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Never mind Escape To Victory, Mike Bassett or Jimmy Grimble – where’s our Raging Bull, our This Sporting Life? Even a Seabiscuit would do
Adam Bate considers why so few former goalkeepers have been managers in the Premier League
Joey Barton may have felt he was insulting Neil Warnock by likening him to the eponymous film hero Mike Bassett, but there is no identikit for the football manager. All sorts of folk have trodden the touchline in England, but only two goalkeepers have ever managed in the Premier League. Nearly two decades on from Mike Walker’s sacking at Everton, it is surely high time we asked the question: where are all the goalkeeper managers?
Rob Hughes wonders why so many football-related dramas fail to strike the right tone, especially in their action scenes
Lord knows they’ve tried. Ricky Tomlinson as England manager. Sean Bean tanking around in a Sheffield United strip. Sylvester Stallone between the sticks. Even Adam Faith as pint-sized proprietor of – oh yes – Leicester Forest (from a script by Jackie Collins, no less). All of them as inept, unconvincing and downright embarrassing as each other. So just why is it that films about football never work? Certainly not through lack of an audience. It’s a sport, lest we forget, adored by millions the world over, one with its own in-built dramatic arc. A ready-made fantasy in which slumdogs really can become superstars. Never mind Mike Bassett or Jimmy Grimble. Where’s our Raging Bull, our This Sporting Life? Even a Seabiscuit would do.
The Autobiography of Ian Holloway
Green Umbrella, £16.99
Reviewed by Matt Nation
From WSC 250 December 2007
Although Ian Holloway himself admits to being “not a particularly nice kid”, it doesn’t appear to have stopped his eye for a wrong ’un extending into adult life. After Ollie is dropped as a low-paid teenager at Bristol Rovers, Mike Channon attempts to console him by first by offering him £1,000 and then snatching it away at the last second. Three lines later, however, Channon is described as a “fantastic bloke”. Both Bobby Gould’s and Dave Bassett’s man-management skills are (once again) shown to be about as sensitive as a nipple wrench in the bogs, yet Ollie “likes” and “respects” his former gaffers. Only with Wally Downes does Ollie eschew praise with faint damnation in favour of a full-on, and fully deserved, kicking after the former Wimbledon man cracked wise about the new boy’s wife’s chemotherapy.