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Managing Man Utd in the shadow of Sir Alex Ferguson
by Jamie Jackson
Aurum Press, £18.99
Reviewed by Joyce Woolridge
From WSC 345 November 2015

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As Louis van Gaal celebrated his 50th game in charge of Manchester United with yet another defeat by Swansea, and the annual farce that marks United’s summer transfer window dealings escalated with the “failed” David de Gea sale, A Season In The Red may have been better written at the end (or however far the Dutchman makes it) rather than the beginning of this season. Although the book surveys both David Moyes’ and Van Gaal’s attempts to manage the “impossible job… in the shadow of Sir Alex Ferguson”, the lion’s share of the pages goes to the present incumbent and as his stock, and United’s fortunes, continue to yo-yo wildly, the tale remains half told.

The most interesting and illuminating, but all too brief, chapter deals with neither of Ferguson’s two main successors, but is about Ed Woodward, executive vice-chairman. He is the man perceived to be responsible both for uncovering vast new sources of income through worldwide regional sponsorship deals and United’s continual embarrassment in the transfer market. Jamie Jackson, the Manchester football correspondent for the Guardian and the Observer, describes Woodward’s very existence as “a cause for curiosity and celebration in the joyless, lacking-piss-and-vinegar world of elite football” and characterises him deftly as someone who appears determined to enjoy every minute, bustling with energy, unusually approachable in “a trapeze-wire act that he manages to portray like a Sunday morning stroll for coffee”.

However, both the accounts of Moyes and Van Gaal fail to spark. This is partly because of what the book is – a series of observations gathered by Jackson while attending press conferences, reporting on matches, accompanying last year’s pre-season tour in the US when Van Gaal took over the reins and in the few “intimate meet-and-greets” with the press which United’s managers deign to allow. What it doesn’t, and indeed in all fairness can’t, draw upon are personal interviews with the protagonists. So Jackson fills the gaps by imagining what it is like to be David Moyes in his office, waiting to be given the coup de grâce, what it is like to be Moyes on his first day and so on.

There are revealing sections such as when Moyes relaxes talking to the Manchester press over dinner, letting his guard slip, and a perceptive analysis of Ferguson’s replacement’s penchant for choosing the wrong words so often, hoping for, rather than expecting results. Van Gaal’s entertaining performances for the press are also well observed. But Jackson is prone to rambling and to say the same thing, wearingly, in several different ways. Moyes is “the number one around here, numero uno, the gaffer, Le Grand Fromage”. Plus the Splitting. Sentences up. Into sections and inserting interludes which are possibly meant as poetry: “Sir Alex Ferguson, David Moyes, Shadows falling, Shadows falling.”

Stylistic tics aside this is a serviceable, if premature, rendition of the story so far, though without much detailed analysis (particularly needed in the case of Moyes, accused by some of tactical ineptitude) of what happened on, rather than off the field. Ryan Giggs’s brief tenure, potentially so revealing, merits far more than the single sentence devoted to it.

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1958-68
by Iain McCartney
Amberley Books, £25
Reviewed by Jonathan O’Brien
From WSC 320 October 2013

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Whatever the other flaws of Manchester United: Rising from the wreckage 1958-68, you can’t accuse Iain McCartney of not putting in the hard yards. Don’t be fooled by the fact that it’s 350 pages in length: that figure could easily have been considerably higher, had the typesetter been only slightly more generous with the font size and spacing.

Books on the Munich disaster aren’t hard to come by. McCartney himself already has one to his credit, a well-reviewed biography of Roger Byrne, the United captain who died in the crash with 22 other people. This one is clearly his final word on the subject. Each page is crammed full of microscopic detail, from George Best’s car windscreen being defaced with lipstick by a lovelorn female fan, to the price of touted tickets for the Cup final, to assistant manager Jimmy Murphy’s preferred at-home listening (Chopin and Grieg).

McCartney must effectively have lived in the cuttings library for months to amass this much material. In its own way, the deluge of information reaches critical mass – and it’s not helped by the lack of subheadings to break up the text, meaning that the whole thing feels like a slog at times.

We all already know the narrative: the emotional aftershock of the crash, the slow rebuilding, the many painful defeats, the shaping of talented young players into gods of the game, the regaining of the title in 1965, won again two years later, the coronation against Benfica in 1968. McCartney uses the 1963 FA Cup final, in which United beat Leicester 3-1, as the turning point. The team narrowly avoided relegation that same month, finishing 19th, with many players still not psychologically recovered from Munich, dressing-room recriminations abounding (Noel Cantwell reputedly led the player-power faction) and Jack Crompton’s coaching methods being soundly criticised. It’s a reminder of how easily everything could have turned out differently.

