Elements of style

The elements of style in football fiction have very little to do with fashionable strips, cutting edge hairdoo’s, trendy cars and flashier bars. It’s about the words and how they’re placed on the page. The order of things. In football it’s the stuff the manager thinks about mostly. Smart players do it too. Well… I’ll leave that where it is.
Smart fans know it’s all about the football. Smart fans don’t worry about style or image, unless it’s to take in the latest version of the club’s away game alternative training kit.

Now, take Robbie Williams, Port Vale’s ‘biggest’ fan. Obviously when we say ‘biggest’ we’re not talking pie-eating, legging stretching or Texas rancher euphemising here. We’re talking celebrity LARGesse. Yesterday, pop’s largest celebrity football fan, ignored his famously favoured team to watch what he described in an impromptu game-side Sky Sports interview as his ‘secret Vale’ in action at the Emirates stadium.

Standing alongside his old Take That chum, the Barlow boy - he is after all unofficial leader of the manboy ‘band’ (he’s the only one who can actually play an instrument), Williams blaw-blaw-blawed a profession for football love at its vainest. He unwittingly revealed something most people probably would have guessed. He suggested following Port Vale can be difficult sometimes and that he enjoys watching a team who win a game once in a while. I know. Wanker! Football fans stick with their teams through thick n thin. Or thin n thin if you’re a Vale fan, but that’s besides the point.

It turns out Williams thick, like many of football’s shallower, shiny trophy, gold diggers, is a clandestine dirty love for Man. Ewe, Alex Ferguson’s pedantically preened multi-millionaire European champers who strut, stroll and, with the ball at their feet, victoriously sweep all-comers aside. Except, they got done, didn’t they?

In the classic writer’s text, Elements of Style, by Strunk, White and Kalman, now in its fourth edition, it says write about what you know about, write about what you feel most comfortable with.

Clearly most weeks Robbie words would have wrung truer than the electronically controlled giant bell hanging above the Thames near the houses of Paharliament. Except he chose to say what he did during an interview in the stadium on a day when his sentiment was hopelessly inaccurate. Clearly as a singer of over prescribed love songs this is not new to him, but in the world of football, fictive or otherwise, these are the things that count. Like a flat cap, a black pudding under the arm, a losing racing card and a pair of steel toe-capped boots, your words are the stable, solid ground you stand on and if you get it wrong, you’re in the mire. I don’t think football fiction writers are any different.

Port Vale’s 2nd round FA cup spectacular 4-3 comeback (from 3-1 down) was the stuff of legend, a genuine football story of the day. Or would have been if it hadn’t been overshadowed by the Red Devils (has there ever been more appropriate name?) getting their bums felt by the Gooners. While the result will make the likes of Nick Hornby, Karren Brady and, allegedly, Osama Binboy Laden happy, it only leaves Robbie wishing he’d been in Huddersfield.

On a side note, I was wondering if the destruction of the part of the Emirates stadium by Osama’s mob in Chris Cleave’s novel Incendiary would count as a football fiction moment? Mind you, it’s probably just a happy coincidence that my thinking of these things has converged in this week’s post.

Sweet Feck All?

For a wee while Sweet FA was all I thought I'd be putting on the blog this week. School's back. I'm really busy. Still late and never and better, apologies for delays and the rest.

I am dilligently looking for football fiction, but I couldn't help feeling this week that I was looking for something in all the wrong places. A bit like the four women who lead the charge to take their football widow bitterness out on their men folk in Siobhan Curham's book Sweet FA.

I have to be honest I was fully expecting it to be absolutely shite. I was looking forward to having something to rip into. Something I could open up and tear a big lump off. But I couldn't. Now, it isn't the best example of football fiction, but it isn't the worst either.

It's in the same league as Karren Brady's woeful lipstick football fiction, but while Brady's books would be fighting with each other to avoid relegation. Curham's book would be in the play-offs for promotion.

'Whoah' I hear you say. And you'd be right too. 'Whoah' is exactly what I said. The book's content and lack of any real football bar it from being Championship material and the glory of a higher division would ultimately allude it, but there is something there. A couple of wee bubbles of questions popped into my mind when I was reading it, besides why I was reading it obviously, and that made it a worthwhile exercise.

