Book reviews

Craig Thomas explains why some Chesterfield fans are dismayed by the club's decision to move to a new site

When you’ve dragged yourself to Edgar Street, Springfield Park and the like on Tuesday nights for five years and seen your beloveds regularly stuffed at Rochdale, simply winning promotion to Division Two becomes your Holy Grail. Since last May at Wembley, when Chesterfield elbowed their way past Bury, it’s been broad, sunlit uplands all the way with the team pursuing a play-off place for the second successive season. But good results on the pitch have been mirrored by disaster off it: the chairman wants a ground move.

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The 1995-96 season was the first time that Welsh Clubs playing in England were excluded from the Welsh Cup, resulting in the final being an all-League of Wales affair. Thomas Crockett explains why the occasion didn't get the publicity it deserved

Many supporters felt that the absence of the holy trinity (Cardiff, Swansea, Wrexham) devalued the Welsh Cup, one of the world’s oldest football tournaments. Pre-match prognoses in the press were pessimistic, Wales on Sunday dishing the dirt by predicting the FA of Wales would lose £30,000 by holding the final at the National Stadium in front of a low crowd – a self-fulfilling prophesy if ever there was one.

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Joyce Woolridge offers a view of the 1996 Championship race from an Old Trafford perspective

In 1994 there was a general expectation that the Premiership would go to Old Trafford. This year Manchester United fans with any sense have been asking themselves how on earth the team has ended up with one major trophy, let alone two.

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Ian Cusack explains how Newcastle fans feel about the on that got away

If, last August, someone had informed me that the season ahead would finish with Manchester United winning the double, that Sunderland would be First Division champions and that Newcastle would blow a 12-point lead in the Premiership then the only option available would have been to imbibe copious quantities of Hemlock. Yet a month on from the end of the season, my equilibrium has been restored and I’m eagerly anticipating the Charity Shield. I know this is no consolation really, but it is the first chance any of us has had to see Newcastle at Wembley since our plucky defeat by Tranmere Rovers, then in Division 4, at the 1988 Mercantile Credit bonanza. I didn’t think you’d remember it.

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If ever a side spent longer at the top of a division and ended up being relegated in the same season, Millwall fans would like to hear about it. Paul Casella that other clubs may learn a few lesson's from his teams experience

Lesson One – Player Managers
Kenny Dalglish began the trend, and proved it could be done at the highest level, but all he had to do was follow the guidelines set out in the ‘Liverpool Way’ handbook.

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