(and other football stories)
by Mark Hodkinson
Pomona, £7.99
Reviewed by Tom Davies
From WSC 286 December 2010

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Rochdale have long been a totem of English football's fourth tier, a traditional by-word for lower-division failure alongside "the likes of" Hartlepool, Crewe, Torquay or Macclesfield. All of those have nonetheless enjoyed a promotion or two in the past four decades. Rochdale hadn't, until last season when they finally ended a 36-year spell in the basement. Mark Hodkinson had been there for all of them.

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The Lost Legacy of a Dundee and Spurs Legend
by James Morgan
Back Page Press, £9.99
Reviewed by Ken Gall
From WSC 286 December 2010

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Your reviewer approached this book with what can be fairly described as some scepticism. After all, can anything be more wearying than another "Where did it all go wrong, George?"/birds 'n' booze/study of a legend of the 1960s and 70s? Happily, however, while there are elements of the above, James Morgan's study of Alan Gilzean offers something else again; combining the career of a great player with an exploration of a personality at odds with our expectations of the great names of the past.

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The Peter Taylor Story Volume One
by Wendy Dickinson & Stafford Hildred
Matador, £17.99
Reviewed by Harry Pearson
From WSC 286 December 2010

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Gus van Sant makes films – Elephant, Final Days – that focus on a series of incidents viewed from complex mesh of different viewpoints. Maybe one day he'll turn his attention to the story of Brian Clough. Certainly there are already more than enough angles available on the bookshelves. Indeed, with new volumes appearing almost monthly (two more Clough biographies are slated for next year, and another one on Don Revie is on the way) it's hard to avoid a feeling that what we have here might be, to bowdlerise the words of Nigel Tufnell, "too much perspective".

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The Success Story of Major League Soccer
by Beau Dure
Potomac, £22.00
Reviewed by David Wangerin
From WSC 285 November 2010

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It may not be saying that much, but Major League Soccer – now approaching the end of its 15th season – is the longest running coast-to-coast soccer league North America has ever had. And, as Beau Dure writes at the end of this book: "Whether MLS has ‘arrived' is a moot point. It's here. And it's healthy."

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The Story of England v Argentina
by Neil Clack
Know The Score Books, £12.99
Reviewed by Tom Green
From WSC 285 November 2010

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Given our national obsession with football, it's strange how ignorant most of us are about the game from any other country's point of view. Certainly, reading Neil Clack's excellent history of the rivalry between two of the game's great nations, I found myself fascinated by the Argentine perspective.

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