Reviews from When Saturday Comes. Follow the link to buy the book from Amazon.
Once seen as a jinx, David May became something of a mascot at Manchester United as he all but vanished from sight except for trophy ceremonies, as Chris Taylor remembers
“Who the hell is that?” asked my dad. “David May,” I told him. May had just come on as a 90th-minute substitute for Ruud van Nistelrooy at Anfield. With the score 2-1, Sir Alex had decided enough was enough and it was time to shut up shop completely.
Csaba Abrahall looks back on a bench-warmer in the days before three subs, a loyal servant who rarely got to serve – Ipswich Town’s Mr Reserve Team, Tommy Parkin
So successful was Ipswich’s youth policy in the 1970s that anyone learning his trade at Portman Road could reasonably expect to have to consider storage arrangements for international caps sooner or later. Eric Gates, George Burley and John Wark were among many who made the transition from Ipswich junior to full international. Tommy Parkin, a member of the club’s FA Youth Cup-winning team in 1973, was not, yet his rather prosaic contribution is remembered almost as fondly as those of his illustrious peers.
Once, twice and once more (as a coach) an Evertonian, Alan Harper had a host of nicknames and collected several medals for Mark Tallentire to count
Alan Harper joined his team-mates in picking up the 1984 FA Cup while clad in an uncomfortably tight tracksuit top. It was almost as if he was underlining his bit-part status – Everton’s utility player had spent the final against Watford waiting patiently for the call which never came.
The ever-promising Chris Plummer has gone down and down and is now out of Queens Park Rangers, but Anthony Hobbs and his fellow Rs have a soft spot for the fellow
Centre-half Chris Plummer could justly claim to be the very-nearly man of QPR over the last ten years. His final appearance for Rangers – at Layer Road, Colchester at the end of last season – completed a series of just over 50 first-team appearances, spread over an eight-season period that started with Rangers in the Premiership and finished with us in Division Two.
Can Roman buy the Premiership? One man did just that and Ray Chenery can't see anything wrong with the transformation of Blackburn wrought by the late Jack Walker
Back in the 1970s, when Match of the Day was king, they’d show the top of the table in each division. And occasionally Blackburn Rovers’ name was there, mostly in their Third Division days, for all the nation to see. I remember being envious of the teams who seemed always to feature near the top of the Second – why couldn’t we ever do that? And then we did; in each of the three seasons from 1987 to 1990, under the guidance of Don Mackay, a good and imaginative manager, we reached, but failed, in the play-offs for promotion to the First. By January 1991, however, we were 20th in Division Two. But that was the January that Jack Walker took control of Blackburn Rovers.