'winter fixtures' Yes it's goalfood's annual bumper Christmas book review beano with the inimitable John Leighton (November 06)

We can sometimes blame global warming for too much. There was a time when the football programme would be decimated by eastern European style blizzards, the news would cut from the sight of a ‘pop’ lorry being dug out from a snow drift to news of nine goal thrillers at fog bound, dilapidated stadiums. Eventually even the most hardy of souls gave up and whole divisions would be wiped out. I doubt whether any Scottish second division game was ever played in January. Sadly, all-seater stadia, undersoil heating, winter breaks and the Health and Safety Executive, as well as a little bit of environmental changes have put paid to that. Will we never witness Motson’s sheepskin coat covered in snow again?

I can hear the rumble of muttering and mumbling from the other side of the screen, not another nostalgia = laden wander through some middle-aged bloke’s reminiscences of nil-nil draws at Field Mill or the glory days of Bradford Park Avenue!

Fear not, for this Christmas you won’t have to listen to the legion of pub bores, because this Christmas you can fill the stockings (or large, woollen, 1950’s footy sock) of all the family and friends with a cracking selection of facsimile’s and annuals from a land before the premiership.

But I’m going to make you wait…I’m going to build up your appetite. Frankly I’m going to have a bit of a rant!

There are hundreds and hundreds of football related books published every year. The majority try to come out from the summer onwards, every publisher, whether it be a huge conglomerate or a bloke in his back room knows if you are going to make money, you have to do it at Christmas.

So you go into any decent sized bookshop and you are overwhelmed with the sheer choice. So, let me make things easier for you, the first ones you see…ignore! Why? Because these will almost certainly be ‘written’, the term applied so loosely it’s settled round the word’s ankles, by one of that happy band of heroes, the England Football team.

At the end of last year the major publishers lined up the choice pickings from the putative squad and lavished huge deals on them, stoked their burgeoning egos and rubbed their hands in glee at the potential profits. Unfortunately, predictably, the team foundered on the rocks of over-expectation, poor ability and twelve-yard-itis!

The publishing world is agog at the desperately poor sales of these books, but why should they be surprised. Without the tidal wave of success, what is there to commend anyone to read about these rich, bored boys?

How many of us will pick up Frank Lampard’s ‘Totally Frank’ and expect to be thrilled by his ‘difficult’ school days, Latin or footy practice… or John Terry’s monosyballic ramble through the usual clichés. I don’t want to know what Roman’s yacht’s like. You’d have thought that Rio Ferdinand’s ‘Rio: My Story’ would have more to commend it, the rise from Peckham tower block to Cheshire mansion, with drugs tests inbetween. But it misses the point, too often these books tells us way too much about shopping appointments kept and not enough about the others they miss.
Stevie G, surely here’s a genuine working class hero, a man still close enough to his roots to appreciate the real story…but no, another opportunity is lost to mindless whining about not winning the world cup, from the manager through to seventeen year old, everybody’s fault but yours Stevie? Are you sure?
There’s more, Joe Cole’s ‘Cole Play’ (see what he did there), Jermaine Jenas’ ‘No, I didn’t know why I was there either’, Gary Neville’s ‘Gob Open, Head Down’ and the one we were all waiting for, especially if you were an Arsenal fan, Ashley Cole’s ‘My Defence’. What a charmless piece of ungrateful moaning, if ever a footballer deserved everything they get it’s Cole. From his second division Posh and Becks lifestyle to his selfish, self-engineered move to the club that suits him best, everything he says and does screams ‘No Defence’.
You know what, £55,000 a week, for an international defender at a top European club is insulting. Why not just say, ‘that’s all it was, I just wanted more money’. I think we’d accept that…but the rest of it, shush now!

There could’ve been one book that should’ve been worth reading, ‘Wayne Rooney’, ghosted by Hunter Davies, the father of the Football book. There was a chance that hidden in the depths of the biscuit-faced man-child was a tale worth telling and who better to tell it. Another open goal was missed though, like the failure to breach the Macedonian defence the other week a glaring opportunity is spurned.

With the media coverage being so intrusive and so plentiful, there is nothing in these books that can’t be covered in a couple of Sundays by a tabloid…which they already do, publishers have to get those huge advances back somehow…there’s nothing we don’t know already and nothing in these books that enlightens us as to what or why these events happened.

If you don’t care what presents you give folk this Christmas, all the above are piled up in the shops gathering dust…except for the Neville and Jenas books…I made those up.

So, now you know what not to buy this Christmas, what of these glorious trips down memory lane I promised?

