Reviews from When Saturday Comes. Follow the link to buy the book from Amazon.
Paul Tracey reflects on the Football League sanction which has made life particularly hard for one of football's stalwart clubs
Uncertainty has surrounded QPR for the past year, ever since chairman Chris Wright put the club up for sale and placed it into administration. With no new owner emerging, fans and staff alike have had the possibility of the club folding hanging over their heads for the best part of a season.
Tom Davies meets up with Leyton Orient defender and PFA representative Dean Smith to gain an insight into the players' perspective of the crisis hitting lower-league clubs
Have players in the lower divisions become more insecure about their jobs in recent years?
I think so, yes. Squads are getting smaller again and it does seem to have been getting harder and harder in recent years for players being released at the end of the season to find another club, whereas in seasons before it was quite easy. Players are having to look lower down, and more are going into non-League football. Which means many have got to come to terms with part-time football and finding another job. As a result, the Conference teams are getting stronger – there are a lot of players in the Conference who could be playing in the Football League.
Small may not be all that beautiful in Scottish football, but it is no less intense. Geoff Leonard investigates the neglected passions of Dumfries and Galloway
Inter-city rivalries sound like fun, where the proximity of large conurbations lends an edge to clashes between clubs such as Newcastle and Sunderland. City ones look even better – Dundee’s clubs divided by a street, Liverpool’s by a park and Glasgow’s by centuries of intolerance.
Darlington's chairman is going to unfounded lengths in a bid to break free from football. Jon Lymer reports
It used to be said that the north east was a hotbed of football talent. These days it’s equally true to say that it is a hotbed of eccentric football chairmen. In recent times the region has enjoyed a series of revelations about its chairmen, including brothel visits, cocaine abuse, High Court action and even (if you stretch the geographical parameters a bit) an alien abduction or two. But the prime mover throughout all this fuss has been Darlington’s convicted safecracker-cum-business magnate, George Reynolds.
Cambridge United's terrible season might have been even worse, but for the LDV Vans Trophy. Andrew Bennett gives thanks for a much maligned competition
As far as the family of cup competitions goes, it would be fair to say that the LDV Vans Trophy is the runt of the litter. But for the supporters and staff of Cambridge United, it has been nothing short of a lifeline in a season spent tossing on the choppy seas of relegation. And not even a decisive and bubble-bursting 4-1 defeat at the hands of Blackpool in the final could spoil the occasion as a welcome, if all too temporary, relief from all the ills of a season that has lurched from the merely dismal to the disastrous.