Poverty, war and football
by Julie Ryan
CreateSpace, £9.99
Reviewed by Neil Andrews
From WSC 317 July 2013

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In and Out of the Lion’s Den is a case for why you should never judge a book by its cover. Ostensibly a biography of former Millwall striker John Shepherd, author Julia Ryan – Shepherd’s daughter – delves a bit deeper into her ancestry to explore the journey of her maternal grandparents and their flight from Franco’s Spain to England. As such, this is a very personal account of many lives rather than one, offering a vivid and at times fascinating insight into the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath, as well as the life of a professional footballer in the 1950s.

The early part of Shepherd’s story is a remarkable one. Recommended to the Lions by an insurance salesman who never saw him kick a ball, he overcame polio while on National Service to score four goals on his debut away to Leyton Orient – still a post-war record. Unfortunately for Shepherd a combination of injuries and bad luck meant he never fulfilled the early promise that saw him being courted by managers such as Matt Busby. More surprising still is his behaviour off the field.

In an age where many decry modern footballers and how they bear little resemblance to their predecessors, Ryan inadvertently proves that Shepherd and his team-mates have more in common with today’s players than is often suggested. Bonuses are placed – and lost – on horses, cars are driven without a licence and FA Cup final tickets are sold on the black market. The striker also sulks and refuses to turn up for training when dropped from the first team. When left out for a second time Shepherd sells his story to a national newspaper. He is even arrested after playing stooge for a gambling ring, receiving a fine for his troubles (he escapes press attention after providing a false name to the courts). More sinisterly there is a hint of match-fixing, although it’s a shame the author fails to press the matter further.

Ryan is clearly more comfortable writing about the war in Spain and handles the atrocities of the conflict and its aftermath, particularly the concentration camps in France, delicately. Her mother’s acclimatisation to life in England as a young child is particularly touching, yet while she is prepared to tackle the awkward and unexpected reunion of her grandparents in London head on, she shies away from any scandal her father may have been involved in.

There is also a lack of attention to detail in the chapters on football. While census records, casualties of war and even the address of a toy company are recorded with impressive accuracy elsewhere, Millwall fans will be startled to discover that the Den was located in London’s East End and that Neil Harris retired in 2011, while the date the club was formed is wrong by ten years.

Such errors could have been avoided with the help of an experienced editor. However this book is still worth a read, especially for manager Charlie Hewitt’s programme notes, which are an unexpected delight. Remarks such as “when will people learn how and when to mind their own business?” prove that today’s bosses haven’t changed that much from their predecessors.

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by Tony Cottee
Philip Evans Media, £14.99
Reviewed by Mark Segal
From WSC 317 July 2013

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Back in the day when you could phone footballers out of the blue for an interview, Tony Cottee was one of the few who didn’t hang up immediately or pretend they were busy and then turn their phone off at the time you were asked to phone back. Once he even gave me his home number. This, added to the fact he was a West Ham hero of mine, made him one of football’s nice guys but this side of his personality is sadly lacking in The Inside Story.

His second autobiography, the story begins as Cottee is winding down his career. A return to West Ham and a League Cup winner’s medal at Wembley with Leicester are the high points as he slowly slips down the leagues, ending up as player-manager at Barnet where it all went horribly wrong.

Like any centre-forward you’ve ever met or played with, Cottee is keen to let you know his scoring record but there seems little feeling behind the numbers. In fact the end of his career is not the real reason for the book, it’s the thing he needs to get out of the way before the main part – his attempt, and ultimate failure, to become West Ham chairman.

It was on the drive home from the 2004 play-off final defeat to Crystal Palace in Cardiff that Cottee decided to act, and the reader is taken through his attempts to put together a consortium to oust hated chairman Terry Brown from Upton Park. At first it’s a shambles, as he turns up to meetings without any kind of business plan, but slowly it begins to come together and each meeting, phone call and proposal is faithfully documented as the book becomes bogged down.

After realising he doesn’t have the money among West Ham supporters he spreads his net further and begins talking to a group of Icelandic bankers who eventually go it alone, buy the club and almost run it into the ground. Cottee is desperate for the reader to understand the time and effort he put into trying to save “his” club, which is why the progress of his consortium is documented in such detail. But in doing this he only glosses over the other areas of his life which were clearly suffering. He admits part of the reason his marriage failed was because of the time he dedicated to his consortium.

In a chapter about his work for Sky’s Soccer Saturday, Cottee claims his live reports are the next best thing to playing and perhaps it’s this transition from player to ex-player which could have been explored more. Many former pros talk about missing the buzz of the dressing room and maybe it’s even more acute for prolific strikers who are used to the adulation which comes with scoring goals. Cottee’s tireless work in trying to oust Brown could be a way of replacing this buzz, but it’s a shame the mechanics of his takeover are more in evidence than the human story.

