Book reviews

Thom Gibbs looks at the latest kit designs and finds only a few sartorial gems among the racks of polyester horrors and 'Climacool' fabrics

Pre-season is a time to nurse gently the bruises that football has inflicted on our souls in the past nine months. As the new campaign approaches we revert to a position of blind optimism and unreserved excitement. Nothing captures that dumbly hopeful glow better than the first glimpse of next season’s shirts. What unforgettable moments will we associate with our side’s new kit? Will it be remembered as a cocky disaster like England’s Admiral strips of the barren 1970s? Or surreal triumph, à la the radioactive bird poo kit inexorably linked to Norwich’s 1990s European adventures?

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In his new book The Manager, Barney Ronay looks back to the early 1990s and hears from Graham Taylor what life was like for him and his family –  hounded by the media and victims of an angrey new mood of public "disappointment"

Graham Taylor was England manager from 1990 to 1993. He took England to one tournament and narrowly missed out on another. Still, the defining images of his reign are all variations on the theme of excruciating failure. Taylor was not a showman, a big personality or a silk hat impresario, yet he remains one of the most famous of all England managers. Perhaps this is because his appearance coincided with the England manager, whoever the England manager might have been, becoming wider public property for the first time, in the same way the actor playing James Bond is, or the host of the Radio One breakfast show or the Minister for Pensions. And make no mistake Taylor was huge in his time.

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Visits to exotic climes are nothing new for English clubs. Simon Hart charts a trailblazing trip a century ago

"The pioneers of football in foreign lands.” It sounds like a slogan dreamed up by some Premier League executive bent on selling the “39th game”. In fact these were the words of Everton director EA Bainbridge describing the ground breaking tour of Argentina and Uruguay jointly undertaken 100 years ago by his club and Tottenham Hotspur. The duo made history by facing off in Buenos Aires in the first  match played between two professional teams in Latin America.

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Amid anger and recriminations, has David Beckham's US "project" failed? Neil Forsyth considers an alternative view

While most British footballers watched Ayia Napa slide sadly away through aero-plane windows before returning to pre-season training, the most famous of all has had a far more demanding month. David Beckham returned to America and a controversy that could bring a premature end to a relationship that always seemed built on artificiality and misjudgement on the player’s part.

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Huw Richards responds to Roberto Martinez's departure as manager of Swansea

 In WSC 269 I suggested that Swansea fans “would not swap Roberto Martínez for anyone”. It was incontestably true when written, but by the time of publication anyone reading Swans websites could reasonably have assumed that the club had instead been managed by somebody called Judas. Some of that abuse came from the traditional inability of many fans to grasp that, whatever a club is to them, it is an employer to a player or manager. It also, though, reflected what Martínez had come to mean to Swansea.

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