Search: ' Turf Moor'

Success and Failure at Burnley FC
by Dave Thomas
Vertical Editions, £12.99
Reviewed by Alan Tomlinson
From WSC 294 August 2011

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When Burnley drew Bolton Wanderers in the Carling Cup the season after their Premier League campaign, all was in place for a morality play as much as a football match. Owen Coyle, the Bolton manager, had walked out on Burnley in the middle of their first year back in English football's top tier for 33 years. Burnley tumbled down the league table, Bolton survived and Coyle was labelled Judas by inconsolable Burnley fans.

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Tom Davies reacts to Crystal Palace going into administration and looks at other teams threatened by HM Revenue & Customs

In a season of such widespread financial dysfunction, it’s perhaps surprising that it has taken until January for any professional club to go into administration, the fate that befell Crystal Palace at the end of last month. The administrator was called in by the London-based investment fund Agilo, a “specialist in distressed companies”, to whom chairman Simon Jordan had mortgaged much of the club’s asset base, including player wages, sale income and the basic fixtures and fittings.

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Got To Be There
Part One 1964-1987
by Dave Burnley
Dawber, £10.00
Reviewed by Alan Tomlinson
From WSC 274 December 2009 

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Big Club, Small Town & Me
The epic story of Burnley’s meteoric rise to the Premiership
by Brendan Flood with Stuart Wilkin
TH Media, £9.99
Reviewed by Alan Tomlinson
From WSC 274 December 2009 

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Before and on October 18, 2009, the UK’s sport media focused upon what some called the “cotton-town derby” – Blackburn Rovers versus Burnley – that would establish “bragging rights” in east Lancashire. The two clubs were founder members of the Football League in 1888, but had not met in a top-flight fixture for over 40 years. It was an eerie atmosphere walking to Ewood Park from Lower Darwen, as the blue-and-white of Blackburn dominated the streets, one shirt announcing “Burnley fans eat bananas with their feet”. The 2,800 Burnley supporters were bussed in with a police escort. During this 11-mile journey passengers were abused from the windows of respectable Blackburn residences. On arrival buses were cordoned off by lines of police, preventing any contact with the visiting supporters. “How many of you are on duty for this?” I asked a young policewoman. “All of us… They’ve cancelled everyone’s day off.”

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Accrington Stanley are struggling to stave off the possibility of going bust for a third time. Neil Billingham looks at how the generosity of the Lancashire people is helping them through their latest crisis

To go bust once is unfortunate. To go bust twice is careless. But to go bust three times? In August when Accrington Stanley were given eight weeks to pay an outstanding tax bill of £308,000 or face being wound up the other north-west clubs came together to help. Neighbours Burnley hosted a friendly match against Accrington which saw more than 5,000 fans turn up at Turf Moor, raising £50,000 for the club. Three days later, fans from across the region turned up at Stanley’s League Two match against Darlington to swell the attendance to 3,228, more than doubling the season’s average.

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Nobody expected Walsall to scale the heights that they reached in 1998-99. Tom Lines remembers an amazing season

The winner of the 1999 LMA Manager of the Year award wasn’t a huge surprise. Alex Ferguson (the knighthood would follow a few months later) had just led Manchester United to an unprecedented treble, after all. What was remarkable was that Fergie was given a run for his money in the voting by an unassuming 51-year-old enjoying his first season as a manager. That Ray Graydon’s Walsall side had just finished runners-up in Division Two gave his status as the country’s second-best manager a certain symmetry. But given Fergie’s achievements, the fact that Graydon received any votes at all says much about the incredible job that he and his players did that season.

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