Reviews from When Saturday Comes. Follow the link to buy the book from Amazon.
With Middlesbrough struggling to survive the drop Steve Wilson asks why the chances of Hope Powell succeeding are so slim
As Middlesbrough’s steady slide towards relegation fast approaches a vertical drop into the Championship, questions are inevitably resurfacing over the wisdom of employing Gareth Southgate as the club’s manager in his first job in the dugout.
Cameron Carter digests the latest verbal jousts between Rafa and Alex and co and detects more childish bickering than cunning mind-games
A significant proportion of advertisements these days, particularly the daytime ones, depict attractive, long-suffering women coping with a man who, though apparently the husband, could also be her idiot child. This is so that the female consumers being targeted can laugh knowingly to themselves about how childlike men are before nipping out to spend good money on Buttercup Eyelid Cleanser and dog insurance.
Harry Pearson ponders whether there really is a collective football sensibility in the north-east and concludes that there probably isn’t
A dozen or so years ago I was sitting on a plane at Brussels airport. Our departure had been slightly delayed to allow passengers from a connecting flight to join us. Eventually they arrived and marched down the aisle to the rear of standard class, an elderly couple trailing the scent of sun tan oil and eau de cologne. Nothing unusual in that except that on closer inspection the pair turned out to be Newcastle United chairman Sir John Hall and his wife, Lady May.
A Yorkshire MEP is campaigning for an investigation into the 1973 Cup-Winners Cup final. Matthew Barker wonders why
The 1973 European Cup-Winners Cup final wasn’t, by all accounts, a great game. Leeds United and Milan kicked chunks out of each other in a typically brutal early-Seventies footballing culture-clash, played in a torrential downpour in Salonika. Luciano Chiarugi scored the only goal from a third-minute free-kick (indirect, claim Leeds), with the Italians happy to defend deep in a catenaccio master class under the tutelage of Nereo Rocco. Don Revie’s team had three penalty claims waved away by Greek referee Christos Michas, while Norman Hunter was sent off. It was, as Italian newspaper Il Manifesto recently put it, “a disaster from beginning to end … a night of rain and rage”, with a disgruntled local crowd pelting Milan’s players with missiles as they attempted to celebrate their win.
As national manager Guus Hiddink takes charge at Chelsea, Dan Brennan reflects on worries in Russia over what is said to be only a temporary job-share
If Guus Hiddink turns Chelsea’s season around, don’t expect too many loud cheers in Russia. The Dutchman’s decision to combine his permanent job as Russian national team coach with a makeshift one at Stamford Bridge has been met with what might best be described as resigned dismay.