Book reviews

The Inside Story of a Football Scout
by Les Padfield
Sportsbooks, £8.99
Reviewed by Pete Green
From WSC 291 May 2011

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Scouting is one of those activities that runs in the background of football, like a virus scanner, mostly unseen, but with a key role to keep the other stuff working smoothly. Les Padfield's Scouting For Moyes offers an diverting glimpse into the underworld of hastily scribbled player reports and complimentary sandwiches and, in so doing, goes further than many football books to shed fresh light on other aspects of the game.

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Arsenal Football Club
From Woolwich to Whittaker
by Brian Glanville
GCR Books, £11.95
Reviewed by David Stubbs
From WSC 296 Oct 2011

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Over The Bar
Memories of My Career with Arsenal and Wales
by Jack Kelsey
GCR Books, £12.95
Reviewed by David Stubbs
From WSC 296 Oct 2011

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Both of these titles involve journalist and lifelong Arsenal supporter Brian Glanville, who began his literary career aged just 19 when he persuaded Cliff Bastin to allow him to ghostwrite his memoirs. In 1952, aged just 21, Glanville wrote one of the first histories of Arsenal, from 1886 to 1952, when, unbeknown to the author, his team were about to embark on one of the most fallow periods of their history.

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The Tragedy of Robert Enke
by Ronald Reng
Yellow Jersey Press, £16.99
Reviewed by Mike Ticher
From WSC 297 November 2011

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Considering young men are a group at high risk of suicide, the number of active footballers who have taken their own lives is surprisingly small. Dave Clement, Alan Davies and Justin Fashanu are perhaps the best known in Britain, all in their declining football years. That makes Robert Enke a rarity among rarities: the Hannover 96 goalkeeper was at his peak, in a season that should have led to the World Cup, when he walked in front of a train in November 2009.

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My Life on Football's B-Roads
by Chris Hargreaves
The Friday Project, £8.99
Reviewed by Piers Pennington
From WSC 299 January 2012

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If you were told that a footballer called Hargreaves had written an autobiography you might not be surprised, although Chris is probably not the first name that would spring to mind. Despite the unpromising title, arising from a tenuous connection between the author having played for a lot of clubs and having long hair, it proves to be a thoroughly enjoyable and – in an immediate, haphazard, unpolished kind of way – well-written account of what life as a lower-League professional footballer is really like.

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The Autobiography
by Dominic Matteo

Great Northern, £16.99
Reviewed by Simon Creasey
From WSC 300 February 2012

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He may have made fewer than 150 appearances, scoring a measly four goals in the process, but at Elland Road Dominic Matteo's name ranks right up there with other legendary figures from Leeds' halcyon days. Whether home or away, Matteo's name is sung every week by Leeds supporters to commemorate the "fucking great goal" he scored against AC Milan in a Champions League tie at the San Siro.

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