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Book reviews

Reviews from When Saturday Comes. Follow the link to buy the book from Amazon.

Honour crimes

After losing Fernando Torres to Chelsea, Liverpool supporter Rob Hughes explains why player disloyalty is not a new phenomenom

The media circus that trailed Fernando Torres’s move to Chelsea once again raised what is fast becoming a dominant issue in today’s game: club loyalty. Liverpool fans’ dismay was complete when, at his first press conference at Stamford Bridge, their departed idol coolly batted away accusations of traitordom and justified his switch of allegiance by declaring that “romance in football has gone”. Yes, he said, he’d had three good seasons at Liverpool but he wanted to play for a team who actually won things. What’s more, he was never a Reds fan (though, in his defence, he was candid enough to admit he’s no Chelsea nut either). Club loyalty counted for nothing when it came to winning trophies.

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Earning the stripes

Paul Knott pays tribute to a player who came to symbolise a club, remaining instrumental through an era of unprecendented success

Nine seasons after joining Hull City from Cambridge Utd for exactly one-thousandth of the fee paid by Liverpool for Andy Carroll, Ian Ashbee moved on a free to Preston on January transfer deadline day. During this time he achieved the unique feat of captaining the same club in all four divisions, including the top one for the first time in Hull City’s history.

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Hearts and minds

Gordon Cairns reports on a player who made transfer law history, but who now finds himself back where it all started

The career of Andy Webster to date could read as a morality tale for the modern footballer. As this year’s winter transfer window closed, the centre-half was quietly released by Rangers and rejoined Hearts, a reunion which only a month previously seemed as plausible as Paul McCartney welcoming Heather Mills back with open arms. It wasn’t that Webster had left Hearts that had made him persona non grata at Tynecastle, it was the manner of his going. He was the first player to invoke clause 17 of FIFA’s transfer regulations which states that a player can buy himself out of a contract three years after the deal was signed, leaving Hearts with 
no transfer fee.

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Fallen saints

Thirty years ago this month Ipswich thrashed the best team in France. Csaba Abrahall looks back to a memorable UEFA Cup tie

Just the other week, I was listening to Arsenal’s come-from-behind victory against Barcelona at the Emirates. “Remarkable!” said Alan Green. Indeed it was but, as they’d done something very similar last year, somehow not extraordinary. This is how the Champions League has changed European club competition. The group format and perennial participation of the same teams renders a fixture such as Arsenal v Barcelona hardly less routine than Arsenal v Bolton. Notable performances by English clubs in Europe are therefore increasingly common, but so common as to be almost mundane.

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Good will hunting

Financial demands keep rising at Everton but a new ground still hasn’t been located. Simon Hart looks at a unique set of problems

The Mirror journalist David Maddock is a sympathetic chronicler of the Merseyside football scene but his blog on Everton on January 18 was unfortunate in its timing. With David Moyes’s team underperforming and rumours circulating about the club entering administration, he sought to explain “why Everton’s achievements under Moyes and Kenwright are far more impressive than anything Man City have done” – urging fans to “rejoice in the fact that the club is run prudently with no danger of going bust”.

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