Reviews from When Saturday Comes. Follow the link to buy the book from Amazon.
The transfer window system has found few friends in England – but Barney Ronay believes it can help save the critics from their own excesses
Chairmen are raiding their piggy banks, agents are warming up their fax machines and all over the country costly foreign imports are nervously checking their passports. The transfer window is open and no one knows quite what to expect. Although, those with most to lose have already had their say on the matter.
Chris Ramsey is a successful black English manager – but he's working in South Carolina, where Gavin Willacy found him bitter at his treatment in his homeland
Chris Ramsey spreads his arms out wide, palms up to the cloudless sky, and looks around him at the neat yellow stands of Blackbaud Stadium. “Just think about it,” he asks. “Where would I want to be? Here or Rochdale?” The coach of Charleston Battery, arguably the best club in America’s A-League (one level below the MLS), expects the answer to be “here”, in idyllic South Carolina, where the air rarely dips below 70 degrees. But challenge him and he admits he would love to be coaching back home in England. The problem is, he’s black. “Being black has certainly been a stumbling block in my career,” he claims. “Put it this way, I’ve had obstacles to overcome that other coaches haven’t.”
Leroy Rosenior is settling in well as the far south-west's latest black manager, but Nick House is puzzled by the route that took the former striker to Plainmoor
It’s fair to say Leroy Rosenior’s appointment as Torquay United’s first-team coach – manager in old money – met with some scepticism. The concern was simple yet forceful: was he any good? Reports from travellers were decidedly mixed: acclaimed as part of a trio at Bristol City; steady at Gloucester; hardly a success at Merthyr
Few Premiership chairmen are facing more questions than West Ham's Terence Brown, as Darron Kirkby explains
The only thing that West Ham fans can agree on at present is that the club is in crisis. Without a home win in the league this season – a run of 12 games including defeats by West Brom and Birmingham – and with only an FA Cup victory since October 22, becoming the first side in Premiership history to be bottom at Christmas and avoid relegation is looking an increasingly tall order.
Bolton Chairman Phil Gartside tells Andy Lyons how his club is ready for anything
"We have a plan for various eventualities, such as whether we stay up or go down. If the worst came to the worst we could reduce our wages significantly. We haven’t really looked at other clubs who have gone down as case studies of what not to do because we’ve been up to the Premier League and relegated twice before, so we’ve had the experience. It might be possible to do things like increase the parachute payments to relegated clubs, but the rules are the rules and you have to plan around them.