Book reviews

The play-offs have now completed 15 turbulent seasons of drama and, some would say, injustice. Csaba Abrahall, however, is a devotee. He looks back on the ups and downs of their history 

You may not know the name Martin Lange, but the chances are he will have given you reason to shed tears of joy or despair at some point since the late Eighties. For Lange was the man behind the introduction of the Football League play-offs, the end-of-season extra­va­ganza that has just completed a 15th successful season.

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Wheeler-dealer Harry Redknapp was unable to keep the wheels in motion at Upton Park, as Darron Kirkby explains

If the timing of Frederic Kanoute’s runs had been half as good, we wouldn’t have found ourselves in such a mess in the first place. But within three hours of season ticket renewal forms dropping through letterboxes the length and breadth of Essex, West Ham an­nounced that Harry Red­knapp had left the club “by mutual con­sent”.

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QPR aren't just coming to terms with the cost of relegation – there are stories behind the scenes too. Anthony Hobbs reveals all

The last time Queens Park Rangers were rel­egated, from the Premiership five years ago, things were very simple. We had a rich chairman with no real interest in football, who was completely unwilling to spend his own money, but content to realise the capital of our most liquid assets (ie sell our best players). In the five years leading up to our latest 40-point season, things have been bit a little less clear cut. This season in particular, it’s felt a little like being on a boat that hasn’t been properly tied up. We’ve just been gradually drifting away and nobody quite knows what to do about it.

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Karl D Pridmore explains how the board at Nottingham Forest tried to change a football club into a public company in 1997

In April the financial future of Nottingham Forest was decided in the High Court, to almost complete indifference in the national press. It’s a complicated tale, but one with important implications for other clubs and, for Forest, a more or less happy ending.

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The Football League's verdict on charges of financial irregularities against Chesterfield has thrown the Third Division into confusion. Hartlepool fan Ed Parkinson is among those left unimpressed

In a confusingly dishonest world full of spin, deceit and greed it is usually possible to gain some respite by indulging an obsession with lower division football, a reasonably plain-speaking sporting backwater still dominated by traditionalists and mercifully free of prawn sandwiches. The recent events involving Ches­ter­field would suggest that this rare pool of comparative sanity is in danger.

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