Book reviews

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.

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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.

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What are the realistic ambitions for those outside the top half of the Premiership? Gary Parkinson discusses Bolton's future following promotion

Given the financial constraints which led to previous manager Colin Todd resigning after being forced to sell one player too many, it’s still a source of amazement to many that Sam Allardyce managed to get Bol­ton promoted. Since he took over two years ago the fire sale has stopped but he has continued to barter, flog­ging £10 million worth of players (notably Eidur Gud­johnsen and Claus Jensen) while spending less than £4 million.

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What are the realistic ambitions for those outside the top half of the Premiership? Rob Fitzgerald sums up Tranmere's situation

The growing gap between the Premiership and Nat­ionwide League makes Tranmere fans acutely aware of the limitations of what their club can achieve. We are unlikely see a return of the optimism experienced at Prenton Park during John King’s second spell in charge, when we went from the bottom of the Fourth Division to the top of the (new) First in five years.

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What are the realistic ambitions for those outside the top half of the Premiership? Mark Hodkinson sums up his club's situation

The death knell, the clock striking midnight, the end of the world as we know it – this kind of rhetoric has shadowed my support of Rochdale FC since I first dunked a plastic fork in a tray of pie and peas at Spot­land back in the 1970s. But for all the talk and creeping fog of pundit fatalism, we’re still here. And being here is OK, especially with a completely rebuilt ground and a team that mounts a routine but flawed promotion challenge on an annual basis. We might even, lordy lordy, escape the bottom division one day soon. We’ve been here 27 seasons now, a long time in hell.

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