Book reviews

The world is against Leeds United if you believe David O'Leary's vision of events. Mike Ticher takes issue with a spiky work of self-defence

Football clubs are not open institutions and successful managers, on the whole, are not warm and fuzzy people. To be really good at the job you have to be a hard bastard of one type or another. The same is true of many chairmen, who are led to concentrate so in­ten­se­ly on what seems best for their club that the whole of the outside world is filtered through the needs of XXFC. These are hardly original insights, but they are strongly re­inforced by Leeds United On Trial. Despite the storm over the book’s amazingly crass timing and title, it probably provides more evidence about the nature of football clubs in general than it does about Leeds United and David O’Leary in particular.

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Neil Reynolds examines Lee Hughes's relationship with his hometown club West Bromwich Albion

It’s often said that scoring a goal is better than sex. If that’s true, then losing a prolific goalscorer to another local team is like catching your wife in bed with your next door neighbour. And so it was with Lee Hughes.

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Michael Hughes looks at Jamie Cureton and Bristol Rovers

Boxing Day 2000 at the Memorial Stadium, Bristol and and obscene chants are being aimed at a visiting player. Just four months previously Jamie Cureton had beena terrace hero, scoring for Bristol Rovers on the opening day of the season. Now he was back playing for Reading and facing some vitriolic abuse.

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Ken Sproat looks at why Lee Clark left Newcastle United – for local rivals Sunderland

To the sort of people who produce WH Smith adverts, and Bobby Davro, Paul Gascoigne is the living embodiment of the typical Geordie. More representative of the area, however, inasmuch as every estate seems to have dozens, are charvers – image obsessed teen­agers standing outside 8-til-late shops comparing tracksuits, trainers and baseball caps. Though some cause a nuisance they are, after all, sons and daughters who love their mams and dads.

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Coventry are one of the moving spirits of the Phoenix League. Neville Hadsley believes their frenzied activity masks panic about their own financial position

It’s always struck me that the acting career of the Kemp brothers from Spandau Ballet was limited by the fact that there weren’t enough up-to-no-good twins around to portray. Once you’ve done the Krays, who else is there? Step forward Geoffrey Richmond and Bryan Rich­ardson. True, they are not twins. Also true they are up­standing citizens, rather than criminal gang lead­ers. But they do have a certain physical resemblance – too many good meals in decent restaurants, one sus­pects – and they are also the joint architects of a rather rum scheme.

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