by Michael Blackburn
Grosvenor House, £7.99
Reviewed by Tom Greene
From WSC 310 December 2012

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I was 100 pages into reading Agents, Rovers and Cricket Loving Owners when Steve Kean resigned from Blackburn Rovers. The author, Michael Blackburn, pours so much of his heart and soul into describing the pain both Kean and Venky’s have caused the club’s support that my first thought on hearing the news was for him. His book is a history of Venky’s takeover from the perspective of an exasperated fan living through it.

The story is certainly there to be told – Rovers have gone from one of the best run clubs in the League, operating successfully on very little external funding in one of the poorest parts of the UK, to an utter shambles. The catalogue of mismanagement, PR embarrassments and total lack of direction described in the book continues to this day. At the time of writing, despite Kean’s resignation almost a month ago, there is still no new manager in place. When Venky’s took over Kean was Sam Allardyce’s first-team coach. Currently in charge is Kean’s assistant, Eric Black: anyone is in with a chance of the manager’s job at Ewood Park.

The book is a chronological story from the day the Venky’s took over in November 2010 to eventual relegation last May. The structure is both a strength and weakness. On the positive side, no detail of the fans’ experience has gone undocumented and almost every game of Kean’s reign is described in painstaking detail. However, his poor team selection, delusional post-match analysis and never-ending optimism about his own and the team’s position is not enough to engage the reader throughout.

My favourite sections of the book are where we get pure unadulterated Kean. Although the author is scornful of Kean’s playing and managerial experience, this was not what made him a disastrous manager. His Comical Ali-style post-match debriefs are catalogued with some verve, although I was disappointed that a personal favourite – where Kean blamed a David Dunn shot hitting the post on a lack of dew on the grass – was not included in the author’s top ten. However, because we do not hear from Venky’s or their ex-manager directly (no doubt not for want of trying by the author) we are left with the same longing for the true story as Rovers fans will have felt living through it.

This book will not shed any new light on the Venky’s debacle for anybody who has followed the era closely. However, you could not get a more comprehensive account of what it has felt like to be a Rovers fan over the last two years. For those fans of Premier League teams not content with mid- to lower-table obscurity, read this book and it will show you that things could be worse. A lot worse.

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My life watching 
West Ham through 
a camera lens
by Steve Bacon & Kirk Blows
Biteback, £15.99
Reviewed by Neil Fairchild
From WSC 310 December 2012

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When Steve Bacon was appointed West Ham club photographer in 1980, John Lyall was only the fifth West Ham manager of the 20th century. In the 23 years since Lyall’s departure, there have been nine different permanent managers and almost as many promotions and relegations. For Hammers fans the familiar rotund figure of Bacon waddling across the pitch on matchdays has become a reassuring constant in an uncertain world.

Until Alan Pardew arrived in 2003 Bacon would travel to away matches on the team coach. He would even be present in the dressing room during team talks. There’s Only One Stevie Bacon is a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the dysfunctional world of West Ham over three decades, with a chapter dedicated to the tenure of each manager from Lyall to Gianfranco Zola.

Although Bacon’s subjectivity gives the book a partial and at times spiteful feel – Paul Kitson is a “weasel”, Brian Kidd a “horrible little shit” – his refusal to pander to fans’ preconceptions makes for a refreshing viewpoint. Ron Greenwood is an “awkward bugger” and Pardew, who was the last manager to have his name sung by West Ham fans, is repeatedly dismissed as arrogant and mocked for his use of psychology and motivational techniques. Lou Macari, loved by neither fans nor players, is portrayed in a surprisingly compassionate light. Others are depicted in exactly the way you would expect: old-fashioned Billy Bonds, for example, struggles with the modern world. Following rumours about the close relationship between Ian Bishop and Trevor Morley, Bonds calls both players into his office and asks: “Well, are you or ain’t you?” It turns out they ain’t.

Kirk Blows, author of various books on West Ham, has been enlisted to bring a sense of cohesion to these anecdotes. Blows appears to have viewed his role as that of articulating Bacon’s thoughts rather than challenging them. At times some editing would have been kind. Bacon’s bafflement at the poor quality of televisions in a department store in 1980s communist Romania (“the arsehole of the universe” as he charmingly calls it) would have been a useful omission.

