Book reviews

There are 763 footballers out of work and many clubs face an uncertain future. Barney Ronay looks back ten years to the bright sunrise of the Premiership era, the beginning of the boom when football was just money, money, money 

In the summer of 1993 the tabloid press was in the process of acquiring a new footballing vocabulary. The first Sky TV-fuelled English Premiership season had just ended, and suddenly “come and get me pleas” were being issued, “want-away contract rebels” aboun­ded, and Big-Spending Blackburn rubbed shoulders with Moneybags Man Utd as multi-million market madness descended. It all sounded extremely empowering for the soaraway red tops; and there would be plenty more to come. Topped and tailed by the Mur­doch corporation, football had gone tabloid.

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From foresight to hindsight, sound judgements to naked prejudices, Joyce Woolridge sifts through, as the man himself put it, “the **** in the papers” written about the Beckham transfer saga

David Beckham’s transfer to Real Madrid has pro­vided the press with a close-season story beyond its wildest imaginings. The amount of print dedicated to increasingly wild speculation about the sale of (variously) “The boy who got too big for his boots” or “An England hero” led Beckham himself, according to the Manchester Evening News, to text his Dad in disbelief: “Can you believe all this **** in the papers?” Most of what was written was best described as **** flowing copiously on to the pages of broadsheet and tabloid.

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Has any recent transfer been as fateful as Leeds United selling Eric Cantona to Manchester United? Duncan Young recalls the Frenchman’s spell in Yorkshire

It’s difficult to imagine now, but in November 1992 selling Eric Cantona to Manchester United didn’t seem like such a crazy idea. Six months previously he had been the talisman of Leeds’s first championship success since 1974 and the near-mythical reign of Don Revie. The funny thing is, he didn’t actually play that much.

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 Chris Taylor’s dreams of watching Juan Sebastian Verón turn into an evening comtemplating has-been celebrities, at a typical reserve match

I had not expected to be discussing the members of Take That while stood on the Popular Side terrace at Altrincham’s Moss Lane ground.

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Alex Wolstenholme wonders if the introduction of age restrictions could reinvigorate the reserves in England as they have done north of the border

Watching the reserves is a journey into a world both instantly recognisable and yet strangely unfamiliar. The setting, the kits and often the players are the same, but there’s something missing that can be found at almost every other level of the game where a league title is played for. The fortunes of the stiffs are never a major cause of concern for fans. That part of the programme where one of the club’s ex-pros (and now second-team boss) gives his match report from the latest reserve game has never been required reading.

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