Book reviews

While the east midlands mourns a great manager, Brian Clough's native region has lost a great player. Harry Pearson  traces a legend's goalscoring career

It was during the 1986 World Cup. England had got off to a pathetic start and in the ITV studio Mick Channon was lamenting the inability of English players to “get by people”. “The Brazilians do it,” he burbled. “The French do it. The Danes do it…” From off camera came an unmistakable whine: “Even educated fleas do it.” Brian Clough may have won titles and European Cups, but the queasy, humiliated expression that remark put on Channon’s medieval mug will likely live longer in my memory than any of them. To anyone who grew up on Teesside the tone, if not the accent (Clough’s peculiar vocal style was all his own) was unmistakable. Funny undoubtedly, but also scornful, the humorous equivalent of a slap in the face.

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Where were you when you heard the news about Jimmy Glass's goal? In an excerpt from his autobiography, the goalkeeper recalls Carlisle United's JFK moment

We were well into added time when Scott Dobie hit a cross from the right. It came off a Plymouth defender and went out for a corner. I looked across at the manager, Nigel Pearson. At other times when I’ve wanted to run up the field, people have told me to go back. No faith in football to come up with a wonder moment. But now I thought, “Sod it.” What was there to lose? Nigel shrugged his shoulders and waved me up. I began my 100-yard dash up the pitch, hoping to arrive in the penalty area before Graham Anthony took the corner.

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Another summer of transfer-related theatre and drama resulted in some surprising deals and a whole lot of bad feeling, Jon Spurling writes

Sir Alex Ferguson described the summer transfer window as “an annual farce of half-truths” and David Moyes claimed it gives football writers the chance to “peddle irresponsible headlines”. The latest doses of rumour and counter rumour seem to have left many Premiership managers feeling far more drained and insecure than normal. “Yous are talking out of your backsides,” barked an apoplectic Ferguson when a gaggle of hacks suggested that Ruud van Nistelrooy was poised to move to Real Madrid. By simply adding the “ski” suffix to a player’s surname, or deploying the “Real deal” headline, tabloids can give even the most experienced manager nightmares, such is the financial clout of Chelsea and the Madrid giants.

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Thanks to a financial incentive scheme from Littlewoods Pools, things could be looking up for Scotland's perennial losers, East Stirlingshire. Neil White explains

For the past two years, the safest bet in British football has not been on Arsenal or Martin O’Neill’s dominant Celtic side. The smart money, if you have enough of it to counter increasingly prohibitive odds, is on whoever happens to be playing East Stirlingshire.

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Wigan Athletic's chairman controls clubs involved in both codes of rugby, too, but Ashley Shaw finds that few object to this takeover of a town as the Latics fly high

Pies, piers and rugby league used to dominate Wigan. Yet as a town situated handily between the football hotbeds of Manchester and Liverpool, it comes as little surprise that supporters of Wigan Athletic reject the stereotype straight away.

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