Bacon is the first to admit that he is no football expert and this book sheds little light on why the FA Cup that was won just before his arrival was the club’s last piece of major silverware. Nevertheless there are plenty of interesting and funny tales: the team coach stopping on the way to a match at Stoke to allow the kit manager to put a bet on for Macari; a naked John Moncur jumping out of a locker during one of Harry Redknapp’s team talks; a frightened Paolo di Canio telling a stewardess “I don’t want to die” before getting off a plane that is about to take off.

Far too often the tone of the book is brought down by stories that would be better left in the pub. His fondness of Mark Ward’s wife’s “big boobs” and a players’ masturbation competition on the team coach (yes, really) are two examples. Then again, given the niche target market for this book, perhaps Bacon simply has a good understanding of his audience.

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Lonely at the top: 
A biography
by Philippe Auclair
Macmillan, £17.99
Reviewed by David Stubbs
From WSC 310 December 2012

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“I don’t recognise myself in the players I see today,” George Best said in his very last interview, conducted, as it happens, with Philippe Auclair himself. “There’s only one who excites me, and that is Thierry Henry. He’s not just a great footballer, he’s a showman, an entertainer.”

Henry, however, is not exactly in the Best tradition. He has both more and less about him than the ultimately ruined Manchester United superstar. Henry’s sheer quantity, as well as quality, of achievements at both league and international level dwarf Best’s but for all that he hasn’t quite blazed in the firmament in the same way. A lifelong teetotaller, he yields little or nothing in the way of a volatile private life, while his personality ranges from affable to aloof. For all those va-va-voom ads, he is simply not as scintillating a character off the field as he was on it in his prime. Maybe that’s why there has only been one full-length study of the player published in the UK – Oliver Derbyshire’s Thierry Henry: The amazing life of the greatest footballer on earth – a book as abysmal as its title, almost Piers Morganesque in the low it sets in Arsenal-related discourse.

Auclair admits not being drawn to Henry the way he was to Eric Cantona, his pre-
vious subject in the acclaimed The Man Who Would Be King. However, Lonely At The Top is probably about as shrewd and in-depth a profile as we’re likely to get of Henry, who seems to have been moulded by the drive of his father, a highly influential figure in his life until he made a botched attempt to effect a transfer for his son to Real Madrid. The book tracks his development from a speedy but slight youngster reluctant to track back to the machine of panache he was at Arsenal. Auclair adds his own flourish with allusions to the likes of Philip Larkin and Gustave Flaubert which will raise the blood temperature of the compiler of Pseuds Corner but otherwise will only distract the most determinedly Philistine reader.

Auclair poses questions he’s not always able to answer, such as why Henry never seemed to get along with Zinedine Zidane and truly fulfil his potential at international level, or why Arsène Wenger is so beset at times with tactical ineptitude despite his success at Arsenal. Viewing matters from a French perspective, he regards Henry’s fateful handball against the Republic of Ireland as an unfortunate crowning moment in his career given the probably unfair antipathy it triggered against him, though Arsenal fans in particular would hardly see this as quite so defining of the player.

The access he has had, some forbidden to UK journalists, does yield insightful, incidental nuggets along the way: into the character of Emmanuel Petit, for instance, profoundly affected by a personal tragedy; Patrick Vieira’s excessively informative quote that the cheers of the Highbury throng gave him “a hard on”; as well as the partying habits of the French squad in the 2002 World Cup. This occasionally gives the impression that, fine and thoughtful as Lonely At The Top is, its author would secretly prefer to be writing about somebody or something else.

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The third day of the WSC advent calendar and we’ve got three Kings for you.

The first is taken from WSC 187, September 2002. Haydyn Parry examined what Gillingham would do without their leading striker, Marlon King, who had just lost his appeal against a conviction for stolen goods which meant he would spend 18 months in prison.

The second is Harry Pearson on the King’s Road, so synonymous with Chelsea FC, in WSC 166, December 2000.

The third is this photo of the Greene King stadium, alternatively called De Montfort Park, home to Hinckley United of the Conference North. This 4,329-capacity stadium was opened in March 2005 and its record attendance is 3,411 – achieved against Leicester City in a pre-season friendly in July 2012.

This photo was taken at FootballFans.eu