Book reviews

This month marks the 40th anniversary of Accrington Stanley's controversial ejection from the Football League. Mike Gent explains what went wrong

“Probably the most famous football team in the land” is how a Lancashire County Council web­site describes Accrington Stanley. A contentious claim, but there is no doubt that the Stanley’s continued no­toriety stems not from the club’s modest playing record but from a series of off-pitch calamities which culminated in their departure from the Football League in March 1962. Since then, the spectre of Ac­crington Stanley has been regularly invoked whenever football clubs sink towards bankruptcy.

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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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Andy Lyons meets Liverpool chief executive Rick Parry, who discusses his club's perspective on the current state of English League football and their role on the international stage as a member of the controversial G-14 group of elite European clubs

Some clubs claim that they have a duty to their shareholders to be in Europe. Is there less of this pressure at Liverpool through not being a publicly quoted company?
We don’t have that institutional investor pressure but the club has to pay for itself. We consciously incurred heavy losses for a couple of years of around £14 million when we were investing in the squad but you can’t go on doing that. The dilemma, and 90 per cent of clubs would say it’s a nice dilemma to have, is that you invest in a squad capable of getting into the Champions League, but if you don’t get in, you’re suddenly £20 million adrift and facing huge problems. We weren’t in Europe in 1999-2000 and that was a really difficult year for us. In ab­solute terms the gap between those in the Champions League and the Premier League is bigger than that between the rest of the Premier League and the Football League. I’m not saying we’re unhappy to be in that position but it’s a big gap to bridge.

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