On her official site Curham says its about a group of football widows. She writes,"I wanted to write a book that would appeal to all women. I was interested in the notion of a group of women who are feeling neglected and unfulfilled coming together to regain control of their own lives. Sweet FA is not just about seeking revenge, but it is also a story of friendship and the fulfilment of dreams. As Belle, Ginny, Anna and Maz embark upon their campaign of sabotage and retribution they also begin a journey of self-discovery that will change each of their lives forever. Deciding to follow their football-obsessed partners' example they each find a passion of their own to pursue. Belle decides to have an affair, Ginny learns to chill out, Maz attempts to become a fashion designer and Anna finally finds the courage to escape from her abusive relationship."

This is all true, but it's not what I was thinking when I was reading it. I did however let my mind run with the ball at it's feet and I was entertained for a wee while, but honestly I would much rather be reading something else.

Awright, so I should've looked at her site before I read it, but I'm not sorry I read it. Well not as sorry as I thought I would be. It's often funny and sometimes even evocative. Along with the writing, the characters are engaging. See the bit I myopically focussed on was the football-obsessed partners. And there wasn't enough of them. But that was to be expected. It was about the girls. Still it opens the door to a world of football fiction that I hadn't put a great deal of thought into. Footballer's wives and football widows. There's bound to be creeds of material there.

And then that made me think that there must be football widowers, ye know, fellas whose partners are obsessed with football. US all-star Mia Hamm's partner for example might be sick of football, I can't see it right enough but you get the point.

Curham's written a number of other books. They're most likely not for me. Even on the beach I'd prefer to read something with more substance or more football or both. If you're interested most book sellers on the net have them. Or have a look at Siobhan Curham's own site

Karren Brady singing the Blues

Karren Brady is a bit of a football fiction all-star. Not because she wrote a couple of pieces of lipstick football fiction, she's the chairman of Kerrang! allegedly the world's biggest selling weekly rock magazine, and a non-executive director at Channel 4, Mothercare and Sport England.

Most famously though she is the Managing Director at the EPL's very own Birmingham City FC. When appointed at the ripe old age of 23 she became the youngest Chief Executive in the U.K. Her rise to fame started in advertising before she moved onto brutal tabloid nonsense papers like the Daily Sport - obviously where she refined her flair for a pungently perfumed phrase -and that was before she turned her hand to football clubs and novel writing.

She was arrested recently on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud and false accounting. It's been reported in uk tabloids that the police are investigating illicit payments made to agents among other things.

Most controversially, despite her marriage to a Luton Town player and her job with the Brummies Football Club, she's a Gooner... apparently. It's scandalous I tell ye.

But keep the naughtiness with the old shares fraud and the paperbag payments in mind for a moment. The run down on the book I've chosen to review this week will help you understand why.

Brady's novels aren’t necessarily what discerning readers would readily call football fiction. But the field is a small one and there's room for everybody. Besides Karren Brady is in the business, and better than most, she knows there can be little difference between a good buy and a bad one.

The story of her first novel United goes something like this… The protagonist, a sexy wee lassie called Sara, has it all. The glam, the lifestyle, the first division footballer... no sorry that's a different story. She does though, Sara has it all and then her bloke buries his slippers, all be it, like everything else in the book, most tragically. Then she takes the helm at a football club she’s inherited, where fantastically, (remember the naughtiness) she discovers a web of corruption that’s running rampant through the club. Its all unashamedly secret and there’s danger at eh, every turn. Every now and then there’s some wanton lovin' to keep you interested.

I have to be honest I couldn't spoil this one even if I wanted to. A month in the sun couldn't spoil it. I can’t even remember what happens at the end. I do remember that any real twists and turns happened on the park, but they were in such very short supply that I'm not even sure it was the same book.

But its the life imitating art's imitation of life angle that adds another dimension. And reminded me of her work's place in the genre.

Karren has written four books all up; a factual account of her first season at Birmingham City, cleverly called Brady plays the Blues particularly so now she's singing them, the two novels, United and Trophy Wives and her latest non-fiction effort Playing to Win is a kind of self-inspired, self-help piece about successful women in business.

They might not be books you’d add to your football fiction collection but they are topical and hey, it’s all part of the wee, and sometimes inglorious, world of football fiction.