50 years of trials and triumph with football’s 
also-rans
by Tim Quelch
XPublisher, £14.99
Reviewed by Nick Miller
From WSC 301 March 2012

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Part memoir, part collection of anecdotes and – perhaps slightly surprisingly – part modern history, Underdog! is a collection of stories about when the improbable occurs in football. There are the obvious tales, such as Wimbledon winning the 1988 FA Cup, along with more obscure stories, like the Northampton Town side that reached Division One in the mid-1960s.

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A year on the frontline with a proper club
by Michael Calvin
Corinthian, £8.99
Reviewed by Neil Andrews
From WSC 301 March 2012

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Millwall and success are not common bedfellows. As such you could be forgiven for thinking this offering is little more than an attempt to cash in on the Lions' campaign of 2009-10 that ended in play-off success. Michael Calvin struck lucky with the happy ending, but there is a lot more to Family than a simple recap of a winning season. It offers a fascinating and entertaining insight into what is described as a "proper club" by the book's subtitle.

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How football lost its soul
by Rob Smyth ansd Georgina Turner
Elliot & Thompson, £11.99
Reviewed by Pete Green
From WSC 301 March 2012

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Jumpers for Goalposts is predicated on the simple idea that over the past 20 years football has become shit. From Alan Shearer's anti-punditry to corruption at FIFA; from idiot fans on the internet to the abject Italian players who blamed their failure to beat Denmark on the rough weave of their socks. As a catalogue of all that is wrong with the game, the book is accurate and thorough. As rhetoric, it is stylish and irresistible.

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How Brighton & Hove Albion Football Club and its fans united to build a stadium
by Paul Hodson & Stephen North
Stripe Publishing, £15.99
Reviewed by Drew Whitworth
From WSC 302 April 2012

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We Want Falmer! is a sequel to the authors' earlier Build a Bonfire, from 1997. Their first book is a collection of testimonies from Brighton & Hove Albion players, staff and fans, recounting the fight to depose chairman Bill Archer and save the club from relegation to the Conference. At the time, Brighton were 91st in the League and playing at Gillingham to crowds under 2,000. They now sit in the upper half of the Championship and crowds at the new American Express Community Stadium (Amex) have averaged over 20,000.

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Reluctant Champion
by Andrew Fagan and Mark Platt
Aurum Press, £20
Reviewed by Seb Patrick
From WSC 300 February 2012

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By anyone's standards, Joe Fagan was a remarkable success as a manager. In the first of just two seasons in the top job at Anfield, a treble of trophies that included becoming the fourth and last English manager to date to win the European Cup immediately guaranteed his place in history. But unlike the men who preceded and succeeded him, Fagan has generally survived in the records only as a name, rather than as a personality.

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