Book reviews

by Kevin Drinkell
Black and White, £14.99
Reviewed by Pete Green
From WSC 293 July 2011

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Kevin Drinkell was a great centre-forward whose career never quite hit the top. There's a credible argument that he was unlucky not to have made the England squads of the late 1980s. This was partly down to the wrong transfers at the wrong times, admits the player in this autobiography, and partly due to the intransigence and skulduggery of Robert Chase, his chairman at Norwich, in handling approaches from Manchester United and Tottenham.

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Scotland's Great Football Bosses
by Michael Grant & Rob Robertson
Birlinn, £18.99
Reviewed by Craig McCracken
From WSC 298 December 2011

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Scotland's uncanny knack of producing football managers of the highest calibre over the past century continues to perplex and fascinate in equal measure. Few footballing subjects have inspired as much analysis, with Michael Grant and Rob Robertson's book being the latest addition to this busy genre.

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A year on the frontline with a proper club
by Michael Calvin
Corinthian, £8.99
Reviewed by Neil Andrews
From WSC 301 March 2012

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Millwall and success are not common bedfellows. As such you could be forgiven for thinking this offering is little more than an attempt to cash in on the Lions' campaign of 2009-10 that ended in play-off success. Michael Calvin struck lucky with the happy ending, but there is a lot more to Family than a simple recap of a winning season. It offers a fascinating and entertaining insight into what is described as a "proper club" by the book's subtitle.

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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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The Reinvention of Leeds United
Anthony Clavane
Yellow Jersey, £16.99
Reviewed by David Stubbs
From WSC 285 November 2010

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Thanks to the searing influence of David Peace, Leeds Utd currently burn vividly on the collective consciousness. It helps that their team-sheet remained so constant under Don Revie – nine of the 1963-64 promotion squad were still regulars nearly a decade later. Even many non-supporters of a certain age can recite the classic line-up, as easily as if it were the Dad's Army platoon – Sprake, Reaney, Cooper, Madeley, etc, invariably culminating in Bates – Mick Bates, the perennial substitute and Private Sponge of the organisation.

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