Well, before Shoot, Four Four Two and When Saturday Comes, the discerning Football fan, young or old, had two choices, read of comic book sporting heroes in Tiger, Scorcher or Valiant or purchase Charlie Buchan’s Football Monthly. You can do both this Christmas.

Brendan Gallagher’s ‘Sporting Supermen: the True Story of our Childhood Comic Heroes’ is not confined to an examination of the life and times of footballing god Roy Race. It’s a celebration of sporting comic book heroes who generations of youngsters aspired to follow. William Wilson, who despite being born in 1795 and having fought at Waterloo, went on to have an extremely successful athletics career and become world heavyweight champion and play a crucial role in winning the ashes and becoming a Spitfire ace over the next 160 years. Alf Tupper, the tough of the track, the aforementioned Race and Skid Solo, the kind of personality that Nigel Mansell probably dreamed of being.
Gallagher gives us the right balance of reverence and humour and I’m glad he found room for my favourite, ‘Hot-shot Hamish’.

‘Charles Buchan’s Football Monthly’ must have been a godsend for fans from the fifties through to the early seventies; one can only imagine fathers surreptitiously sneaking a son’s copy to the outside lav. This collection of the best of Charles Buchan is an absolute gem, crammed with articles, stories and profiles of a bygone era. There’s no rose–tinting here, we see it all as they saw it then. A photo-spread of Bolton’s cup heroes and the Everton team they beat, relaxing away from the pitch. Canasta, draughts and a song at the piano and no-doubt a bottle of the most expensive Champagne and a spot of Roasting after the cameras have gone.
It had it all, from light-hearted photo spreads to hard-hitting articles about the state of the game and best of all it re-prints genuine adverts from the magazine. I wouldn’t be tempted by Bill Brown, Scottish international goalkeeper modelling Twilley’s string vests, but Peterborough Utd’s advertisement for ‘Professional players wanted, all positions’ did catch my eye. ‘Apply stating date of birth, height, weight, position, married or single, experience and wages required’…yes this was pre-Barry Fry. Absolutely brilliant and thoroughly recommended for any age.

Those of us of a later vintage who were brought up with football in the seventies and eighties, the dark days before a football jersey was a fashion accessory will delight in ‘Studs’ Barney Ronay’s trawl through the era’s football magazines and in particular its staple, the player profile. These were essential reading, favourite cars were either Capri’s or Ferrari’s, nothing in between, you rarely got a footballer who didn’t rate Clint Eastwood above all other actors and Steak and Chips fuelled their exploits in a time before carbohydrates. In my fading memory the answer that stayed with me most was in response to the incendiary question ‘favourite player’…now I’m sure the answer I read week in and week out was ‘Mick Mills, gentleman of the game’…maybe Barney didn’t rate him.
‘Studs’ is from a time far racier than Charles Buchan, but there’s still an element of the underground about it, the parade of cult heroes, Bob Latchford, Charlie George, Alan Hudson, are somewhat careworn compared to their counterparts today…not one of them has shaved a line in his eyebrow, but it’s a fascinating look at a world so close but never to return.

While we are still wallowing in the dim and distant past let me mention ‘Match Day’, a collection of football programmes from the post war to the present day. This has been published by Fuel, a design collective so it concentrates on cover designs and it’s edited by designer Paul Kelly and Bob Stanley who played for St Etienne…the band not the football team.
At £29.95, this isn’t a throwaway present, but for those interested it’s a fantastic tome to dip into, constantly and consistently revealing surprises.

Getting plenty of hype at the moment, especially in the Observer as they are publishing it is ‘You are the Ref’. Paul Trevillion’s cartoon strip has been with us for 50 years now and is currently enjoying a revival. Now personally I never could be bothered with this (likewise, always the only unread bit of my Shoot! – Ed). While I retain an uncanny ability to know when a goal is going to be ruled offside which tends to leave me sat motionless as those around me are going bonkers, I’ve never been interested in the detail! It’s like blokes and instructions…it’s all unnecessary, Refs are either right if the decision is in my team’s favour or wrong if it isn’t, black and white.
I do, however, appreciate that this kind of thing is a spot on for the football anorak in your life.

Does anyone remember the Football Handbook? Me neither, but apparently it was a part-work, you know the sort of thing, buy issue one, get issue two free and it builds up into a beautiful and informative encyclopaedia of everything football related!
Some bright spark has put the whole thing into book form, and despite looking cheap and less than cheerful it reveals hidden depths. Think ‘Studs’ with all the dull bits added, If your target present receiver is a little on the Motson side of anally retentive, this is the one.