With so much information crammed in, the prose tends towards the dryly matter-of-fact. Perhaps unavoidably, it settles into a laundry-list of match after match and win after win (though it never resorts to the Lego-brick approach of David Peace’s scarcely readable Red Or Dead). At times, it reads as if it were written in the late 1950s themselves. Perhaps this is McCartney’s way of getting into the spirit of the thing, eschewing the pseudy floweriness of so much current football writing for a just-the-facts approach that better suits the subject matter. Or perhaps that’s just the way he writes: not having read the Byrne book, it’s difficult to tell.

Despite its occasional drabness, it’s not hard to imagine Manchester United: Rising from the wreckage 1958-68 becoming the set text on the subject matter. If nothing else, it’s a remarkable feat of research and hugely admirable as an important contribution to the historical record – even if it’s not always easy to love as a piece of writing.

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The man behind Manchester City’s 
greatest ever season
by Stuart Brennan
Andre Deutsch, £16.99
Reviewed by Matthew Barker
From WSC 310 December 2012

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Roberto Mancini was a gloriously gifted player. He was also stroppy; prone to outbursts and sulks that frequently alienated him from coaches of club and country and, occasionally, some of his team-mates. Now, as a manager himself, he has to deal with players who can comfortably outdo him on the ego and attitude fronts.

The first 100 pages or so of Stuart Brennan’s book are dedicated to Mancini the footballer, particularly his time at Sampdoria. Mancini’s contention that he was actually a midfield playmaker, rather than an out-and-out striker, caused him problems throughout his playing career. His great vision and unfailing talent for placing the ball where he wanted won him endless plaudits, but fallings out with a succession of Azzurri coaches and a surfeit of Italian attacking talent put the blockers on his 
international career.

Bar a few stand-out howlers – claiming the Calciopoli scandals took place “six years after” Italia 90, for one – the main problem here is the author’s drawn-out, clumsy theory that Mancini has always sided with the underdog, and that his notorious stubbornness is actually the stuff of an anti-establishment rebel (this despite him being a boyhood Juventus fan).

We are told that his move to Sampdoria in 1982, after a debut season with Bologna, “appealed to his sense of destiny” and that the Genovese club – a “provincial footballing backwater” apparently – provided the perfect platform for someone keen to topple the established Serie A order. And yes, it’s pretty obvious where we’re going with this one.

Less time is spent looking at Mancini’s time in Italy as a coach, which is a pity. The traumas of a first job in charge of Fiorentina, when the club were edging towards bankruptcy and demotion to the old Serie C, are dealt with in a few paragraphs, as is his equally troubled stint at Lazio. Brennan is itching to get to the bit where Mancini takes charge at Inter, so he can triumphantly point out that Nerazzurri are sort of, a bit, kind of like Manchester City. And Milan just like Manchester United. Perfect. Except, of course, they’re not.

The claim that il Mancio was sacked by an “ungrateful” and “impatient” Inter after three post-Calciopoli championship wins is hugely misleading. Most Italian commentators (and did Brennan really not think to speak to one?) believe the coach engineered his move away from the club and that his bluff was called after he reportedly told players he was going to Chelsea following Inter’s 2008 Champions League exit against Liverpool.

Instead of the promised insight and examination, we get a decidedly uncritical portrait; there is little analysis of the handling of Carlos Tévez. The relentless blandness of Mancini’s press conference quotes are interspersed with uninspiring, cut-and-paste retellings of events from the past couple of years, stuff that anyone with a passing interest in British football, never mind Manchester City supporters, surely knows well enough already.

We’re told those City fans are “in delirium”, some lucky ones are even “in ecstasy”, and surely no one can begrudge them that? Brennan sees his subject’s habitual grumpy aloofness as a positive, proof that he’s willing to fight his corner. However, a more searching assessment of Mancini, both as a man and a manager, could have flagged up warning signs of potential 
troubles ahead.

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Alex Lawson on the role of train travel in football

In the 1970s and 80s Football Specials were used to ferry fans to away games by rail in a bid to contain hooliganism. Supporters’ organisations and the British Transport Police have been investigating the idea of restoring the services in the wake of frequent arrests of fans travelling on regular trains. At the height of hooliganism, spare carriages and redundant trains were used to transport huge numbers of fans. But the Specials became a focus for problems and were largely scrapped in the early 1990s as privatisation made organising services across the networks more difficult.

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