Following the media frenzy over Wayne Rooney, Barney Ronay looks at teenage players who have acquired star status without even stepping on to the pitch
“Just 16, with brutal power and terrifying pace. The man-boy has nerves of steel and fears no one. He is Wayne Rooney. He is… A PHENOMENON”
The big issues affecting clubs in the Football League
The principle that clubs should not leave their ground unless they are certain of being able to return to a site in the local area is one that was meant to have been established after Brighton left the Goldstone Ground. However, it shows no sign of being universally accepted. Ron Noades, for one, is keen to move Brentford out of Griffin Park, despite the fact that no new long-term home has been secured.
Peter Taylor's latest port of call is Peterborough, where many of the supporters are waiting impatiently for the end of the Barry Fry era. Darren Fletcher reports
Nobody knows what is happening at Peterborough. Not the fans, nor the media and nor, it seems, the manager or the chairman. Six seasons ago, Barry Fry took over the club. However, having written himself a rolling three-year contract, he gave up the idea to let a wealthy local businessman, Peter Boizot, take the reins while Fry concentrated on the football. The season before Peterborough had finished 16th in the Second Division and the new manager promised he would take us out of that division. Following numerous triple sub- stitutions, he did – into the Third.
Ian Plenderleith dissects a biographical account of Lars Leese's career to discover that, unlike his wife, the German never quite felt at home in South Yorkshire
When German goalkeeper Lars Leese signed for Barnsley at the start of their Premiership season in 1997, he was one of six foreign players at the club that year. As the journalist Ronald Reng describes it in his excellent biography of Leese, published in Germany earlier this year, Barnsley boss Danny Wilson was “like a kid in a toyshop who was finally allowed to buy international stars – or rather, players who were international and were taken for stars in Barnsley”.
Colin Peel searches in vain for a long history of exciting derbies in the Second City, as Aston Villa and Birmingham City prepare to resume hostilities
Blues v Villa is the derby that football forgot. No other big city rivalry has had to wait as long for its protagonists to renew the duel for league supremacy. December 12, 1987, was the date of the last clash, in the Second Division, which saw Villa triumph 2-1 in front of 28,000 at St Andrews. Both Villa and their manager that day, an enterprising chap called Graham Taylor, were bound for promotion. For Blues, things got much worse before the current owners began the transformation which has the put the club where it is today.