Book reviews

Five years after blazing their way out of the Football League (with an arsonist at the helm), Doncaster are back, to the delight of Glen Wilson

In the underpass at Doncaster station there is an advertisement for a local nightclub, which reads: “Can you make Doncaster what they made Carlisle?” Anyone passing through may be forgiven for thinking that the people of Doncaster don’t expect a lot in life. However, when it comes to football the expectations of the town are far greater. Almost 10,000 Doncaster supporters made the trip to Stoke for the first ever Conference promotion final, in the hope that this would be the season in which Rovers finally regained their place in the Football League.

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Mark Tallentire explains why Everton are staying put

When Everton announced they were pulling the plug on their plan to join the King’s Dock development, not a single letter or email of com­plaint was received by the club. However, more than 40 had arrived by mid-morning on Monday after the 2-1 win against Aston Villa kept their bid for UEFA Cup football going for another week, either congratulating David Moyes on another three points or complaining about Duncan Ferguson’s conduct in the same game. Therein lies a tale as the fans, while broadly in favour of the proposed 55,000-seat city-centre stadium on the banks of the Mersey, are more interested in seeing Moyes create a winning team.

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Ian Plenderleith explains why he believes Stoichkov's horor tackle in a friendly game in the US should have seen him banned for life

In a friendly between DC United and American University, a couple of weeks prior to the 2003 Major League Soccer season, DC’s new striker and assistant coach, Hristo Stoichkov, 37, broke the leg of AU’s 18-year-old midfielder Freddy Llerena. For his trouble the Bulgarian received a red card, while the MLS Disciplinary Commission served him with a $2,000 (£1,250) fine and a two-match suspension.

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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.

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Damian Hall wonders why Stephen Hughes slipped away after a promising start to his career at Arsenal

People got pretty excited about young Stephen Hughes. For a youth system that manufactured almost an entire double-winning team in the late 1960s and the likes of Liam Brady, David O’Leary and Tony Adams in its wake, the 1990s were an embarrassing barren spell for Arsenal. While rivals were carefully hatching out the likes of David Beckham, Michael Owen and Rio Ferdinand, the Arsenal footballer factory was fine-tuning Ian Selley – a Toploader to your U2, if you like.

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