Book reviews

Steve Parish remembers Manchester City’s 1967-68 season

Nineteen sixty-eight was my last year at school. A-level revision had to be fitted in around the end to Manchester City’s best postwar season, when they played ten matches in six weeks. The run-in began with an am­a­z­ing night at Old Trafford when George Best scor­ed first but City cruised into top gear and beat title rivals Uni­ted 3-1. I’ve still got the little reel-to-reel tape, recorded off the radio, of a Radio 4 documentary called More Than A Game, with vox pop interviews before, during and after the match, and roars, singing and cheers throughout.

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As Alex McLeish takes over at Rangers he joins an ever increasing list of departures from Easter Road to one of the Old Firm, Jill Birnie says

My first experience of seeing my team, Hibernian, being preyed upon by the Old Firm, came as a very young child when Colin Stein, the high-scoring centre-foward, was poached by Rangers. My own children are now about the same age as I was when Stein was cruelly rem­oved from my life. In the weeks since Alex McLeish departed to become Rangers man­ager they have gone through the complete spec­­trum of emotion that I went through back in the days of black and white television. Why us again? Why can’t they leave us alone? I made the reassuring noises to them, the very ones that my own father had made to me.

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Mark Tallentire looks at the Everton board's move against racist chants by their away fans that brought shame on the club

As if Walter Smith did not have enough to do in deciding which member of his squad to play out of position next, the Everton manager had to find time in the run-up to Christmas to make a statement about the racist behaviour of more than a few of the club’s travelling fans.

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After his trial, Lee Bowyer found himself pilloried in the press and punished by his club. Leeds fan Ian Blake was one of the few who thought he got a raw deal

Lee Bowyer, declared not guilty by the British jus­tice system, has nonetheless been convicted by the media, a cabinet minister, a former minister of sport, politicians, fans of other clubs and, last but not least, his own club, Leeds United. This despite the verdicts of a jury who, unlike many of his present ac­cusers, considered all the evidence.

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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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