Book reviews

Dave Espley looks at Stockport County as Andy Kilner departs and Carlton Palmer gets his first taste of management

In what might seem to an outsider to be one of the least surprising sackings of the season, Stockport County dispensed with the services of Andy Kilner the Monday after a 4-0 home de­feat by Millwall on October 27. What is per­haps surprising, however, is that the County chairman Brendan Elwood was still insisting to all and sundry on the Saturday night that Kil­ner’s job was safe. Granted, chairmen do that as a matter of course and, as we all know, votes of confidence usually precede a sacking as inevitably as night follows day, but in El­wood’s case, he genuinely meant it.

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Dianne Millen looks at Aberdeen's hopes to move to a new stadium and complex as part of Scotland's bid to host the Euro 2008 Championships

Aberdonians of a certain age can remember the glory days. Not the hot Eighties nights un­der Fergie when even the likes of Bayern Mun­ich were sent home from Pittodrie to think again, but further back yet, to the Fifties and Sixties. In those pre-wage inflation days, an ordinary league game against Hibs or Dundee United would see the official 40,000-odd cap­acity swelled by a good few hundred who never touched a turnstile – clinging to the roof of the Main Stand, maybe, or even perched peril­ously on the newly installed, state-of-the-art floodlights.

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Apparent misfits in the Premiership, more than a few imports have gone on to have perplexingly good careers elsewhere. We tracked down three of them, Ernst Bouwes looking at Jon Dahl Tomasson

In the spring of 1997 his fellow players voted him Talent of the Year in the Dutch league, with Giovanni van Bronckhorst and Arnold Bruggink second and third. A couple of days after accepting the trophy, he scored a hat-trick against Vitesse Arnhem to go top of the goalscorers list, leaving quality players like Luc Nilis, Roy Makaay and Patrick Kluivert (and Gerald Sibon) behind him. While his goals took modest Heer­enveen to their first Dutch Cup final, about 20 clubs  were rumoured to be interested in signing him, with Ajax, Atlético Madrid and Bar­celona the most persistent. A transfer fee of about £2 million seemed a laughably small amount for a 21-year-old who had just made his international debut for Denmark. Yes, we’re talk­ing about Jon Dahl Tomasson.

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Apparent misfits in the Premiership, more than a few imports have gone on to have perplexingly good careers elsewhere. We tracked down three of them, Gabriele Marcotti looking at Darko Kovacevic

If he hadn’t been run out of town after making just eight starts for Sheffield Wednesday, perhaps Darko Kovacevic might have earned himself a funky nick­name in Yorkshire. Certainly, English fans tend to be a little more imaginative than their Spanish coun­ter­parts (“Golacevic”was the best Real Sociedad sup­porters could come up with). Perhaps he might have entered Sheffield lore as the “Darko Destroyer” – after all, he was Nigel Benn’s contemporary.

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Apparent misfits in the Premiership, more than a few imports have gone on to have perplexingly good careers elsewhere. We tracked down three of them, Craig McCracken looking at Marc-Vivien Foé

Marc-Vivien Foé was an early developer. A first team regular for Cameroon’s top club Canon Yaoundé at 17, an international at 18, a World Cup player at 19, he won his first transfer to Europe when he signed a contract shortly after his 20th birthday to join Lens.

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