Book reviews

As Roy Keane reflects on an eventful career, Joyce Woolridge questions the representation of United's skipper and the influence of the ghost writer

“Journalists and players have an uneasy relationship… Journalists tend to try and make the player say the things they want him to say. And it is all too easy for them to do this… This shows particularly when they are on the ‘discontented player’ story.”
Eamon Dunphy, Only A Game?

A ghost stalks the pages of Roy Keane’s autobiography: the unquiet spirit of professional Irish malcontent, Eamon Dun­phy. The ghostwriter who transcribes the tapes and knocks the pieces into shape usual­ly leaves some sort of footprint on the text of a footballer’s life, whether a flowery met­aphor or a stock phrase.

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Jon Lymer looks at the deal that, to all but Darlington's publicity staff, looked doomed from the start

In the run up to the closing of the new transfer window, Darlington came within a whisker of clinching one of the most unexpected moves of recent years. In the event, however, the club and its erratic chairman, George Rey­nolds, sim­ply continued along their romp to the heart of insanity.

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Suddenly, the midlands is full of financially stricken First Division clubs. Peter Gutteridge tries to isolate the reasons for Derby's spectacular plunge

Rams fans can tell you that rock bottom does not ex­ist. No matter how far you sink there is plenty of room to sink deeper. Derby County are a reported £30 million in debt and the bank is feeding in cash through an intravenous drip. We can’t even sign non-contract players un­til we have reduced the wage bill. We can’t reduce the wage bill because the transfer market is dead and we can’t release players because we can’t pay off their con­tracts. Rumour has it that two takeover bids and one refinancing package are under discussion. In four seas­ons we have progressed from the top half of the Premiership to relegation and the fringes of administration.

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Gary McAllister has been asked to come up with some ideas to revive Coventry on a zero budget. Neville Hadsley is impressed so far, but not quite won over

When Gary McAllister walked into the job of player-man­ager at Highfield Road, he came with plenty of baggage from his last stint with the Sky Blues – and acquired a few awkward bits of hand-luggage left be­hind by his immediate predecessors too. His time as a player had not been an unalloyed success: two med­i­ocre seasons (the rest of the team arguably as much at fault as he); another spent injured – no crime there, but hardly a plus point; and a final season in which, thanks bizarrely to a partnership with Carlton Palmer, he performed so brilliantly that he earned him­self a free transfer to Liverpool.

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Ian Plenderleith dissects a biographical account of Lars Leese's career to discover that, unlike his wife, the German never quite felt at home in South Yorkshire

When German goalkeeper Lars Leese signed for Barn­sley at the start of their Premiership season in 1997, he was one of six foreign players at the club that year. As the journalist Ronald Reng describes it in his excellent biography of Leese, published in Germany earlier this year, Barnsley boss Danny Wilson was “like a kid in a toyshop who was finally allowed to buy international stars – or rather, players who were international and were taken for stars in Barnsley”.

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