Football and Fashion |

Vision release Book of Football Records 2012

Vision release Book of Football Records 2012

By Clive Batty

Published by Vision Sports

Out Now! RRP £16.99 ISBN 9781 90763 7322

Football fans live being able to rattle off a whole list of facts and statistics, such as which premier league club has the noisiest fans, and who’s the only player to have won the Champion’s league with three different teams. If you know someone like this who you know wants to build up their football knowledge, then the perfect Christmas present for them is the Book Of Football Records 2012, published by vision sports.

Brothers, dads, Grandfathers, and of course all those female footie fans out there, will be overjoyed to get their hands on this book. This is the third edition of this book and its quirky and colourful format will no doubt ensure that it enjoys the success of its predecessors.

This great book is packed full of facts, records, amazing and facts from the beautiful game. There are entries on every league club in England, as well as the Scottish SPL teams. It also has features on all the top footballing nations, the major clubs dorm Europe and the rest of the world which encompasses every team from Boca Juniors to Barcelona, and also has a monster squad of footballing legends past and present.

In the 2012 edition you can find out..

• Which Brazilian star was sent off in 2011 after celebrating a goal by putting on a mask of himself?

• Why did an Indonesia player score an intentional own goal in a match against Thailand?

• Which player missed three penalties in the same international match?

• Which South American player became the first goalkeeper ever to score 100 goals?

• Which Premier League star has played 46 times for England without ever completing 90 minutes?

• Which 2011 match ended with the referee setting a new world record by sending off 36 players?

• Which club set a new Premier League record last season by failing to keep a clean sheet in 34 consecutive matches – but still managed to avoid relegation?

• In which country did a ref allow a goal ‘scored’ by a cheeky ball boy?

• Which Premier League manager has written three football novels?

• Who is the only player to have made more than 1,000 appearances for the same club?

• Which Dutch club signed an 18-month-old toddler this year after being impressed by his football skills in a YouTube video?

As if all that wasn’t enough……. there are a whole wealth of fun and quirky entries which celebrate the more bizarre footie facts and records like the referee who scored a goal with a blinding header and team that scored 149 own goals in one match!

This fact packed book of footy knowledge is available from bookshops now. See www.visionsp.co.ukfor more information.

The Andy Morrison story the good, the mad and the ugly

By Andy Morrison

Foreword by England legend, Joe Royle

Publication date: 10th October 2011, RRP: £16.99, Hardback

Published by Fort Publishing Ltd, ISBN: 978-1-905769-27-8

A gritty, brutally honest and enlightening football autobiography

Andy Morrison was a hero for the fans of every team that he played for in his career, he was also regarded as possibly one of the most troubled players of the game in modern times. He has recently published an autobiography detailing his career and the struggles he faced. In his career he was the captain of Manchester City, Blackpool, Huddersfield Town, and Plymouth Argyle.

Morrison was known for his inspiring performance at City, where he brought the club from some of its darkest days to some of its brightest. Manager of the club at the time was Joe Royle, he commented, “I’ve been in football management for a serious amount of time, Andy Morrison was, no question, one of the best players that I ever took on.”

While Morrison’s life on the field was very successful he was struggling with his personal life, after being born in Scotland he moved to Plymouth. Here he was brought up in one of the cities worst council estates and his life was filled with adversity. By the time he reached his adult life he had seen violence, dealt with alcoholism, been in trouble with the police, and had also suffered significant personal loss.

Morrison’s autobiography is an honest and frank book. It is a book that looks at a man who has been in crisis, but a man who has fought his demons, however painful they may be, and has never given into the darker side of his character.

In this new book he makes no effort to hide his problems, he talks about his fights with his managers and his teammates. He talks of the bar brawls and the pursuit of the fans who shouted abuse at him. He details his court trial where he was tried for benefit fraud, and talks about the hell that it caused his family.

Morrison believes that many of his problems can be traced to a horrific incident in his youth, one that he has never spoken about. Until now.

Andy’s story is a gripping, no-holds-barred read, which will make you wince, may shock, and goes a long way to explaining what has made Andy Morrison the man he is today.

New Book Challenges Wenger's Strategy and looks to Arsenals future

ARSÈNAL – THE MAKING OF A MODERN SUPERCLUB

RRP £8.99, ISBN 978 1 9076 3731 5

Which Way Now for Arsenal?……… This New Book Challenges Wenger’s Strategy and questions the future of Arsène AND the club

Due to the disappointing start that Arsenal have made to the new season, the timing couldn’t be more perfect for the release of this new book. Co-written by Alex Fynn and Kevin Witcher, this book asks questions regarding the future together of Arsène Wenger and the club. They also aim to ask and answer all those awkward questions that all gunner fans will want to know.

In the revised and fully update version of the book, these are just a few of the questions they have asked:

1)            Is Arsenal still a ‘big’ club?

2)            What needs to change to keep Arsenal at football’s top table? What’s stopping them attracting the type of world-class star that once graced the ‘Invincibles’ side of the 2003/2004 season?

3)            Is Arsène Wenger the right man to take Arsenal forward?

4)            Where does Wenger’s reliance on youth – which has consistently failed to deliver silverware over the last 6 years – stem from? Is it actually harming the club more than it is benefitting it?

5)            What does the club’s conspicuously reclusive Board really think of the current situation on the pitch?

6)            Who are the key figures lurking in the shadows at the Emirates? How much say do they have in Wenger’s transfer dealings?

7)            In light of recent departures, how much money does Arsenal really have at its disposal for strengthening the club’s current threadbare squad?

8)            What would it take for Wenger and Arsenal to ever part company?

9)            Despite their well-documented on-field problems, why is Arsenal still – potentially – in a better position than their great rivals, Manchester United?

