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How Britain’s greatest football manager was made at Aberdeen
by Michael Grant
Aurum Press, £18.99
Reviewed by Keith Davidson
From WSC 338 April 2015

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In September 1985, Aberdeen manager Alex Ferguson was among the coaching staff when Scotland played Wales at Ninian Park in a tense World Cup qualifier. He was sitting next to national team boss Jock Stein on the bench. The paths of Stein and Ferguson had crossed many times over the previous couple of decades; as a friend and mentor Stein was a huge influence on Ferguson’s professional life. When the senior man collapsed towards the end of that game, then died in the stadium’s medical room shortly afterwards, it had a profound effect. It was Ferguson who shouldered the responsibility of calling Stein’s family.

This is not the only death to feature in Michael Grant’s book on Ferguson’s formative years. His first season as manager at Aberdeen was turbulent both on the field and off. Sacked by St Mirren in May 1978, he joined the Dons, launched an unfair dismissal claim against his former employer which he lost, had disagreements with some of the established players at Pittodrie and, crucially, his father was diagnosed with lung cancer.

During a bad-tempered away game at St Mirren, of all places, in February 1979 Ferguson’s father died in a Glasgow hospital. The news was broken to him after the final whistle. At the time the Aberdeen manager was still only 37 years old. This kind of detail is the strength of Grant’s book. There is evidence of Ferguson’s pathological competitive streak, there are quotes from his former players – sometimes revealing, sometimes funny – and an inevitable warm glow for any Dons-supporting readers as domestic and European successes provide staging points in the narrative.

What Fergie Rises provides more than anything else however is an explanation of what he had learned, and endured, by the time he joined Manchester United in 1986. When the call came from Old Trafford Ferguson had more than 12 years under his belt in football management with East Stirlingshire, St Mirren and Aberdeen. He achieved his greatest successes in Scottish football by instilling the belief in the Dons players that they could beat Celtic and Rangers in Glasgow, something Grant demonstrates comprehensively. Three League titles and other domestic trophies followed. When Liverpool humbled Aberdeen in the European Cup in 1980, Ferguson made notes. In 1981, holders Ipswich Town were dumped out of the UEFA Cup. By 1983, the European Cup-Winners Cup and European Super Cup had both been secured.

For those who have a one-dimensional view of Ferguson as the red-nosed grandee of the Sky era, Grant’s stories about his pragmatism and his willingness to learn from his mistakes – even to admit them – paint a fuller picture. An argument in the wake of a Scottish Cup tie in March 1985, for example, saw striker Frank McDougall punch Ferguson to the ground. The manager was canny enough to realise that the club’s top scorer had to stay in the side irrespective; a matter of weeks later the Dons retained the League title. Long before he joined Manchester United, Ferguson knew what it took to be a winner.

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Simply the best
by Tom Miller
Black & White, £9.99
Reviewed by Gordon Cairns
From WSC 337 March 2015

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The radio football parody Only An Excuse captured the Scottish perception of Jim Baxter almost to perfection back in the 1980s. His character explains his most famous performance, against England in 1967 where at one point he juggled with the ball: “I had a couple of great teachers… and three White & Mackays and a double Grouse, before I went on the pitch, like. That would explain the languid fluidity.” Unfortunately, the only inaccuracy was the choice of spirit – Baxter preferred Bacardi over whisky. Tom Miller tries to expand on the popular caricature of an incredible footballer who loved a drink by offering an explanation for Baxter’s self-destruction in this new biography, with somewhat limited results.

James Curran Baxter is often described as Scotland’s greatest player but ended a 12-year playing career with only ten domestic medals, which was not a lot given that Rangers were the dominant team in Scotland for most of his time at Ibrox. Perhaps that is why his eulogists focus on individual performances, including two victories at Wembley and being picked for a Rest of the World select. However the extent of Baxter’s drinking and lack of training must surely limit claims that he was truly world class. Although alcohol abuse was rife in the football culture of the 1960s, it’s questionable whether you can consistently operate at the top level with high volumes of alcohol in your bloodstream – Pelé and Eusébio weren’t playing with hangovers.

It seems Baxter’s problem was that he simply didn’t value the natural ability that raised him out of the ordinary, his career a long attempt at sabotaging the skill he possessed. In the most interesting chapter, sports psychologist Tom Lucas examines how never being acknowledged by his birth parents as their son during his playing career may have affected Baxter. (He grew up thinking his real mother was his aunt, who he was raised by.) Lucas’s conjecture is that the pitch was the only place Baxter could escape from the pain of rejection by his mother while his womanising could be connected to his feelings of abandonment.

