Reviews from When Saturday Comes. Follow the link to buy the book from Amazon.
Cardiff City are in Division One – but not everyone is convinced Sam Hammam has a long-term recipe for success. Andrew Turton, though, hopes he does
It’s the Second Division play-off final and it’s goalless with less than five minutes of extra time remaining. Andy Campbell beats the offside trap and, sprinting clear, lobs the keeper to send Cardiff City into the First Division for the first time in nearly 20 years.
Dave Hannigan tells the story of the Irishman who's been around the world and back
Just four summers have passed since the then Juventus manager Carlo Ancelotti introduced Ronnie O’Brien for the last 13 minutes of an Intertoto Cup semi-final against the Russian representatives Rostelmash. Making his third cameo appearance in the competition, the 20-year-old Irishman slotted in comfortably alongside Edgar Davids, Alessandro Del Piero et al. A matter of months after Bryan Robson had shown him the door at the Riverside Stadium, while very publicly dismissing his chances of ever making it at the highest level, he was pulling that famous zebra-striped jersey over his head and trousering £3,000 a week. Life was good and the unfortunate Liam Brady comparisons were far too plentiful.
Dianne Millen explores the potential pit falls of a groundshare bewteen two rivals
Groundsharing controversies – you go years without them and then two come along at once. After the Falkirk saga comes the controversial announcement that Hearts and Hibs are proposing to sell their grounds, both in traditional working-class areas of the city, to fund a purpose-built stadium miles out of town in Straiton, an area currently best known for hosting the local Ikea.
Could this be the end of the road for Oldham Athletic? Steve Ragg explains how a promising season suddenly went so wrong
From the brink of promotion to the edge of extinction in what seems like no time at all. While hopes of Division One football died with the play-off defeat at QPR, Oldham Athletic may be killed off altogether if a solution to our latest crisis isn’t found very soon.
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.