by Don Shaw
Ebury Press, £16.99
Reviewed by Peter Gutteridge
From WSC 268 June 2009
The story of Brian Clough’s triumphs at Derby County and his fractious relationship with chairman Sam Longson has been told many times. Now we have another film and book, The Damned United, in which Clough’s supposed inner demons are explored. It is therefore a huge challenge for Don Shaw to produce a fresh look at this key period of Derby’s history – but he succeeds.
Never turn the other cheek
by Pat Crerand
Harper Sport, £18.99
Reviewed by Ashley Shaw
From WSC 254 April 2008
You would struggle to find a more optimistic Manchester United pundit than Patrick Crerand. Ever bullish about the club’s prospects and reluctant to criticise the team’s poorest displays, he makes an enthusiastic cheerleader and the perfect summariser for MUTV. The title of his autobiography portrays the subject as an uncompromising Scot unafraid of settling an argument with his fists. Yet throughout it throws up surprises. During an appearance on the Kop to take in a Liverpool match in the 1960s, he and some fellow United players suffer Scouse witticisms but no worse, “a contrast with today’s Liverpool supporter”, he suggests.
A Football History
by Gary James
James Ward, £21.95
Reviewed by Joyce Woolridge
From WSC 258 August 2008
Gary James’s ambitious aim is to tell the history of football in the Manchester area and thereby establish its importance to the city and its environs. The game was banned there 400 years ago because the inhabitants had been “greatly wronged… by a company of lewd and disordered persons… breaking many men’s glass windows at their pleasures and other great enormities”. As James points out, the authorities have not always been sensible of the myriad benefits of what became the region’s favourite pastime. You can hear James’s exasperation as he writes: “It says much about how the early history of football has been viewed in Manchester that the only plaque commemorating the history of [Manchester] City is actually incorrectly positioned.”
Despite the big-name signings, native players have always been the majority in Serie A, thanks in part to a highly developed youth structure. Matthew Barker reports on how “chicks” grow into “cadets”
The recent press panic that foreign players “as young as 16” were joining Premier League squads and enjoying the benefits of youth-team set-ups at the expense of home-grown talent was a little misleading. Certainly compared with their English counterparts, the average Italian 16-year-old will have been part of a centralised, dedicated training programme for at least four or five years, and many will already be fairly attuned to the notion of being a professional footballer. Foreign imports, particularly South American, may still feature prominently in the upper echelons of the Italian game, but last season 73 per cent of players in Serie A were home-grown, nearly twice the number in the Premier League.
To suggest that the French midfielder has an attitude problem would be like saying Tewkesbury has been a bit damp of late. James Eastham reports on a career that has gone nowhere, via pretty much everywhere
Stéphane Dalmat scored a glorious goal in the Champions League last season. Playing for Bordeaux, he picked up the ball on the halfway line, breezed past an opponent and lobbed PSV Eindhoven’s goalkeeper, Gomes, from 25 yards. In the Sky TV studio, Jamie Redknapp, Dalmat’s team-mate at Spurs in 2003-04, described the midfielder along the lines of being “one of the most skilful players I’ve ever seen”, but labelled his attitude “shocking”.