Book reviews

The Life and Times of a Football Obsessive
by Rob Grillo
The History Press, £9.99
Reviewed by Pete Green
From WSC 254 April 2008 

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Mainstream culture has reached a peculiar position with regard to knowing things. On BBC1’s The One Show recently, an expert guest prefixed one interesting contribution with the phrase “Sorry to be a nerd, but…” Think about that for a moment: he was invited on to the show specifically to share his knowledge about a particular subject, yet deemed it necessary to apologise for doing so.

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The True Story of Supporting the Worst Football Team in Britain
by Dave Roberts
Portico, £12.99
Reviewed by John Carter
From WSC 259 September 2008 

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Male adolescence is – among other things too toe-curling to be discussed in public – about making grown-up choices. It’s the first time we make our mark, take a stand, pledge an allegiance. The Bromley Boys is about one such choice.

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Northern Ireland in Sweden
by Ronnie Hanna
Sportsbooks, £7.99
Reviewed by Robbie Meredith
From WSC 263 January 2009 

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The team that made it to the quarter-finals of the 1958 World Cup have served as a sustaining cliche in Northern Irish football. We’re perennial underdogs, so the story goes, and “our wee country”, although comparatively short of players and facilities, can occasionally roll our sleeves up and battle to victory over superior teams who just can’t match our collective warrior spirit, just like the boys of ’58.

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The Biography
by Jim White
Sphere, £18.99
Reviewed by Ashely Shaw
From WSC 266 April 2009 

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Enter the words history and Manchester United into Amazon and the mind-boggling number of results returned suggest that this subject is perhaps over-subscribed. In the last 12 months alone there have been a plethora of retrospectives – so how can a new “biography” of United be justified?

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Love, Death and Football
by Jason Cowley
Simon & Schuster, £14.99
Reviewed by Terry Staunton
From WSC 270 August 2009 

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Michael Thomas’s last-gasp goal for Arsenal at Anfield on May 26, 1989, has proven to be hard to top, in terms of live and unscripted televised sporting drama. Possibly the most replayed clip from a domestic football match of the last two decades, what has happened to the game in the intervening years forms the basis of Cowley’s persuasive argument that nothing was ever the same again.

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