Just because our current crop of footballing ‘personalities’ are rubbish, doesn’t mean to say that there haven’t been characters in the game. Take Tommy Docherty - I know what fans of Bristol City, QPR and Wycombe are thinking, but not that one. It’s possible that the term ‘character’ was invented to describe the ‘Doc’ and while he hasn’t been gainfully employed as a football manager for a while his anecdotal skills have been sharpened on the after-dinner and punditry circuits.
‘Hallowed Be Thy Game, The Doc’s Story’ is the man’s life in football, outspoken, honest (it says here) and opinionated, the Doc never lets the opportunity for a one-liner get in the way of his narrative but it’s all the more enjoyable for it.

When I was growing up Alan Brazil was one of those players who was obviously quite successful but you could never quite work out why. He looked like an overweight Art Garfunkle and on the one occasion I saw him turn out for my team…he played like him.
But his career wasn’t without incident and he’s rather re-invented himself as the common man’s Andy Gray.
In his wittily titled biography ‘There’s an Awful Lot of Bubbly in Brazil: the Life and Times of a Bon Viveur’, Brazil reveals a roller coaster life of brilliant highs and desperate lows and finds he’s happy just to have survived.

If Alan Brazil has managed to emerge relatively unscathed from a tumultuous career, have some compassion for Gary Sprake. His nephew Stuart Sprake has written ‘Careless Hands: the Forgotten Truth of Gary Sprake’.
I never saw Sprake play but even I recognise his name as a byword for hapless keeping. This has to be unfair, you don’t become an international without having some talent, Nigel Winterburn is the exception that proves the rule, Sprake junior seeks to redress the balance of a career tainted by claims of corruption and downright incompetence.
A tale of redemption written by a family member, with the full cooperation of Sprake himself has to be taken with a pinch of salt, but I think he deserves an opportunity to have his say.

Some of the best and most though provoking football writing occurs when you get a combination of a good writer and an excellent subject matter. This Christmas we’ve got a couple of cracking candidates. Gordon Burn has built a reputation with books examining the Yorkshire Ripper and Fred West, but he also has a backlist that builds evocative images of the eras they are set in. ‘Best and Edwards’ is an examination of a football club, two personalities and an England that is all but gone. This is no misty eyed, nostalgic view, however, Burn looks at why two careers were lost for wildly different reasons and asks questions of the environment that surrounded them.

Oliver Holt is one of our better football writers, so many of them seem to wear teams’ colours too close to the pen, but Holt seems always able to see through the hype and give you the meat of the story. His ‘If you’re second you are nothing’ is a duel biography of Sir Alex Ferguson and Bill Shankly, men from similar working class backgrounds who rose through undistinguished playing careers to define the art of management in their respective eras.
I was delighted to discover that Holt’s work was inspired and informed by Alan Bullock’s seminal study of the parallel lives of Hitler and Stalin, those of us brought up to dislike the all encompassing success of Liverpool and Man Utd will see no irony there.

Christmas is replete with official and unofficial annuals for most of the premiership clubs. Two of the more substantial are ‘The Official Illustrated History of Manchester united 1878-2006’ and ‘Chelsea Football Club: the Official History’.
The United history is distinguished by one of the worst covers I’ve ever seen on a book of this kind. Photoshop has opened many design doors, but unfortunately there are no doormen, so anybody with a mouse is allowed in. The cover picture is the now famous picture of United holding the European cup aloft, with as it’s centre piece the most outrageous piece of grandstanding ever seen on a football podium, David May’s face leering over the trophy. One never imagined you’d see the two together…actually one never assumed you’d see him on the pitch and one was right.
Our heroic designer had his one idea for the year and instead of May’s doughy fizzog we get Bobby Charlton’s surprisingly hirsute head, further examination reveals other bit part players replaced by legends.
So appalled was I by this cover I didn’t look inside, but its weighty, very illustrated and somewhere along the line we are all related to a United fan…easy present.
As for Chelsea, well I found this one a complete surprise, turns out they’ve got a history. For someone who considers Chelsea to be the footballing equivalent of the Asbo millionaire lottery winner, to discover that a book on their history isn’t a couple of pics of a thug in flares kicking a copper and then 300 pages of Roman, his yacht, his mates, John and Frank arm in arm, Joe Cole and a page three model…you know the kind of thing, well I was taken a back. Yet curiously there are omissions, no mention of their 6-0 mauling at Loftus Road on a sunny Easter Monday, yet they did choose to include photographs of David Speedie…bizarre!
For Chelsea, one feels, the history is still in the writing and as yet we know not where that particular story will take us, If only agent Ken had been allowed to complete his mission.

