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Cameron Carter takes a look at the Joey Barton story, while discovering how the game has changed since 1957

Gabby Logan has a great listening face, possibly one of the best on television. Her gleaming eyes and soulful nodding, even when filmed after the interview, lead her subject and viewer alike to believe that this is a woman who not only cares, she might also remember some of the things her interviewee said 20 minutes later. The expression is one of distilled empathy, her listen a strong, steady listen – rather like the diligent way you attend someone who’s telling you his life story while buying you drinks all night. This bedside manner was seen at its best on Inside Sport (December 3, BBC1) as she asked Joey Barton to explain himself to the nation.

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The Hard Life and High Times of Malcolm Allison
by David Tossell
Mainstream, £16.99
Reviewed by Harry Pearson
From WSC 262 December 2008 

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I once met Malcolm Allison in a pub in County Durham. The thing that struck me about Big Mal was that he was really quite small. Admittedly he was by that stage an elderly man, but the fact is that in football “bigness” has always been about more than mere physical stature.

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A History of Football Tactics
by Jonathan Wilson
Orion, £18.99
Reviewed by Harry Pearson
From WSC 259 September 2008

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To those of us who grew up reading World Soccer in the 1970s, the word “tactics” will forever conjure up the severe glasses of journalist Eric Batty, portly sage of formations and positional play, whose annual selection of a World XI invariably involved at least one player of whom the writer would observe: “For club and country he is predominantly deployed on the right wing. I have elected to play him at left-back…” In 1970, Batty wrote a book in which he presented an analysis of the styles and tactics of the teams at the Mexico World Cup. In it the author conclusively proved – by data, argument and drawings – that Brazil were the most effective side at the tournament.

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Dear WSC
Why does Andy Gray keep saying “pick the bones out of that”? It’s an expression he’s come to use in every post-match analysis he does on Sky, usually in relation to a slow-motion replay of a goalmouth incident. But it’s become so frequent that it’s almost a verbal tic, as though he doesn’t realise he’s saying it. This suggests a deep-seated trauma. Could it be that he is haunted by an incident when he failed to pick the bones out of a fish, say, and consequently nearly choked while in a packed restaurant? Either that or he’s replying a vivid and unsettling dream. But it could be worse. Imagine the look of alarm on Richard Keys’ face as Andy stares into the middle distance and mutters: “The defence was as exposed as someone standing naked in front of everybody they went to school with, plus their mother and other female members of the family.”
James Potter, via email

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After the introduction of Wayne Rooney England fans became optimistic, but again the tournament ended in failure to convert in a shootout

The editorial in WSC 233, in which we suggested that England would grind their way through the group stage then go out to the first reasonable team they played, proved to be prophetic. But we can’t claim any credit for special insight. Anyone who has followed the various tribulations of the national team over the past couple of decades knew broadly what would happen at the 2006 World Cup. So, clearly, did the England players, even down to the sudden extra effort the ten men produced in the last hour against Portugal, bidding to set up at least another of the heroic defeats to which they seem mentally attuned and which, if you ignore some obvious truths about penalty shootouts, they achieved.

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