Book reviews

Ferguson and Shankly
by Oliver Holt
Pan, £8.99
Reviewed by David Stubbs
From WSC 250 December 2007

Buy this book 

Sir Alex Ferguson and Bill Shankly have some things in common, opines Oliver Holt, not least in their sharing of the sentiments expressed in the title to this double biography. For Ferguson, the need to prevail – to compensate, perhaps, for the setbacks and disappointments of his early working life – was deep-dyed. He was even known, when a game of cards with his players wasn’t going well, to chuck the entire pack across the coach in fearsome, capillary-bursting pique. As for Shanks, he outlined the attitudes that made him practically a hermit to football in an uncharacteristically revealing letter to a journalist in 1955. “I used to think that it would be better to die than to lose,” he wrote. “To enable me to reach the top, I went to all extremes, no woman, no smoking, early to bed – this went for years, but it was worthwhile.”

Read more…

The Autobiography of Ian Holloway
Green Umbrella, £16.99
Reviewed by Matt Nation
From WSC 250 December 2007

Buy this book 

Although Ian Holloway himself admits to being “not a particularly nice kid”, it doesn’t appear to have stopped his eye for a wrong ’un extending into adult life. After Ollie is dropped as a low-paid teenager at Bristol Rovers, Mike Channon attempts to console him by first by offering him £1,000 and then snatching it away at the last second. Three lines later, however, Channon is described as a “fantastic bloke”. Both Bobby Gould’s and Dave Bassett’s man-management skills are (once again) shown to be about as sensitive as a nipple wrench in the bogs, yet Ollie “likes” and “respects” his former gaffers. Only with Wally Downes does Ollie eschew praise with faint damnation in favour of a full-on, and fully deserved, kicking after the former Wimbledon man cracked wise about the new boy’s wife’s chemotherapy.

Read more…

Why have a director of football as well as a head coach? Luke Chapman is not alone in wondering if the answer at Spurs is to provide an extra person to blame in a crisis, ahead of the club’s chairman

As divorces go, it was messy, underhand and undignified. Two months after Martin Jol’s position became untenable and hours before kick-off in the UEFA Cup tie against Getafe, mobiles buzzed with the news that Spurs chairman Daniel Levy had finally decided the union with his manager was over. With his players conspicuously failing to do it for their boss, Jol then had to sit on the bench and play the part of manager one last time, a sorry end in keeping with recent events at the Lane.

Read more…

A German player refuses to play against Israel – because he was born in Iran. But Ashkan Dejagah, who has dual nationality, has picked up sympathy in some unexpected places, as Paul Joyce explains

Tattooed on the neck of VfL Wolfsburg midfielder Ashkan Dejagah is the motto “Never forget where you’re from”. On his right forearm is the word “Teheran”, the German spelling of the city where he was born in 1986; on his left “Berlin”, where he grew up and played for Hertha. Not that anyone will forget where he comes from after he withdrew from a Germany Under-21 game against Israel in Tel Aviv in October. “There are political reasons for this,” he told the paper Bild. “Everyone knows I’m a German-Iranian.”

Read more…

Northwich are hoping a takeover will save them, reports Michael Whalley

Neil Redfearn certainly knows how to pick a club in crisis. In the summer of 2006, he quit the manager’s chair at Scarborough as they lost their Conference place amid a host of financial woes. The former Barnsley and Bradford midfielder might have hoped for an easier ride when he pitched up at Northwich Victoria this summer. He didn’t get it. Nine Blue Square Premier matches brought eight defeats and a draw. So Redfearn packed his bags to find something less stressful to do.

Read more…