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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An Autobiography
by Norman Uprichard with Chris Westcott

Amberley, £14.99
Reviewed by Robbie Meredith
From WSC 300 February 2012

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It is a standard and understandable practice for footballers who played long before the Baby Bentley-fuelled Premier League age to use parts of their autobiography to lament some of the traits of the modern pro. Norman Uprichard, the notoriously brave Northern Irish goalkeeper who played for Arsenal and Portsmouth in the old Division One in the 1950s, is an exception to the rule. He has virtually nothing, negative or positive, to say about the game after his own career finished in 1961. It is a pity, as he had more right than most to regret missing out on the comparative riches available to later generations.

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The Autobiography
by Dixie Deans with Ken McNab
Birlinn, £16.99
Reviewed by Jonathan O'Brien
From WSC 300 February 2012

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It requires little brainpower to work out how John Deans, Celtic's powerhouse striker of the early 1970s, came by his nickname. But it seems even that was beyond some people. Early on in this autobiography, a well-known horseracing pundit accosts Deans at a function and slaps his back, under the impression he has just met the Evertonian Dixie Dean instead. "For me to be Dixie Dean, I would have had to be about 90," he writes. "I must look like I had a hard paper round."

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