FEAR AND LOATHING AT GOODISON PARK: EVERTON UNDER DAVID MOYES by Lou Reed Foster

Fear and Loathing at Goodison Park chronicles the David Moyes era at Everton when a fallen giant of the English game fought to re-establish itself among football’s elite.

With relegation dogfights making way for Champions League qualification and the first cup final since 1995, David Moyes’ tenure was underpinned by stability and a hopefulness that success would soon return to the blue half of Merseyside.

It was, however, a period when the notion of success was redefined, not only for Everton but within the game as a whole.

With the financial gulf widening in a league deluged by an influx of foreign investment and media conglomerates, Moyes’ Everton became synonymous with operating on a shoe-string budget, in an era of multi-million-pound transfers and bloated wages.

With billionaire takeovers reshaping the landscape of English football forever, the people’s club’s hopes of breaking through football’s glass ceiling faded, leaving only fear and loathing at Goodison Park.

(Publisher: Pitch Publishing Ltd. May 2023. Hardcover: 272 pages)

 

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NEVER STOP: HOW ANGE POSTECOGLOU BROUGHT THE FIRE BACK TO CELTIC by Hamish Carton

Never Stop is the story of how Australian manager Ange Postecoglou took Celtic from the edge of despair to the UEFA Champions League, via a domestic ‘double’ in his debut season.

Postecoglou arrived in Glasgow with virtually no reputation on this side of the world, but through his compelling media appearances, enthralling style of football and winning habit, he soon became one of the most iconic Celtic managers since the legendary Jock Stein.

Celtic were in crisis on and off the park in the summer of 2021, with numerous key players, including iconic captain Scott Brown, leaving the club after a season that had seen them finish 25 points behind Rangers. As Postecoglou arrived amid the chaos – and brought talent like Kyogo Furuhashi, Josip Juranovic and Jota with him – Celtic fans also returned to the stadium for the first time since the start of the pandemic.

Postecoglou, his players and the support formed an unbreakable bond that would lead Celtic to the Premiership title and back to the group stages of the UEFA Champions League.

Alongside a full colour photo section to accompany the text, in this book Carton shares the inside story of what makes Postecoglou special, with views from numerous former players, colleagues and close friends.

(Pitch Publishing Ltd. March 2023. Hardcover: 256 pages)

 

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1992: THE BIRTH OF MODERN FOOTBALL by Rob Fletcher

1992: The Birth of Modern Football brings to life the key events from one of the most important years in football history.

After the huge success of Italia ’90 and the potential to show football around the world on TV, law makers, chairmen and players ushered in monumental changes to the structure of the game.

Everyone remembers the first year of the Premier League but changes to the backpass rule and the arrival of the newly branded Champions League would have a seismic effect on football.

On the pitch, Italian clubs spent huge sums as they bolstered their squads for success at home and abroad. In England, Leeds and Manchester United were battling at the top of the league for the final season in the First Division. That sliding-doors moment really did have a huge impact on Alex Ferguson’s men. To add to the growing changes, the revolution was televised.

1992: The Birth of Modern Football transports you back to the year that changed football forever.

(Publisher: Pitch Publishing Ltd. March 2023. Paperback: 256 pages)

 

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THREE GAMES IN MAY: AND A TWENTY-YEAR ODYSSEY THAT DEFINED SIR ALEX FERGUSON’S MANCHESTER UNITED by Rob Carless

Three Games in May takes us all the way back to Manchester United’s final three matches of the 1998/99 season.

Prior to these games, United had won nothing that year. However, what unfolded over those 11 days at the end of May would see them complete THE most unique of trebles, and it all came down to the final few seconds of the Champions League Final at the Camp Nou. Drama at its finest!

By chronicling the twenty-year period of 1989 to 2009, including anecdotes from the players, fans, and journalists who witnessed the historic events first-hand, Three Games in May provides a unique perspective on the events leading up to those fateful three games, as well as the three great dynasties that Sir Alex Ferguson built at Old Trafford; a period that began with United’s greatest-ever manager facing the sack!

A must-read for all Manchester United supporters, Three Games in May demonstrates that there is more to the story than those three trophies and takes the reader on a nostalgic journey through all the trials, tribulations, and, ultimately, the glory.

For every copy sold a donation will be made to Prostate Cancer UK.