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The father of modern English football
by Graham Morse
John Blake, £17.99
Reviewed by David Stubbs
From WSC 317 July 2013

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My earliest memory of Walter Winterbottom, manager of England from 1946 to 1962, is from a second-hand copy of the FA Book For Boys. His name spoke to my infant sense of humour, though I assumed he harked from a more didactic, purposeful age when no one had time to find the word “bottom” amusing. I also heard him providing co-commentary for the 1966 World Cup final, his vowels a strange mix of received English and suppressed Lancastrian. Like his successor, Alf Ramsey, Winterbottom had felt obliged to brush up on his elocution if he was to be taken seriously. Such class considerations abounded in his era, in all their absurdity – author Graham Morse recounts how FA secretary Stanley Rous had been reprimanded by the FA chairman for wearing plus fours when his predecessor, Sir Frederick Wall, had worn a top hat and frock coat to games.

Winterbottom himself was quite the modern man – an Oldham lad who had made his way in the world on academic merit, who understood the value of tactics, technique and advanced coaching skills. He gained a reputation as a “pedagogue” for trying to impose these methods on often-reluctant players, Stanley Matthews in particular, who thought the best way to play was to bloody well get on playing, and that skill was something you were born with. Winterbottom understood what he was up against – that in England the game had deep-rooted, violent beginnings which encouraged a crude approach, whereas in Europe and South America the game had been taken up at more middle-class levels, and was more open to theory-based technically sophisticated methods.

Winterbottom was England manager when the team lost 1-0 to the US at the 1950 World Cup. However, his hands were tied. He was never allowed to pick the team – a dubious panel of selectors did this job, whose whims once led them to grant 38-year-old Leslie Compton his first cap. He also had to put up with Matthews being ordered on a goodwill tour of Canada during the tournament. As for the 1953 defeat to Hungary, he was almost alone in understanding that the Magyars would be formidable opponents. Contemporaries such as Chelsea manager Ted Drake, however, continued to insist that England’s problem had been physical fitness rather than formation and tactics.

Morse is the son-in-law of Winterbottom, who would have been 100 this year, and his account is naturally sympathetic. It’s deservingly fulsome as well as being engagingly redolent of his era, in which Winterbottom was paid just over £1,000 a year, of players arriving at games by tram, laced balls carried around in nets, and courtships shyly conducting on hills overlooking mill chimneys. The title isn’t an overstatement – Ron Greenwood, Bobby Robson and Trevor Brooking all took on board Winterbottom’s philosophy. That England continue to fail is more to do with the institutional obtuseness Winterbottom himself never managed to break down, as opposed to his enlightened approach, whose time may not yet properly have come.

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by Richard Gordon
Black and White, £7.99
Reviewed by Dianne Millen
From WSC 316 June 2013

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Even now, 30 years on, if you mention the date May 11, 1983 to any Aberdonian, even the coldest north-eastern eyes will mist over as we mutter affectionately “Aye, Gothenburg”. For it was on that night that Aberdeen, led by Alex Ferguson, beat Real Madrid 2-1 to lift the Cup-Winners Cup. BBC journalist and lifelong Dons fan Richard Gordon has now commemorated the 30th anniversary of the club’s most famous triumph in this engaging account.

Structured around the journey to the final – and beyond it to the subsequent Super Cup victory over SV Hamburg – the chapters assess each game and the impressive domestic results which surrounded it, presenting a pen portrait of a single member of the legendary team. These interviews are often both hilarious and insightful and convey a sense of how those individuals operated, and how they managed to achieve what they did. Even if, as Eric Black recalls, it was considered no big deal: “I just thought that was how it was – you turned up, played a game, got shouted at a bit and won a trophy every year!” (Aside from the European triumph, Ferguson’s Aberdeen were Scottish champions three times and won five domestic cups.)

That collective energy, Ferguson’s ability to construct a team greater than the sum of its parts, lifted the Dons to the highest levels. Ferguson’s attention to detail and control-freak tendencies irked some players but, as Gordon Strachan puts it: “At Pittodrie every Monday morning there would be eight of us wanting to kill Fergie but by Tuesday we’re laughing and joking about it.”
The author lets the overall picture gradually emerge as we read each individual’s account. The result is a fascinating tale of how a group of talented, but otherwise fairly ordinary, blokes did something exceptional together. While there is plenty of information and several mini match reports in the book, Gordon’s pacey writing style ensures it doesn’t get bogged down with the kind of details only a hardcore fan would want to know. Perhaps the only disappointment is that while he touches on the factors which made the team’s success possible, without an interview with Ferguson himself (although his shadow falls on almost every page) the analysis is inevitably incomplete.

Celebrating Gothenburg has sometimes been seen as controversial. Certain commentators (and even some managers) accuse Aberdeen fans of living in the past – or use it as a stick with which to beat those of us who call for better than mid-table finishes, even in these changed days. Ultimately, however, this book reminds us of just how amazing the achievement was and that it is still worth celebrating. And that given the right set of people and circumstances, any of us can achieve more than we thought we could.

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