GET IT ON: HOW THE ‘70s ROCKED FOOTBALL by Jon Spurling

Four years after the crowning glory of 1966 and a decade after the abolition of the maximum wage, a brash new era dawned in English football. As the 1970s took hold, a new generation of larger-than-life footballers and managers came to dominate the sport, appearing on television sets in vivid technicolour for the first time.

Set against a backdrop of three-day weeks, strikes, political unrest, freezing winters and glam rock, Get It On tells the intriguing inside story of how commercialism, innovation, racism and hooliganism rocked the national game in the 1970s. Charting the emergence of Brian Clough, Bob Paisley and Kevin Keegan, and the fall of George Best, Alf Ramsey and Don Revie, this fascinating footballing fiesta traces the highs and lows of an evolutionary and revolutionary era for the beautiful game.

Jon Spurling has been interviewing footballers for twenty-five years, including legends George Best and Jack Charlton, European Cup-winning captains Emlyn Hughes and John McGovern and pioneering black footballers Cyrille Regis and Brendon Batson. Get It On presents these heroes of the era in their unvarnished and uncompromising glory and explores how the 1970s was the most ground-breaking decade in English football history.

(Publisher: Biteback Publishing. March 2022. Hardcover: 416 pages)

PLEASE DON’T TAKE ME HOME: A LOVE STORY WITH FULHAM FOOTBALL CLUB by Simone Abitante

Please Don’t Take Me Home is the emotional tale of Italian immigrant Simone Abitante’s 20-year love affair with Fulham Football Club.

After leaving his native country, Simone falls in love with London and its oldest club, embarking on a personal mission to spread the word and get Fulham recognised beyond Britain by as many people as possible.

Following the Cottagers through the most successful spell in their modern history, Simone takes his nephews to Craven Cottage where – together with new friends and Whites addicts Jeff, Mark and Ben – they experience unforgettable wins, exhilarating highs and devastating lows, amid rivers of beer, true friendship and an unquenchable passion for the beautiful game.

Even after leaving London for Mallorca, Simone keeps following his beloved Fulham, with that famous white jersey serving as a second skin.

Played out against a backdrop of heartbreaks, departures and life-changing decisions, Please Don’t Take Me Home is a footballing story every fan can relate to.

(Publisher: Pitch Publishing Ltd. March 2022. Hardcover: 224 pages)

MARCELO BIELSA: THE FOUNDATION OF SUCCESS AT LEEDS UNITED BY Salim Lamrani

As Marcelo Bielsa’s interpreter, Salim Lamrani was his right-hand man throughout his first season in charge of Leeds United. As a privileged witness to that remarkable 2018/19 campaign, Lamrani tells the inside story of how the club came within a hair’s breadth of returning to the Premier League before winning promotion in the very next season to end a 16-year exile.

Lamrani lays bare the secrets behind Bielsa’s methods, starting with the demands he makes in an intense pre-season, through to the Argentinian tactician’s unwavering loyalty to a highly effective style of play – a style based on possession, collective coverage, rapid transitions, changes of tempo and constant attack. For him, beauty is non-negotiable.

Thanks to Bielsa, the players of Leeds United were the actors in an unforgettable epic, which made an indelible mark on millions of supporters. Taking us match by match through Bielsa’s first year in English football, Lamrani weaves a fascinating narrative and paints an intimate portrait of a unique football genius.

(Publisher: Pitch Publishing Ltd. March 2022. Hardcover: 320 pages)

SOAP STARS AND BURST BUBBLES: A SEASON OF YORKSHIRE FOOTBALL by Steven Penny

Football writer Steven Penny takes you on a journey across the football fields of Yorkshire during the 2002/03 season.

From the multi-national squad of Premiership club Middlesbrough to the six-year-old boys of Wheldrake Junior FC playing their first game. The book concentrates on the non-League clubs of the county, from Barnoldswick – playing in Lancashire competitions – to Easington – tucked away on Spurn Point. And from Northern League sides Marske United and Northallerton Town to the world’s oldest club, Sheffield FC, now based in Derbyshire.

Penny reports on more than 40 matches, including Harrogate Railway’s remarkable FA Cup run and Doncaster Rovers’ return to the Football League. As well as reports and match details from every game, included are club histories, interviews with fans and club officials

(Publisher: Victor Publishing. February 2021. Paperback: 269 pages)

 

Read our review here: Book Review: Soap st (footballbookreviews.com)

For details about: Towering Tales & a Ripping Yarn: Yorkshire Football’s Grassroots Legends click here: TOWERING TALES & A RIPP (footballbookreviews.com)

LS92 by Billy Morris

Two years have passed, but the events of Bournemouth 90 continue to cast a dark shadow over the lives of everyone who travelled south on that hot Bank Holiday weekend.

Max Jackson is out of jail and trying to re-establish himself in a Leeds underworld being torn apart by gangland warfare. The Yardsley brothers are still paying the price for their actions, with the spectre of Alan Connolly continuing to haunt them. At Millgarth, Sergeant Andy Barton finds himself in the limelight after Bournemouth, but terrace culture is changing, and police intelligence is struggling to adapt to the new normal of the nineties.

At Elland Road, a resurgent United are heading towards their first league title in eighteen years, but a disturbing, malevolent force is threatening to gate-crash the champions’ victory party.

