Search: 'Herbert Chapman'

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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Neil Rayment looks back at that rarest of seasons – one in which Newcastle actually won something

The long-term significance
In the days when FA Cup finals were played at Wembley, Cardiff became the first team to take the Cup out of England when they beat Arsenal 1-0. As well as becoming a question beloved by pub-quiz compilers ever since, the game was also notable for being the first final to be broadcast live on the radio. In order to help listeners get a sense of what was happening, the commentator referred to a grid printed in the Radio Times, which divided the pitch up into eight sections. It has since been claimed that this was the origin of the term “back to square one”, though that phrase doesn’t crop up in surviving radio commentaries from the period.

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In this adaptation of his introduction to The Best of Charles Buchan's Football Monthly,  Simon Inglis traces the life of the first half-decent football magazine and the player and broadcaster who brought it into existence

Truly, the monthly magazine is the prince of periodicals. A friend, a fashion statement, an always invited guest, the monthly mag need never fade before reaching its final resting place, be it the doctor’s waiting room, the loft, or that pile in the downstairs loo.

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Jon Spurling wonders whether applause is an appropriate replacement for the minutes silence.

Just as views on the responsibility for George Best’s early death are polarised, the same is true of attitudes towards the minute’s applause that was seen at Portsmouth and West Ham to mark his passing. There is a weighty body of evidence that suggests that Best would have approved of such a gesture. On Parkinson last year, he confessed: “I hope I’m remembered for the football and the cheers I brought to grounds, rather than all the front-page nonsense.” A lesser known fact is that he preferred the B-side of Don Fardon’s Belfast Boy – Echoes Of The Cheers – to the song that reached number 32 in the charts and which due to its ubiquitousness over the Old Trafford PA system was an early-Seventies version of Simply The Best.

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Mike Ticher recalls Arsenal's first championship – the same season that saw Manchester Utd relegated

The long-term significance
Arsenal’s first League title (and the first by any southern club) set them on their way to their domination of the 1930s. The previous year’s FA Cup final victory over manager Herbert Chapman’s old club, Huddersfield, was neatly symbolic, but the championship cemented the north Londoners’ arrival. It had taken Chapman six years to win it, but then the floodgates opened, with three in a row from 1933-35, another in 1938 and a second Cup win in 1936 – though he didn’t live to see most of the silverware, having died in 1934.

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