(Publisher: Morgan Lawrence Publishing Services. March 2023. Paperback: 232 pages)

 

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TEN BIG EARS: AN ALTERNATIVE ACCOUNT OF FC BARCELONA IN EUROPE by Aly Mir

Ten Big Ears is the story of one of the biggest football clubs in the world, told through an eyewitness account that spans four decades.

The story begins and ends with Barcelona in disgrace and threatened with a ban from UEFA competition. In between is a fascinating account of some of the greatest football the world has ever seen, including all five of the club’s European Cup Final triumphs.

Find out what it was like to attend Barcelona games in European club competitions in six different countries.

Drawing on wider historical and cultural references to provide an alternative and quirky take on the rollercoaster that is Barça, this is almost certainly the only football book to reference philosophy, classical antiquity, religion, popular music and reality television dance shows.

Written by a fan of another football club, Ten Big Ears is a personal and occasionally satirical account that commemorates the 30th anniversary of the club’s first European Cup win in 1992. It is also a unique record of how watching the game has changed.

(Publisher: Pitch Publishing Ltd. April 2022. Hardcover: 256 pages)

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OUT OF THE BLUE: CHELSEA’S UNLIKLEY CHAMPIONS LEAGUE TRIUMPH by Gary Thacker

By the early months of 2012, it was clear that the appointment of Andre Villas-Boas as head coach at Chelsea wasn’t delivering the required success. Instead, the club was spiralling towards its worst season of the Roman Abramovich era.

On 4 March, Villas-Boas was dismissed, with his former assistant Roberto Di Matteo made interim head coach until the end of the season. Struggling in the league and with their place in the Champions League in peril, it was an appointment designed to make the best of things until a permanent replacement could be sought in the summer.

Instead, under Di Matteo’s guidance, Chelsea embarked on a run of performances that not only led to an FA Cup triumph but resurrected their European hopes with improbable victories over Napoli, Benfica and Guardiola’s all-conquering Barcelona before, against all odds, winning the Champions League by defeating Bayern Munich in their own stadium.

This is the story of a triumph that came out of the blue.

(Publisher: Pitch Publishing Ltd. April 2022. Hardcover: 448 pages)

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Book Review: Ticket to the Moon: Aston Villa – The Rise and Fall of a European Champion by Richard Sydenham

1976–77 Liverpool, 1977–78 Liverpool, 1978–79 Nottingham Forest, 1979–80 Nottingham Forest, 1980–81 Liverpool and 1981–82 Aston Villa. The run of European Cup wins, when England dominated the football landscape in a competition which bears little resemblance to the monster that succeeded it and today is misleadingly titled as the UEFA Champions League. Back then entry to the competition was only reserved for the respective Champions of their top divisions, and when Aston Villa lifted the English First Division title in 1980-81 their ticket into Europe was booked.

Author Richard Sydenham looks at the period from 1968 to 1990 through the book with that timespan broken into chapters detailing, The Rise, The Glory and The Fall of the Villa Park club as they climbed to the pinnacle of European football beating Bayern Munich 1-0 in Rotterdam.

On the plus side the book displays great research with Sydenham’s access to the main protagonists such as ex-Chairman Doug Ellis, the families of ex-manager’s Ron Saunders and Tony Barton and ex-players, providing an impressive line-up. Through this Sydenham provides a sound background to events on and off the pitch, establishing such points of interest, such as which players and staff were either pro-Ellis or pro-Saunders.

The author was also privileged in having access to Boardroom minutes, however, the general feeling as a reader was that where these were used in the book, that in the main they provided no great revelations and was a disappointing feature.

Given that Villa have never to date been able to reach the highs of the 1980-81 and 1981-82 campaigns, the book feels a little light on the details around those two historic seasons. Further, there are times when reading that the story felt less about the club, and instead wandered too often into a defence of Doug Ellis and his time at the helm of the club.

Finally, a couple of other observations. Firstly, the text size is pretty reader unfriendly in being quite small, and secondly the statistics sections seemed slightly odd in that both cover different periods, with a season by season results breakdown from 1974-75 to 1987-88, accompanied by a summary that covers 1968-69 to 1989-90.

The idea for the book is a sound one with some great source material, yet somehow it doesn’t quite hit the mark.

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