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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My Inside Account of the 2010 World Cup
by Gary Lineker
Simon & Schuster, £16.99
Reviewed by Ian Farrell
From WSC 285 November 2010

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If you've caught any of Gary Lineker's promotion for Still Dreaming, you might have picked up a distinct lack of enthusiasm from him. Having now read it, I can say that this is no self-deprecation. To be fair, books of this type are only really as interesting as the tournament they describe, and while England's campaign certainly wasn't the glorious triumph the publishers would've been hoping for, it wasn't the disaster they'd probably take as second-best either, despite what the papers would have you believe. France had a disaster, and there's undoubtedly a fascinating book to be written about it. Ours was merely a big disappointment, a damp squib. And turning material like that into a cracking read takes a very special literary talent, not an ex-goal poacher.

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The Reinvention of Leeds United
Anthony Clavane
Yellow Jersey, £16.99
Reviewed by David Stubbs
From WSC 285 November 2010

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Thanks to the searing influence of David Peace, Leeds Utd currently burn vividly on the collective consciousness. It helps that their team-sheet remained so constant under Don Revie – nine of the 1963-64 promotion squad were still regulars nearly a decade later. Even many non-supporters of a certain age can recite the classic line-up, as easily as if it were the Dad's Army platoon – Sprake, Reaney, Cooper, Madeley, etc, invariably culminating in Bates – Mick Bates, the perennial substitute and Private Sponge of the organisation.

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