The Archive

Jim Gwinnell takes a look at the best and worst moments in the long history of Bristol Rovers

What has been the biggest single factor in Rovers’ recent decline?
There hasn’t been one single cause; the slump has had a number of different stages, with a cause for each. Throughout, the board and the four managers utilised have shown poor judgement, although most if not all their decisions were made in good faith. However, we’ve used more players than David Lean used extras in an epic, and most have not performed.

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While many feel footballers earn too much these days, there are those who argue that salary capping players would be a bad idea

One of the biggest clubs in the country is in dire trouble; another high-flyer has slumped from the top of the league to the bottom, both as a result of spending too much on players’ wages. That may sound familiar, but in fact these two examples from Australian sport could hardly be more different from the nightmare scenarios painted for the future of football clubs in Britain and the rest of Europe.

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Friday 1 Tony Pulis, out of work since leaving Portsmouth two years ago, takes over at Stoke. Steve McLaren resigns as Sven’s assistant, saying: “It was never intended to be long-term and it has dragged on.”

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Holland's version of the FA Cup is so underappreciated, many teams field their reserve squads to compete as well. Ernst Bouwes investigates

If the FA Cup is the best and most exciting cup competition in the world, the Amstel Cup, org­anised by the Dutch FA (KNVB), has to be a contender for the worst. Nowadays, the clubs playing in European competitions are given a bye as far as the last 16. This is only fair, according to the KNVB. “We need our best clubs to do well in Europe to gain points for us in the UEFA ranking,” says the KNVB’s Henk Kesler.

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Stephen Wagg offers a revisionist view of Adam Crozier's time in charge at the Football Association

When Adam Crozier left his job as chief executive of the Football Association, I was in­trigued by the language in which this was rendered by the football media. It seemed for all the world as if some tribune of the people, having heroically held the line against “commercialism” in the game, had now de­parted the stage. In his wake the fat cats of the Premier League would now continue to boost their own financial power at the expense of ordinary football folk. When one con­siders the circumstances of Cro­zier’s appointment and the key events of his comparatively short tenure at the FA, this seems more than a little absurd.

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