Old scores are settled, and new ones imagined, as the climax to the title showdown becomes a deadly quest for vengeance, forgiveness and redemption. LS92. Dark crime fiction from a time when it was still grim up north.

(Publisher: Independently published. January 2022. Paperback: 176 pages)

 

Read our review here: Book Review – LS92 by (footballbookreviews.com)

For details about Bournemouth 90 click here: BOURNEMOUTH 90 by (footballbookreviews.com)

TOWERING TALES & A RIPPING YARN: YORKSHIRES FOOTBALL’S GRASSROOTS LEGENDS by Steven Penny

Football writer Steven Penny takes you on a journey across the football fields of Yorkshire during the 2020/21 season, discovering some incredible links to the game’s greats.

Liverpool, Manchester United and Arsenal are among 90 professional clubs from the UK who have links to the lower-level Yorkshire clubs featured in this book. Add a sprinkle of overseas clubs and international teams, including England’s 1966 World Cup winners, and the grassroots scene in the Broad Acres has given much to the global game.

Discover the story of the world’s first black professional footballer, the pop star who arranged his gigs to carry on playing Sunday football and the White Rose apprenticeship served by managerial legends Bill Shankly, Joe Harvey and Herbert Chapman. Read about the schoolboy footballers who conquered the world and the fictional team that went down a storm in a TV classic.

Penny digs up dozens of tremendous tales of life on the White Rose county’s lesser known football fields.

(Publisher: Victor Publishing. January 2022, Paperback: 248 pages)

I AM SAM by James Durose-Rayner

High-flying sports-media mogul and David Beckham doppelgänger, Mr. Arsenal is living every football fan’s dream: he’s loaded, has his pick of the ladies and drives a flashy sports car. And to make his life even sweeter, he’s been chosen to work on coverage for the 2014 World Cup.

Tasked with producing a short documentary, Mr. Arsenal, stumbles upon footage from Mexico 1970 and a high-profile spat between television pundit and Manchester City coach Malcolm Allison and Tottenham Hotspur player and captain Alan Mullery.

On further investigation, he unearths a reference to a half-forgotten player named only as ‘Sammy’ and referred to as the one who was ‘left behind’. Determined to discover the man behind the name, Mr. Arsenal quickly becomes obsessed with the tragic story of this once top-flight footballer whose brilliance has been all but lost in the annals of sporting history; a player who was once one of the highest paid and most successful players in Britain: Jon Sammels.

As Mr Arsenal revisits Sammels’ professional heyday in the late 1960s and early 70s, the impact on his own life is extraordinary.

Read our review here: I AM SAM by Ja (footballbookreviews.com)

(Publisher: Clink Street Publishing. February 2015. Paperback: 498 pages)

DEADLINE by Erkut Sogut

As transfer deadline day looms, Ander Anaia is about to make the deal of a lifetime. All that stands in his way is a rival agent. Or so he thinks.

The Table, a secret cabal of super agents involved in ‘off-pitch’ criminal activities, have other ideas. And they’ve kidnapped his daughter Joska as collateral.

David Miller is about to make his first serious deal. A deal that would bring Ander’s world crashing down around him. Now Ander must do everything in his power to stop him. Or risk losing his daughter – and the deal.

(Publisher: CA Publishing House Ltd. February 2022. Paperback: 291 pages)

BLOODY SOUTHERNERS – CLOUGH AND TAYLOR’S BRIGHTON & HOVE ODYSSEY by Spencer Vignes

In 1973, Brian Clough and Peter Taylor stunned the football world by taking charge of Brighton & Hove Albion, a sleepy backwater club that had rarely done anything in its 72-year existence to trouble the headline writers. The move made no sense. Clough was managerial gold dust, having led Derby County to the Football League title and the semi-finals of the European Cup. He and his sidekick Peter Taylor could have gone anywhere. Instead they chose Brighton, sixth bottom of the old Third Division.

Featuring never-before-told stories from the players who were there, Bloody Southerners lifts the lid for the first time on what remains the strangest managerial appointment in post-war English football, one that would push Clough and Taylor’s friendship and close working relationship to breaking point.

Read our review here: Book Review: Bloody Southerners – Clough and Taylor’s (footballbookreviews.com)

(Publisher: Biteback Publishing. October 2018. Paperback: 320 pages)

LOST IN FRANCE: THE REMARKABLE LIFE AND DEATH OF LEIGH ROOSE, FOOTBALL’S FIRST SUPERSTAR by Spencer Vignes

In 1914 one of Britain’s most famous sportsmen went off to play his part in the First World War.

Like millions of others, he would die.

Unlike millions of others, nobody knew how or where. Until now.

Lost in France is the true story of Leigh Roose: playboy, scholar, soldier and the finest goalkeeper of his generation. It’s also the tale of how one man became caught up in a global catastrophe – one that would cost him his life, his identity and his rightful place as one of football’s all-time legends.

Lost In France is the biography of goalkeeper Leigh Roose, football’s first genuine superstar, a man so good at his position on the field of play that the Football Association made one of the most significant rule changes in the game’s history just to keep him in check. Small wonder that when the Daily Mail put together a World XI to take on another planet, Leigh’s was the first name on its team sheet.

Read our review here: Book Review: Lost in (footballbookreviews.com)

(Publisher: Pitch Publishing Ltd. July 2016. Paperback: 192 pages)