Reviews from When Saturday Comes. Follow the link to buy the book from Amazon.
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.
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.
The trial of Lee Bowyer, Jonathan Woodgate and Michael Duberry has thrown an unflattering light on the values of Leeds' young players. John Williams argues the club should bear some of the responsibility
In one sense, of course, the coverage of the trial of Jonathan Woodgate, Lee Bowyer et al in Hull has been faintly ridiculous. Since when did a post-nightclub brawl, of a kind which takes place pretty much everywhere in this country every weekend, become the stuff of front page tabloid stories, day after day? Even with the suggestion of racial overtones – unfortunately by no means unusual either – this hardly stands up as a big spread. Except, of course, that these young guys are already B-list celebrities, actual or prospective England international footballers. Well, here’s more than a start: in a celebrity-fixated, reality-TV culture, this already offers enough for the full media treatment.
Is George Graham's departure a victory for Tottenham tradition? No, says Paul Kelso, he paid the pricce for not winning football matches
Since George Graham was turfed out to make way for the Second Coming at White Hart Lane there has been so much talk of The Spurs Way that the uninitiated would be excused for thinking Haringey Council were renaming the Tottenham High Road. Of course many clubs have a distinct self-image, an unwritten statement of principle based in equal parts on tradition and nostalgia – West Ham’s academy, Everton’s school of science or Wimbledon’s school of hard knocks – but at Spurs the blend is particularly potent.
David Rocastle died of cancer on March 30, aged 33. Sean Hanson looks back on the life and career, both all too brief, of the Arsenal and Engalnd star
It was on the fields of Beckenham Place Park in south-east London, playing schools and park football, that the young David Rocastle began to shine, and anyone watching knew he was going to be something special. A few years later, he was signing schoolboy forms at Arsenal, a contemporary of Tony Adams, Martin Keown, Michael Thomas and Gus Caesar.