Search: ' Keith Haslam'

After securing promotion from Division Three on the final day, Stag Colin Dobell can take a deep breath and look back at where it all went right

What has been the single biggest reason for the club’s successful season?
The promotion of Stuart Watkiss from youth team coach to assistant manager at the start of the season, and then to manager, brought a new sense of pur­pose and belief, especially for the young players Stuart had nurtured through the youth team. The success of players like Lee Williamson, who made the PFA Third Division team in his first full season, has made all the difference. 

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An unaccustomed and unsettling sense of well-being seems to be settling over some of the League’s recently troubled clubs. At Southend United, the unlikely partnership of George Soros and David Webb is in place and prom­ising to take the Shrimpers out of debt and on to higher things. How much the renowned international financier knows about the Third Division may be questioned, but for the time being the property company Delancey Estates, which he controls, is shaping the destiny of the club that once discarded this month’s England manager.

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Blessed with an unpopular chairman, Colin Dobell writes on how a group of fans were encouraged to formulate a plan to make Mansfield their own once more

The story of Mansfield Town’s decline is a familiar one of dubious financial dealings, serially broken promises and a wanton lack of investment. However, it may not have a conventional ending if the efforts of a group of fans achieves its goal of ousting the current chairman Keith Haslam. Unlike other such campaigns, they also have concrete ideas about how to go about replacing him effectively.

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