by Archie Macpherson
Black & White, £17.99
Reviewed by Archie MacGregor
From WSC 278 April 2010

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As unlikely alliances go, learning that Archie Macpherson was once good pals with Jeremy Paxman during their days on breakfast TV in the late 1980s must rank right up there as one of the most bizarre double acts in the history of tele­vision. There's no suggestion that they've remained close buddies ever since, rather the rapport was a fleeting mutual support mechanism designed to help both of them deal with the mind-numbing ordeal of early morning broadcasting. Look what it did to Frank Bough after all.

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The Remarkable Rise of Exeter City
by Nick Spencer
Nick Spencer, £12.50
Reviewed by Howard Pattison
From WSC 278 April 2010

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According to this book, supporters of Exeter City bought their football club in a jewellery shop. It is to be supposed that they left the premises, like so many other customers, wondering to themselves what on earth they had just done. But in 2003 the circumstances were so dire that the Trust felt they had no option but to run the club themselves.

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A History of the People's Team in the Workers' State
by Robert Edelman
Cornell University Press, £21.95
Reviewed by Jonathan Wilson
From WSC 278 April 2010

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Listen to some fans of Spartak Moscow and they would have you believe that their club almost single-handedly defied the state machine, that the 12 league titles they won in Soviet times were each clear and decisive blows for liberty and independence. Spartak's founder and long-time president, Nikolai Starostin, is hailed as some sort of sporting saint, whose years in a prison camp in Siberia were a form of martyrdom for the spirit of freedom he kindled in others.

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My Story
by Ralph Milne with Gary Robertson
Black And White, £14.99
Reviewed by Neil Forsyth
From WSC 277 March 2010

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In August 1991 Ralph Milne travelled to London and met a Chinese football agent in Green Park. After changing into a tracksuit behind a tree, Milne dribbled past the Chinese a few times before they switched to practising passing. Milne launched the ball with such force it caught the agent flush in the face, sending him into the mud. He got to his feet with the news that Milne had earned a short-term deal to play in Hong Kong. A few months before Green Park Milne had been on Man Utd’s books. A few years before that, he’d been one of the most exciting Scottish players of his generation. But a few years before that, he’d discovered alcohol.

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by Robert Endeacott
Tonto Books, £7.99
Reviewed by Duncan Young
From WSC 277 March 2010

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Dirty Leeds is an enjoyable read on some levels, but almost certainly not those envisaged by the author. With its provocative title and its projected first person narrative it seeks to inhabit the same niche as The Damned United by Robert Endeacott’s friend David Peace. However, whereas Peace’s Brian Clough offers a coruscating examination of the motivations of a well-known historical figure, Endeacott’s Jimmy O’Rourke simply reels off a history lesson through the eyes of a fictional would-be apprentice.

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