Both of the authors are renowned experts on football and have an inside track on all the latest goings on at Arsenal, in a nutshell, what they don’t know about this club simply isn’t worth knowing.

This latest edition of the seminal biography of Arsenal, which was a bestseller, has 5 new chapters which take in all the events of the past 2 seasons, and is based on the unprecedented access which the author’s were granted. These include exclusive interviews with both current and former players, key members of the board and the man himself,  Arsène Wenger.

The book looks in great detail at the way that the club was transformed into a global super team under the leadership of Arsène Wenger, and challenges the French coach to change some of his tried and trusted methods in order that Arsenal keep their place amongst the elite both in the premiership and in Europe.

The Observer has described this book as “fascinating”, and the Guardian thinks it is “shrewd and well informed”. Arsènal: The Making of a Modern Superclub, has had positive comments from all who have reviewed it, and ‘When Saturday Comes’, the respected football magazine commented that “at last, there was a football book with reflected the age and the modern game”.

‘The Smell of Football’ is the candid story of his eventful 35 year-career in professional football of Mick ‘Baz’ Rathbone.

As a young player crippled by nerves (and an irrational fear of the legendary Trevor Francis!), Baz struggled to hold down a place at his boyhood club, Birmingham City, but went on to forge a distinguished career in the lower leagues with Blackburn and Preston in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

Baz qualified as a physio when his body finally gave in and, after a rollercoaster season battling against the relegation trap door as manager/physio at Halifax, he re-joined Preston where he met up with a young David Moyes. After a successful period at Preston he eventually joined forces again with David at Everton as Head of Sports Medicine.

At Goodison Park he was responsible for the well being of millions of pounds worth of talent – rubbing shoulders with the likes of Duncan Ferguson, Wayne Rooney and Tim Cahill – in a remarkable eight year spell that would take him to the heights of walking out at Wembley on FA Cup Final day.

The book is the honest, uncensored account of life in the dressing room – charting the changing face of football up and down the divisions, from booze-fuelled bus trips and £50 a week pay packets, to the glitz and glamour of the Premiership and its celebrity trappings.

OLD TRAFFORD IN THE ’80s: THE PLAYERS’ STORIES

With: Bryan Robson, Frank Stapleton, Gordon McQueen,

Arnold Muhren, Alan Brazil, Clayton Blackmore, Gary Bailey,

Arthur Albiston, Bill Garton, John Gidman and Ron Atkinson

NEW PAPERBACK EDITION!

Published by Vision Sports Publishing, Out Now!

RRP £7.99, ISBN 9781907637094

The 1980’s was certainly a barren decade for Manchester United as far as league titles were concerned, but they did bag two FA Cups during that time. The teams that conquered did so with grit, determination and some seriously dodgy perms. Eleven key players from that time have been tracked down by author Andy Mitten to tell their own stories in this new book.

They played hard on the pitch, and many played just as hard off it. Working class lads who got to live their childhood dreams by playing for the biggest and most glamorous team in the country. There are 11 chapters in the book, each one a mini-bio of the players involved. Through their stories we get the chance to build up a picture of what life was really like at Man Utd.

The football, the fights, the boozing sessions and the childish pranks are all recorded for posterity. This was an era when footballers were still one of us, they lived alongside the fans who turned out to watch them and went for a pint after training. These footballers weren’t celebrities and played for the love of the game, as there wasn’t much money to be made back then. When they retired they were lucky if they had a few medals to show for their efforts.

Penwizard have launched a personalised World Cup Book where you can play alongside your favourite England players and even score the winning goal for your country.

Star in your own personalised World Cup adventure by simply adding your name, choosing your country and personalising the illustration so you appear in the words and pictures playing alongside top footballers. In this personalised book you meet Fabio Capello as he prepares for the big match and decides that you’ll play for England alongside team players like Rooney and Lampard. You’ll take a crucial pass and score the winning goal for England in the final of the World Cup!

Create an avatar by personalising the illustrations, including hair style and colour, skin tone with an additional option to include glasses or beard. Choose your country from a list of top football teams including; England,Brazil, Spain, Argentina, Italy, Germany, Holland and France. You can play for any team, as Penwizard allows you to create any Football strip by choosing the shirt style and colour along with sock and shorts colour from the wide range of options available.
Penwizard personalised World Cup book NOW Available at www.penwizard.co.uk.

READER OFFER we would be happy to offer your readers 10% Discount with voucher code 985621

The Fashion of Football, by Paolo Hewitt and mark Baxter, is a groundbreaking work that examines for the first time the link between football and fashion. Voted one of the 50 best football books by Four Four Two magainzine, it features a selection of rare photographs which enliven the text, the book divides itself into a work of two halves – the first depicting how fashion has influenced the players and the second showing how it has been represented in the stands. We begin in 1962, when restrictions limiting earnings from professional football were lifted and footballers started to splash out on looking good. First we visit George Best’s boutique in Manchester, try on the Terry Venables wig and reveal how the 1970s Chelsea team used flamboyant King’s Road boutiques to gain the upper hand in psychological battles with fierce rivals Leeds. We then move on to the ’80s to consider the influence British black footballers brought to bear on fashion, leaving room to mention the hairdressers and the mullet. Into the ’90s and, well, we’re confronted with Liverpool FC in white suits and David Beckham in a skirt…Back in the stands for the second half, The Fashion of Football describes how football fashion has been influenced by the world around it – from the ’60s working-class Mod look to ski.

Paolo Hewitt is also author of The Sharper Word: A Mod Anthology, The Soul Stylists, Alan McGee and the Story of Creation Records and The Looked After Kid. Mark Baxter is a former shop and club owner with a love of ’60s clothing and Millwall Football Club.

‘Hewitt and Baxter go in for a mix-and-match style…to create a colourful, colloquial history of British football fashions’ The Independent on Sunday