Book Review: The Secret Diary of a Liverpool Scout by Simon Hughes
Now this is an intriguing book. Whilst most of the key architects of Liverpools's lasting success over the four decades after Bill Shankly took over avtively shunned publicity, most were still pushed into the limelight. Click to continue reading...

Over the past few days I've been reading the book Secret Diary of a Liverpool Scout which deals with the life of former chief scout Geoff Twentyman (review of this should be online early next week).
Author Simon Hughes has done an excellent job of rounding not only players that Twentyman helped bring to Liverpool but also those that ended up elsewhere. Click to continue reading...

Book Review: Genius Does as it Must - Liverpool FC Banners Compiled by Chris McLoughlin and Adam Oldfield
When people talk about the atmosphere at Anfield, particularly on a European night, they often refer to the singing and the raw emotion that there is in the ground. Too often, they fail to pick up on an important element that distinguishes Liverpool fans from many of their English counterparts: the banners that adorn the stands. Click to continue reading...

Big Mal: The High Life and Hard Times of Malcolm Allison, Football LegendBy David TossellMainstreamSeptember 2009, £7.99, ISBN: 9781845964788We recently introduced to the sidebar a table of links to some football-related book reviews that we (well, mostly LR) have written, either on here or Goodreads. Click to continue reading...

Much has been written about the Gael Kakuta case which has led to the ban on transfer dealings that has been imposed on Chelsea. There has been debate about whether the decision was too harsh or not; others have focused on going over Chelsea's actions to see whether they were right in what they did or not. Click to continue reading...

Meta: I'll be away until Monday, which is really quite handy given the transfer window's just closed and it's an international break. I will miss the three-year anniversary of this blog tomorrow, but that's no great shakes. Here's a book review to hold you over. Don't break anything.
Why England Lose and Other Curious Phenomena Explained
Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski
HarperSport
The title's obviously intriguing, it got a rare five-star review in FourFourTwo, and the blurbs have compared it to Moneyball. Click to continue reading...

Book Review: Red Race by Paul Tomkins
If you're a fan of American sport (something that I have to admit I'm not) then you'll be familiar with the love affair that there is with statistics and how numbers are used to explain almost everything.
Up till a few years back such an approach was alien to football where the only numbers you were likely to get were those pertaining to the scoreline. Click to continue reading...

Book Review: Tor
For some reason this book – which is a history of German football - had stood, unread, on my bookshelf for a couple of years. I had bought it in one of my usual spending sprees and then felt little inclination to read it. Well, that's not completely true as I had actually started to read it, not really liked what I saw and dropped it soon after. Click to continue reading...

Book Review: Wark On by John Wark
It must be impossible for those who played top flight football in the era of pre-Premiership riches not to wonder how their lives would have panned out had they been born a couple of decades later. Take Glen Hysen: the Swedish central defender who played for Liverpool in the early nineties recently ended up on the dole after a Swedish broadcaster opted not to renew his contract. Click to continue reading...

Grant Wahl discusses his new book, The Beckham Experiment, out now from Crown

Why do book reviews have to be summaries of the book? I never got that. I understand it but don't get it. I do get jacket blurbs, though. Those few sentences of praise on the back of a boo I'm always curious what names are there and what they say.

Click to continue reading...

Book Review: The Rivals Game by Douglas Beattie
If you've ever read Four Four Two's regular feature More Than A Game, then there's no doubt that you'll love this book. For the premise behind it is similar: take two clubs where there's a derby and look at what makes games between them particularly fierce. Click to continue reading...

Book Review: Behind the Back Page by Chris Davies
One the cover of this book there's a quote attributed to Ian Ridley where he discribes the author, Chris Davies, as being "a funny guy".
Such a comment would normally be the prelude to a long read without any laughs. Click to continue reading...

From time to time, I'll review books that strike my fancy. The first one would have been a must-have for my library even if a friend hadn't written it. Hot Winter Nights: A Game-by-Game History of the Major Indoor Soccer League 1978-92 was a labor of love for my man Rich Paschette and it's a treasure trove for indoor soccer aficionados and stat/sports encyclopedia geeks like me.

Click to continue reading...

img style="BORDER-RIGHT: medium none; BORDER-TOP: medium none; MARGIN: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: medium none; BORDER-BOTTOM: medium none" height="1" alt="" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.co.uk/e/ir?t=alivthi-21amp;l=as2amp;o=2amp;a=0715637630" width="1" border="0" /Normally, I'm either immediately hooked by a book and don't put it down until I finish it or else I start delaying reading more of it which is a clear indication that it isn't really to my liking. Click to continue reading...

The end of the year seems to be the ideal time for compiling lists and whereas others have looked at the best goals or their favourite games from 2008, I've opted for a completely different list: the best five books I've read during 2008.
5:Elephants, Lions and Eagles: A Journey Through African Football by Filippo Ricci
I'll admit that I expected a bit more from this book. Click to continue reading...

The end of the year seems to be the ideal time for compiling lists and whereas others have looked at the best goals or their favourite games from 2008, I've opted for a completely different list: the best five books I've read during 2008.
5:Elephants, Lions and Eagles: A Journey Through African Football by Filippo Ricci
I'll admit that I expected a bit more from this book. Click to continue reading...

A couple of months back, I reviewed the book Anfield of Dreams by Neil Dunkin and although it wasn't exactly my kind of book, there are many who don't share my opinion. Proof of that comes not only from the very healthy sales figures but also by the recent nomination for the British Sports Book Awards 2009 for the Best New Writer title. Click to continue reading...

A couple of months back, I reviewed the book Anfield of Dreams by Neil Dunkin and although it wasn't exactly my kind of book, there are many who don't share my opinion. Proof of that comes not only from the very healthy sales figures but also by the recent nomination for the British Sports Book Awards 2009 for the Best New Writer title. Click to continue reading...

Yesterday I reviewed Paul Tomkins' latest book Dynasty which, in case you missed it, I wholeheartedly recommend. Here's a brief-ish chat that I had with Paul about this book and Liverpool's current situation.
How did the idea of the book come about?
I was getting sick of the notion that everything in the club's history was perfect, and Benítez could do no right in some people's eyes. Click to continue reading...

Book Review: Dynasty by Paul Tomkins
People who read Paul Tomkins' regular columns fall into two categories: those who appreciate his insightful musings and those who do so to complain about his ultra-positive tinge. That over the past few years he has been writing largely for the official website has strengthened the latter's view that he is simply a mouthpiece of the club. Click to continue reading...

What do footballers get up to once they retire? Once it was a pretty straightforward choice between finding a way into football management, going to work in a factory or else buying a pub, with the ultimate decision depending largely on how much money any testimonial had managed to raise.
These days players, at least those lucky enough to spend some time in the Premiership, have no such problems. Click to continue reading...

Hopes around Russia's probabilities at the European Championships weren't that high. True, they had Guus Hiddink, a master in getting teams to outperform expectations, but their limitations were deemed to be too much even for him to overcome. After all, they'd qualified for the championships largely because of England's incompetence and their defeat to Croatia in the final group game. Click to continue reading...

I think it was the tag line of Alive and Kicking that caught my eye. "When Soccer Moms Take The Field And Change Their Lives Forever" I wasn't sure what to expect. But I was browsing around Amazon for some soccer books and figured for a couple bucks used, it was worth a [...] Click to continue reading...