Published two years after what was billed as “the definitive biography”, the bulk of this book rehashes the well-worn tales of Baxter’s drinking, gambling and occasional footballing. Miller, an in-house commentator for Rangers, didn’t have to wander far in his choice of interviewees, the majority of whom seem to come from the club’s “family”, including current defender Darren McGregor and youth-team coach Davie Kirkwood, I assume because both had played for Fife clubs like Baxter, hardly justifying their inclusion. Baxter’s own voice is barely heard, yet for most of his playing career he wrote syndicated columns. Although ghost-written, surely a trawl through these would have unearthed something more relevant than how McGregor felt when he joined Rangers.

The inclusion of two poems and a selection of pen portraits from the back of football cards feel like fillers to make the book up to the required length. There is no interview with Alex Ferguson, who played alongside Baxter; Scotland’s greatest manager’s views on getting the best from Scotland’s most talented player would have been compelling. Neither is there any input from Baxter’s sons or first wife, which could have given greater insight into how he felt about family, especially if he had issues about abandonment.

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The life and crimes of 
a footballing enigma
by Alan Pattullo
Mainstream, £18.99
Reviewed by Archie MacGregor
From WSC 336 February 2015

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For someone who so determinedly shunned the media throughout his playing career Duncan Ferguson had quite a knack for grabbing headlines. The two were intrinsically related of course and contributed to him polarising opinion like few other Scots-born players have in recent decades, with perhaps only Graeme Souness ahead in the queue. This book lays bare not only justifications for his brooding hostility towards the press pack but also in turn how such unwillingness to explain himself fuelled antipathy towards him, especially in Scotland.

For those with strongly held opinions over whether Ferguson was a chronic underachiever with delinquent tendencies or a mixed-up kid who just needed to feel appreciated it’s unlikely this thoughtful and even-handed appraisal by Alan Pattullo will persuade them to change camps. Among the undecided there is simply just a lot more to ruminate over.

On the playing side the book chronicles Ferguson’s emergence as an exciting prospect at Dundee United, a then record-breaking £4 million transfer fee when he moved to Rangers in 1993, his failure there and the headbutt on Raith Rovers’ Jock McStay that led to a short jail sentence, a smattering of generally underwhelming international appearances and finally rejuvenation of sorts, eight sendings-off and near folk-hero status in two spells at Everton. Off the field Ferguson also emerges as no less paradoxical. For every interviewee testifying that he was “fun”, “sensitive” or had “a heart of gold” there is another portraying him as a “hellraiser”, “cruel” or “difficult to like”.

It’s hard not to escape the view that Ferguson’s early experiences under the successful but authoritarian Jim McLean at Tannadice shaped his seemingly ambivalent attitude towards the game. Along with notoriously long contracts to tie players down, there were results-driven pay packages with low basic wages topped up with relatively handsome appearance and win bonuses. This bred a “brutal” culture within the club where players competed ferociously with one another to make sure they were in the matchday squads. Newcomers were treated as unwelcome potential rivals and details of how Ferguson once humiliated a young German trialist by cutting up his suit in the dressing room make for particularly uncomfortable reading.

His penchant for getting into trouble ultimately led to a spell in Barlinnie prison. This was viewed as harsh by some but three previous convictions for assault prior to the McStay incident hardly stood him in good stead in court. However no one in the book offers any support for the SFA also seeking to impose a 12-game ban as its own punishment – a move that wholly soured Ferguson’s relations with the Association and all but extinguished his desire to play for Scotland.

It was letters of support from Everton fans, including one from a young Wayne Rooney, that Ferguson credits with keeping him going through those dark days and helped forge the strong relationship he has with the club to this day. Pattullo, like others who have taken a keen interest in his tumultuous career, could barely imagine him ever becoming a coach but there he is, an integral part of Roberto Martínez’s back-up team at Goodison Park. Heavens he’s even started speaking to the press occasionally. Maybe the autobiography will be next.

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Rangers, Britain & Scottish independence
edited by Alan Bisset and Alasdair McKillop
Luath Press, £8.99
Reviewed by Gordon Cairns
From WSC 331 September 2014

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The editors of Born Under A Union Flag have taken on an ambitious task: to quantify Rangers fans’ relationship not only with Scotland but the United Kingdom as a whole. A difficult terrain to map, as historically the club has been considered the team of a union that may be dissolving. That Rangers are in this position as a Unionist team in a country falling out of love with the UK is due to a particular set of circumstances which occurred at the turn of the last century, when a challenger was sought for a successful team of immigrants. The fanbase of this new champion just happened to be drawn from the Catholic-free zone of the Govan shipyards.

