Me, My Dad And The Dons
by Stuart Donald
Hachette Scotland, £ 12.99
Reviewed by Keith Davidson
From WSC 284 October 2010
Despite the title, this book has nothing to do with Sir Alex Ferguson and his time at Pittodrie. Instead it's a memoir by Stuart Donald, looking back on his childhood as a Perth-based Aberdeen fan in the late 1970s and 1980s, and how his relationship with his father developed while they watched the Dons together during the club's most successful era.
Life Of A Football Legend
by John Harding
DB Publishing, £16.99
Reviewed by Terry Staunton
From WSC 284 October 2010
Transfer negotiations between the two world wars may not have been as rife with the creative – and occasionally dubious – wheeler-dealings of modern times, but there were still a few inspired solutions to securing the services of a top player. In 1929, when Alex James was looking for a move away from a supposedly tight-fisted Preston to what he considered a bigger and more ambitious club, he resisted overtures from both Liverpool and Manchester City before Arsenal stepped in with an ingeniously structured offer.
The Story Of The Greatest FA Cup Final Shock Of All Time
by Lance Hardy
Orion, £18.99
Reviewed by Ed Upright
From WSC 283 September 2010
As a Sunderland supporter born nine years later, I have, on occasion, been accused of intergenerational grumpiness towards the club's 1973 FA Cup win. Acutely aware of the folklore that surrounds it – Bob Stokoe's trilby, John Peel's favourite ever gig (the Faces in the town a week after the semi-final), street parties and rented colour TVs – I've witnessed more rain-soaked half-time raffles drawn by members of the winning squad, while play-off hopes foundered or relegation fears worsened, than I care to remember.
The Autobiography
by Viv Anderson with Lynton Guest
Right Recordings, £17.99
Reviewed by Al Needham
From WSC 280 June 2010
Viv Anderson, as we all know, was the first black player to turn out for the England first team so you’d expect his biography to be a tale of personal redemption and inner dignity in the face of the monkey-whoopers and banana-throwers – A Rangy Lope To Freedom, if you will.
In a golden age for domestic Dutch football, Feyenoord and Ajax often found the going tougher at home than they did in European competition. Ernst Bouwes looks back on the 1970-71 Eredivisie season
The long-term significance
This season the Dutch league was arguably the best in Europe if not the world, being host to the 1970 European Cup winners Feyenoord and the team who were about to succeed them, Ajax. PSV reached the semi-final of the Cup-Winners Cup and FC Twente the quarter-final of the Fairs Cup. Between 1969 and 1978 these four teams would play in eight European finals and win six.