being a manager picking up the pieces?
Funnily enough it was all a bit of a shock for me at the time, because I didn’t know quite how bad things were. We were talking just before deadline day about doing this and doing that, we even made an offer for a player with money it turned out in hindsight we didn’t have. It was a very difficult time. It also brought some reality. For the fans it was a shock, rather than moaning about where we are, to realise that we might not even be on the map. With the gates we get, that was 13,000 people looking like they might not have a team any more. The players were concerned about being paid, and all credit to David Davis and Chris Wright, they did keep paying us. But what we had to try and do was overcome the fact that we’d had a rich sugar daddy who’d built up a huge gap between what we were paying our players and what the fans were paying to come in and watch us. Feeling that the whole thing might die at any moment was very, very difficult.
Huddersfield Town have not had the best of times recently, but Steve Wade looks at their colourful history for comfort
To what extent is manager Mick Wadsworth being blamed for Huddersfield’s recent decline?
A very vocal section of the crowd regularly call for his blood. But despite a few questionable decisions, Wadsworth isn’t entirely responsible. The rot started to set in after the sacking of Peter Jackson and responsibility must be accepted by a number of players, too. The awful irony is the pain of that first home game this season against Brentford, when the PA voice announced the beginning of “the Wadsworth era”.