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Qualification failure leaves England searching for answers but are supporters aware of how heavy their expectations weigh? 

We had the cover of this issue worked out ahead of the Croatia match. “Disaster for England” would have been the headline, with two players discussing the fact that qualifying meant Steve McClaren was still the manager. We should have known better. Still, in the wake of the Wembley debacle, it has been suggested that England’s worst ever qualification failure may yet have a silver lining if it leads to the “root and branch investigation” of English football promised by the FA.

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A History of the Corinthian Football Club
by Rob Cavallini
Stadia, £17.99
Reviewed by Harry Pearson
From WSC 255 May 2008 

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Founded in 1882, Corinthian Football Club took their name not from the Greek city-state, but from a word meaning “a man of fashion and pleasure”. And right from the start pleasure was an integral part of the Corinthian ethos, with failure to attend any of the lavish meals presented to the team on their trips around Britain likely to result in a player’s expulsion from the club.

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My Story
by Tommy Docherty with Les Scott
Headline, £18.99
Reviewed by Joyce Woolridge
From WSC 240 February 2007 

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In these times, when making a few appearances for a Premiership club and being caught brawling outside a lap-dancing club is deemed enough for a three-book deal, Tommy Docherty’s weighty life serves as a salutary counter to such instant celebrity. This is a genuine autobiography, covering in detail his hard but respectable upbringing in a Glasgow tenement, his playing days as an uncompromising but skilful and accomplished wing-half for Preston and Arsenal, and his eventful managerial career at club and international level. Social change and the transformation of the status of footballers probably mean that future autobiographies can never have such depth of interest, replacing stories of early privation and struggle with 300 pages about the contents of their garages, address books and wardrobes.

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Ferguson and Shankly
by Oliver Holt
Pan, £8.99
Reviewed by David Stubbs
From WSC 250 December 2007

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Sir Alex Ferguson and Bill Shankly have some things in common, opines Oliver Holt, not least in their sharing of the sentiments expressed in the title to this double biography. For Ferguson, the need to prevail – to compensate, perhaps, for the setbacks and disappointments of his early working life – was deep-dyed. He was even known, when a game of cards with his players wasn’t going well, to chuck the entire pack across the coach in fearsome, capillary-bursting pique. As for Shanks, he outlined the attitudes that made him practically a hermit to football in an uncharacteristically revealing letter to a journalist in 1955. “I used to think that it would be better to die than to lose,” he wrote. “To enable me to reach the top, I went to all extremes, no woman, no smoking, early to bed – this went for years, but it was worthwhile.”

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Twenty years ago the home team were struggling to stay in the top flight – today they are struggling to get back into the Football League. But at least they have a nice new ground, complete in almost all respect. By Josh Widdicombe

Outside Oxford train station at one o’clock on a Saturday afternoon, no one has any idea what the ­Kassam Stadium is, let alone how to get there. A group of teenagers, who have found some steps to sit on and won’t be moving for anyone, look at me with confusion. A bus driver gives me a shake of the head, implying public transport is too much trouble by half. I settle for a taxi. We pull out of the car park and are overtaken by a bus, whose destination is “Football Ground”.

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