Man and Bhoy
by Neil Lennon with Martin Hannon
Harper Sport, £17.99
Reviewed by Robbie Meredith
From WSC 241 March 2007
Irish footballers have been among the most prominent exponents of the mea culpa sports autobiography in recent years. Tony Cascarino and Paul McGrath have produced open and apologetic works detailing personal failure, far in tone from the bland self-justification inherent in most of the genre.
Steve McClaren’s job is up for grabs
This month the sports pages have been embroiled in a cagey kind of guessing game: something speculative and possibly a little unfair, but which has, as ever, proved irresistible. So much so that discussion of who the next England coach will be has advanced so quickly that you’d be forgiven for forgetting the only real obstacle to getting someone in tomorrow is the fact that the position is already filled.
The scuffle at St James' Park was anything but savoury, but let's not get carried away
If you look outside for a moment, it’s likely that the streets will be awash with children scrapping with each other in imitation of the fight broadcast from St James’ Park on April 2. Some will be pretending to be Lee Bowyer or Kieron Dyer, others will have been assigned the roles of peacekeeper Gareth Barry and bystander Lee Hendrie. Who knows where it may lead? When will footballers realise that they are role models whose every action, however stupid, will likely be mirrored by impressionable youngsters?
Football has long had a drugs problem but is far from alone in this and should learn from other sports, believes Harry Pearson
As I write the raging debate is whether Rio Ferdinand had his mobile turned off or just on silent during his infamous afternoon shopping trip. It seems to me that if you replace the word “mobile” with “brain” then you are getting nearer the measure of the thing. In truth, given his absent-minded performances of late the fact the Manchester United defender should forget a pressing appointment with a flask is not so surprising, nor in a sense was the reaction it provoked – though Gary Neville and co’s adolescent posturing response did achieve what had previously seemed impossible, uniting the nation behind the Football Association.
After Graham Taylor’s resignation as Aston Villa manager, David Wangerin looks back at the ups as well as downs of a man who more than once took a job too far
Graham Taylor’s hasty departure from Aston Villa has in all likelihood ended a coaching career spanning five decades. To many, that career will live in a sort of infamy, largely due to the shortcomings he exhibited as England manager a decade ago which led to the team’s failure to qualify for USA 94. But to others, his greatest blunder came not with the national teams he selected, the tactics he deployed, or even the results he failed to deliver, but in allowing himself to become the subject of that fly-on-the-wall television documentary for, as it turned out, the benefit of a rather bitter and recriminatory audience. Within a worryingly short time, “Do I not like that” became a kind of catchphrase for ineptitude, the TV programme an inadvertent testimonial for the Peter Principle of a man rising to the level of his own incompetence.