The Sky Sports Football Yearbook 2003-2004

View other editions of The Sky Sports Football Yearbook 2003-2004.
View books by Glenda Rollin, Jack Rollin.

The footballing bible - Rated
This book is great the amount of times I have pulled this book out to win an arguement is incredible it has information on every player in the english football leagues and information about all the teams too all the players who have ever played for england, ireland, scotland, wales and nothern ireland full and u21 leagues and so much more. Remember there is like 1000 pages in the book you have to buy it!

The Premiership of football facts! - Rated
Over a thousand pages, each housing hundreds of facts. Forget buying any other pretend yearbooks, endorsed by Motty and the like, this one grows each year and with some of the stats you can just sense the quality and research that has gone into it. With so many facts you can excuse a slight error within if you look hard enough just to prove the authors are human after all (!). It will stay by your side all season and will be especially useful in a pub quiz, especially with the comprehensive Euro 2004 section. One down point, which hasn't been in the last few editions either, is the exclusion of the team photos, but it still incorporates the odd image here and there.

Why so many mistakes ? - Rated
As a football buff and football supoprter I buy the yearbook every year. Over the last couple of seasons the standard and the quality of the text has deteriorated in my opinion, to such an extent that the most fun I have is finding the error on each page (at least one per page !).

It would also be so much better if there was consistency throughout in terms of the team background (Manchester City's profile is organised by years in division whereas others are by year) and in the player details (why cover overseas clubs for some players but not others).

The thing that drives me craziest however is the way the author deals with the change to Premier, 1, 2 and 3 from Divisions 1-4. Take for example club's highest position in Division 1 (not always supplied for every club that's been in division 1) the reader needs to double check whether the position refers to old divsion 1 or new division 1. I know it should be obvious from dates but, argghhhhhhhh.

The coverage of Scottish football is pitiful.

The book's a great idea but would benefit from much more detailed research and some careful checking. (Have Newcastle United been in 12 or 13 FA Cup finals ?).

Price up ,quality down - Rated
The Sky Sports yearbook ( formerly Rothmans ) is a must for all football buffs and fans alike. Packed with information, stats and many interesting features it is a book I look forward to buying before the start of a new season.

I have every copy since 1986 - 87 season, every year the price goes up. I've never minded this, as it is an exceptional read.

However ,last year without looking for ,I found several mistakes, which I thought were lazily researched. I wrote to Mr Jack Rollins ( the auther )to bring this to his attention. Several months later I recieved a letter from Mr Rollins, explaining that his Scottish correspondent ( 90 % of my complaints were about mistakes made about Scottish football )would be in touch. True enough I have had several conversations with the correspondent. In fact for this years book, I helped him with several bits of information he had wrong.

This years book is even worse for errors. This time I found several, again without looking for them. One example is Boltons Florent Lavilles date of birth is given as 7 / 8 / 1983. This would make him 10 years old when he made his debut for previous club Lyon! There are a lot more, much worse than this.

I find the coverage of Scottish football a big let down. Every player from all 96 English teams has their stats noted. However the 12 SPL teams are given 2 pages each. Surely it wouldn't be to much effort to give stats for these players to?

Over the whole The year book is quality. However I'm becoming dissilusioned with the amount of mistakes cropping up.Mistakes can't be helped but some of them I found were just plain sloppy. It boasts great things but it isn't the book it once was.