Book reviews

Jozef Venglos was expected to bring glory to Villa on the basis that he was continental, but David Wangerin remembers how it never quite worked out for him

Jozef Venglos was manager of the best Villa side I’ve ever seen. For ninety minutes, anyway. That delightful October evening in 1990 when we inexplicably smashed Inter Milan into little pieces and scattered them across our pitch remains the most captivating game of football I’ve witnessed. It still seems inconceivable – trouncing a collection of Europe’s finest with a team captained by Stuart Gray. Surely no run-of-the-mill manager could ever have orchestrated it.

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Jan Molby was loved at Swansea but Huw Richards documents how his reign as manager was ended

The sacking of Jan Molby under-lines what we already suspected about the new owners of Swansea City – they are either brave, daft or both. You must be to take over a Third Division football club, and you certainly have to be to then sack an authentic folk-hero.

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Roy Hodgson hasn't always managed foreign clubs. Matt Nation remembers his short stint in charge of Bristol City

On turning to the front bit of your Sunday tabloid, you often find pages five to eight plastered with a ‘seedy past’ exposé. The host of a sofa-based chat-show, for example, is revealed to have once visited a topless bar, dropped a couple of tabs and then thrown a cloakroom attendant through a plate-glass window. The nation smirks behind its collective hand for a couple of days, then loses interest, comes over all moral and decides to let bygones be bygones.

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A new video has been released in favour of Everton staying at Goodison Park. Andy Burnham examines the club's big decision

Peter Johnson was a Liverpool season ticket holder. It is rumoured he travelled down to Wembley with the Liverpool squad for the 1986 FA Cup Final.

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Injuries can not only end careers, but can also affect a former player's life afterwards. Ashley Shaw looks at the legal action taken by Ian Knight after his livelihood was taken away by a bad tackle

When a player suffered a career ending injury in the Good Old Days the options left open to him were fairly well defined. Almost automatically he would be forced to seek alternative employment – some opened pubs, others ended up cleaning windows, some even went into management. No one in their right mind would even contemplate taking a fellow pro to court – it just wasn’t done and besides there was little money in it.

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