Generally the post-Christmas publishing lists are a wasteland littered with the occasional bleached-boned blockbuster that publishers got cold feet over amongst a dust storm of dross. Persevere, there’s always something worth seeking out if you look hard enough. They’ll be hard to find, but there have been some worthwhile new titles published during this fallow period.

2008 has thus far been dominated by the fiftieth anniversary of the Munich Air Crash. In a landscape peppered with anti-Man U sentiment I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the positive reaction to this commemoration. Attempts to wind up an atmosphere of animosity by the red tops were largely ignored and the 6th of February was marked as a national disaster as well as a personal tragedy for Manchester United.

Most of the coverage and the publishing have been very well judged. You couldn’t fail to be moved by the documentary showing Bobby Charlton watching recently found footage of his team mates or Harry Gregg vehemently denying he was a hero despite constant evidence to the contrary.

Sir Bobby has begun a publishing odyssey with the first part of his memoirs ‘My Manchester United Years’; as for Harry Gregg, a scouring of the second hand sites may well reveal copies of ‘Harry’s Game’ an autobiography now sadly out of print.

There’s plenty of choice when it comes to the disaster itself. Years ago, probably around the 25th or 30th anniversary of the crash I bought my father Frank Taylor’s ‘The Day a Team Died’. Taylor was one of the journalists who survived the crash and while this won’t be the best-written account it doesn’t lack warmth or emotion.

Of the more recently published work, David Hall’s ‘Manchester’s Finest: How the Munich Disaster Broke the Heart of a Great City’, is getting the most coverage. While it covers common ground with all the books on the subject, Hall’s book looks at the wider implications to the survivors, the club and the city and is exhaustive in its coverage. There are lots of books written by ‘insiders’, but the real power of this book is in the presentation of the views of the ordinary man on the street.

Max Arthur has made a speciality of picking out the most vital of personal testimonies in a number of books about the First and Second World War. His particular talent is to interweave these accounts to form a compelling and insistent narrative, which he does with ‘The Busby Babes: Men of Magic’.

For a little balance it’s worth adding Jeff Conner’s ‘The Team That Wouldn’t Die’, a book that barely hides its indignation at the fate of the some of the survivors and the families involved. In those not so long gone times there were no support networks and little regard for those left behind and this poignant and disturbing book leaves us with no doubt about the scope of the long term damage of the crash.

All of the above are better than Cristiano Ronaldo ‘Moments’.

Those of you who have an interest in the history of the game might find a use for ‘Uppies and Downies, The Extraordinary Games of Football in England’. Since the 12th century towns, villages and hamlets up and down the country developed festival games, loosely based on football but invested with a touch of good old British eccentricity. Some of these games still exist today and appear to involve quite a lot of mud. Combined with the public school variants on football (also covered) they provide a remarkable lineage and partial explanation for the enduring popularity and prevalence of the national game.

A few years ago I bought a book called ‘Don’t Cry for Me Argentina’ by Mike Wilson, now long out of print, but fear not football/pantomime lovers, Graham McColl appears to have re-written it. ‘78: How a Nation Lost the World Cup’ revisits this fertile ground. It’s hard to believe that 30 years ago Scotland, under the auspices of the pied piper of reckless optimism Ally McLeod, thought it was on the cusp of carrying off the greatest prize in football and no amount of evidence to the contrary was going to disavow them of this crazed vision.

How a team made up of chain smoking tricky wide-boys, notorious hard men and Alan Rough thought they were about to rule football has much to do with the social and political landscape of Scotland at the time, with a little bit of saccharine romanticism thrown in. It’s a great story, well worth returning to, and it’s worth remembering as you laugh at the folly of a third rate team being lauded like champions that every England team has set off to most World Cups since then with similar expectations and the same result. At least the Scots learned a lesson.

It’s possible that you won’t remember Simon Garner, for years he relentlessly scored goals for Blackburn Rovers ‘BJW’ (before Jack Walker), a twilight period between the cup finals of the sixties and their current position of solid premiership wannabe’s. Garner was a successful player at an unfashionable club at an unfashionable time. You’d say that this would only appeal to die hard Rovers fans, but this is actually an updating of a book written in 1992!
Although stereotypical of the pre-dietary, hard-livin’, ‘just missed out on the big money…’ biography, it has its moments. If you are the sort of sports reader who’ll happily read about Gary Nelson, Neil Redfearn or Iwan Roberts then this is the fellow for you.

Now then, what about ‘Toddy: The Colin Todd Story’. Well I’ve yet to see this, but whilst trying to find out more I was surprised and intrigued by what I thought was it’s sub-title, ‘The True Story of Hollywood’s Most Sensational Murder’ - my first thought was that I’ve got the wrong Todd…it must be about his son, Andy!

Turns out that was a book called ‘Hot Toddy’.  This ought to have a chance though; Colin Todd was around Brian Clough, England’s calamitous failure to qualify for the 74 World Cup and the onset of the footballers' perm/tight short era. Any kind of reference to the psychotic Todd Junior should also be worth reading. Something tells me it won’t though. His career as a manager has been shrouded in indifference. From time to time he’s appointed to a non-descript job and a few months later he slips quietly out of a side-door marked ‘mutually terminated’. I’ve been wrong before though.

It’s difficult to find an unexplored angle in football writing these days, so it’s a little depressing to find that another ‘football obsessive’ feels that his life trawling a footballing backwater is worth our time and effort. Rob Grillo’s ‘Anoraknophobia’ is the latest on the market. What can often kill this kind of book is the idea that anybody other than a few of your mates are interested in the peculiar intricacies and day to day obsessions of the club you support, whether it be Chelsea or Chessington World of Adventures XI. Fortunately Grillo’s is a journey round the 92 football league clubs, his cast are like-minded obsessives, ground hoppers and pub pundits. He’s got a self-deprecating style that suits the subject, he knows how sad he is and knows we’re going to feel better about ourselves after reading it. For all my initial fears, Anoraknophobia’s worth a visit from anyone who enjoyed Adrian Chiles' book on being a West Brom fan (We Don’t Know What We’re Doing).

Finally, and I suppose we could call this ‘Book of the Quarter’, Kevin Bray’s ‘How to Score’, subtitled ‘Science and the Beautiful Game’ , although perhaps something along the lines of ‘the ultimate pub pundit’s weapon’ would have been more appropriate. Bray provides plausible, ‘scientific’ and most importantly, easy to explain answers to the burning football questions…two pints in you’ll feel indestructible! In the cold light of day you can take all this with the proverbial pinch of salt, but it’s worth wondering how many of the Television and Radio pundits are dipping into this little cracker.

978-1845133016 The Team That Wouldn't Die: The Story of the Busby Babes (Paperback) by Frank Taylor
978-1845963415 The Busby Babes: Men of Magic by Max Arthur
978-0593059227 Manchester's Finest: How the Munich Air Disaster Broke the Heart of a Great City by David Hall
978-0285632622 The Day a Team Died by Jeff Conner
978-1905624645 Uppies and Downies: The Extraordinary Football Games of Britain by Simon Inglis
978-0755314102 '78: How a Nation Lost the World Cup by Graham McColl
978-0752446660 There's Only One Simon Garner (Paperback)
978-1859836149 Toddy: The Colin Todd Story
978-0752445618 Anoraknophobia: The Life and Times of a Football Obsessive by Rob Grillo
978-1862079885 How to Score. by Kevin Bray