Book reviews

The marketing prospects Japanese players offer are causing people to overlook what a fine player Bolton have signed in Hidetoshi Nakata, believes Justin McCurry

There was a certain inevitability about the cynicism that greeted the arrival of Hidetoshi Nakata at the Reebok Stadium. In persuading the unsettled Japan midfielder to move to Bolton from Fiorentina, Sam Allardyce had, so the received wisdom goes, ensured the club a steady income from replica-shirt sales, television coverage in the Far East and household corporate names on pitch-side sponsorship hoardings. After all, other Japanese players to have signed for Premiership clubs – remember Akinori Nishizawa and Kazuyuki Toda? – have done little to dispel the notion that they are anything more than cash cows in football boots.

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One step forward and two steps back? Darron Kirkby wonders where West Ham are going next

West Ham’s promotion killed off supporters’ hopes that somebody would buy chairman Terence Brown’s 38 per cent share in the club. Despite his low profile, Brown has become one of the least popular chairmen in football during his 12 years in charge. The atmosphere at the Boleyn Ground has been poisonous since relegation two years ago with the crowd all too eager to barrack either Brown or manager Alan Pardew when things go wrong. The latter’s insistence on playing people out of position and his questionable tactics have even led to the crowd singing “We are the West Ham claret and blue army”, omitting his name.

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Shaun Wright-Phillips' move to Chelsea has caused surprise and anguish for Manchester City fan, among them Ian Farrell, who nonetheless hopes that the transfer won't sully the reputation as one of the Premiership's good guys

Though controversial transfers always seem to bring odd cases of the sort of stagey shirt-burning antics so beloved by the media, most football fans in this cynical age tend to be well insulated against genuine outrage. But on Monday July 18th, something did happen that was as truly shocking as hearing that the Andrex puppy had savaged a child: Shaun Wright-Phillips became the bad guy.

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Do English coaches deserve more credit? Not if Mathias Svensson is to be believed, as Marcus Christenson reports

Sven-Göran Eriksson has been in charge of England for four and a half years – and yet no consensus seems to have developed on whether the Football Association was right to appoint the Swede as its first foreign manager. So the debate rages on. This summer Bristol Rovers manager Ian Atkins, having just completed the FA’s UEFA Pro Licence course, claimed that English coaches and managers get “the best training in the world” and added: “I think people are over-critical of English coaches and that is wrong.”

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The game's uncertain financial climate is causing top flight players to fall further and faster than they once did, leaving Cameron Carter bewildered by the pace of the change

There’s a terrible feeling you get as you get older – the sense that your world and its familiar landscape are being discreetly removed by stage-hands while you’re not watching. John Thaw dies, child-smacking is driven underground, Club biscuits devolve to just one orange flavour; it feels, if you’re being particularly paranoid, that the way is being cleared, little by little, for your own exit. It doesn’t help that, amid the hype of big name transfers in summer, some familiar faces are slipping into retirement or semi-obscurity without so much as a goodbye.

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