10 Best Football Documentaries Of All Time
7. Trouble At The Top
Like many lower league sides overstretching on the promise of TV money which never materialised, the collapse of ITV Digital plunged Luton Town into financial meltdown. In the summer of 2003, chairman Mike Watson-Challis sold the Hatters for just £4 to a shady consortium headed by a man named John Gurney.
In the grand tradition of hyperbolic new owners, Gurney made outlandish promises - or threats, if you were a fan. The club would build a 70,000 seater stadium they had no hope of filling, a racecourse (yes!), and change their name to 'London Luton'. The owners' trade off for securing solvency was being able to do whatever the hell they pleased.
And that included firing the popular managerial team of Joe Kinnear and Mick Harford, a decision which was met with protests. In order to get Hatters supporters back on side, Gurney devised a ludicrous concept in keeping with television trends at the time: Manager Idol, a reality contest in which fans voted for the new boss.
Unfortunately, two of the candidates on the shortlist - the scorned Kinnear and poll-leader Mike Newell - had no interest in the position. At the eleventh hour, third-choice Mike Newell stormed into the lead - just as well, since he was the only one prepared to take the job.
The BBC2 documentary Trouble at the Top had the best seat in Kenilworth Road as the chaos unfolded. It's a remarkable, oft-forgotten story of English football, one which some years later, would thankfully end in the oleaginous Gurney getting his comeuppance.