Every year produces modern stories to rank alongside any of the oft-repeated folklore of the game. Last year there was an excellent book on East Stirlingshire called ‘Pointless’ and their infamy as the team that couldn’t win, or Gary Imlach’s ‘My father and other sporting heroes’, a moving tribute to his father and the generation of footballers who never received the rewards they were due. This deservedly won the William Hill Book award and is an antidote to the current crop of biographies. They are both available in paperback this year and well worth catching up with.

I’ve dug out some gems from this year. ‘Northern Soul’ by Ed Jones is an inside look at Wigan’s first season in the premiership, it’s standard fare and it’s a story that has been told before. In an age of the domination of a handful of super clubs it’s still a tale worth returning to.
‘Ooh Aah Stantona’ by Phil Stant is a tale from the lower leagues, warm and conversational, it’s a reminder that for every Ashley Cole there are hundreds of hardworking professionals who consider £55 worth fighting for.
There is a great book to be written about the current travails of Hearts, ‘Heartfelt’ isn’t the great book, but it’s not bad either. It’s the story of Aiden Smith, a committed Hibs fan who chooses to spend a year following Hearts, ‘supping Bovril from the Devil’s cup’ is the subtitle…I couldn’t do it.

If you like your stocking fillers cheap and large, Myriad books have put together ‘Football Grounds from the Air’, a series of aerial views of all the football grounds in the English and Scottish leagues…a lot of book for £6.99.

So there you have it, there are others available, but I reckon I’ve picked out the real winners, if you want to buy a present this Christmas then you could do worse than any of the above. If you want to know the best football book around this Christmas, well it’s none of the above. There are two I rate higher than all the others, David Peace’s imagining of Clough and The 44 days at Leeds, ‘Damned Utd’ (see a previous issue of our fanzine for a review) and a book called ‘All Round Genius’, Mick Collins’ study of Max Woosnam, Olympian, MCC cricketer, shooting gold medallist, crack snooker player and golfer and no mean footballer to boot, a Corinthian Casual in every sense of the word. A character to grace the pages of ‘Sporting Supermen’ and a rattling good read.

Happy Christmas, good reading and may your Boxing Day fixture defy the weather!

Sporting Supermen: the true stories of our childhood comic heroes by Brendan Gallagher. 1845131657. £12.99 Aurum press.

The Best of Charles Buchan’s ‘Football Monthly’ edited By Simon Inglis.
1905624042. £16.99. English Heritage.

Studs!: the greatest retro football annual the world has ever seen by Barney Ronay.
0091913640. £9.99. Ebury press.

You are the Ref by Paul Trevellion.
0852650698. £12.99, Guardian.

Football Handbook: The Glory Years.
0462006816. £9.99 Marshall Cavendish ELT.

Match Day: football programmes from the Post war to the Premiership by Paul Kelly and Bob Stanley.
0955006147. £29.95 Fuel.

There’s an Awful Lot of Bubbly in Brazil: The Life and Times of a Bon Viveur by Alan Brazil.
1905156243. £18.99. Highdown.

The Doc: My story-Hallowed be thy Game by Tommy Docherty.
0755315545, 18.99 Headline.

Careless Hands: The Forgotten Truth of Gary Sprake by Stuart Sprake and Tim Johnson.
0752436902, £18.99 Tempus.

Best And Edwards by Gordon Burn.
0571215807, £16.99 Faber and Faber.

If You’re Second You are Nothing: Ferguson and Shankley, by Oliver Holt.
140588915, £18.99, Macmillan

The Official illustrated History of Manchester United- the Full Story and Complete Record
1878-2006. 0752876031, £25 Orion

Chelsea Football Club: The official history in Pictures by Rick Glanvill.
0755314670, 19.99 Headline.

Football Grounds from the Air by Ian Hay and Cassandra Wells.
1904736564, £6.99 Myriad.

Northern Soul: One Little Club’s Big Adventure by Ed Jones.
0316732516, £10.99 Little, Brown.

Ooh Aah Stantona by Phil Stant.
1844542092, £17.99 John Blake.

Heartfelt by Aiden Smith.
1841585106, £6.99 Berlinn ltd.

All Round Genius: The Unknown Story of Britain's Greatest Sportsman
by Mick Collins 14.99, aurum press.

The Damned Utd
by David Peace. £12.99, faber and faber.