Reviews from When Saturday Comes. Follow the link to buy the book from Amazon.
In the first of two features on record-breaking top-flight relegation seasons, Joe Boyle struggles to find any positive signs amid the despair at Sunderland
There are internet addresses that snare you and reel you in, even as you sense something unwholesome. Like this: www.freud.org.uk/archiegemmill.html.
In a dark season for the game as well as Stoke, Ken Sproat saw Newcastle inflict one of the Potters’ 31 defeats of 1984-85 – but can now see it wasn't all gloom
A football team cannot get much worse than Stoke City during the 1984-85 season. There, in the all-time records for being hopeless, they skulk alongside such Victorian disasters as Darwen, Loughborough Town and Glossop. The fewest points in a season (17), the fewest wins (three – all at home), the most defeats (31) and, with 24, the fewest goals (the leading scorer was Ian Painter with six, of which four were penalties). They failed to score in 25 of the 42 league matches. They suffered mathematically definite relegation with eight miserable matches still to play.
Conservationist Barney Ronay is worried about the squandering of natural resources by clubs such as Arsenal, whose players come in 57 varieties
When Bill Shankly said, “There are two great teams on Merseyside – Liverpool and Liverpool reserves,” he may well have had little more than Everton-baiting on his mind. However, more than ever, Shankly’s barb reflects a tendency among clubs at the top end of the scale to accumulate alarmingly large first-team squads.
Chris Taylor’s dreams of watching Juan Sebastian Verón turn into an evening comtemplating has-been celebrities, at a typical reserve match
I had not expected to be discussing the members of Take That while stood on the Popular Side terrace at Altrincham’s Moss Lane ground.
Alex Wolstenholme wonders if the introduction of age restrictions could reinvigorate the reserves in England as they have done north of the border
Watching the reserves is a journey into a world both instantly recognisable and yet strangely unfamiliar. The setting, the kits and often the players are the same, but there’s something missing that can be found at almost every other level of the game where a league title is played for. The fortunes of the stiffs are never a major cause of concern for fans. That part of the programme where one of the club’s ex-pros (and now second-team boss) gives his match report from the latest reserve game has never been required reading.