Books for Bedtime: Christmas Stocking Fillers For The Football Fan

Books for Bedtime: Christmas Stocking Fillers For The Football Fan
11:36, 05 Dec 2017

Football fans can be notoriously difficult to buy for at this time of year. The new kit that came out in the summer has already been in the drawer for six months while the latest offerings for the PS4 and Xbox are usually snapped-up on the day they are launched; but such is the quality of books about the beautiful game at the moment you could do a lot worse than sticking one of these terrific titles in their stocking this Christmas.

Everton Greatest Games: The Toffees’ Fifty Finest Matches by Jim Keoghan

The way things have gone this season suffering Evertonians might just appreciate finding something to remind them of the good times under the tree this Christmas and Jim Keoghan’s nostalgic look back at some of the greatest games in the club’s history will do just that.

On the back of the excellent Highs, Lows and Bakayokos: Everton in the 1990s, Jim trawls through the long and illustrious history of one of the game’s best known names, selecting 50 of the greatest matches from the past 130 years or so.

For a generation of Blues who have enjoyed slim pickings in recent years, this might seem something of an ambitious assignment but England’s fourth most successful football club (based on league titles won) still boasts a rich history littered with exciting encounters and marvellous matches.

The handy bite-sized chunks of information, collated from old match reports and newspaper cuttings make Keogh’s book easy to navigate, from the era of Dixie Deane to the glory days of the 1980s under Howard Kendall, an era which not surprisingly features heavily.

Not only will this beautifully put together publication take a large number of fans on a trip down memory lane, it also acts as a reference book for those too young to remember many of the club’s fine achievements and, although recent form might suggest that a second edition is some way off, until then this is a must-have for Evertonians everywhere.

Out of the Shadows by Gary Jordan

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The World Cup of 1982 still divides opinion. Some feel it was a wasted opportunity for England to lift the trophy for the first time since 1966 while others think Ron Greenwood’s side were unlucky to be eliminated from a tournament which they came home from without losing a game.

Luckily we have Gary Jordan’s new offering Out of the Shadows to offer an honest and knowledgeable account of what has become something of a forgotten period in the history of the national side, as we are reminded of how Ron Greenwood and his team embarked on the country’s first World Cup finals after an absence of 12 years.

Jordan perfectly captures that turbulent and transitional period as England prepared to enter the big time with star players like Kevin Keegan and Trevor Brooking knowing this would probably be their last opportunity to shine on the world stage; from a qualifying campaign which saw Greenwood offer his resignation before changing his mind, to the huge highs and crushing lows of the finals in Spain that summer.

“We all thought we were very unlucky,” writes Paul Mariner in the book’s foreword and maybe that’s what was England’s downfall back then, as a side and a nation optimistically and perhaps foolishly believed they could mix it again with the biggest names in the game after so long in the wilderness?

For those of a certain age this book will bring memories of Admiral kits and curly perms flooding back, but this is more than just a nostalgia trip; it’s a thorough and detailed examination of a period in the game’s history which is so often overlooked; but thankfully Jordan’s fine work puts that right while highlighting just how little has changed when it comes to England’s troublesome relationship with major tournaments in the years that have followed.   

29 Minutes from Wembley by Steve Phelps

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The 1980/81 season began like many others for Coventry City but would culminate in an epic League Cup run which would provide the narrative for one of the most memorable campaigns in years as a group of players who had grown up together came of age.

Not only is this a fascinating account of one of the club’s most enthralling and talked about seasons but it’s also a first-hand look at one of the more turbulent periods in the city’s recent past, as Steve Phelps manages to perfectly capture the essence of just what it was like watching and playing football in the early 1980s.

Documenting his time as a young man embarking on what would be a lifelong journey following Coventry City Phelps cleverly combines newspaper reports with fascinating accounts from supporters and those players he was watching from the Highfield Road stands as he reunites fan favourites like Tommy Hutchison, Steve Hunt and Paul Dyson; all of whom remember it as if it were yesterday.

As the title suggest, City would fall agonisingly short in their quest to make it to Wembley, losing to West Ham in the semi-final; but there is little sign of disappointment or bitterness here, just a sense of what could have been, along with some magnificent memories of an optimistic era for the club; a million miles from the dismal mood that currently shrouds Coventry City.

Mud, Sweat and Shears by Dave Thomas

Goalies without gloves, the magic sponge and floodlight pylons, all things we no longer see at football, yet there is one constant who still remains in the game and is regularly spotted forking the field and dispersing divots during half-time break at stadiums up and down the country – the groundsman.

Roy Oldfield is the former groundsman of Burnley who lovingly tended to the Turfmoor turf throughout the 1970s and 80s in the days when pitches were far from the beautifully kept bowling greens that players expect today.

In Mud, Sweat and Shears the former miner, who traded black fingers for green ones, recalls the daily battle of preparing a pudding of a pitch on a weekly basis and is sprinkled with his recollections of the famous players, managers and referees who would often drop into his shed for a chat and a cuppa.

Like the sport itself the role of a groundsman has changed drastically in the last 30 years as advances in technology and greater funding has meant that being a groundsman is now more of an art than a vocation; but with that a fundamental part of a club’s make-up can so often be lost, something which is highlighted here as Thomas taps into what made Oldfield tick, what he saw and what he experienced during such a difficult and different time for this great old football club.  

Using some of Oldfield’s diary entries we are transported back to a time when a fully functioning mower was something of a novelty for a groundsman and thanks to anecdotes involving the likes of Denis Law, Bill Shankly, Kevin Keegan, not to mention Burnley’s former chairman Bob Lord; this is more of a behind the scenes look at the workings of a football club and the people involved during its darkest and most difficult days than simply the confessions of a man with a mower.

All of these books are published by Pitch Publishing and are available to order on their website: https://www.pitchpublishing.co.uk/

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