Book reviews

The Forgotten Truth of Gary Sprake
by Stuart Sprake & Tim Johnson
Tempus, £9.99
Reviewed by Huw Richards
From WSC 248 October 2007 

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Some decent sporting careers are damned by a single error. Bill Buckner, a just-this-side-of-great baseball player, has for 21 years been defined by the fielding error that extended the Boston Red Sox’s interminable wait to win a World Series. Gordon Smith will have to make one heck of a splash running the Scottish FA to efface memories of his miss in the 1983 FA Cup final. Such judgments are often undeserved, however, and the authors here aim to prove that Gary Sprake, Stuart’s uncle, merited better.

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Trouble and takeover at the world’s richest football club
by Mihir Bose
Aurum Press, £18.99
Reviewed by Adam Brown
From WSC 244 June 2007 

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The spate of foreign businessmen buying English clubs has received little serious attention from the nation’s hacks who seem to regard the process in the same way that a child looks at a glittery bauble on a Christmas tree. Bose, now the BBC’s sports editor, should be congratulated for providing this incredibly detailed account of the failed BSkyB bid to buy Manchester United in 1999 and the successful Glazer family takeover in 2005.

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The Willie Miller Story
by Willie Miller with Rob Robertson

Birlinn, £14.99
Reviewed by Neil Forsyth
From WSC 256 June 2008 

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For the uninitiated, Willie Miller is not a mafia overlord but a long-standing servant of Aberdeen, also known as the Dons. Miller played for the club for 19 years, before a spell as manager and his current post as director of football.

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The Autobiography
by Sir Bobby Charlton

Headline, £7.99

Reviewed by Harry Pearson
From WSC 252 February 2008 

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There was a time during my early childhood when Bobby Charlton was every English boy’s hero, the one who only the finest player on the pitch was allowed to pretend to be. Then along came George Best and suddenly Bobby lost his lustre. He didn’t have long hair (or if he did, only on one side of his head at any rate), he didn’t throw mud at referees, he didn’t run around town in a Jaguar E-type and Chelsea boots. Compared to Best he was boring. And that, pretty much, is where things have remained over the past 40 years: Sir Bobby cast as the lugubrious spinster at football’s wild party.

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The Biography of Manchester United’s Midfield Maestro
by Ian Macleay

John Blake, £ 17.99

Reviewed by Joyce Woolridge
From WSC 260 October 2008 

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This is a book that should have been written two years down the line, when hopefully Owen Hargreaves has managed to put in something like a full season and lived up to his premature billing here as “United’s Midfield Maestro”. Currently, the Canada-born player is yet again not gracing the Old Trafford, or any other, pitch with his sublime skills, though his return to ­fitness is expected soon. It is undoubtedly true that without Hargreaves’s sporadic appearances Manchester United would not have won their two trophies last season, but the same could be said with more justification about most of the rest of United’s squad. He also showed some promise as the “holding midfield player”, the current mythical missing piece of the England team’s jigsaw, when fit. But he is still a work in progress.

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