With Ipswich hoping to rename a stand in tribute to Bobby Robson, Csaba Abrahall assesses the former manager's impact
Planning permission permitting, when Ipswich meet Newcastle at the end of September, Portman Road’s North Stand will be renamed in honour of Sir Bobby Robson, who died in July after a battle against cancer lasting almost two decades. It promises to be a day of celebration of the career of a man who managed both clubs with distinction.
The Autobiography
by Sir Bobby Charlton
Headline, £7.99
Reviewed by David Stubbs
From WSC 271 September 2009
Following up the first volume of his memoirs My Manchester United Years, this covers the span of Charlton’s international career from 1958 to that anticlimactic moment in 1970, when in his last game for his country he was substituted in the World Cup quarter-final, only to see West Germany overturn a 2-0 lead, taking advantage of Peter Bonetti’s unfeline goalkeeping display.
The Toughest Job in Football
by Brian Glanville
Headline, £18.99
Reviewed by Harry Pearson
From WSC 246 August 2007
“I didn’t see any reaction in the team. That was the thing that left me amazed; there wasn’t the rage you expect from an England team that’s losing.” So said Fabio Capello after watching Bobby Robson’s team thrashed humiliatingly by Holland at Euro 88.
Passion should go out of fashion
A genial old man called Stanley Green used to parade up and down Oxford Street wearing a sandwich board, now preserved in the Museum of London, that warned of the dangers of “passion”, which he believed could be brought on by consuming too much protein. The small pamphlets he handed out to passers-by didn’t make any reference to football being afflicted with this dangerous tendency, but the game would have provided him with enough material for a book, possibly even an encyclopaedia.
The papers say something nice about an up-and-coming star, for once
It’s been quite a month for Micah Richards: a couple of good games for England, a new contract offer from Manchester City and a chorus of unwavering approval from every sports desk in the land. A certain level of ubiquity is nothing new: Ashley Cole, David Beckham and Rio Ferdinand have all had the treatment in recent times. What makes Richards’ case unusual is the papers are saying nice things about him.