Author Archive

(and other football stories)
by Mark Hodkinson
Pomona, £7.99
Reviewed by Tom Davies
From WSC 286 December 2010

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Rochdale have long been a totem of English football's fourth tier, a traditional by-word for lower-division failure alongside "the likes of" Hartlepool, Crewe, Torquay or Macclesfield. All of those have nonetheless enjoyed a promotion or two in the past four decades. Rochdale hadn't, until last season when they finally ended a 36-year spell in the basement. Mark Hodkinson had been there for all of them.

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The Autobiography
by Dwight Yorke
Pan Books, £7.99
Reviewed by Damon Green
From WSC 280 June 2010

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Tits. He's seen a few. Especially in the latter days of his career. Graeme Souness tried – he says – to break his leg during a five-a-side game. Roy Keane has the management skills of a psychopathic Mr Bean. And Peter Andre has no idea how close he came to being strangled to death.

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The Autobiography
by Viv Anderson with Lynton Guest
Right Recordings, £17.99
Reviewed by Al Needham
From WSC 280 June 2010

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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.

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A History In Ten Matches
by Jonathan Wilson
Orion, £14.99
Reviewed by Harry Pearson
From WSC 281 July 2010

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Jonathan Wilson produces so much high-class writing about football that, had I not met him on a couple of occasions, I'd be tempted to believe he was actually a workers' collective. The Anatomy of England is Wilson's fourth book on the game and while the subject – the England national team in all its splendid misery – might seem less exotic, esoteric and altogether more familiar than those covered in his excellent Behind the Curtain and Inverting the Pyramid the result is every bit as thought-provoking and entertaining.

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by Matt Le Tissier
by Writers Name
Harper Sport, £18.99
Reviewed by Tim Springett
From WSC 279 May 2010

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In keeping with his career, Matt Le Tissier’s autobiography is an interesting read but doesn’t truly satisfy. One reason for this is that both the front and back covers, as well as the internal layout,
look appalling.

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