As Scotland has moved from being strongly identified with Britain, the position of Rangers has shifted too, from the establishment team to that of outsiders, while ironically it is the “rebel” club Celtic who have had one of the UK’s most right-wing home secretaries of recent memory, John Reid, on their board. The 14 authors, representing both opinions on the issue of Scottish independence and all bar one fans of the club, examine Rangers’ place in the UK with varying degrees of success, using a mixture of personal experience and historical perspective, with the latter the more persuasive to this non-Old Firm fan.

Historian Graham Walker convincingly charts the shift from Rangers as the establishment team to “becoming at odds with the country as a whole”, and casts light on how the support evolved to deal with this change, illustrated through the recasting of God Save the Queen as a subversive anthem. The song gained popularity in the 1980s as the club fell out of favour with mainstream opinion. Although the purpose is to wind up the anti-monarchy opposition, and I must admit it has this effect on me, Walker describes a rendition of the national anthem to illustrate his argument that many fellow fans are more concerned with showing their loyalty than supporting the team. Rangers’ last game in Europe was a must win against NK Maribor in 2011; as the team pushed for the decisive goal in the last few minutes, the crowd began to chorus the dirge-like anthem rather than the Ibrox roar, destroying the momentum on the pitch while creating an atmosphere of resignation and defeat, and so the team failed to progress.

While calling for a constitution to be created for the club, editor Alasdair McKillop looks to Barcelona as a model. He argues that “Celtic have a morally infused narrative that is entwined with the socio-economic progress of the community”, backing up their claims to be “more than a club”. In my opinion, as Rangers’ estrangement from Scottish society grows and their fans continue to utilise British symbolism and song, they could mirror Barcelona’s “other” club, Espanyol (ie “the Spanish”), and become the quintessentially British club, or that of the outsiders – especially if Scotland breaks from the union.

“Better Together” or “Yes” campaigning pollsters will be sorely disappointed if they read this book hoping to get an insight into how this considerable section of Scottish society might vote on September 18. However what it does do is take the temperature of Rangers fans at an important juncture of Scottish history.

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by Stephen O’Donnell
Ringwood, £9.99
Reviewed by Mark Poole
From WSC 325 March 2014

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Football fiction generally has a bad reputation, which makes Paradise Road a moderately pleasant surprise. It’s competently written, with likeable characters and an enjoyable plot. It’s told from a range of perspectives but the loose storyline concentrates on Kevin McGarry, a Celtic fan dealing with the premature end of his own playing career and consequently seeking fulfilment following his team, socialising with his friends and family and working as a joiner for the council. The story provides an experience of life in the thick of the Celtic v Rangers rivalry, takes an occasional detour from Scotland to Prague and includes enjoyable chapters where McGarry fantasises about the details of his football career that got away.

It’s set in the late 1990s, when Celtic were fielding popular, relatively talented players, from John Collins to Jorge Cadete. The team were playing well but still, somehow, losing almost every major trophy to Rangers. It’s fertile ground for Celtic nostalgia, safe in the retrospective knowledge that the good times would soon be back.

The story is told with sharp humour that can make a fan throwing his beer can at an obnoxious policeman’s innocent horse seem funny while the interaction between the central character and his friends and family is engaging. As always with football fiction, there is a difficult balance to strike between telling a story and pontificating about issues affecting the game. Once or twice Paradise Road feels close to a lecture on subjects that will perhaps be too familiar to most of its readers. No matter how much you agree that Celtic and Rangers are not simply two sides of the same coin, or that Scotland’s national anthem, Flower of Scotland, is as potentially offensive as any Celtic songs, it’s still likely to be hard work to read about in anything but the most concise way. This is a shame because the book flows so well in other places that’s it’s clear the author is no boring obsessive.

Among the interesting topics it deals with is an honest appraisal of how thrashing Aberdeen, who had dominated Scottish football so recently, becomes much less satisfying in an era when contrasting incomes leave the clubs mismatched. And it provides a subtly impassioned reminder of how much more enjoyable the matchday experience was before the gentrification of football. It’s an argument that’s been heard frequently elsewhere, but fiction provides an excellent context for the value of one fan’s perspective. The book will appeal to many Celtic fans, while some of the more universal topics may make it of interest to fans of other clubs, particularly outside Scotland.

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